ForwardKeys has joined forces with NPD Travel Retail (formerly Counter Intelligence Retail) to unveil the Traveller Statistics service.

The platform, developed by NPD Travel Retail in partnership with ForwardKeys, releases global scheduled air traffic data to give users access to passenger and nationality volume and trend insight at 550 leading airports.

TRBusiness was the exclusive travel retail media at the first NPD Travel Retail Liquor Conference held today (10 April) in London. The event doubled as the launchpad for the partnership with ForwardKeys.

SMARTER DECISION MAKING

Information on pax nationalities at airports during specific times of the day at chosen terminals is accessible via interactive online dashboards as part of the service.

It has been designed to enable subscribers to better target their retail investments and make shrewder commercial decisions by pinpointing the largest and fastest growing airports and terminals to maximise return on investment.

In turn, the tool can help users adapt to constantly shifting nationality trends to increase business growth in the future.

Garry Stasiulevicuis, President, NPD Travel Retail at the NPD Group said: “By partnering with ForwardKeys, we are truly utilising the best data sources available in the market, such as their exclusive access to the Chinese passenger with TravelSky.

“Our clients will be able to truly understand every facet of the global traveller’s whereabouts, leading to more informed, data-driven commercial decisions.

“As part of The NPD Group, our focus is on providing best-in-class data to clients, delivered through the most engaging visualisations, unlocking the insight that truly drives companies forward.”

GRANULAR-LEVEL INSIGHT

In one of a number of focused presentations during the course of the day, Laurens van den Oever, Chief Marketing Officer, ForwardKeys shared insight into how the collaboration changes the shape of passenger analytics.

He paid thanks to NPD Travel Retail for putting its trust in ForwardKeys ‘to fuel traveller statistics with an unparalleled set of data that really captures the full size of the market’.

Van den Oever said: “The collaboration with NPD will be the first among a group of clients that have access to the total air market representing the full industry, including all the different channels around the world.

“It’s one thing to get access to booking data, but it then requires [an understanding of] what is behind that. The algorithm that does that is a combination of more 17m booking reservations every day to the lowest level of granularity being the PNR number (passenger name record). From that, we can derive full itineraries for a traveller or a travel group and what they are doing.

“It’s much more important to understand the purpose of why somebody is at an airport, rather than the total volumes of travellers from a given destination. Metasearch data, government statistics, events – like Chinese New Year and Ramadan, airline KPIs, load factors, financial performances and airport statistics have gone into this model.”

Coverage of the launch including insights on travel retail liquor will follow in due course…

To view live tweets from the event, click here.