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Frank Belzer is the chief sales and marketing officer for Icon Park in Orlando and serves on the board of Grand Canyon Resort Corporation. He was previously a board member and consultant for Florida Tours and a senior vice president at Universal Parks. He is a regular speaker and panelist at travel trade conferences.
As our industry tries to rebuild and recover from losses from the more than two-year pandemic, it’s faced some unexpected headwinds: inflation, fallout from Russia’s attack on Ukraine, rising oil prices, political stress.
Uncertainty cannot be avoided, but the extended and heightened levels of uncertainty over the years of the pandemic have fueled our need to understand how once-familiar patterns in consumer behavior have changed so we can adjust our businesses accordingly.
I am somewhat disappointed when my peers in the travel and tourism space rely primarily on Google or web analytics to develop their marketing plans and strategies. They are, I believe, looking at a source that reveals only a partial and ultimately distorted version of the story.
What is missing? According to research provided to me by clients, destinations and attractions generate 30% to 80% of their business through non-website transactions through third-party providers. This is an invisible business for Google.
And of course, one of the most powerful influences on travel decisions, which can quickly move a business up or down, is word of mouth, which is similarly invisible to web analytics tools.
I’ll share the experience of one of my clients as an example of how reliance on digital data led them astray.
Using data from the client’s website, it was assumed that clients were in a certain age group and mostly lived in certain geographic regions. It has also been suggested that they prefer some aspects of their destination over others. It seems like the kind of information that can help any organization develop more unique and successful marketing plans. However, the data reflects only 35% of those actually caught. When we analyzed data from their call center (another 30%) and third-party booking sources (the remaining 35%), we found a completely different and often conflicting set of data points.
It would be great if analytics was a silver bullet that saved us the need to combine and analyze multiple pieces of data. The reality is that even with reliable information from multiple channels, someone still needs to get out from behind the computer screen, talk to employees, listen to consumers, and widen the net.
Experience and reasoning also need to be tested. Randy Stiles, associate vice president for analytics and institutional studies at Grinnell College in Colorado, has written several papers on the importance of integrating humans with data, and says, “Ultimately, the use of analytics is the best.” Decisions are made by combining the science of quantitative analysis with the art of sound reasoning.
In the face of our still uncertain future, our industry must go deeper into our customers’ preferences and behavior to understand and navigate our way successfully. As challenging as it is, we can’t give this to Google or many other datasets without humans interpreting the final meaning of the patterns.
Web analytics is a critical piece of the puzzle ahead. Learning more about how to incorporate the intelligence they provide into our larger analytics is an important part of helping us make better decisions. As with most complex problem-solving exercises, a hybrid approach is key. In the current long-term uncertainty, only our path can shape our recovery.
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