Big data and analytics in tourism and hospitality: opportunities and risks - ProQuest - 0 views
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The purpose of this paper is to examine and provide insights into one of the most influential technologies impacting the tourism and hospitality industry over the next five years, i.e. big data and analytics. It reflects on both opportunities and risks that such technological advances create for both consumers and tourism organisations, highlighting the importance of data governance and processes for effective and ethical data management in both tourism and hospitality
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This paper identifies and examines key opportunities and risks posed by the rising technological trend of big data and analytics in tourism and hospitality. While big data is generally regarded as beneficial to tourism and hospitality organisations, there are extensively held ethical, privacy and security concerns about it. Therefore, the paper is making the case for more research on data governance and data ethics in tourism and hospitality and posits that to successfully use data for competitive advantage, tourism and hospitality organisations need to solely expand compliance-based data governance frameworks to frameworks that include more effective privacy and ethics data solutions.
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Technology (and its rapid development) is one of the key megatrends and driving forces that are seen to shape the future of tourism (Yeoman, 2012, 2018; Yeoman and McMahon-Beattie, 2018) via changes that will impact the way tourism and hospitality providers interact with travellers.
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A recent business report on key megatrends and market disruptors suggests that technology and new ways of engaging and interacting with customers are fuelling the rate of disruption as currently businesses are able to reach new customers in new ways and can reinvent customer engagement around service and convenience (Boumphrey, 2019).
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One of the most important uses of data is to improve personalisation, travel companies using the information they gather to make specific adjustments to their offerings.
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Currently, considerable amount of structured and unstructured data are produced globally (Nunan and Di Domenico, 2013; Verdino, 2013), a so-called “digital exhaust” (Wang, 2013; Barocas and Nissenbaum, 2014) that is passively generated by users of products and services using mobile devices (Shilton, 2009), an abundance of publicly available data shared on social networking platforms (Nov et al., 2010) and customer data and information purposely collected by tourism organisations’ booking systems or customer relations management (CRM) systems
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This abundance of data and the act of processing data on a large scale has led to the concept of “Big Data,” which Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier (2013) define as “things one can do at a large scale that cannot be done at a smaller one, to extract new insights or create new forms of value, in ways that change markets, organisations, the relationship between citizens and governments, and more” (p. 6
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ndeed, one of the latest Euromonitor International travel industry reports confirms that big data and analytics is expected to be the most influential technology impacting the industry in the next five years (Bremmer, 2019), followed by artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.
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The use of data is viewed as a disruptive innovation in the tourism and hospitality industry, although it allows organisations in the industry to facilitate personalisation, offer convenience, save costs and overall gain competitive advantage (Evans, 2020).
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In particular, in the tourism and hospitality sector, the effective use of big data is associated with revenue management (e.g. using and combining internal data, such as occupancy rates and current bookings, with external data such as information about local events, school holidays and flight information to forecast demand and maximise revenues); market research and strategic marketing purposes (e.g. identifying customer trends to best cater marketing opportunities); customer experience and reputation management (e.g. social media conversations and online reviews, service usage data and internal feedback via customer surveys). A good example of an organisation that successfully uses big data to gain competitive advantage is AirBnB (Evans, 2020; Guttentag, 2019).
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These concerns have been intensified by recent global cyber-attacks and more specifically by significant data breaches in a wide range of industries and sectors, including the tourism and hospitality industry (Armerding, 2018; PwC, 2016, 2017). The hospitality industry is now in the media spotlight because of high profile breaches (PwC, 2016, 2017).
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One of the biggest data breaches of the 21st century has affected one of the largest hospitality companies, Marriott International. Starting in 2014, the data breach occurred on systems supporting Starwood hotel brands, which were acquired by Marriott in 2016 and affected ∼500 million customers worldwide, with the breach only being discovered in September 2018. Data and information on names, contact information, passport numbers, travel information and other personal information were compromised, and information on credit card numbers and expiration dates of more than 100 million customers was stolen (Armerding, 2018).
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Indeed, the 2018 Global State of Enterprise Analytics survey found that globally 49 per cent of companies surveyed believed that the primary challenges organisations most commonly face are data privacy and security concerns (MicroStrategy, 2018). Similarly, another recent industry report shows that over 40 per cent of tourism industry professionals claimed that data privacy and cybersecurity are one of the most influential factors impacting digital commerce in this sector (Bremmer, 2019).
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These technological advances provide significant opportunities for businesses to harness the wealth of data to support their activities and gain competitive advantage. The efficient uses of data and analytics drive process and cost efficiencies and strategy and change (MicroStrategy, 2018).
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When selecting analytics solutions, tourism and hospitality organisations are required to address the growing concerns around privacy and security of customer data by putting in place well-designed data governance frameworks capable of providing quality data and be able to provide effective frameworks of data security and protection for all stakeholders
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Potential frameworks for ethical data management and digital privacy specific to tourism and hospitality would need to identify, in addition to the protections afforded under the recent General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (ICO, 2018), how data is collected, what it is used for and who has access to it and why
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Big data and analytics are playing a crucial role in digital transformation efforts of organisations in general and in the tourism and hospitality industry, thus driving greater effectiveness and efficiency and the strategy to define new business models and bring about successful change (Evans, 2020; MicroStrategy, 2018)
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This was about the risks in the hospitality and tourism industry when it comes to big data and analytics. Big data is so important in the hospitality industry because it's how companies know who to cater to and with what and how. In addition to the importance of big data, there are risks that come with it. A few risks are data leaks, hackers, etc. Companies invest money in their systems so these things are avoided.