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Amadeus has partnered with innovative start-up Forward Data to launch ‘Forward Keys’, a business intelligence tool for hotels and Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs), based on data supplied by Amadeus.
“When it comes to demand forecasting and market performance monitoring, hotels and destination marketers are still working in the dark with little reliable data to support business decisions and limited ‘live’ benchmarking,” says Olivier Jager, CEO of Forward Data S.L. “For example, revenue management techniques in the hotel industry are still largely based on historical data”, he continues. “This is a missed opportunity in an industry which is largely built on computer-based transactions which generate vast quantities of data daily, providing huge insights on current and future trends.”
The Forward Keys solution enables revenue managers to quantify future demand based on tangible, current market data supplied by Amadeus. The tool will give users real-time booking activity data enabling hotels, for example, to compare their bookings with the number of arrivals in their city on a given day. “If a hotelier sees bookings are up by 5% versus the previous year, they would be happy about that,” says Mr Jager. “But if arrivals at the local airport are up by 15%, the hotelier is missing an opportunity – and that is the kind of insight that only air booking data can provide.”
Forward Keys will help hoteliers anticipate future demand, identify dates when they can make a difference, compare budgeted occupancy against forecasted market occupancy, and allow more accurate decisions on revenue management.
Destination Management Organisations will be able to use the solution to monitor in “real time” the impact of their marketing efforts in comparing reservations made during and outside the campaign period, and also benchmark their performance against competing destinations for future and historical periods to make better long-term plans and investment decisions.
Furthermore, with enriched information, hotels and DMOs benefit from more accurate forecasting and trend analysis, which in turn allow them to make more accurate decisions on revenue management and give faster responses to opportunities and competitive threats.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales. She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
