In marketing, there is often the tendency to make decisions based on instincts, which can sometimes generate enormous success.

But what if the instincts are off?

The business could fail, or at the very least, money that could have been spent on a better investment is wasted. This is no less the case for the hotel industry than for any other.

NB: This is a viewpoint by Aly Thompson, industry manager for UK & Ireland at trivago.

Independent hoteliers often have a very short time frame in which to make important decisions that can drastically affect their bemusiness.

They are extremely busy with their daily operations, making their guests happy, ensuring that the staff is doing a good job, keeping up with technology, reviewing online marketing strategies, checking how their competitors are doing in multiple distribution channels.

It´s a lot of work, and we know it.

When we’re under time constraints, it’s even harder to not rely on our instincts.

Human beings are not objective by nature; we all have our biased assumptions, emotions, and instincts. But to be successful in any business, we should be making data-driven decisions.

Take, for example, seasonality and large events:

• Intuitively, we know these two factors impact demand, but how can search volume give a data-driven approach to reacting to this change in demand?
• How can hoteliers find out about their guests’ demographics?
• How can they be sure they’re setting attractive room rates?
• How can they know what prices their competitors are offering?

There is an unparalleled, untapped opportunity in data on the Internet.

According to World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), more than 1.2 billion people traveled across the globe in 2016, 3.9% more than the previous year.

On average this equates to approximately 3.3 million check-ins every day.

All those travelers left behind a digital footprint – data in the digital space – of their behavior when searching for their ideal hotel.

There are significant challenges when it comes to collecting and analyzing big data, to making it immediately actionable.

Independent hotels often lack the technical infrastructure and resources to take on these challenges, and must instead try to extract insights from the reports and whitepapers flooding the Internet.

It’s important, however, for hoteliers to have a structured approach to data, so that they can single out the information most relevant to their goal: anticipating what travelers want, and when they want it.

Trivago and Tnooz will discuss all this and provide greater context in a free webinar called “How to drive more direct bookings from data” on Thursday 30 March 2017 (details below).

As a leading global hotel metasearch with a mission to empower hoteliers to compete better online, trivago will identify three travel data pillars that are vital for hoteliers to focus on when seeking data, to develop competitive marketing and pricing strategies.

NB: This is a viewpoint by Aly Thompson, industry manager for UK & Ireland at trivago. It appears here as part of Tnooz’s sponsored content initiative.

NB2: The start time for the webinar is 0800 Pacific US, 1100 Eastern US, 1600 UK, 1700 Central Europe. Please adjust for your local time zone.

REGISTER HERE TODAY!