The use of customer data at the territorial level is a subject that raises a lot of interest, but also questions and reticence on the part of organizations that promote or manage destinations. At Touriscope, we are very interested in this subject.
Through their leadership role, these tourism organizations are particularly well placed to compile and analyze data on current and potential visitors to their territory. But what are we really talking about? What are the challenges in managing this data? Here are a few things to think about, as well as best practice examples that are very revealing of the potential of customer data.
New ways to collect customer data
Across the country, province or region, Canadian destinations collect a lot of data to better know their customers. Until recently, these were mainly surveys, statistics from social networks, newsletters and websites. But new initiatives are emerging in order to obtain a more accurate picture of the profile and behavior of their visitors. They rely on other sources, including:
- Search engine data (e.g. Google Trends)
- Location-based mobile data (telephony providers such as Rogers, Telus)
- Payment data (Mastercard, Visa transactions)
The Quebec Ministry of Tourism is also taking a closer look at this massive data. In his new Tourism intervention framework 2021-2025, he says he wants to stimulate innovation by using big data to understand customers. At the Tourism Conference at the end of May, he unveiled his Visitor View tool from Environics Analytics, using visitors' cellular data. The New Brunswick Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture also uses this tool.
The Environics Analytics platform aggregates a multitude of external databases to profile and segment consumers. For segmentation, they offer the PRIZM solution, which is based on visitors' postal codes. There is a version just for Quebec. This makes it possible to obtain “typical profiles” of Canadian visitors, including their leisure and travel behaviors.
Data sharing is also one of MTO's commitments since, in collaboration with the Alliance, it aims to build a unique customer database for relational marketing and customer knowledge purposes.
Advantages and challenges of exploiting data in tourism
Dedicating efforts to exploiting customer data creates opportunities for collaboration between the organization and its external environment (stakeholders), but also internally since it forces to break silos between departments. This was emphasized by Nicholas Hall, founder of Digital Tourism Think Tank, during a webinar/discussion group organized jointly with the European Tourism Futures Institute.
He also outlined the three main benefits of using data in marketing: facilitation, engagement, and targeting.
Even if destinations are aware of what customer data can do for them, there are many obstacles that prevent them from taking action and exploring options other than those already used (but often unsatisfactory), including:
- Lack of time, resources, and technical skills
- High data purchase cost (even very high!)
- Reluctance to sharing data between actors
- Lack of understanding of data science and the value creation process
- Technological barrier (technological debt, non-standardized data systems between organizations, etc.)
The last two points were shared with me by two brilliant start-ups from the MT Lab, Gradiant AI and Alpha Premium. I had the chance to give a talk with them at the event of Connected territories of the NumériQC week to demystify the management of customer data in tourism organizations.
Using data to predict tourism recovery
Since the start of COVID, Destination Canada has developed an analytical method to identify signs in consumer and industry behaviors to estimate where, when, and at what pace travel and tourism will resume.
The report, entitled” Report on the consequences of COVID-19 and the recovery of the markets ”, is updated regularly. The diversity of data sources makes it possible to obtain a fairly accurate and complete picture of the situation. The estimates for each province and target market are based on:
- Credit and debit card spending in Canada, standardized based on Statistics Canada data
- Prospective booking and cancellation data for return tickets from travel agencies authorized by IATA
- Queries including keywords related to travel, attractions, and events on Google (2020 versus 2019)
- Searching for and booking accommodation on an online travel agency
- Bookings for flights to Canada
- The number of new cases of Covid in each country
A center of expertise in tourism based on data
During the DTTT webinar, I discovered the center of expertise in leisure, tourism and hospitality CELTH, in the Netherlands. In partnership with the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, they created the Data & Development Lab Destinatie Nederland. Their projects using data are very inspiring and go beyond customer knowledge. Here are a few examples:
- Carbon footprint of all types of travel to and from the Netherlands
- Comparison tools for visitor management
- Customer journey toolkit
- Dashboard the State of Destination the Netherlands
- Day Visitor Data Development (activate the Google fr translator)
- Predictive models for insight into tourism pressures
- Using GPS to track visitor behavior in tourism
- Value of online feeling data for tourism issues
Where do you start?
Destinations no longer have the choice to make greater use of customer data. Whether to compete with each other or with the Web giants who now all have one foot in the journey (Google, Amazon). To do this, it is necessary to have technological and data analysis skills internally, but I think it is mainly about being open to all opportunities and being interested in the subject (through monitoring, conferences, discussions with partners, etc.).
Technologies are becoming more and more accessible, automated solutions exist on the market, some of which are dedicated to DMOs. Firms specialize in using this massive data for the tourism industry: Travel Appeal in Europe, Visitdata in France, Rove Marketing in Canada or Arrivalist in the United States.
The tourism industry is just beginning to see the potential of big data. Of course, ethical issues are omnipresent and there are many gray areas. Data use projects should above all be based on standards that guarantee the privacy of individuals and the confidentiality of their data. Because the most important thing is to maintain a relationship of trust with our travelers!
Click hither to download our white paper on customer data collection.
If you want to discuss your customer knowledge projects or simply discuss this subject, do not hesitate to contact us Contact!
Photo on the front page: © Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio
POSTED
6/8/2021