By Harshita Shishodiya – Regional Sales Engineer (EMEA) at Cirium, Mike McCormick – Head of Business Development at 3Victors and George Jebran – Head of Data Science at 3Victors
Shopping data is a mine of information that holds valuable indicators to traveler intentions and travel trends. The advantageous insights provided by this data helps businesses in the travel industry maximize their profit potential. It’s no surprise that search data is increasingly becoming an integral part of travel businesses revenue models and traveler intentions data.
The wealth of data generated by consumers can be hard to navigate. However, with a tool like Cirium Demand View, powered by 3Victors, the travel industry can easily identify traveler intentions and thus capitalize on periods of high demand by optimizing pricing models. We have developed one such informative, interactive, and easy to visualize dashboard to monitor search activity in real-time for the FIFA World Cup 2022.
The power of the shopping data lies in the input search parameters and each search query reveals a certain attribute about customer travel behavior.
Let’s take some of the most used input search parameters as an example
- Origin, Destination and Departure Dates: These demonstrate destination travel demand patterns, typical flow of traffic and seasonality for the choice of travel. Airlines typically identify a “peak season” calendar each year based on published holidays and other significant events. Airlines are now increasingly relying on shopping data to complement the traditional seasonal calendar by identifying both the shopping date as well as the travel date.
- Shopping Date: This determines the number of days prior to departure that a search is made. A price sensitive customer will shop well in advance whereas a price agnostic business traveler will shop closer to departure date.
- Number of Passengers: This is also a critical identifier for the “customer segment”. A family of four flying during the summer holidays can be considered as classic vacation traffic. A solo traveler flying on a Sunday morning flight from Dubai to Riyadh (who booked a flight 2 days in advance) will be considered “corporate” traffic.
- Length of Stay: This is a deduced metric that is utilized by airlines or online travel agencies (OTAs) to define fares for selected itineraries. Airlines define the minimum and the maximum length of stay for a certain fare, and thereby create buckets of length of stay for which the price is valid. Weekend stays in Bali, for instance, for a passenger flying out of Singapore would arguably hold a higher fare given the number of Singapore residents that fly, and stay, in Bali for the weekend compared to a 5-day stay, which is less common.
The constant shift in shopping behavior during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar is yet another example of how airlines can optimize their fares and network schedules based on key insights driven by passenger shopping behavior.
Qatar has seen some shock upsets, from Saudi Arabia’s stunning win over Argentina to Germany’s group stage knockout and these unexpected results have influenced passenger shopping behavior. For instance, there was a 68% increase in the number of searches for flights from Saudi Arabia to Qatar following the Kingdom’s 2-1 win over Argentina. Similarly, the number of searches declined by more than 80% after Saudi Arabia were eliminated from the World Cup.
Data plays a critical role in any business, and Cirium’s partnership with 3Victors actively helps the travel industry to leverage the power of shopping data by analyzing future traffic demand and identifying emerging opportunities.
