GfK and Abacus to collaborate on big data analysis for Asia Pacific's travel trade

SINGAPORE - Asia Pacific’s leading travel technology provider, Abacus International has signed an agreement with GfK to advance the analytics available to the travel industry by supplying anonymized booking data for the specialist GfK Travelscan report.

GfK will receive a feed of the aggregated weekly live bookings of participating Abacus agents, initially based in Singapore, to produce a set of predictive analytics that should help to refine travel retail strategy for the sector.

“We are delighted to intensify our partnership with the leading provider of travel agent solutions across the APAC region,” commented Laurens Van Den Oever, Global Industry Lead, Travel & Hospitality. “This will help to scale the robustness and representation of GfK Travelscan, while offering added value to the Abacus client base.”

“Big data now plays a central role in the travel industry and we are pleased to be working with a leading research partner to share insights on what can be a complex area,” said Rani Francois-Marie Saad, Vice President for Abacus Ventures and Corporate Development. “It is an opportune time for exploring multifaceted ways of improving market intelligence through the GfK Travelscan to allow better predictions and in-depth knowledge of travel consumption in the APAC travel industry for travel agents.”

The Abacus agreement follows a recent commitment from the National Association of Travel Agents Singapore (NATAS) to share with GfK its members’ weekly consolidated live booking data, with similar aims.

Future projects include the potential to integrate other datasets, so that individual agents can more easily measure their own performance against market demand.

“In the increasingly competitive travel marketplace, agents are eager to make more informed, real-time data-driven decisions. The GfK-Abacus partnership brings us closer to realising this common goal,” concluded Van Den Oever.

sourced:traveldailynews.asia