By Hardik Roy
As the travel industry becomes more competitive, it is crucial for businesses to understand their customers’ behaviour and preferences to stay ahead of the game. In today’s data-driven world, leveraging analytics can help travel businesses unlock valuable insights.
Airlines have been using data for a long time to optimise their pricing strategies. By analysing customer data and market trends, airlines can adjust their pricing to maximise revenue. Similarly, hotel chains are using data to personalise their offerings. Online travel agencies have been at the forefront in using data to optimise their search algorithms. Cruise lines are using data to improve their sail routes and destinations.
Key benefits
Better understanding of customer behaviour: By analysing customer data, travel businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ behaviour and preferences. Customer behavioural data like time spent on a product page, or purchase/review history, etc., help companies better understand the market need and can identify patterns within specific customer segments.
Predictive marketing efforts: By analysing historical customer data and market trends, businesses can develop predictive models. This includes forecasting demand, identifying churn risks etc.
Improved customer satisfaction: Customer behaviour KPIs such as conversion rates, customer satisfaction scores, retention rates and customer acquisition costs indicate the effectiveness of a product or strategy in the market.
More informed decision-making: Analysing operational data can help businesses identify inefficiencies and optimise their operations to improve profitability while listening to customer feedback.
How to get started
Before you can start using analytics to drive sales and customer satisfaction, it’s important to identify your business objectives.Next step is to collect relevant data. This may include data on customer behaviour, website traffic, social media engagement, and more. There are tools like Google Analytics and Social Media Analytics which provide key insights to help understand customer preferences.
Representing the data in specific scenarios and use cases can sometimes tell a much better story about consumer behaviour than direct feedback. Use tools like Google Data Studio, Looker or Tableau to analyse your data using dashboards and derive relevant insights.
Once you have derived insights from your data, it’s important to use those insights to make data-informed decisions. For example, if you notice that a large percentage of your customers are booking travel packages, you may want to focus your marketing efforts on promoting those packages.
The writer is principal product manager, Sabre, a travel technology company