Data Analytics Research Project
Data analytics is defined as the process of studying raw data to drawing inferences about the information (Rouse, 2016); and indeed, data analytics, respective Big Data is the buzzword nowadays. Many industries report increased business performance as a result by working with data analytics. However, the hospitality industry seems to be lagging behind. In fact, Wheatley argues in 2016 that data analytics is still underutilized in the hospitality industry, especially for hotels. In the same vein Xiang et al., 2015 have noted that data analytics has yet to be fully exploit in terms of its capabilities. Yes, there are some data analytics applications in the area of marketing and more specifically if it comes to customer reviews and the analysis of these with text mining and sentiment analysis. However, apart from the big players, such as IHG, Marriott and few others, smaller chains and independent hotels seem to struggle to apply data analytics with its vast opportunities.
For that reason HSMAI in conjunction with a SIT researcher team, led by Assoc Prof. Dr Detlev Remy plan to establish an industry whitepaper on the topic of data analytics, and its current status in the hotel industry, to identify the actual status of data analytics in the hotel industry, with a focus on the APAC region.
Furthermore, the focus is to investigating the opportunities of data analytics seen by the hotel industry as well the barriers, and lastly the skills set need respective requested.