The travel industry is advancing and the influence of technology is expected to change traveling forever. Artificial Intelligence, social networking websites, electronic payment, smartphones and more are going to change traveling in very many ways. With the influence...
Travel / Hospitality
Recent Articles
Predictive analytics in the travel industry: use cases
The latest technological advancements have taken the world by a storm. It’s immensely impressive to see how much better and convenient our lives have become, thanks to those advancements. One such recent development is the discovery of big data. It’s the concept to...
ZOE – The world’s first virtual personal cruise assistant powered by AI
ZOE is the world's first virtual personal cruise assistant, powered by AI and developed in partnership with HARMAN and Samsung Electronics to enrich the cruise vacation. ZOE is a voice-enabled AI artificial intelligence (AI) tool found in every stateroom and can speak...
Top 20 best & free GPS tracking apps for iOS in 2019
There is a huge variety of GPS tracking apps in the market. What is the safest and the most efficient one? How to find the right one for yourself and your family and keep your location data secured? This is a list of 20 best & free GPS tracking apps for iOS. As it...
Ride-sharing impact on drunk driving in the US [Infographic]
Since its inception in 2009, ride-sharing app Uber has changed the way we commute. Within minutes, we can now get from point A to point B anytime we want simply by opening up an app on our phone. After a night out, ride-sharing apps like Uber make it easy for people...
A look at all digital transformation initiatives in Travel, Aviation and Tourism
High-tech advancements and digital strategies that contribute to an increasingly digital world and digital age are evident in almost every industry imaginable. Companies know to remain competitive, they must look for ways to keep customers happy and impress other...
Big Data in aviation – Six trending technologies
Large and Luxurious - has become a way of life for the city of impeccable architecture and style – Dubai. Apart from being the largest among UAE cities, it houses the world’s tallest building, biggest natural flower garden, the most massive mall, world’s heaviest Gold...
How IoT and big data are driving smart traffic management and smart cities
Have you ever sat down and imagined the capabilities and limitations of big data - a term we give to drawing insights by applying analytics to the ever-growing amounts of digital information? Sometimes, it seems tempting to think that big data can do anything. With...
Does your car read your expressions? AI and machine learning make this possible
Very soon, your car will recognize you when you get behind the wheel. Utilizing cameras with biometric indicators and facial recognition software, the automakers are looking to personalize your driving experience with cars that stare back at you adjusting quietly, the...
IoT-connected cars of today – Cases from Hertz, Nokia, NTT, Mojio and Concur Technologies
Imagine a world where your car not only drives itself but also says intelligent things like these: A hotel is just around the corner and you have been driving for eight hours. Would you like to reserve a room and take rest for a couple of hours? You last serviced the...
5 ways artificial intelligence is driving the automobile industry
Artificial intelligence is taking the automobile industry by storm while all the major automobile players are utilizing their resources and technology to come up with the best. The beauty of devices with artificial intelligence is that it tries to learn from sensory...
Big data drives Tesla – The future of Tesla and driverless cars
Thirteen years ago Elon Musk and a group of engineers formed a car company in Silicon Valley with one simple goal, “to prove that electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars.” Since then, Tesla has become a leader in the automotive industry. While they...
4 ways big data can help airline operations run smoothly
When you’re waiting for your plane to board, the last thing you want to hear is that your flight has been delayed or canceled, leaving you stranded at the gate. Even if your flight takes off on time, you wait anxiously at the baggage carousel, crossing your fingers...
An infographic on hotel guest satisfaction – Industry Insights
Hotels owners and managers have to constantly move with the times in order to keep ahead of the game and keep customers coming through the doors. While the advent of technology has brought on the industry immensely, it has also brought with it certain challenges for...
How online market places use big data to score travelers cheap airfares
If you’ve recently heard someone complain about how expensive air travel has gotten, it’s time to look past popular perception and look at the facts: Business Insider looked at federal transportation statistics for 5 major airports over the last 20 years, and found...
How big data has transformed the travel agent’s role
You see them in nearly every city you visit. Forlorn little buildings with faded signs in the windows advertising their services: travel agencies. Ask anyone on the street, and it seems like it’s a given that these agencies are dying in the Information Age when a...
Overwhelmed by Data: How travelers use it to save money
Businesses have a new obsession: collecting as much data as possible and turning it into cash. Whether that means making their processes more efficient, providing new insights on what consumers want, or directly selling the data they collect, small and large companies...
How travel marketers can benefit from Big Data analytics [INFOGRAPHIC]
One of the buzz words in recent times among corporates is none other than ‘Big Data’. Yet multiple definitions for Big Data prevail. Tnooz CEO Gene Quinn says with a smile, “If you ask ten people about the definition of Big Data, you will get eleven answers”....
5 ways Artificial Intelligence is helping a modern traveler today
The way we travel is changing as quickly as how we live. We have different expectations for planning a trip than we did a few decades ago, and today, convenience, comfort, and price matter more than anything else. Leisure travelers want unique experiences, while...
How do Amadeus and Red Hat innovate the open source way
No matter how you look at it, open source has become the de facto standard for enterprise software development, distribution and adoption. Amadeus’s excellent post highlights eight reasons why Amadeus has adopted open source software. And, Udo Seidel explains why open...
Hotels can use data and a bit of TLC to make a difference
Many hotels are challenged to meet short-term targets whilst having to formulate strategic priorities in a highly competitive business environment. How is it best to deal with this dilemma? NB: This is an analysis by Anna de Visser-Amundson (senior lecturer and...
What does Pokemon Go mean for the travel industry?
If you haven’t played, or at least heard about, Pokemon Go, you may soon be in the minority. Not only has it single-handedly brought gaming giant Nintendo back to life but sparked conversations about the future of augmented reality (AR). It may not be obvious, but the...
5 more examples of predictive analytics in travel industry
Previously, I listed 5 ways the travel industry uses predictive analytics. These ranged from recommender systems to fraud detection and conversion optimization. The travel industry also uses predictive analytics in a number of other capacities as listed below: Dynamic...
Top 5 examples of predictive analytics in the travel industry
Forget about Minority Report and its sexy gesture interface – predicting the future is very different from what you see in the movies. In reality, it’s all about finding patterns in a vast amount of data. Applying the right statistical models allows you to gain...
The misery of choice, and the pressing need for travel curation
Japan’s iconic Sakura season. We were all really excited about our trip to the land of spiritual awakening. Who wouldn’t be? It all sounded like a dream come true, until we realized the burden of planning a trip, from beginning-to-end! As 3 women travelers taking our...
Personalizing travel search: How data leads to happier travels
An overdue evolution is happening in travel search, especially in the hotel sector. Doesn’t searching for a “hotel in downtown Miami” seem archaic when the travel industry has so much more information to work with? For instance, it’s entirely possible to search for...
Top 6 travel APIs to start prototyping your application right now
Most developers would agree that APIs should just do their job and get out of the way. Being able to focus on the application at hand is key, especially when working on a potential innovation. This is what we wanted to achieve with the Travel Innovation Sandbox. It’s...
Top 4 technology trends set to create a better travel experience
Connected baggage, robots, virtual reality, big data, and drones will be part of your travels soon. Just how will they, along with other technology trends, create a better experience for travelers? Robotics combined with artificial intelligence You can already...
Commercializing big data: frequent flyer programs
I recently shared an article on how airlines are using information to individually price airfares and extract maximum value from passengers which was thought provoking and insightful for many airline industry and big data professionals. With all the overwhelming...
How hotels use big data to generate new revenues
Hotel revenue management and use of analytics for room sales have remained largely unchanged for decades since the early 1980s when hotels started looking at yield and how they could optimize the revenue each room could generate. By the mid-1990s, Marriott’s...
The future of OTA loyalty programs
Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are known as an effective distribution channel for hotel rooms, but with more major hotel brands pushing direct bookings in an effort to reduce commissions paid out to agents– this leaves OTAs searching for the next goldmine product to fuel...
How big data is changing the way you fly
A journey into predictive analytics and how data will drive up airline ticket prices. As airlines and frequent flyer programs gather more intelligence on your day to day lifestyle, flying and financial position - they begin to build a data profile on your interests,...
Big Data unravels the best time to target travellers with marketing [Infographic]
More fuel for the marketer's engine with some major crunching of numbers to understand the differences in the booking behaviour of travellers. In particular, programmatic marketing specialist Rocket Fuel analysed data from more than 240,000 travellers (generating...
The role of big data in the travel and hospitality sector
How did you book your airline tickets for your last vacation? Kayak. How did you book the hotel stay for the last business trip? Hotels.com. How do you book your car rentals for your weekend getaways? Enterprise.com. Where do you look for the best deals for local...
How tech startups help food nomads to pick their favourite restaurants
As co-founder of a startup with global ambitions, I’ve travelled 170+ days in the last year – pretty much making me a nomad of sorts. And as a self –confessed foodie, the quest for memorable food experiences on my travels has certainly been interesting. First, the...
White Paper: How hotels provide amazing guest service using Big Data
Many hospitality companies are using big data today to understand trends and obtain additional customers. Many more hospitality companies want to comprehend the value of obtaining big data or correlating big data with data from their systems. For many years, hotels...
Big Data takes Indian Railway to a new level it deserves!
The very first train journey in India took place in the year 1853, when a fourteen carriage long train drawn by three locomotives covered 21 miles between Bori Bunder (Bombay) and Thane. We have come a long way since then, and the huge strides that the Indian Railways...
Personalizing the travel experience with Big Dataanki
Not much time has passed by when we were all praying for the Malaysian Airline MH-370 to be found. Thanks to Big Workflow (a tool based on Big Data), DigitalGlobe, Tomnod.com and obviously the search team, who although couldn’t save the passengers but helped to give...
Big Data: The secret ingredient for food companies?
All food companies face an interesting dilemma: How to understand the tastes and needs of their consumers? When it comes to food or snacks, tastes and preferences vary so much that it is hard to have one single strategy that meets everyone’s needs. Besides, customers...
Is Big Data a game – changer for businesses and travellers?
Data has become an integral part of our society today. Widespread use of the Internet, social media, location-based services, and multimedia are contributing to the ever-growing data explosion that is generating information about people, their preferences, likes and...
Big Data – The perfect pill to boost the hospitality industry
Over the past several years, we have heard so many definitions of Big Data; some say it’s a “collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using traditional data processing applications”, while others say it represents “the...
How airliner data improves weather forecasting
When severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, flash floods, or winter storms threaten the Washington region automated observations from airliners taking off and landing at airports as far away as Philadelphia give NWS forecasters a more detailed picture of what the atmosphere...
Today's travellers want to travel the world in just one way – their own way.
Today's travellers want to travel the world in just one way – their own way. They want to: 1. put together their own unique travel experiences: the average traveler uses more than 10 sources at any step of the travel journey / booking cycle 2. tap into inspiration...
Airlines get the most from Big Data to improve passenger experience & increase revenues
Big Data is something we hear a lot about in the travel sector. As airlines face increasing pressure from travellers to improve the standards of air travel and create a more personal experience, while at the same time being tasked with finding new ways of generating...
For the airline industry, big data is cleared for take-off
When a customer checks into a flight with United Airlines UAL 1.34% , there is typically an array of potential add-on offers to navigate through: flight upgrades, access to the airline’s United Club, and more. Under United’s old “collect and analyze” approach to data,...
How to harness Big Data to improve hotel and travel businesses
Over the past few years, Big Data has transformed the way the hospitality, travel and tourism sector (HTT) functions. It has lodged a new dimension of customer care in HTT by opening up mind-boggling possibilities — spurring a ‘paradigm shift’ from simply viewing...
Car-sharing, GPS data changing transportation patterns
Why drive a car when you can tap out a ride on your smartphone and get picked up in minutes. Need to drive? Rent a car by the hour and then leave it on the street when you’re done with it. But if you must own a car, one California automaker is betting it won’t use...
Should autonomous cars behave like automatons or act like human drivers?
At Nokia’s Here connected car division in Chicago, researchers are pouring over crowdsourced vehicle data from all of the world, trying to figure out how our future autonomous vehicles should comport themselves on the road. By comparing high-definition mapping data...
Smart Cars and Big Data: Automotive Analytical Concerns
At the launch of the German auto industry event CeBit, Volkswagen’s chairman Martin Winterkorn stated, “The car must not become a data monster. I clearly say yes to Big Data, yes to greater security and convenience, but no to paternalism and Big Brother.” The English...
Big Data makes for big opportunities in car manufacturing
Cars are becoming more intelligent, that is certainly clear.The average family saloon now has more computing power than Apollo 11, the shuttle that first took man to the moon. One major aspect of this ‘intelligence’ is how the information a car gathers is transported...