European Cities Marketing (ECM), the European network of city tourist offices and convention bureaus, has just signed a partnership contract with Forward Data SL (FDSL), a market research company bringing a new approach to operational traveler data intelligence for the tourism industry.
ForwardKeys is a business intelligence tool designed to help decision-makers in hotel chains, destination management organizations and other industry professionals to make data-backed decisions, anticipate demand and measure ROI. The system daily aggregates air reservation information generated by more than 155,000 online and off-line travel agencies worldwide, allowing accurate identification of traveler true origin, transits and destination. This tool provides permanent tracking of trip cancellations and modification to provide the most accurate analysis for future arrival trends.
“In the past few years, the need for data has intensified and ECM progressively extends the range and quality of its market intelligence tools incorporating data on travelers,” said Ignasi de Delàs, president, ECM. “Thanks to ForwardKeys, we can now quantify in real time the travellers planning to visit our destinations in the coming weeks and month and turn that information into a competitive advantage, a key to our forward looking strategy.”
Under the deal, ForwardKeys will provide ECM member cities with quarterly reports providing KPI on Europe as a destination with a focus on top European city destinations: past arrival trends measured by source market, length of stay, lead time, top 10 cities by volume and by growth as well as arrival “on book” for the next two quarters as per actual booking situation with arrival dates.
“We are delighted to partner with ECM, share information with tourist offices and convention bureaus, and exchange more in depth about our tool to monitor inbound and outbound travelling permanently, compare their performance ‘in real time’ with competing destinations and monitor the impact of their marketing efforts,” said Oliver Jager, CEO, ForwardKeys.
