Download Data mining made simple

Data mining made simple
Monday 22nd April 2013 12:16
There are many ways to interpret a marketing message, but sometimes the simplest
are the best, says Pride of Britain chief executive Peter Hancock
Albert Einstein said “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything
that counts cannot necessarily be counted”. This is true in every sphere but for those of us
who market hotels it couldn’t be more apposite. We are now awash with statistics, especially
those relating to web site usage and online reservations, while some of the facts that matter
most remain out of reach.
A good example of this is the rapid rise in the number of hotel bookings made from a mobile
device. These are overtaking the number made on PCs and it would be easy to conclude
that more of our customers are making snap decisions on the move. Delve deeper and we
see that over two thirds of bookings made by smartphone are actually conducted by
customers at home.
If you are excited by really big numbers, however, look no further than the latest social
network stats which show that Twitter now has over 200 million active users, while Facebook
and YouTube are both used by over one billion individuals worldwide.
Are these figures important? Who has counted the number of letterboxes around the world?
A conservative estimate would be at least two billion. Is growing usage of one method of
communication a good enough reason to dispense with all the others?
The other day I had a very interesting conversation with a senior executive at a leading car
manufacturer. They spend a lot of money on sponsorship and know in their bones that
linking their brand with top quality sporting events is good for business. But can they
measure the number of cars sold as a direct result of sponsorship? Of course not, any more
than a hotel can put a figure on the number of rooms sold because of landscaping or new
photographs. These are things that we instinctively understand will help us appeal to
customers even though we have no statistical evidence.
In some ways we should feel sorry for all modern marketers. The sheer volume of data is
impossible to handle, we do not have the time or brain-power to make full use of it. Yet there
is one especially valuable piece of data that many hoteliers overlook every day, perhaps
because it involves asking a question rather than scrolling through reports. The question is
this: “May I ask how you heard about the hotel?” If you are among the majority who seldom
pose it, you may be surprised by the answers.