Data is meaningless until it is given a context, and that’s one of the recurring themes in the latest batch of tnooz webinar replays, collected here for your viewing pleasure.

Expedia Media Solutions linked up with a consumer insights agency to drill down into the habits of travellers from the UK, the US and China, taking a slightly different approach in offering demographic breakdowns in each market and by looking at how travellers behave in-destination – the final frontier for upselling.

Elsewhere, Expedia Affiliate Network commissioned Phocuswright to produce a detailed look at 2017 and the immediate future. 2017 Phocus Forward, The Year Ahead in Digital Travel features some new findings alongside some data aggregated the research giant’s series of reports.

One of the real-world elephants in the digital travel room is fraud, which is now multichannel and multidevice. Scrapers and bad bots are one manifestation of fraudulent behaviour, and the workshop with Distil Networks and iCruise.com shows the damage that can be done and how to mitigate and minimise their impact.

Payments share a family resemblance to fraud, in that both are business-critical functions which should be front of mind for any ecommerce business but which are often lost in the gaps between departmental silos. Worldpay explains why seamless and secure payments are now a given and how the payments landscape will change over the next five years.

Finally, chatbots are becoming an important part of the hotel industry’s revenue generation mindset. The best in breed are morphing the human and the automatic to  create bots which respond automatically and with personality, as explained by Triptease.

A hotelier’s guide to live chat

Speakers:

• Charlie Osmond, founder and chief tease at Triptease

Chatbots, while still in their infancy, can already serve a number of business functions for hoteliers. But as the tech behind bots and live chat gets closer and smarter, hoteliers are now seeing the potential for both to generate revenues, in advance of the stay  and on-property.

Click here to register for the replay.

Five things a travel or airline CFO needs to know about payments

Speakers:

• Thomas Helldorff, VP airlines and travel, Worldpay
• Eelco Dettingmeijer, senior business development manager, airlines, EMEA, Worldpay

Payment providers for the travel industry need to keep on top of consumer tech trends, fintech and fraudsters as well the specifics of how the travel industry works. Worldpay shares some data on how it sees the payments landscape shaping up over the next five years.

Click here to register for the replay

The motivations and mindset of online travelers in China, the US and the UK

Speaker:

• Wendy Olson Killion, global senior director, Expedia Media Solutions

Expedia Media Solutions shares the results of a multi-generational study, commissioned with global customer insights agency Northstar, which examines online behaviors and trends of travelers around the world, across devices and throughout the consumer journey.

Click here to register for a recording and to see the slides

Are bad bots destroying your conversion rate and costing you money?

Speakers:

• Elias Terman, Vice President of Marketing, Distil Networks
• Antoine Zammit, vice president of technology, iCruise.com/WMPH Vacations

When aggressive scrapers caused slowdowns on iCruise.com, Antoine Zammit, VP of technology at its parent company WMPH Vacations, called in bot mitigation specialists Distil Networks to stop the scrapers. Hear how and why, as well as a detailed, data-driven look at how bots are hitting travel websites and apps.

Click here to register for a recording and to see the slides

Related reading from tnooz:

How iCruise.com defeated web scrapers with Distil Networks

What to expect from the travel industry in 2017 (13 July)

Speakers

• Maggie Rauch, director, research, Phocuswright
• Oliver Hoare, senior director of business development, Expedia Affiliate Network

Talking through the insights from 2017 Phocus Forward, The Year Ahead in Digital Travel while also tapping into Phocuswright’s global analysis for a longer-term view on how the current state of play will segue into 2018 and beyond.

Click here to register for a recording and for access to the slides.

 See also:

Webinar wrap – personalization, seamless travel, automation, customer experience (one of two)