The "scientific method" isn’t dead, it’s just being ignored. This process - to test a hypothesis based on previous observations - remains relevant in the digital era of massive data.
NB This is an analysis by Crai Bower from Skyscanner.
Because it isn’t the data that’s overwhelming, it’s the observers who are overwhelmed.
Ewan Nicolson, senior analyst for Skyscanner, explains:
“Most people use data to produce reports: how many customers do they have, how much money are they making and so on. Of course it’s interesting to see these large screeds of data, but the ability to interpret and curate the data remains key.
"You can’t just expect something important to come out of the pile.”
Travel's trend toward trends
Few industries are as trend-dependent as travel. While some may seem whimsical - Nicaragua usurps Costa Rica as the “must visit” Central American destination, Berlin overtakes London as Europe’s go-to conference site – trends can reveal genuine economic opportunities for suppliers in the market, from airlines to hoteliers via car hire and restaurants.
Raw data, no matter how vast the compilation, doesn’t produce conclusions. Like scientists in their lab, Nicolson and his team utilize data to develop potential questions, not simply to confirm familiar answers.
Hugh Aitken, director of business development at Skyscanner for Business, continues:
“We are wrong if we assume [travel data] from the past will be the same in the future. Purchasing and destination trends change all the time, as do competitor dynamics. Historically, airlines have struggled to keep on top of competitor pricing and to understand their own performance and share within the market.”
To this end, Skyscanner for Business recently launched Travel Insight, a new module designed to interpret real-time demand travel data that results in a comprehensive overview of the air travel market.
Travel Insight was developed to identify information such as most popular destinations and preferred travel days and times. The innovative geo-tagging feature determines the locations of users when they search for flights, potential travel destinations based on searches made but not booked and scheduling preferences.
Completely anonymous, geo-tagging can create a comprehensive data set that identifies the booking behavior among business travelers.
This real time data collection produces analytics and trend projections that might otherwise go unnoticed, with subsequent opportunities left unfulfilled.
Aitken explains:
“Getting reliable and comprehensive market data, especially forward looking, is hugely challenging for an airline. It is also virtually impossible for an airport to know exactly what is going on in the air travel market [at large]. Trend data can inform, even transform future decision making across the airline and airport industries.”
Like any valuable experiment, the more informational slices that can be cleaved from a single data set the better. Robust analysis should interpret millions of anonymous data points to aggregate search data specific to each unique market, region and airport.
Conclusions should contain a competitive analysis of market share, the average price of ticketing, a schedule of advance booking times and, perhaps most importantly, generate new questions and methodology for future study and conclusion.
Nicolson suggests:
“Reliable air travel data interpretation alters the airline and airport dynamic. If an airport can become an expert on future market demand, that airport can help an airline make effective planning decisions. The airport’s position shifts from involuntary port of call to one of a trusted partner that possesses invaluable knowledge about the trading conditions and passenger dynamics within their market.”
The airport transforms from blind to symbiotic host, engendering a relationship that benefits not only the airline industry but also air travel in general. Better information leads to insightful analysis that results in improved best practices and, ultimately, end user experience.
To reach this end, data interpretation must prove meaningful rather than merely interesting.
The study of Skyscanner's 35 million unique monthly users should produce more questions than answers, if the end user wishes to gain novel and significant insights such as air travel trends and analytics that may change the airport-airline dynamic for the benefit of both enterprises.
Throughout history, many a scientist has followed an interesting tangent down a rabbit hole. No less a thinker than Aristotle spent years trying to prove that birds actually buried themselves within the sea floor in an effort to explain why they disappeared and reappeared over the Mediterranean Sea each autumn and spring respectively.
Today, our limited insights can often appear just as crude. Fortunately, ongoing study of real time data produces a holistic analysis of market share and user trends. These questions and solutions will result in a fundamental change to our interpretation and understanding of air travel.
NB This is a guest article by Crai Bower from Skyscanner. It appears here as part of Tnooz's sponsored content initiative.
NB2 Skyscanner was one of the main sponsors for the THack Dublin event this May. Click here to read Tnooz's coverage of the event "Proximity-based and time-limited apps capture interest on the Emerald Isle"
NB3 Departure board image by Shutterstock