N OW A RRIVING : B IG D ATA

IN THE H OSPITALITY ,
T RAVEL , AND T OURISM
S ECTOR
A White Paper by SOCAP International

In this white paper, SOCAP International, the Society of Consumer Affairs

Professionals, looks at the real opportunity of Big Data and how Big Data is
changing the HTT sector. SOCAP represents over 100 brand name
companies, many offering hospitality, travel and tourism services. This
discussion begins with the big picture. How is Big Data and data analytics
causing a paradigm shift in the HTT experience, and how are companies
seeking to remain on the right side of business success adapting their
operations to be competitive?

SOCAP International
4/23/2013

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

Now Arriving: Big Data in the

Hospitality, Travel, and Tourism
Sector
We are what we eat. True.
But we are also where we go. What we see. How we react. In short, we are the sum total of
millions of small and not-so-small choices that define our individual experience. More so
than ever before, that experience can be captured, aggregated and analyzed. Doing so stands
to improve each transaction as it occursto improve the customer experience. But the
process also yields the potential to learn from all types of interactions, to piece that learning
into a larger social and business mosaic, and, as a result, to understand not just what has
happened but what will happen in the future and why.
Like a march up the evolutionary ladder, data becomes information, information becomes
knowledge, knowledge becomes understanding. Understanding sets the stage for a new
dimension in value added consumer choices and options. All of this begins to be made
possible by the business strategies and the technology innovations of Big Data.
Big Data is the productive use of data in units of measure that far exceed megabytes and
gigabytes. In a sense, Big Data is to automation what a symphony orchestra is to a string
quartet: bigger, richer, combining more talents and invested with greater possibilities for
exploration and discovery. And, of course, Big Data is also more difficult to manage.
But managing Big Data opens the door to mind-boggling transformational possibilities, and
no sector is more likely to shape and be shaped by Big Data than the companies offering
hospitality, travel and tourism (HTT) products and services.
The HTT sector is an inherent data generator, creating millions of records about travel
behavior on a daily basis. In the past, HTT data has largely been transaction based:
Booking reservations, recording account balances, tracking points in loyalty programs.
Customer engagement took place on these well- defined but fairly proscribed fields of play.
Big Data elevates the HTT sector
to new dimensions of customer care
by not just managing transactions
Big Data is the productive use
but by shaping the potential for
interactions.
of data in units of measure that

far exceed megabytes and

As Keith Collins, senior vice
president and chief technology
gigabytes.
officer of SAS said in an interview
in 2012, Its not only about how
big the data is. Its about what
youre going to do with it. Thats the real challenge, and the real opportunity, of big data.
www.socap.org

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

Bryan Pearson, President and CEO of Toronto-based Loyalty One, a loyalty strategies and
measured marketing firm, agrees:
Regardless of industry, the question is not how much data you have, but how
it is used in order to achieve relevance with the customer. A feature that
distinguishes the airline and tourism industry is the rich pool of potential
information, both transactional and self-reported. The key is to think about
how to use it for both marketing and customer service related applications. A
good illustration is provided by United Airlines use of data to respond to what
is important to customers at a given moment. In one particular example,
United offered its early morning business travelers a gift of free miles by
messaging to them in real time directly on their smart phones after a flight
was delayed due to mechanical delays. Apologizing for the delay, the airline
extended the makeup offer of free air miles or a dollar-based certificate. Before
the flight even landed, passengers were talking about the great service.
In this white paper, SOCAP International, the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals,
looks at the real opportunity of Big Data and how Big Data is changing the HTT sector.
SOCAP represents over 100 brand name companies, many offering hospitality, travel and
tourism services. This discussion begins with the big picture. How are Big Data and data
analytics causing a paradigm shift in the HTT experience, and how are companies seeking to
remain on the right side of business success adapting their operations to be competitive?
Next, the white paper focuses on the importance of personalization in HTT and how Big Data
helps shape the type of interactions that foster customer satisfaction while allowing the
company to learn and grow. Part of personalization is providing the consumer with the right
information, in the right format, via the right channel. Attention will be paid to the
burgeoning sources of data, how these must be gathered from both inside and outside the
enterprise, and the need to harmonize disparate data types to create global views of
customer care threats and opportunities. In this new world of hospitality, travel and
tourism, contact centers are an important contributor to a complete and completely
satisfactory HTT customer experience.
This white paper will look at what it means to become a customer-centric organization and
how companies are using Big Data to elevate customer care from a cost of doing business to a
core mission of the HTT business. Companies operate with a variety of well-structured data,
reflecting financial performance, product development, operations, and other facets of the
commercial enterprise. They also collect, analyze and integrate unstructured data from
websites and social media sources outside the enterprise. Taken together, companies use
Big Data to answer well-defined and predetermined questions and to seek answers to
questions that have not been specifically posed or that solve problems and suggest
opportunities not even anticipated.
In either case, no data are more important to the health and well-being of the company than
the data for, by and about its customers. Yet the internal management process for owning
Big Data is often distributed, and real decision-making authority when it comes to Big Data
investment decisions can be diffuse. Opportunity abhors a vacuum. If Big Data is indeed an

www.socap.org

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

orchestra, customer care organizations need to occupy the first chair in advocating for the
customer-centric way of doing business.

WEB 1.0 AND THE TRAVEL TROIKA

Remember travel agencies? In the pre-web era, travel agencies used an online global
distribution system (GDS) to book customer travel and lodging arrangements. Travel agents
could, of course, be well versed in terms of hotels, airlines, resorts and destinations, and they
could know their customers preferences and idiosyncrasies well. Or not.
According to aviation and travel distribution authority Timothy ONeil-Dunne, managing
partner, T2Impact, in terms of serving customers, travel agents generally sat in the middle
of a bell-shaped curve. They served as the intermediary between supplier and consumer, and
what they provided most of all was the ability to make travel reservations.
There were some very interesting statistics indicating that most people who went to a travel
agency felt they were better informed than the travel agents. People would say, the person
sitting behind the desk was likely to be less smart than me, so therefore all I want to do is
find a way to get behind that terminal and understand how the terminal works, ONeilDunne said.1
Those people got their wish.
Web 1.0 turned something that was opaque into something that was relatively transparent
by opening up access to everybody, ONeil-Dunne says.
In the Web 1.0 world, hospitality, travel and tourism companies set the agenda for
interaction with customers. Equipped with electronic commerce capabilities, these company
websites allowed travelers to view availability and book their own reservations right on the
spot. Travel information, according to Larry W. Smith, managing partner with Thematix
LLC, a semantics technologies firm, consisted largely of a troika: time, place and price.
Advice, suggestions, commentsthe rich soup that offers insight and shapes informed
choicestook a back seat to convenience and lower cost. Travel writers and guidebooks had
been around since the days of Marco Polo, and these could certainly influence consumer
choices and preferences. And travel agents continue to put together tours and more
complicated travel arrangements. But the web itself had displaced many travel agencies, the
conventional source for travel planning.
With Web 1.0, consumers had the information necessary to reserve seats and rooms online,
but, from a customer care perspective, little was done to go beyond gathering the most basic
information about the consumers identity and method of payment.

SOCAP Interview, March 2013

www.socap.org

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

The top 100 brand name companies in the HTT industry all have a
staff of from two to 20 people who listen to the social string on a daily
basisThe public voice is heard at a new level.

Affinity programs grew as a method of rewarding a companys most frequent customers, and
these programs began to collect preference information. Yet the emphasis of these programs
focused largely on offering the consumer discounts for premium accommodations. Beyond
upgrades, such programs did little to understand consumer preferences, interests or future
plans.
Thus, Web 1.0 gave consumers greater access but imposed significant limitations as well.
Information that the best travel agents may once have heldinformation that provided a
fuller, richer view of travel options and opportunitiesnow took persistence and digging on
the consumers part. And the ability of travelers to share information and opinions among
themselves about airlines, hotels or restaurants in an accessible, easy to use and trustworthy
way was simply missing.
A consumer never realizes how complex a travel product isall the subtleties and nuances,
says ONeil-Dunne. The trade-off for the consumer is the assumption that the product is
simple because it looks simplebut I dont have enough capability to assess the information
I am being presented, and I dont have someone I can go kick if I make a mistake.
Roughly 20 years passed between 1985, the year that Sabre first allowed consumers to make
their own online travel reservations and 2004, when OReilly Media coined the term Web 2.0.
In travel and hospitality terms, it was the end of one era and the beginning of another.
Web 2.0 recognizes the advent of people to people communication over the Internet.
Technology did not necessarily provide someone to kick, but it began to allow people to pick
each others brains for travel dos and donts.
In the Big Data era, Larry Smith says, hotels need to be about more than just clean sheets
and bright smiles. In a sense, HTT companies like hotels have long been swimming in their
own internally generated data, from guest registration systems, suppliers, housekeeping,
maintenance, procurement, food and beverage operations and other sources. Now, HTT
companies have the opportunity to listen and learn from their customers.
The top 100 brand name companies in the HTT industry all have a staff of from two to 20
people who listen to the social string on a daily basis, Smith says, adding, The public voice
is heard at a new level. In the past, companies would get a bag of mail and phone calls. If
those calls and letters were not happy, at least they were private. That paradigm has
shifted.

www.socap.org

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

Says Brent Oshiro, director of consumer affairs at Hawaiian Airlines, Travel is all about
service. That is the differentiation among companies. The products in this industry are
fairly commoditized so as a smart consumer you are going to TravelAdvisor or Yelp to figure
out which option gives you the best customer experience for your budget. So it is really a
battle of service.
He continues, You have to focus on effectively listening to what your customers are talking
about and that is really, really challenging. Theres just too much information out
thereand customers expect a response faster than ever. If you spend all day reading
complaints from last month or even last week, its too late. The reviews have already been
written.2
While HTT companies did better or worse at responding to and correcting customer
complaints, for the most part the value of individual contacts simply did not justify a deeper
dive to find richer veins of consumer information. And before the advent of cloud computing,
Hadoop-enabled parallel processing, and other innovations, the technology itself did not
enable companies to gather cost effectively the customers voice and to seek larger patterns.
Big Data and Big Data analytics change this dynamic, bringing a set of new benefits to the
analysis of what might otherwise be considered low value transactions.3
Dealing directly with consumers, HTT companies not only have the opportunity to generate
transactions but to create interactions, whether triggered by paid space advertising,
proprietary websites and other internally controlled social media outlets, email, mobile,
search, earned media, rented or publicly available lists or other channels.4 The use of
sensors and geo-location data add significant real-time capabilities to the mix. Many in the
travel industry are moving rapidly toward real-time online personalization in their customer
experience, and this is a transformative use of data, SAS CTO Keith Collins maintains.5
The [travel] world is changing, ONeil-Dunne says. Were seeing true retailing emerge.
Weve moved away from prepackaged assumptions delivered through small, slim,
unidirectional pipes to fat data pipes, far better analytics, a better understanding of who the
consumers are, a better understanding of my products, and a far better controlled
marketplace because [with consolidation] there are fewer players.
Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which operates over 1,000 properties in 100 countries, is using
its Big Data capabilities and know-how to shift its guest experience focus from assuring
satisfaction to understanding, meeting and exceeding expectations.
Matthew Valenti is vice president of Starwoods Guest Experience Intelligence group,
bringing the corporations guest survey tracking, quality assurance and consumer affairs
functions under one management roof. Valenti says Starwood Hotels recently redesigned its
guest experience surveys to capture this difference: We want to be able to deliver a brand
SOCAP Interview, March 2013
Keith Dawson and D. Daniel Ziv, A Conversation on the Role of Big Data in Marketing and
Customer Service, CRM, April 25, 2012
4 Mark Taylor, Its Time for Big Data to Improve the Customer Experience, Outlook Report,
Razorfish, 2011
5 Keith Collins
2
3

www.socap.org

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

experience in a better, more personalized way. We want to ensure we provide what the guest
expects as well as deliver what creates customer delight.
The nature of guest expectations can be a moving target, so Starwood Hotels has also begun
to seek this information sooner. Where customers could once expect to receive a satisfaction
survey a week after checkout, that lead time has now been cut to a single day. Valenti says
eliminating the time involved gives properties the immediate information they need to
respond to guest issues.
Using Big Data effectively to get ahead of the customer relationship curve is a matter of
balancing science and art, says Loyalty Ones Bryan Pearson. It is about using customer
data to build customer intimacy and, ultimately, emotional loyalty. So we know how to
gather data through transactions, email communications, surveys, and the like and we
can use algorithms to cross-reference the information and sharpen the customer profile.
Pearson continues, This sounds ideal, but while a lot of companies today have the
wherewithal to collect data, fewer know how to actually use it in a way that benefits both
themselves and the customer. This is where the art is needed for effective engagement to
pull insights from that data and then share those insights with staff to use in relevant ways.
A case in point is the Hilton HHonors program, which continuously finesses its messages and
offers, and uses advanced algorithms to cross-reference a guests profile and spending
patterns against hundreds of variables to recommend the best offers in rank order.
By shaping the type, texture and extent of the interaction, the HTT company has a far
greater opportunity to craft the total consumer experience. Of course not all Big Data
sources are within the purview of the HTT company. Most are not. Today, Larry Smith
says, HTT customers stand on a precipice, and their comments can send a snowball of
reaction rolling down the hill.
With social media, HTT customers have a megaphone into the universe to shout
indiscriminately about their passions or slights and get responses from peers, a companys
competitors and the company itself, Smith says.
Indeed, one source says consumers are 71 percent more like to make a purchase decision if it
is based on a social media referral.6
Of course not all that appears in the social media is critical or even aimed at specific
companies. Yet the consumer voice may be very germane to the interests of the enterprise.
Establishments leaving the job of collecting, storing and analyzing big data to others may
miss out on the opportunity to burnish their brands, shape customer experiences, optimize
customer engagements and better secure customer loyalty.
In a world of burgeoning Big Data capabilities, miss the chance to meet or exceed customer
expectations, and the HTT company may very well miss the chance to serve that customer
again.

Paul Beaulieu, Why is Social media still underutilized by restaurants? smartblogs.com,

February 15, 2013
6

www.socap.org

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

MAKING IT PERSONAL
Could the executives at top label music record companies see the day when a computer
manufacturer would dominate the music distribution industry? Unlikely. But Apple ITunes brought new levels of convenience, innovation and personalization to the way
consumers purchase and use music. Technology brought transformation. Could Big Data do
the same in hospitality, travel and tourism? Personalization and the customer experience
may hold the key. And if new levels of convenience, innovation and personalization come to
the travel, hospitality and tourism field, will these value-added services be provided by sector
incumbents or newcomers?
Consider first the fundamental changes that are coming to the travel experience itself.
Until recently, a business or pleasure trip to a distant locale meant not just a physical
separation from friends and family but a period of near isolation from everyday issues and
concerns. Communication was difficult and expensive. At best, catching up or checking in
meant a phone call home at the end of the day. Mobile communications and Big Data-fueled
applications have crashed that barrier.
Says Temple Universitys Daniel Fesenmaier, When I was in Switzerland recently, I went
for a walk and used a mapping application. I texted my son to ask about school. I used
FaceTime to speak with my wife. Ten years ago, we really couldnt do that. We separated
ourselves. We went on tour or vacation and sent a postcard. Most of the data we get from
studies demonstrate a huge convergence between everyday life and the travel experience.
Will Global Delivery Systems give way to Tourism Activated Networks? Will Big Data
inform the travel and hospitality experience to the point that competitive advantage flows
from companies providing commodity seats and beds to the companies best able to design
personalized consumer experiences? With more than 100 million smartphones now churning
up an ocean of consumer engagement opportunities, the infrastructure is going into place.7
People travel from place to place and they create networks that are activated as they move
through space, Dr. Fesenmaier says. Its easy to develop push technology that tells you
that you have friends nearby or to make recommendations [about shops, restaurants,
museums or other venues] based on your personal experiences. That kind of Big Data
enabled destination planning is the wave of the future, and Dr. Fesenmaier maintains that
the techniques utilized to design an individual event can also be used to design the travel
and hospitality experiences for entire metropolitan areas. By scraping data from social
media sites, he says, analysts can understand what people are saying about cities like
Chicago, New York or Philadelphia.
High-end hotels like Marriott and Hilton are quite smart on this, Dr. Fesenmaier says.
They understand that the value and experience that is created during a hotel stay is tied to
the quality of the guests overall experience in the area. So they are making huge use of
data.

Paul Beaulieu, Why is Social Media Still Underutilized by Restaurants?, smartblogs.com,

February 15, 2013
7

www.socap.org

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

Today, venues like Las Vegas and Colorado ski resorts use guest cards to gather data about
where customers go, eat, stay and do. Tomorrow, those cards may be replaced by wearable
technology that not only gathers this type of activity and preference data, but also collects
biometric data such as pupil dilations or changes in pulse, giving HTT companies even more
insight into the customers emotional response to a restaurant, nightclub, resort or other
travel destination.
But even without next generation smart wearables or other futuristic technologies to gather
data and shape interactions, companies are pushing the envelope on the here and now.
Caesars Entertainments Total Rewards gets high marks for delivering offers relevant to
each customer group, including gamers and non-gamers. It does this through a combination
of data analysis, employee engagement and rewards systems. Online and on the casino floor,
Caesars encourages members to share preferences about the kinds of activities and
entertainment they enjoy, such as what wines they like and whether they play golf, says
Bryan Pearson.
With so much data captured, HTT companies could continue to refine the sophistication of
their offerings, from seats, sights and beds to destination-based travel design, to the capture
and resale of the best individual travel experiences themselves.
The HTT companies of the future may indeed provide robust, highly personalized travel
experiences for visitors from Chicago to Shanghai. And Big Data analytics will allow these
firms to optimize each consumer interaction by better understanding the context of each
opportunity and making appropriate, personalized sales and support recommendations as a
result.
This kind of real-time recommending
may also challenge conventional thinking
about the role of websites in helping to
shape the customer experience. For
instance, take the issue of website
stickiness. In the traditional view, the
more time a visitor spends on a
destination website like Chicago or Las
Vegas, the more likely that visitor is to
convert into a travel customer.

Today, venues like Las Vegas and

Colorado ski resorts use guest cards
to gather data about where customers
go, eat, stay and do. Tomorrow, those
cards may be replaced by wearable
technology, giving companies even
more insight into the customer

Or perhaps not. Dr. Fesenmaier calls

website metrics stories, saying studies
show no correlation between behavior on
a website and behavior in the real world.
The work that weve done has shown that most of [the metrics] that people use in terms of
designing a website are not really the ones you should be usingthey are quantitative, but
they are not really related to the business of the destination. We designed a study working
with some destinations where I tracked their log files and I know, through a follow-up

www.socap.org

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

survey, what [customers] did at the place. There was no correlation between what they did
online and their other behavior. Zero, he says.
The story sounded good, but it didnt translate into real-world behavior. As a result, Big
Data sets the stage for a shift in thinking about how to interact with the customer, with
communication being less about content on a website and more about information in context.
Understanding which travel experiences your customers are searching at the time they are
searching can drive tailored offers that can maximize conversions from customers while they
are still engaged with you, says Keith Collins.8
Of course the impact of Big Data on the HTT landscape is not limited to the commerce taking
place between companies and consumers. In the world of Web 2.0, popular travel and
hospitality websites like TravelAdvisor and Yelp offer customers the opportunity to share
opinions, rate suppliers and offer comments about experiences. While useful, the usergenerated content found on these sites can lack context. For instance, the customer looking
for a romantic night out might rate a restaurant very differently than the customer at the
same restaurant simply attending a business dinner. And speaking of business, the rating
persona of the business traveler on the company expense account is likely to be very different
than when that rater becomes the grandparent taking grandchildren on a carefully budgeted
family vacation.
What may be an 8 for you on a ten-point scale may be a 5 for me, Starwoods Valenti says,
and even those numbers might change depending on what type of trip were having.
Then theres the issue of the trustworthiness of the information found on travel websites.
There is no definition of what I would call true trust in the marketplace, says ONeilDunne of T2Impact.
Websites can be salted with bogus reviews despite the best efforts of the website owners to
patrol their cyber property. And even if reviews are honest, who are the reviewers providing
content anyway?
Do I rely on my peer group to say, Oh yeah, I trust this group of people? ONeil-Dunne
asks. Such a group could be an alumni association, social club, homeowners association or
similar structure where filtering has been applied to allow better understanding of whos
who. If the Internet resembles the wild west, the Internet of the future may have more and
higher-gated communities, allowing like-minded and peer-level customers to share their
trusted information about travel and related concerns.
Valenti says Starwood Hotels has opened its property websites up to allow guests to post
reviews. Where better to learn important customer information, glean critical insights and
respond with corrective actions than on a companys own website? The truths may not
always be convenient, but the practice of two-way communications certainly helps build
trust.

Ritesh Gupta and Keith Collins, Big Data has Moved On: Are You Moving Too?
EyeforTravel, December 12, 2012
8

www.socap.org

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

HTT companies striving to see beyond the current horizon of travel experience cannot, of
course, lose sight of Big Datas present day practical realities. Information systems can be
quite fragmented and even territorial, with records pertaining to a single customer showing
up in reservation, post sales complaint, survey, loyalty and other systems, with little or no
ability to weave together and form a complete customer profile. The challenge of leveraging
in-house data resources is very real, much of the data originating in customer contact
centers. While the Big Data buzz often comes from the ability of companies to harvest and
synthesize social media content, call centers can provide even deeper veins of relevant
information.
Take Twitter. In an interview, Ovum Analyst Keith Dawson says, While a typical tweet is
only a handful of words or abbreviations with limited context, an average five minute contact
center call is typically over 1,000 words, providing much richer context that drives more
actionable insights, when mined with the proper tools. Ive heard industry estimates that for
every word tweeted, there are over 200 words spoken in the contact center directly by your
customers and CSRs.9
Michelle Mitchell, Operations Manager, Customer Care, at InterContinental Hotels Group
(IHG), says her companys contact center operates an in-house case management system to
capture guest comments. A separate system, she says, is used to maintain loyalty programs,
while a third is used for collecting contact center metrics such as customer call duration,
average answer time and the like.
Combining data from different in-house systems can help companies achieve new insights.
For instance, IHG is working toward a capability allowing the organization to combine
customer survey data with phone call metrics.
It will let us more specifically see if a particular agent is receiving negative guest comments
and if theres the possibility of a trend. Maybe that agent is in a bad mood after lunch. Are
the calls coming in on a Saturday versus Friday? What time do they occur? Whats the
takeaway? Mitchell asks.
Well-structured corporate databases can help HTT companies come up with answers to what
Jim Sterne, president of the Digital Analytics Association and author of Social Media Metrics
calls the known unknowns. According to Sterne, You know the things youre going to ask
and the entire database is set up that wayThat is what gives these enterprise data
warehouses their power: they are designed in advance to answer the questions you know you
might ask, and they can answer them very quickly so you can refine your questions.10
Hawaiian Airlines is an HTT organization intent on extracting maximum value from its
contact center operations. Brent Oshiro says the airlines approach to data is centered on
customer sentiment and voice of the customer.
Keith Dawson and D. Daniel Ziv, A Conversation on the Role of Big Data in Marketing and
Customer Service, CRM, April 25, 2012 on
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/173109/a-conversation-on-the-role-of-big-datain-marketin.html#axzz2NSOrCplL
10 Jim Sterne, What Every Marketer Needs to Know about Big Data in the Travel Industry,
tnooz, October 23, 2012
9

www.socap.org

10

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

Extracting business intelligence

from a vast array of divergent
types of data is another
significant Big Data challenge.

4/23/2013
One of the functions of our
department is to take customer
feedback data and churn, shape
or form it into information that
we can use to improve our
operations, he says, noting that
about 15 to 20 percent of the
data collected turns into
actionable insights.

The Hawaiian Airlines customer

contacts are read by contact center staff and categorized in terms of the issue raised.
Dashboards provide overall trends and insight into various customer experience issues.
Oshiro would like to see this process move towards automated text analytics in order to
eliminate the biases and inaccuracies introduced by employees interpreting customer
comments.
Extracting business intelligence from a vast array of divergent types of data is another
significant Big Data challenge. While companies are accustom to working with wellstructured data types held in well-understood database management systems utilized by
well-defined enterprise systems, like customer relationship management or enterprise
resource planning, Big Data analytics break through some of their traditional constraints.
Complaint systems, survey systems, voice response systems and other contact center
automation can include open fields for consumer comment, generating unstructured data
that can now be captured, analyzed and integrated into proprietary company data holdings.
HTT companies also face the challenge of monitoring, gathering, analyzing and utilizing the
unstructured data that are generated in huge volumes and at formidable speeds through
corporate websites and in the social media. Cloud computing solutions, offering impressive
economies of scale and a wide array of value added services, makes the job of data storage far
easier. Data federation software acts like a roadmap, providing pointers to where different
types of data can be located and like a train schedule, delivering the organizational
capability needed to keep train loads of data on time and on track. Hadoop processing and
distributed storage techniques allow petabytes of data to be divided up and processed on
networks composed of thousands of nodes.11 12 13 Data visualization tools help make sense of
the results.

CREATING THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC ENTERPRISE

So how does the HTT company use Big Data to bridge information gaps, graduate from
transactions and commodities to interactions and value added travel and hospitality services
and, by doing so, build the end-to-end customer experience? Several steps apply:

Align company offerings and customer needs

http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/data-federation-technology
http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/Hadoop
13 http://escience.washington.edu/get-help-now/what-hadoop
11
12

www.socap.org

11

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

Build internal consensus

Collapse data silos
Create unified, logical data views
Elevate the customer care role in customer experience
Collect and use data responsibly

Alignment
Business strategy and Big Data go hand in hand. Without a clear understanding of how Big
Data initiatives support specific strategic objectives, companies risk wandering in a digital
wilderness. If you define Big Data strategically as needing to achieve a business goal of, for
example, penetrating accounts by more than 30 percent in the next year, then you have the
ability to map the kind of Big Data you need to achieve that goal, advises Joe Cordo.14
In terms of the customer experience, alignment means seeking data in key areas: who the
consumer is, how he or she prefers to shop, and why the customer is making the purchase.
Determine which resources to invest in to keep customers satisfied, while also recognizing
underdeveloped customers who may want to spend more, Bryan Pearson says.

Consensus
Just as information systems supported pre-packaged transactions like reserving seats or
beds, business strategy needs to expand its marketplace thinking. As one business
consultant seems to suggest, organizational barriers need to give way to team-focused
consensus building: Focusing on customer value helps companies move away from channel
performance and toward greater customer-centricity. But to calculate customer value,
companies must fully utilize the recency of interactions, along with the required behavior,
revenue and relationship metrics.15

Data Sharing
Part of the answer requires a willingness to share on an enterprise basis. With customer
data shared, not hoarded, Bryan Pearson says everyone in the organization can then better
align their priorities with top customer requirements and expectations. So equipped,
companies can, according to Pearson, map all customer touch points to identify which
critical encounters define the brands value, and they can continually enhance activities to
better serve those customers.

Unified Viewing
A good executive will start with business objectives and ask, where does Big Data
illuminate solutions and options? says Thematixs Larry Smith. The answer to that
question depends on the ones role within the organization. According to Smith, the store
manager of an Applebees in Toledo may want to know what people are saying about the
outlets burgers or shrimp; the CEO may want to know about the public reaction to an
enterprise-wide menu change and how it is affecting traffic volume across all store locations.
Joe Cordo, 5 Ways to Map Big Data to Business Goals, CMO.com July 19, 2012
http://www.cmo.com/articles/2012/7/19/5-ways-to-map-big-data-to-business-goals.html
15 Mark Taylor, Its Time for Big Data to Improve the Customer Experience, Outlook
Report, Razorfish, 2011
14

www.socap.org

12

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

Smith also maintains that companies who know what they are
trying to do with Big Data can move from Big Data to small sets
of actionable data fairly quickly.
I dont need to boil the ocean, he says, I just need to know
where to dip my cup.
Keith Dawson argues that the job of bringing this data in to
form a unified view of the customer experience is more a matter
of company culture than technology prowess.
According to Dawson, You need business structures in place to
share data, and to encourage the deployment and use of data
warehouses that cross departments and functionsI dont really
see siloization as a challenge of big data. Instead, its a
challenge of organizational problem solving and priority setting.
Once those silos have been broken down, companies can forge
ahead with a more intelligent data analytics strategy.16

CREATING THE
CUSTOMER-CENTRIC
ENTERPRISE

and customer needs

Build internal consensus

Collapse data silos

Create unified, logical

Elevate Customer Care

In the same article, Daniel Ziv from Verint, a data analytics
firm, suggests that customer care executives need a stepped up
role in this process:
The emergence of the chief customer officer role and customer
experience departments that own the end-to-end customer
journey can help drive the right attention and actions, Ziv says.

Align company offerings

data views

Elevate the customer care

role in customer experience

Collect and use data

responsibly

Brent Oshiro at Hawaiian Airlines would seem to agree. Noting

that social media within companies is often owned by marketing or public relations, Oshiro
says, Customers dont just see social media as promotional. They see it as another way to
communicate their issues and concerns. You want to be able to promote your brand but at
the same time respond effectively and efficiently to someone who posts about an issue they
just had. To accomplish that, customer care needs to be part of the solution.

Responsible Data Collection

Data collection should be done with an eye toward how doing so will in some way benefit the
customer as much as the organization. According to Pearson, knowing why data is being
collected will help guide the decision about what data to collect.

Keith Dawson and D. Daniel Ziv, A Conversation on the Role of Big Data in Marketing
and Customer Service, CRM, April 25, 2012 on
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/173109/a-conversation-on-the-role-of-big-datain-marketin.html#axzz2NSOrCplL
16

www.socap.org

13

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

CONCLUSIONS
Big Data and data analytics are changing the theory and practice of hospitality, travel and
tourism businesses. Smart HTT companies are using these technologies to anticipate
customer needs, rewrite how they meet customer expectations, redefine customer
engagement, and achieve new levels of customer satisfaction. In so doing, these firms are
creating a new basis for the award of customer loyalty.
People are looking for experiences and thats why expectations are becoming so important,
says Matthew Valenti of Starwood Hotels. If fundamental expectations are not being met,
it detracts from what the experience could be and negates the type of delight that a guest
could have.
In a commoditized marketplace, differentiation springs from being able to build on basic
transportation, accommodation, and destination services to offer a variety of personalized
customer interactions. Societys rich and famous will always enjoy the perquisites of their
status. Big Data makes high touch HTT interactions possible on a mass market basis.
Technology innovation will continue to fuel Big Data innovation. The transition of Web 2.0
to 3.0 and the rise of Internet-based machine to machine interaction will accelerate the need
of HTT companies to look outside the enterprise for critical information; to base operations
on both internal and external data resources; to leverage data as they relate to customers
moving through space and time; and to not so much measure customer satisfaction and
respond to complaints as to design, implement and assess entire customer travel experiences.
Tomorrows HTT players may be very different from companies today, with the market entry
of information search, aggregation and presentation firms as hotel and airline owners or
strategic partners a distinct possibility. How so? If intelligent networks hold the key to next
generation travel, Internet companies enjoy a bounty of data pouring in from cookies, log
files, and other sources.
Take the photos being posted on Facebook or Instagram. Would the traveler sharing snaps
from a trip to Ireland be interested in information about Scotland? If shown on a mountain
bike, would that individual want to know more about local biking destinations or biking
clubs? If shown standing in front of a car with a bicycle roof rack, wouldnt a trunk rack be
easier to use and avoid back problems down the road? Facebook adds 100 million photos a
day.17
Big data and data analytics suggest that the future may belong to those firms best able to
shape and deliver the consumer travel experience. In doing so, advantage may go to
companies with the longest history in offering HTT services. Other industries have shown,
however, that in a digital world, past success is no guarantor of future business growth and
vitality. Identifying preferences and affinities may become as important to travel and
hospitality companies seeking customer loyalty as being able to provide these services
themselves.

TNW The Next Web, http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/08/05/flickr-hits-6-billiontotal-photos-but-facebook-does-that-every-2-months/

17

www.socap.org

14

Copyright 2013 SOCAP International

4/23/2013

Just who will those companies be? Only time will tell. Now, however, one conclusion is
perfectly clear: for hearing the voice of the customer, shaping the customer experience, and
moving from rewards to real and sustained loyalty in the HTT sector, Big Data has arrived.

SOCAP International
www.socap.org
Founded in 1973, SOCAP International represents a thriving global profession of best-inclass customer care experts across all industries. SOCAP is a member-driven organization
committed to promoting customer care and customer engagement as a competitive advantage
in business. The Associations members include vice presidents, directors, managers and
supervisors of customer care and consumer affairs from top Fortune/Forbes 1000 companies
as well as hundreds of business partner organizations. SOCAP provides the educational tools
and professional resources to help its members to drive business transformation within their
companies. Additionally, SOCAPs exclusive network gives members access to thousands of
customer care experts across the globe. Visit www.socap.org for more information on SOCAP
International.

www.socap.org

15