How Data Science and AI Prediction Help Transform the Travel Industry

Thousands of travelers worldwide prefer to arrange their trips online instead of physically going to a travel agency. This is a fact you can either ignore and see your sales plummet or embrace and find new, advanced ways to work with customers in the digital realm. If your travel company chooses the latter option (which it absolutely should), be sure to consider implementing data science and artificial intelligence into your new strategy. In this data-driven era, AI and big data help tourism companies be closer to their customers, understand their needs and offer services instantly. Let us shed some light on the disruption (sorry for the buzzword) that big data and artificial intelligence will bring into the travel industry.

Why Businesses Should Care

Banking, media, insurance, healthcare and retail are just some of the industries that have learned to reap the business benefits of data science and artificial intelligence. Traveling is not an exception, and once your company also learns to make use of these technologies, they can put you on the map of the race Trip Advisor, Booking, KAYAK, JetBlue, Hilton are already participating in.

Big data and AI have the potential to ramp up your travel business, be it an agency or a transport or accommodations services provider. The transformation will affect the entire cycle of business processes from engaging customers, retaining them and facilitating operations to offering new services and business opportunities. Thanks to data analytics and AI, your new offer will be able to minimize customers’ risks, save their time, give them what they like even before they asked, and make sure they don’t miss the time of their lives. Who wouldn’t love that?

Reshape Travel with Big Data

Just look what data science and artificial intelligence can do to bring value to your travel company.

Make the Perfect Offer

What makes the perfect gift for a friend? Personal touch. What makes the perfect offer to a customer? Personalized approach. Offer the right things to the right person at the right time and you’ve got yourself a loyal customer. With big data in travel, you can give customers what they want even if they haven’t stated their wishes yet. Gathering social network and historical data would be enough to let algorithms analyze a person’s preferences and interests, past experiences and purchases. The results can predict the probable destination, price range and booking suggestions. Avianca Brazil and Ryanair use the insight from data analytics to maximize their ancillary revenue.

Big data can also help you win your customers’ trust providing transparent and dynamic offers. Accurate forecasting of probable fee changes or best deals is one way to get there. Dynamic packaging is another – let your customers change their decisions quickly and create offers accordingly. These features contributed greatly to Skyscanner’s success story.

Make Better Decisions

Analyzing big data is of great help when forming key decision according to market prices and demand. With data analytics, you can build the pricing strategy dynamically, responding to the market in real time. As reported by Reuters, easyJet bets on data to drive their pricing strategy.

Another edge that big data can bring is the dynamic development of customer profile and accurately targeted marketing campaigns. According to Forrester, data analytics increases customer responsiveness up to 36%.

Collect the insight of product and service needs and contribute the knowledge to your business strategy. Powerful analytics can form business scenarios models for patterns and trends to improve predicting and planning. Nippon Airways, for example, use the big data processing technology to optimize cargo management.

Optimize Processes

Collecting and monitoring data will give you control over planning, which prevents painful losses and enhances revenue, IBM reported. Big data in travel can become a base for capacity planning, avoiding misfortunate overbooking and costly compensations. Having analytics at your disposal can bring maintenance planning and schedule stability to a whole new level. In case of flight cancellations or time change, when your customer is most likely to leave a negative feedback, you can swoop in and become the helping hand to make instant, less painful changes to their travel plans. Show loyalty to build loyalty.

Become a Customer’s Ally with AI

Nonstop virtual interactions are said to form the future of all businesses. Artificial intelligence is already a part of the customer service in many ways – forming suggestions and answering questions, supporting customers’ choices and providing guidance. Chatbots have learned to understand contexts and process unstructured data, which makes them popular customer communication tools among the leading travel service providers.

Another area of Artificial Intelligence application is optimization of B2B interactions. That’s how Tradeshift came up with Ada, a B2B eCommerce platform powered by artificial intelligence to help businesses collaborate with each other. It’s a powerful integration force for planning platforms and services providers.

But the ultimate goal in the sphere of travelers’ experience is to create an AI-based personal companion that will not only inform people about optimized routes, alert about possible hurdles and suggest changes before the problem occurs, but will assist in making a trip memorable and creating the best traveling experience.

Imagine coming back from a trip to Athens just to learn that you’ve missed a once-in-a-century concert at the foot of Acropolis. If you had an AI-empowered travel companion to rely on, it would know your location and preferences to offer interesting activities in Athens. Like an exclusive opportunity you won’t be able to experience again. That’s how AI can turn odds in your favor and influence the memories and emotions you’ll experience on your trip.

It’s natural that increasingly more travel companies are adopting AI- and data-driven technologies to empower their businesses. Big data allows them to optimize business processes, make personalized offers and better decisions while AI is here to help travel companies become a trusted friend to their customers.

Skelia realize the importance of using data science and AI algorithms. So, if you’re searching for a partner that knows how to successfully implement these technologies into your business, don’t hesitate to contact us.

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