We have a big revelation for you. You might be shocked. Ready? Here it goes – the tourism industry is seriously messed up right now. COVID and people’s responses to it have thrown a massive monkey wrench into everyone’s vacation plans. From quarantines to travel bans to dining restrictions, everything is operating differently than it was a year ago.
Entire dynamics have shifted. While once people would rent a hotel in downtown Chicago for a couple of nights to do some shopping and check out the museums, they are now going camping or renting a yurt out in the middle of nowhere. And of course, fewer people are going anywhere at all. Air travel is down so much that CNN is pulling out of airports in the spring.
All of these changes and more are driving the tourism industry to big data to try and discern what people are looking for now and how to best respond to these new habits and preferences. While way back in 2019, the industry had a pretty solid handle on how to attract customers and keep them coming back for more, today it’s an entirely new environment. Where once, tourist centered businesses would just use social media for marketing purposes, they now find they have to use it to navigate this new paradigm.
For example, if there is a trend towards more eco-friendly hotels, they will be able to pick up on that, and if they are doing it right, do so in near real time. You already see places responding to trends in this direction with hotels asking guests if they would like room service every day or not. That saves them time and money and is more environmentally friendly.
It would also be good if restaurants and politicians spent some time with data to analyze whether commonly accepted practices make any sense. The perfect example is what is going on with the restaurant industry. Given all of the indoor dinning bans across the country, restaurants have had to get creative to respond. During the warmer months, they simply set up outdoor dining on sidewalks or even in parking lots. No virus likes sunlight and fresh air. It was also easy to meet distance requirements coming from the state. However, as things got colder, they started setting up plastic pods outside, or fully covered and walled-in areas. Suddenly, the outside was now inside but still treated as though it were inside because it was technically outside the restaurant. Confused? That’s because you’re rational.
Now, the obviously comical absence of logic aside, any intelligent person can look at this situation and realize that these pods and dining tents are not only no better than inside the actual restaurant, they are probably worse. The ventilation system in the restaurant could be upgraded with better filters that would help control COVID and any other virus. Those plastic pods have no ventilation at all. Any virus or harmful bacteria settles in there and doesn’t leave until someone sprays the heck out of it. Also, those pods are often heated with propane, the fumes of which aren’t actually very good for you.
Common sense aside, the wisdom of these responses can easily be checked with data. Does outdoor dining present a considerably different risk of transmission than indoor? What are the negative or positive effects of the current set up? All of this needs to be investigated to see if we are responding in the best way or not. Data analysis will also be important in determining what customer preferences will be going forward once restrictions are lifted. Perhaps people actually prefer the bubbles because of the sense of privacy. Certainly some will prefer being outside when it is warmer, so long as it isn’t too warm.
TARTLE is perfectly poised to play a role here. With our data marketplace, businesses can have direct access to customers rather than having to go to third parties. Instead of only looking at aggregated data from the big data players, restaurants, hotels and others can interact directly with people and learn what people are really asking for with no filter. Together then, we can find a response that is rational and acceptable to the vast majority.
What’s your data worth?
