Amadeus reports that it has partnered with start-up Forward Data to launch Forward Keys, a business intelligence tool for hotels and destination marketing organizations (DMOs), based on data supplied by Amadeus. The tool will give users real-time booking activity data from Amadeus, allowing them to quantify demand – for example, comparing a hotel’s bookings with the number of arrivals in their city on a given day.
“When it comes to demand forecasting and market performance monitoring, hotels and destination marketers are still working in the dark with little reliable data to support business decisions and limited ‘live’ benchmarking,” says Olivier Jager, CEO of Forward Data. “For example, revenue management techniques in the hotel industry are still largely based on historical data,” he continues. “This is a missed opportunity in an industry which is largely built on computer-based transactions which generate vast quantities of data daily, providing huge insights on current and future trends.”
The Forward Keys solution enables revenue managers to quantify future demand based on tangible, current market data supplied by Amadeus. The tool will give users real-time booking activity data. “If a hotelier sees bookings are up by 5 percent versus the previous year, they would be happy about that,” says Jager. “But if arrivals at the local airport are up by 15 percent, the hotelier is missing an opportunity – and that is the kind of insight that only air booking data can provide.”
Forward Keys will help hoteliers anticipate future demand, identify dates when they can make a difference, compare budgeted occupancy against forecasted market occupancy, and allow more accurate decisions on revenue management.
Destination management organizations will be able to use the solution to monitor in “real time” the impact of their marketing efforts. They will be able to compare reservations made during and outside the campaign period, and also benchmark their performance against competing destinations for future and historical periods to make better long-term plans and investment decisions.
Hotels and DMOs will benefit from more accurate forecasting and trend analysis, which in turn allow them to make more accurate decisions on revenue management and give faster responses to opportunities and competitive threats, Amadeus says.
Visit www.Amadeus.com.