Social Media's 'Big Data' Puts the Fun Back in Travel

[Kaleel Sakakeeny]

"Big Data" derived from social media has almost become a buzz word in decision-making, product-innovation circles. Now, a report coming out of Amadeus, a technology company that provides IT solutions to the travel and tourism industry, says that Big Data is poised to "shape the future of the travel industry."

Travel would not be possible without Big Data, says Businessinsider.com. We use it every time we get a boarding pass, check the weather for a destination, use our cell phone internationally and check into our hotel with our credit card.

And Big Data may be able to put the "fun" back into travel, according to  Roy Rodenstein, CEO of TrueLens,  a savvy Big Data company. As he sees it, big data derived from social media has the capacity to "help and delight travelers" with personalized experiences. Rodenstein believes that these experiences lead to strong word-of-mouth endorsements and repeat business, which enrich traveler profiles and  make the travel experience more fun.

Reporting on the report, Hotelmarketing.com defines Big  Data as "volumes of unstructured data" which, in the case of travel, holds out the promise of delivering "a more efficient and tailored travel experience" benefiting travelers and the travel industry.

As is the case in most "disruptive technologies," or in this case, data, the early adopters in the travel space will be the likely winners in the race to market share. Until now, companies including Google, Facebook , eBay and Linkedin were built around big data.

Now executives at travel companies including Air France-KLM, Cathay Pacific, Eurostar, Marriott Hotels are realizing how big data can be used to "focus around customer needs and preferences, not industry processes."

Specifically, the Amadeus report highlights the following ways travel must use big data to enhance customer relations, better products for the traveling public and product innovation.

* Big Data will allow travel to create stronger customer relations delivered by new approaches to customer/traveler management

* Leading travel companies like Kayak are using big data in their price-flight forecasting, alerting customers with possible flight cost changes during a 7 day window

* The key of course is in harnessing big data, and to that end, new types of data bases and languages (Python, Pig, Hive) will be used to handle the information.

The R and D team at Amadeus agree with TrueLens' Rodenstein. For them, big data can "put the fun back in travel" by improving the traveler's overall travel experience.  

We can't wait.


image/courtesy businessinsider.com