Travel intelligence provider, ForwardKeys, and veteran duty free and travel retail analyst, Jérôme Goldberg, are building a new division under the ForwardKeys brand to provide the industry with live information about international passenger traffic by nationality.

The Valencia-based company tested the interest of potential users during the TFWA show in Cannes, and picked up its first client brands and airports operators this year.

“By compiling the most comprehensive database of air reservation information on a daily basis – with some exclusive agreements, for example in China – we can tap into historical data to understand trends and seasonality, and also look at future data, i.e. on-the-books reservations of travellers to any destinations in the world, focusing on nationality, airport, country or region,” comments Goldberg. “We truly believe this is a game changer on profiling the right traveller at the right place at the right time, based by nationality and passenger profile.”

Goldberg has just taken up the new role of Director of Business Development – Global Retail & Travel Retail at ForwardKeys but remains Managing Director of JMG-Research based in Paris which has a focus on global shopper research.

FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS

“Evidence-based decision making is becoming a requirement in the travel industry and peripheral businesses. There is a need for live, actionable, tactical, reliable, and forward-looking information on traveller trends,” notes Olivier Jager, Founder of ForwardKeys.

“Our solutions start by answering some very fundamental questions: What is the potential of the market? What will travel demand be in the coming months? What are the events that are triggering that demand?”

ForwardKeys claims it can track travellers in great detail thanks to their air ticket bookings, knowing in advance at which airport they will be and when and also have a global understanding of their journey. It focuses on big data drawn from anonymised and aggregated global air reservation information.

“It was frustrating – until now – to have to wait for several months to end up with information too old to be really actionable, and too static to be used as forecast,” says Goldberg. “Thanks to this new business intelligence tool, we can provide a real-time pulse of the market to enable tactical actions to reach the right consumer group as clients know in advance the true travelling patterns.”