X

Do you want to complete our survey?

Checkout our Survey

Big data experiments approach

We experiment with the possibilities offered by big data within PROFIT, in order to develop our knowledge of our guests. We do this in one or several destinations per coastal region, the so-called pilot areas, in order to develop and test the method. We work on the development and use of customer knowledge together with SME entrepreneurs in these pilot areas. This concerns the following pilot area:

  • Essex: Southend-on-Sea
  • Kent: Medway
  • Côte d'Opale: Deux Caps region
  • Belgian coast: Oostende and Nieuwpoort
  • Zeeland: Goes & Wolphaartsdijk, Oostkapelle and Renesse 

We involve as many companies as possible from various different sectors in each pilot area: hotel accommodation, restaurants, cafés, shop owners, attractions, museums, cultural institutions etc. After all, the combination of the data provided by these companies can also lead us to interesting, new knowledge for entrepreneurs and the region. The starting point in each pilot area is the information needed by the entrepreneurs. We organised a meeting with entrepreneurs in all participating pilot areas in March 2017. The main question posed to entrepreneurs was: what would you like to know about the visitors who visit your region? This showed we can cluster the questions into four themes:

  1. Visitor motivation and appreciation
  2. Visitor profile
  3. Visitor behaviour
  4. Visitor expenditure

We subsequently looked at which data would be required for this and which data is already available in the different regions. We partly collected data from the participating entrepreneurs for this purpose and partly made use of data already available on the internet. Looking at the data which was instantly available to all participating regions, we started off with focussing on the Motivation and appreciation theme. We experimented with data obtained from review websites and social media, in order to see whether this data provided any usable information for the questions about the visitors’ motivation and appreciation. The subsequent results can be viewed here. We will continue to develop this approach in 2018. An interactive tool will be created from the current prototype, which will provide a constant stream of live data. Reviews from several websites will also be added to this tool. We will also be working on analysing visitors’ behaviour in 2018.

Data has already been collected by entrepreneurs in one of the participating regions, Zeeland. This included reservation data from hotel accommodations. An initial experiment took place to analyse this data in combination with data about weather conditions, holiday periods, public holidays and events. This experiment resulted in a real need for more and will therefore be rolled out to other participating PROFIT regions in the spring of 2018. All participating entrepreneurs will be asked to supply data for this purpose. This will eventually result in a personal dashboard for all participating entrepreneurs, within which they can review their own figures. We are therefore talking about several experiments with various different types of data. All the results will be discussed with the participating companies. Does this answer the questions posed? More knowledge will also always lead to new questions. Which data will we need to answer these subsequent questions? Where can we get this information from? Etc etc, we are therefore constantly working on increasing our knowledge about guests in the coastal regions. This has turned this into a joint journey of discovery into the possibilities for using big data by the entrepreneurs in the tourism and leisure time sector.

Join in!

Would you like your own personal dashboard too? We are still looking for extra participating entrepreneurs in every pilot area. Get in touch with us and we will gladly pop in to discuss matters. 
Are you not located in one of the pilot areas? Then participation is unfortunately not an option, as the rollout to other regions won’t take place until at least 2019.