Amadeus has partnered with start-up Forward Data to launch ‘Forward Keys’, a solution enabling revenue managers to quantify future demand based on tangible, current market data supplied by Amadeus.

Published: 09 Nov 2010

Amadeus has partnered with start-up Forward Data to launch ‘Forward Keys’, a solution enabling revenue managers to quantify future demand based on tangible, current market data supplied by Amadeus.

The tool will give users real-time booking activity data enabling hotels, for example, to compare their bookings with the number of arrivals in their city on a given day.

Citing an example, Olivier Jager, CEO of Forward Data, says, “If a hotelier sees bookings are up by 5% versus the previous year, they would be happy about that. But if arrivals at the local airport are up by 15%, the hotelier is missing an opportunity – and that is the kind of insight that only air booking data can provide.”

Jager pointed out that when it comes to demand forecasting and market performance monitoring, hotels and destination marketers are still working in the dark with little reliable data to support business decisions and limited ‘live’ benchmarking.

Jager added, “For example, revenue management techniques in the hotel industry are still largely based on historical data”, he continues. “This is a missed opportunity in an industry which is largely built on computer-based transactions which generate vast quantities of data daily, providing huge insights on current and future trends.”

Forward Keys will help hoteliers anticipate future demand, identify dates when they can make a difference, compare budgeted occupancy against forecasted market occupancy, and allow more accurate decisions on revenue management.

Amadeus stated that destination management oganisations will be able to use the solution to monitor in “real time” the impact of their marketing efforts in comparing reservations made during and outside the campaign period, and also benchmark their performance against competing destinations for future and historical periods to make better long-term plans and investment decisions. Furthermore, with enriched information, hotels and DMOs benefit from more accurate forecasting and trend analysis, which in turn allow them to make more accurate decisions on revenue management and give faster responses to opportunities and competitive threats.