Linked Data Paths To A Smart Tourism Journey

A million euro in change in a fountain is just a drop in the ocean for the hospitality, tourism and travel industry, which generates trillions of dollars in revenues each year. It also generates huge amounts of data of all types with the growing use of maps and booking apps, card transactions, user reviews and social media posts.

Linked Data On The Road

Many of these large and unstructured datasets are vastly untapped because they are sitting in data silos and finding links between them is highly resource-consuming. Fortunately, we have Linked Data to create semantically-rich links between data from various heterogeneous sources so that both the tourism industry and travelers benefit from the business insights of big data analytics.

Cities across the world are now actively interacting with tourists by opening datasets and encouraging developers and businesses to create travel and tourism apps. Then we have the travelers taking advantage of Linked Open Data (LOD)-based apps to search for the top destinations and landmarks in a country or city.

And then there are the hotels, travel operators and airlines using advanced analytics to improve customer experience, streamline investments and combine travel statistics with economic data to predict future travel trends.

Taking A Tour of The City

Cities across the globe are now engaging tourists and residents in exploring landmarks and sites worth seeing via open data-based apps.

New York, which has 1,500-plus datasets available, has the BigApps, which includes foursquare APIs, traffic data, apps to easily find bars and search for hotels, etc. There is also the SeatGeek API of data on all live sports, concert and theater events in both New York City and worldwide.

Across the Atlantic, Dublin has its Dubl:nked datastore featuring arts, culture & heritage as well as recreation & amenities datasets. Dublin’s 250 freely available open datasets help the city share data, ideas and connections with everyone.

Travelers, of course, are increasingly using apps to find landmarks, book trips or review hotels. And millions of them are rating and voting for their favorite hotels, destinations, beaches, landmarks and attractions at apps like TripAdvisor.

Tourism Industry Keeping Up with Trends

Naturally, the travel and tourism industry is swiftly adapting to travelers’ preferences and choices in its pursuit of better customer experience, wiser investments and, ultimately, higher profits.

According to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the industry contributed USD 7.2 trillion to the world GDP in 2015. That’s 9.8% of the global GDP. The sector provides jobs to 284 million people in the world, which is one in every 11 jobs.

Therefore, we have one huge business with many players where competition to acquire customers and offer additional amenities is fierce. Today, keeping up with trends and predicting new ones is vital for the industry. Luckily, data is everywhere and is continuously increasing, thanks to the rising use of IoT, social media, wearables and all gadgets digital.

Making Sense of Data from Multiple Sources

All that data, however, comes in most varied formats and from disparate sources and often sits isolated with its vast potential untapped because extracting insights from it would be enormously labor-intensive. Semantic Technology and graph databases help in this task by discovering relationships between concepts.

In addition, Linked Data turns heterogeneous data from multiple sources into semantically-rich interlinked information. Semantic Technology and machine learning help machines understand if a tourist is in Paris, France or Paris, Texas. Even, if they are staying at a Hilton hotel or at the same hotel as Paris Hilton.

Linked Data Integration for Tourism Industry

Linked Data also makes data integration smoother for an enhanced management of both internal and external data. Structured and coherent data help companies not only know their customers but also better manage revenues.

In its report Global hospitality insights: top 10 thoughts for 2016, EY said:

Hotel companies seeking to optimize revenue management in today’s competitive environment should consider the following: Data integration across enterprise systems, breaking down data silos and opening up RMS to access and process more complex data feeds in a more flexible fashion.

EY has a vision of a good revenue management system as a single platform integrating customer data, forecasts, information about local events, economy and market news and advanced analytics.

How Travel & Tourism Use Big Data

According to a Killarney Hotels study on the global hotel trends for 2016, more than 50% of consumers globally have made a purchase based on an online recommendation and more than 50% of hotel bookings take place online. This gives hoteliers the opportunity to get to know their customers better with social media analytics using Linked Data and combining it with statistical data.

Millennials, who are expected to become the dominant consumer group worldwide in 2017, are especially favoring ultra-personalized offers and hotels are eagerly trying to endear them with customized offers and additional amenities. The Marriott, for example, is doing this by offering the use of a phone as hotels room key, in-room virtual reality and text chats with hotel personnel.

The Marriott’s acquisition target Starwood Hotels and Resorts has been focusing on revenue optimization and is using big data and advanced analytics for dynamic pricing. Starwood combines data about weather, economic factors and local events to extract insights that help them decide when to launch promotions or how to price offerings.

For example, if the weather in the winter is especially bad is the US Northeast or Midwest, many people would prefer to go on a vacation to a Caribbean island at that time of the year.

The ability to predict when to increase, lower or hold rates or when investments will pay off the most, leads to better revenue management and, subsequently, to higher profit margins. Analyzing big data for marketing and promotions has the potential to reach out to specific groups of customers and to improve overall customer satisfaction.

The better the customer experience, the more engaged travelers will be. And they will happily throw coins in the Trevi fountain and continue pouring in trillions of dollars into the tourism, travel and hospitality industry.

If you are in the tourism industry and want to benefit from big data analytics in your pursuit of wiser investments and higher profits, don’t wait!