How Real-time analytics can help tourism sector gain a competitive edge

Real-time analytics is transforming several industries by using data and related resources for analysis as soon as it enters the system. It’s a way through which the process of preparing and measuring data becomes a lot easier. In short, it allows businesses to enact on data without any delay. Manufacturing, digital marketing, military applications are some of the major industries that are actively incorporating this tool as their domains are relied on updated information. The usage of real-time analytics has helped the customers in the banking and finance sector, providing valuable inputs to mitigate risks pertaining to cybercrime, fraud prevention among others.

The scope of this technology is not only limited to retail space, but its integration in sectors like tourism can also enhance the system by helping in streamlining several operations including budget allocation. With a diverse portfolio, India’s tourism sector is infused with niche tourism products. Adventure, wellness, medical, sports, eco-tourism, film, and spiritual tourism, are some of the thriving niches with a vast scope of growth. Medical tourism alone has projected a growth of USD 9 billion in India.

However, the sector has its fair share of challenges when it comes to the critical infrastructure protection. The lack of access to digital infrastructure slows down the digitalization processes, which could bring unprecedented opportunities for tourism sector. Currently, the data systems in tourism don’t interact with each other using a common language, as a result, it curtails the scope of data analytics, which affects in policy-making decision. In order to overcome the same, Ministry of Tourism had constituted an inter-ministerial task force for National Digital Tourism Mission last year.

The objective of this task force is to harness the full potential of digitization in tourism sector, facilitating exchange of information for a seamless, standardized data exchange amongst various stakeholders. For this, the government is encouraging Indian companies to tap the potential of ‘Make in India’ initiative by taking a lead in deploying real-time analytics in the tourism sector. Currently, ACSG Corp, a critical infrastructure protection company based in India develops this tool.

A number of countries are moving towards digitalization to gain a competitive edge over others. Portugal has launched a new business intelligence tool, TravelBI that compiles all traditional and new data sources, with geo-data and open-data services, as well as data analytics tools for transforming data into an easily understandable format. Denmark, on the other hand, has launched an initiative – TourismTech Datalake for supporting the new tourism businesses by collecting and transferring data to tourism stakeholders.

Through real-time analysis, companies are determining consumer’s buying behavior and what they like to purchase and explore. It has the potential to boost innovation, generating economic and environmental efficiencies and increasing overall productivity.