1、1Deep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AIWe help you in every step of your innovation journeyPartnering with the largest organizations worldwide gives us a line of sight to identify the main pain points affecting each industry.We then focus on sourcing the best startups that can p

2、rovide the best solutions to these challenges.By collaborating with startups,corporations increase operational efficiencies,decrease costs,find new product lines,and become more innovative from the core.450+Corporate Partners50+Offices Worldwide50,000+Carefully curated international startups in our

3、networkGlobal ReachOne of our greatest ambitions is to make our ecosystem accessible wherever you are.With offices across the world,were proud to be the worlds largest innovation platform by geographic reach.$12bn Plug and Plays startup community has raised$12bn in venture funding JOIN THE PLATFORM

4、PNPTC.COM/JOINWe connectthe best technology startups and the worlds largest corporations.1.Introduction42.Predicting travel demands5NextGen travel demand forecasting5Engaging content:what got people clicking and sharing?133.Managing travelers expectations9The online perception of air travel in the D

5、ACH region since 20209How about a holiday in the risk zone?11ContentDeep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AICautiously opening up15The summer of 2022:lack of personnel,lost baggage,delays163IntroductionXUndoubtedly,Covid-19 has significantly challenged the entire travel and hospit

6、ality industry.Frequently changing governmental restrictions forcing airlines,hotels,and other providers to fully stop operations or provide only certain parts of the usual services,combined with closing borders and often rather intransparent and constantly modifying entry requirements;traveling bec

7、ame an experience of frustration,uncertainty,and required lots of preparation and flexibility.Times of crisis and uncertainties urge us to take a step back and review the current processes and procedures affected by the situation.It is,therefore,relevant to recall“危机,”the Chinese word for“crisis,”wh

8、ich is composed of two parts;“danger”and“opportunity.”Without danger,the opportunity cannot arise;that has been particularly true with the pandemic.Historically,it has been in times of crisis that innovators have emerged creative to solve problems.Priceline,for example,survived the post-dotcom bubbl

9、e and the post-9/11 period by merging Active Hotels and Bookings,creating B,a brand that completely changed online travel.Also,sharing economy with companies like Airbnb emerged out of the 2009 financial crisis as a response to people looking for additional sources of income.Dynamics in these market

10、 conditions set the stage for disruption and new business opportunities.This ebook deals with how to keep up with the pace of managing travelers expectations.The starting point is discovering passengers true pain points throughout the travel journey.We will introduce two of our startups from Program

11、 3 at Plug and Play Vienna to shed light on this topic.They will suggest their views on why analyzing the right data allows us to understand the needs of customers and create a competitive advantage for travel companies.Maya Wagner Plug and Play AustriaDeep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Anal

12、ytics,and AI4Predicting travel demandsNextGen travel demand forecasting Its neither news nor a secret how important it is to keep track of demand for companies operating in and adjacent to the travel and hospitality industry.Clear industry and academic evidence show the quantified effect of accurate

13、 demand forecasting on revenue management.Companies leveraging high-quality data should see double-digit revenue uplift potential.This is true across a wide variety of vertical travel fields.Dynamic network optimization can lead to significant benefits for airlines,reaching full airport management m

14、aturity,optimization of advertising conversion rates for OTAs,enabling fare predictions,or strengthening supplier relations and resource planning for travel management companies.Although,for many years,companies in the travel industry have resorted to historical internal transactions for insights on

15、 future demand,most are now realizing this practice has become obsolete and subject to significant improvements.It is shifting from an exclusively internal focus on constrained bookings to a holistic view that includes total market demand and external factors that impact travel demand.The approach t

16、o accuracy and reliability of forecasts has also changed,moving to advanced embedded accuracy and reliability instead of oversimplified one-dimensional accuracy metrics;this makes forecasts more accurate and very transparent on the exact reliability at each point in time,including quantified deviati

17、ons expected.Deep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AIWhat corporations seeDeep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AITravel Demand-Europe to Europe(Predictions in purple)Forecasts that take into account a wide range of leading driving factors play a critical role i

18、n modern technology product management-delivering great products and services across the industry.To enable this,a wide range of factors should be considered,such as competitive behavior,market dynamics,consumer intent,macroeconomics,disruptions,and pandemics.This makes it critical to keep track of

19、past,composite demand across the latter factors and incorporate these seemingly unrelated disparate variables.New technologies leveraging granular,scalable multivariate analyses and machine learning,previously only available to a limited set of other industries,are now ready to be used by travel ind

20、ustry teams.Another major disruption in forecasting is moving away from focusing on accuracy and reliability as single objects.Instead,more focus is given to a comprehensive array of prediction accuracy and reliability metrics that provides a whole new set of metadata insights.These insights offer r

21、icher interpretations and create more user confidence.For example,with the advanced AI-generated predictions,the dynamic probability intervals provide a robust way to know the expected reliability of a forecast at a specific point in time,in contrast to performance and error metrics that generalize

22、over an entire period.This is illustrated in the below samples,where the contextual top-of-funnel demand is predicted for air travel,expressed in the growth rate.The specific origin-destination pairs have been masked and replaced by their respective regions in this sample.This is generated through a

23、 fully-automated machine learning prediction platform.It captures and processes the various independent signals and uses those to adjust itself while continuously applying resampling methods to augment accuracy and reliability.The latter sample pertains to an international market affected by the war

24、 in Ukraine.It indicates early signs of slight recovery starting in Q4 2022,with recovery picking up by the end of the year and into Q1 2023.While the future is volatile in areas impacted by the war,the current early demand signals suggest improvements early next year.Deep Diving into Travel Behavio

25、r with Data,Analytics,and AITravel Demand-Europe to the U.S.(Predictions in purple)Travel Demand-War affected the international market(Predictions in purple)7ZYTLYN works on the cutting edge of new and disruptive predictive analytics technology.It focuses on the travel and hospitality industries,fee

26、ding predictive intelligence to some of the worlds biggest airlines,airports,and travel agencies.If you believe ZYTLYN can help with its predictive travel intelligence product,contact it for a demo or trial.“Predictive intelligence is a much-needed capability with significant benefits in companies c

27、ommercial,financial,and operations across travel.Yet its lightweight and backward compatible to existing systems,making it easy to adopt and use.”Houman Goudarzi,Co-Founder&CEO of ZYTLYN Technologies8Managing travelers expectationsThe online perception of air travel in the DACH region since 2020To a

28、ssess the changing travel trends and expectations before,during,and after the pandemic,we have collected all air travel-related public content from the German,Austrian,and Swiss webs from the beginning of 2020 until July 2022.This was done via Neticle Media Intelligence,an intelligent social listeni

29、ng tool with automatic text analysis.The first glance at the data reveals that quarantines had a strong effect in 2020:there were twice as many mentions of air travel in 2021 than in 2020 on the German and Swiss webs,and there was a significant increase on the Austrian web as well.There was more inc

30、rease in 2022,especially in the last three months of the examined period.What travelers say is importantDeep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AI9Deep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AIThe number of mentions of air travel in the DACH region per month,with the pe

31、rcentage of negative/positive toned mentions The sentiment analysis shows that the overall mentions of air travel were more negative than positive,especially in Germany and other countries.However,when we look at the details(see the table above),it becomes visible that the amount of negativity and p

32、ositivity has followed the waves of the pandemic quite well.So,after the shock of the COVID-19 outbreak,the summer months in 2020 had a better mood,as well as early autumn,but then the sadness returned as the second wave hit.Towards the end of 2021,the trend started to change slightly,and some posit

33、ive months happened.2022 started positively,but June and July have gone far off in the negative direction again.How about a holiday in the risk zone?In the first two months of 2020,even though thats before the epidemic became a pandemic,“China”was already the number one country in the mentions becau

34、se much of the conversation in January and February revolved around several airlines stopping all flights to China.However,“holiday”(Urlaub)was still the number one topic in these two months.“Coronavirus”was the second most important topic behind that,but it quickly rose to first place in March.Next

35、,in March and April,“Iran”was the most often mentioned location because it also became a high-risk country.Air travel to and from there was stopped as well.Then in the following months,news came from various airports,showing parked airplanes and reporting about limited flights these were the most pr

36、ominent news instead of destinations.While“Coronavirus”replaced“holidays”on the list of key topics,another new topic,“cancellation”(Stornierung),also appeared.Another significant change was that“Urlaub”/“holiday”became a negative topic everywhere people couldnt travel for leisure.Then,in May and Jun

37、e,after the first wave,“Urlaub”took first place again and became a positive topic throughout the summer.Deep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AI11Even though people were talking about holidays again after the first wave,it just wasnt that easy:cancellation was still at 11thth plac

38、e among key topics.Moreover,another new expression reared its ugly head in the summer months,collecting thousands of mentions:risk zone(Risikogebiet).The world became divided into(somewhat)safe and unsafe zones,and enthusiastic flyers were trying to determine which places they could still visit with

39、out issues.The next phase starts at the end of 2020,when vaccination first became available.It immediately became a key topic in air travel-related online conversations as well.However,this was also the start of the second wave of the pandemic.So,from 2021,key topics included masks,tests,and quarant

40、ine.Holidays became a negative-toned topic again throughout the first four months of 2021 but got a positive predominance from the summer onwards.Deep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AIBusiness-related travel Throughout the analyzed period,traveling for business always had fewer

41、mentions than traveling for holidays(which was always among the top three topics).It also had fewer hits during 2021-especially the first half of the year-than before or after.Though attitudes towards business travel did not seem to fluctuate as much as those towards holidays:business travel had sli

42、ghtly more positive mentions than negative ones throughout,just much fewer overall.In 2022,however,it seemed to return with higher mention numbers and placed second on the list of key topics between January and April.12Engaging content:what got people clicking and sharing?Another thing that followed

43、 the COVID-19 waves quite well was the level of engagement people had with air travel-related content.Basically,when they were not allowed to travel,posts related to this topic gathered much fewer interactions.Deep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AIThe number of interactions with

44、 air travel content in 2020 In 2020,the top 10 most engaging posts in Germany either came from before,from the start of the pandemic,or towards the end of the year.All highly engaging posts in Austria were connected to the pandemic.In Switzerland,engagement generally remained low in comparison,as th

45、e chart shows as well.13Deep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AIThe outbreak of interactions in March was likely due to airlines being heavily featured in the news because of their loss of income,but people took to Twitter to express their discontent with the bailouts airlines wer

46、e receiving with taxpayer dollars.14LailaLalami KyleBae87 MelsLien RBReich In 2021,with the increased mention numbers,there was about twice as much engagement as well,especially in the years second half.Before that,in March and April,engagement was mainly linked to COVID-19 regulation announcements.

47、In May and July,sustainability appeared among the most important themes.For instance,it appeared in a political approach to cheap,short flights versus train rides(“everyone who wants to can go on holiday,but the way they do it matters”)and in tragic environment-related news of fires in the Mediterra

48、nean,where the airport in Catania even shut down.At the same time,being fully vaccinated had become enough for air travel;no test was needed anymore.Deep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AICautiously opening upIf we follow the most engaging content further,it really shows what kin

49、d of travel trends people were excited about.In June,it was announced that Italy was no longer a risk zone.While in November,Australia reopened its borders after a very long time.A tweet about flying to a BTS concert went viral.There was less-positive content online but with high engagement,like thi

50、s one popular in Switzerland about people not wearing masks flying or the Omicron variant arriving in Germany,resulting in suspended air traffic with South Africa.Nevertheless,in December,a giveaway for a trip to Mauritius got many people excited about traveling again,who tried to balance safety and

51、 reasonable prices.15Deep Diving into Travel Behavior with Data,Analytics,and AI16The summer of 2022:lack of personnel,lost baggage,delays Unfortunately,in the past two to three months,mentions of air travel have started to follow a whole new script in every sense.The positive sentiment from the sta

52、rt of the year turned around completely,as the ratio of negative-toned mentions was up to 10%higher than that of positive ones.The topic of business trips mostly disappeared from the top list.While holidays were still number one,people mostly werent talking about them in a happy way.This was because

53、 airlines had been struggling with a severe lack of personnel now that passengers had returned to airports and wanted to fly again.Too many people were laid off during the pandemic-stricken months,and the result of that now was delayed flights,passengers waiting in vain at baggage claim,unresolved c

54、omplaints,and so on.This is what the online conversation is revolving around currently,and its up to airlines to wrap up this chapter and fix the service provided by hiring more people as soon as possible.Neticle is one of the fastest-growing B2B SaaS startups in Hungary,providing text analytics sol

55、utions for enterprises in more than 30 countries globally.The company has four products to boost data-based business decisions:Neticle Media Intelligence,which can show companies what the web thinks of their brands and products;Zurvey.io,a customer experience data platform that can automatically ana

56、lyze thousands of textual data like open-ended survey responses or product reviews.The motors of these systems are the Text Analysis API and Data API,which can be easily integrated into companies own platforms.“Companies need to apply cutting-edge technology,like natural language processing,to fully

57、 understand the voice of the traveler.This opens new ways to turn unsolicited feedback into business opportunities.”Peter Szekeres,CEO&Co-Founder of Neticle1718PNPTC.COM/TRAVELPlug and Play is a global corporate innovation platform that helps connect corporate partners to startups in order to help solve their greatest challenges.We also operate as a venture fund and startup ecosystem.To date,we have helped over 5,000 early-to-growth stage startups raise over$12 billion.Plug and Play is consistently ranked among the most active VCs in Silicon Valley.PNPTC.COM