Effective Travel Business Intelligence Strategy can positively impact a company's bottom line. Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence Pvt. Ltd. authored an article for Travel Gazette India magazine, January 2011

2. Measure to Improve
Sanjay Mehta CEO, MAIA Intelligence on how
effective travel business intelligence strategy can
positively impact a company’s bottom line
f you can measure it, you can What routes perform better than others and • Total Booked Spend
improve it. Data provides the at what times of the day? • Average Ticket Price
I foundation for well-designed goals
and objectives,
measurement
and
against
regular
those
objectives tells you just how much
BI IN ACTION
With BI, organizations in travel industry can
www.travelgazetteindia.com
track basic fleet information such as on-time
•
•
•
•
Price per Mile
Average Room Rate
Average Rental Rate
Top 25 Suppliers
you have achieved. arrivals and percentage of booked seats. The • Top 500 Markets
managers are able to drill down to customer
THE CHALLENGE demographics. Who are average customers? Three Key Spend Analyses:
It’s important to relate effectively with What kept them loyal to the company? Why • Incremental volume on suppliers
customers. Consolidation and alliances up are they traveling? How was our service – Preferred – better discounts, more
and down the supply chain are even more perceived in relation to others? discounted spend
vital. More effective human resource and – Non-preferred – potential discounts,
asset management is also important. The sales force in the travel industry is more leverage with preferred
The world of travel management constantly on the road, working on corporate suppliers
inherently relies of multiple sources of deals that establish their organization as the • Booking activity by alternative channels
information. Information is gathered from preferred travel partner for business – Is the supplier’s pricing differential
bookings, ticketing, usage, cancellations and travelers. BI helps sales team leaders and enough to warrant the preferred
other stages of a consumers travel executives to see the big picture, while the channel’s total cost?
experience. This multiplicity means key data drill-down enables them to identify what, or – Where do you need direct data pipes?
may not be noticed, communicated or taken who, is causing a margin or revenue • Booked vs. Billed Rate Audits
into consideration leading missed problem. To make real use of this
opportunities to increase profits, while information, the sales leaders need anytime, Analysis of data within a Travel
causing confusion, duplications, and anywhere access to their information. Such Management Company with BI:
redundancies. information enables them to stay current, • Executive Summary
minimize errors, and feel confident knowing • Compliance
TRAVEL IS COMPLICATED that everyone is working from the same • Booking Behavior
• Highly personal impact on travelers information. • Vendor Analysis
• Huge amounts of spend on Travel BI can help travel agents, operators,
• Tidal waves of transaction data Examples of how to apply BI tools to a wholesalers and retailers gain
• Dynamic and complicated pricing travel business include: comprehensive knowledge of the factors
• Content and spend fragmentation • Understand and analyze industry affecting their business, such as employee
• Sophisticated and stressful negotiations relevant factors such as sales, productivity, sale matrices, commissions,
• Significant cost-reduction pressure commissions, markups and internal markups and internal operations.
operations BI in the travel services industry
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE • Analyze turnover, expenses & profit in can be used in the capture of customer
Without the right information delivered at various dimensions such as destination, desired activities and constraints. They may
the right time, companies cannot effectively suppliers, agents, booking clerks and also be engaged by the business to link key
negotiate supplier contracts, monitor policy many more business segments like market intelligence,
compliance or pinpoint opportunities for • Create sales and profit targets for customer relationship management, yield
additional cost savings. BI extracts meaning branches, team members, agents and management, overbooking and employee
information from multiple sources – data suppliers and analyze these targets on a scheduling.
that might not be explicitly apparent from daily basis. BI can help a decision maker to
simply generating reports. The emergence of • Identify best-selling contracts to assist forecast sales, negotiate contracts, manage
BI corresponds to the increasing volumes of in renegotiation and allocation planning commissions, create and monitor sales and
business data now captured for analysis. • Identify and reward top agents profit targets and identify opportunities to
• Forecast next year's sales increase sales and reduce costs. TGI
Travel business constantly needs to track
fleet’s performance. Are vehicles on time? Dimensions upon which most travel
reports are built
www.travelgazetteindia.com January 2011 – Travel Gazette India 41