Saturday, June 9, 2018, 07:58
Tourism in our country meant an income of 60,000 million euros in 2017, according to data from the Bank of Spain. Can the competitiveness of companies in this sector be improved, while a more sustainable tourism is achieved? Yes, applying Big Data methods. Thus it in any case suggests in 2Destination, a Bilbao company that works with SMEs, large companies and official organizations.
Since 2016, the company has been collecting data from different types and different public sources. There are customers who decide to analyze other data “that they themselves have obtained from sources such as telephony, banking or sensors,” explains Nagore Espinosa, CEO of In2Destination.
This data must be filtered, as in any BIG Data project, so that only those who really offer value are taken into account. According to Espinosa -who defends the decision -based decision -making, the first thing to do is talking to the customer. “We study your case and detect the most important questions that are the key for each of them.” Some of these questions are known to the customer, but others are not. «That is where there is a lot of our work. This is fundamental and then identifies the working methods and the necessary sources to obtain the answers ».
The responsible person notes that it is important to be clear that technology is a medium, not the end. “Depending on the questions to be answered, the methodology to be used is traditional, technological or a combination of both,” he describes. «The purpose of our work is not to measure, but to measure to act accordingly. Our work does not end the report that we deliver to the customer with the data we have collected, analyzed and interpreted: the most important thing is to implement strategic planning within the equipment that manages destinations, resources or tourist companies. That is why we form and develop strategies for achieving the objectives set ».
Large and small
Spain is a country of SMEs, but Big Data technology is not always accessible to them. Instead, Nagore Espinosa defends yes. It ensures that, depending on the size of the project, the proposals vary so that they adapt to the size of the company. But moreover, he says that “the tourism sector welcomes some of the most innovative and large companies in the world, but also for others whose focus is the development of the local territory.” In fact, they work in 2Destination for both the World Tourism Organization of the United Nations (UNWTO) and the National Tourism Authority of Ireland, and for regions such as Almath, in Kazakhstan or Micropymes.
Graph with the comments from a hotel.
RC
The investment is justified in the company, because “it is essential to know what they say about one, what are the profiles of your customers, which communication channels are the most effective, etc., to implement effective promotional actions.”
Sustainable tourism
The duration of a Big Data project depends on whether they are private or public customers and the size of the plan. “There are projects that respond in recent years and others who respond to a specific need,” he describes.
One of the objectives that continue to improve the competitiveness of companies, is to achieve more sustainable tourism and prevent saturation. “We do not refer to purely volume data from tourists who have nothing to do with sustainable development, but to a command image that helps to know the most detailed economic return of the sector, social variables related to our residents, the environment, of absorption of innovation and competitive capacity in the sector, national and urban development, etc.”.
But how can this goal be achieved? «If a destination sensors implement that air quality, levels of use/saturation of parking, traffic jams, flows people on different points, water quality, etc., these are all large volumes unstructured data that are generated at high speed, so big data. This data must be analyzed to make decisions in real -time with the aim of improving the quality of life of the resident and the visitor. In this way we will work for sustainable tourism at environmental level ».
Another example would be, through semantic analysis of social networks, to detect the feeling of residents about events, noise conditions, street cleaning, squares or beaches.
Natural language
That is the social aspect of sustainability that is also analyzed by Big Data. In these cases, natural language processing must be applied in multiple languages. “It is true that irony and sarcasm are complex to appreciate,” says Espinosa. «As a research team, we work last about the progress in this area, both nationally and internationally. In fact, in our team we have a doctor in computer science specialized in research into the processing of natural language, “he adds.
In addition, the application of Big Data methods, inclusion and accessibility problems can be specifically studied in order to detect non -accessible black points on which both on the level of structural improvements and the formation of service providers can work.
Concrete applications
Imagine being a private company that focuses on tourism. A trade, national accommodation, activity company, etc. «We want to know for sure which customers we have had from our services; From everyone who contacts us how much have finally accepted us; And know the customer profiles we have, “says Nagore Espinosa, CEO of In2Destination.
“The application of big data technologies You can answer comments, build relationships that generate prescribers, detect loyalty to the customer, detect improvements, know which channels work best for us to invest in them, where are the problems we lose to these possible customers, marketing strategies and promotions to raise,” he says.
But these technologies can also be applied to public entities. The municipalities and tourist agencies can therefore know which routes tourists follow, which profiles, what electricity follows the walk, how many hours are there in our area and where they go and how they spend every day.
