Published: May 01, 2020

helping tourism businesses gain a competitive advantage through data analytics

Data analytics can help stakeholders in the tourism industry seize opportunities and respond quickly to a crisis. Companies have successfully transformed their businesses by leveraging data insights ranging from individual customer preferences and behaviour to broad industry developments.

However, some tourism companies may be slower to make use of this capability because of lack of expertise, limited resources, and lack of access to good quality data.

To address this challenge, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has taken the lead in building a centralised Singapore Tourism Analytics Network (Stan), to give tourism businesses cost-effective access to a data analytics platform where they can share and consume data. This platform, that the Singapore Tourism Board commissioned NCS to develop, is to encourage the adoption of a common data taxonomy with more standardised data formats, which in turn facilitates data exchange and sets the stage for raising data analytics capabilities across the industry.

With the launch of Stan, STB will engage tourism industry businesses including hotels, attractions, MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) companies and travel agencies on how to adopt Stan in their work.

In future updates of Stan, the tourism industry can look forward to enhanced capabilities such as advanced data visualisation and analytics, leveraging trustworthy data from STB and industry. Industry partners can make use of private spaces to explore their own data, and share consumer tourism-related data through a data marketplace. Stan also provides industry partners with sandboxes to collaborate and co-create use cases for new products and services.

This latest development will help the tourism industry take a significant step forward in its digital transformation efforts as it seeks to discover new opportunities and redefine the visitor experience in Singapore