The travel industry already has a “treasure trove” of customer data that could be used to find new ways to improve services and products.

But much of this data has been “largely forgotten” by many travel firms, according to Jeremy Tait, vice-president of insight for Carnival UK.

Tait’s comments came during a presentation on how data insights can improve travel firms’ brands, products and services at Abta’s Customer Insight in the Travel Industry conference in London.

He told delegates: “The travel industry is blessed with so much data, but the question is how to segment it.

“The industry does not value the data it has. There’s a treasure trove of it in travel, but it’s largely forgotten and not looked after.”

Tait compared this situation with the supermarket sector, which has had to “work incredibly hard” to get information about customers’ behaviour – mostly through the use of loyalty cards such as Tesco’s Clubcard. “You have to invest in the data and manage it,” he added. “You need to dig deep and have to be brave to get to real insights.”

Tait also warned that coming up with new ideas, driven through the analysis of data, was always “met with resistance” in organisations, with management often initially resistant to changes
in strategy.

“You can’t go into research with the blinkers on – you need to leave preconceptions behind,” he added. “You’re not going to discover new things without letting go of your baggage. It’s always going to be met with resistance, so you will have to find new ways to get people to listen.”

Andy Gauld, partner, technology in consulting at Deloitte, said the internal culture of a company could be the biggest obstacle to introducing new strategies developed through data insights.

“We can get the data we want quite easily, but the challenge is ‘are we up for this change?’” he told the conference. “Ultimately, it comes down to a cultural change in an organisation – are we prepared to change how we operate? Are you ready for the challenge around this disruption?”

Gauld added that it was vital to be able to “tell a story” when trying to persuade senior management to make changes to customer services.

“Data scientists are good at solving the problems, but they can lack the ability to tell the story in a way that makes sense,” he said. “But it’s difficult to find the right people to do this.”