Utilizing Big Data to Boost Tourism in Regions and Businesses: Insights into Geoanalysis
Tracing the Pulse of Tourism: Alfa Bank and Beeline Unite to Analyze Masses and Drive Growth
Understanding the swarm of tourists pouring into a region is essential to \strategize, conceptualize, and plan an industry's development effectively. To obtain accurate insights, however, vast quantities of diverse, up-to-date data are pivotal. While it's at their fingertips, this information is primarily wielded by big players; mobile operators gauge movement patterns based on base station loads, and banks assess flows using client transaction data.
However, the issue lies in the isolation of this data. Companies rarely share it, collecting it primarily for their own purposes. The challenge? Acquiring access and building a legal and continuous system for data collection and processing. This requires compliance with data protection, communication, confidentiality, and industry secrecy norms.
Enter Alfa Bank and the Big Data & AI Geoservices team, who have devised an innovative solution to overcome this obstacle. By joining forces, they created a system that anonymously aggregates and processes both companies' data using AI technologies, focusing on crucial parameters of tourist behavior.
"Combining Alfa Bank and Beeline's wealth of data paints an unbiased picture of tourist flow, revealing popular routes and promising growth avenues," says Alexei Kashirin, Alfa Bank's Director of the Advanced Analytics Center.
"The amalgamation of data from two major players signals a welcome trend in the tourism analytics industry," adds Sergei Stankevich, Head of Geoservices at Beeline. "With this data, we can delve deeper into regional tourism and pinpoint crucial micro-trends. Data-driven conclusions allow for personalizing tourist infrastructure to cater to the needs of regional guests and ensure it stays nimble enough to meet demand."
How it Works:
The service operates using aggregated and anonymous data from Alfa Bank clients and Beeline mobile users who've given permission for data collection. The collaboration helps gauge tourist influx and location, decipher travelers' preferences, transportation choices, frequented destinations, and purposes – all statistically projected through predictive mathematical models.
Three principal data sources underpin the collaboration:
Geoanalytics: Information about cellular tower loads and usage dynamics aid the system in analyzing the profile and density of tourist movements for over 40 million users.Financial Activity: Alfa-Bank transactional data elucidates how travelers allocate their resources across cities and regions.Sociodemographic Characteristics: Traveler profiles across a broad spectrum, from age and income to geographic distribution.
The service not only segments tourist sociodemographics into over 200 groups but also dissects travel types into distinct segments, such as beach, sports, or educational tourism, to scrutinize their intricacies.
"This holistic approach enables more than mere observation of the tourism industry's current state; it also helps predict trends, optimize marketing strategies, and generate new tourism products, routes, and events," explains Alexei Kashirin.
Upending the Tourism Landscape:
Government agencies, city, and regional authorities obtain a tool for deliberately planning tourism infrastructure development, adapting the environment to actual guest needs, optimizing transport and logistics, defining tourist attraction locations, balancing museum, park, hotel, and other tourist infrastructure loads.
Businesses – hotels, restaurants, museums, retail, transport companies, and travel agencies – can leverage this new analytics to pinpoint their target audience and preferences more accurately, conduct marketing campaigns more effectively, offer tailor-made services, and introduce innovative products.
"The Russian economy is ripe for tourism development, and businesses demand insights into not only tourist numbers but also their preferences and habits. This empowers more intelligent business decisions and expands opportunities for collaborating with investors," believes Sergei Stankevich.
Fueling Economic Prosperity:
Investors and developers stand to benefit as the service helps lower risks associated with building tourist facilities and managing tourist flow by selecting promising hotel, shopping center locations, and effectively managing objects based on tourist flow density and more accurate demand forecasting.
"Our service is more than a digital tool; it's a catalyst for economic growth. Offering insights that not only accurately represent demand but also unlock new revenue streams, it fosters dialogue with regions and businesses," concludes Daria Maidibor, head of the "External Monetization of Data Services and AI Solutions" stream at the Advanced Analytics Center of Alfa-Bank.
The solution has garnered attention from regional administrations and companies operating in the tourism sector; pilot projects are already in motion and showing encouraging results. The teams continue to develop the service's functionality, integrating new types of data and refining analytical tools to deliver even more in-depth insights, capable of not only responding to current trends but also predicting them.
"We see immense potential in using big data to transform the tourism industry. Alfa-Bank's solution and Beeline offer a tool that unlocks the tourism potential of regions, nurtures local business growth, and creates comfortable travel experiences for all," concludes Alexei Kashirin.
- For effective development strategies in tourism, it's crucial to analyze vast amounts of diverse, up-to-date data, such as financial activity, geoanalytics, and sociodemographic characteristics.
- The combination of Alfa Bank's transactional data and Beeline's cellular tower loads data can unveil popular tourist routes, traveler preferences, transportation choices, and destinations.
- This data-driven approach can lead to the personalization of tourist infrastructure, ensuring it stays nimble enough to meet demand and cater to the needs of regional guests.
- As the service continues to develop, it may integrate new types of data and refine analytical tools to deliver more in-depth insights, capable of not only responding to current trends but also predicting them.
- By offering insights into tourist numbers, preferences, and habits, the data-driven service can foster dialogue with regions and businesses, potentially expanding opportunities for collaboration with investors and fueling economic prosperity in the tourism sector.
