Hotels from small boutique properties to large chains have historic and future bookings data to match to in-hotel spend and customer data.
Matched to external sources like flight cancellation and weather data can make a big difference for properties close to or on airports.
One challenge is that whilst the data may be "Big" it is often not complete. So many distribution channels and systems are involved in booking and managing hotel reservations that much data is hidden away in Hotel Property Management Systems, GDS service providers like SABRE and other third party solution providers.
The recent acquisition of Trust International Reservation Systems by SABRE Hospitality maybe driven by the desire to provide more complete data analytics to give better insights for better decision making
Another US chain which has been recognized for their innovative use of analytics is Denihan Hospitality, which owns boutique hotels across the US including the James and Affinia Hotels brands. Denihan used IBM analytics technology to bring together transactional and customer data across its chains, and combine it with unstructured data such as customer feedback comments and reviews left on rating sites such as Tripadvisor. Menka Uttamchandani, the company’s vice president of business intelligence, said “Every company has massive amounts of data – it is what one does with that data – such as providing relevant dashboards, click through deep dive actionable reporting and analytical insight that can foster a competitive edge.”
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