The digitalization of tourism began and ended with the rise of online travel sales or hotel reservations, plane tickets and shows. Nothing could be further from the truth: the authentic digital transformation for each and every company in the tourism sector has just begun. Data management, its optimization, and even sharing are the starting point of a digital revolution that drives innovation and competitiveness so that the sector operates in a highly globalized market.
To share this vision, we have to understand that data management goes beyond technology and opens the door to new business opportunities because data is behind technological trends such as Artificial Intelligence, autonomous cars or smart cities. After all, we cannot understand technology as an end in itself; It only makes sense in companies of any sector and size if we understand it as a tool at the service of business results and the optimization of our value chain.
As tourists, our digital footprint carefully defines all our preferences, from the means of transportation we choose to the most significant dates on our personal agenda and, of course, what we eat and how we have fun. The ability to collect, store, analyze and make use of this enormous volume of information improves the efficiency of operations. It opens the door to the design of a range of personalized experiences that enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction. Real-time data analysis provides valuable information to understand visitors and anticipate their needs, facilitating informed decision-making that allows us to allocate our resources and design business strategies more efficiently.
Furthermore, due to the interdependence of tourism itself, we must also take into account that this is an opportunity open to its multiple interrelated actors, such as local and regional administrations, and other sectors, such as culture or hospitality, strongly linked and with great weight in many destinations.
Questions with answers
However, how do we correctly deal with all the complexity around data management? Technologically, we should not complicate ourselves. Cloud computing is the only model capable of offering us, at an affordable cost, the storage and computing capacity required by the immense volume of data required by digitalization, in addition to allowing us to cope with the seasonality so characteristic of the sector, something that always adds.
And how do we get to the cloud? The answer is equally simple, through outsourcing to specialized companies. Cloud providers are the best and most efficient way to have the equipment and expertise necessary for IT teams to accelerate innovation without having to take on the challenge of technological data management and security.
Technologically, we already have the answers to many of the questions that arise when we want to optimize our value chain based on data. However, we must also answer a key question: with whom? Who do I trust with my business data and customer information?
To respond to this answer, we must take into account the legislative complexity behind the digital ecosystem: national and supranational regulations, our own and those of other environments, but which influence us by putting the most valuable asset that a company has, its data, in the hands of a third party. And there, again, the safest option is to turn to a specialized company that is under exactly the same regulatory framework in which our business operates. Data is the raw material of our present and future competitiveness, and we must consider who we entrust it to, where it ends up and what it is used for.
