The Pacific Asia Travel Association has formed a tech partnership with Microsoft aimed at improving tourism data collection for PATA’s member companies.
Technicians from PATA and Microsoft will collaborate to upgrade PATA’s data platform PATAmPOWER which gives members big data insights into the Asia Pacific tourism economy.
"With this collaboration our goal is to produce even better data more quickly to our members in both graphic and tabular formats. The challenge with visitor data is that it is often one dimensional and pulled from a limited number of sources that may render analysis difficult and misleading," said PATA CEO Mario Hardy.
"We will also work together on mechanisms for data fusion and linkage, geo-tagging for PATA member attractions, and analysis of travellers’ data through credit card expenditure and social media feeds."
"This will ensure data is pulled and analysed from various visitor touch points so that PATA members are privy to complete visitor information, Hardy added.
The results will be disseminated at PATA trade events and training programmes directed at PATA government members.
PATA has more than 850 members across the travel sphere including government agencies, state and city tourism bodies, airlines, cruise lines, educational institutions and travel companies.
Erick Stephens, chief technology officer of Microsoft public sector Asia, said, "We are pleased to collaborate with PATA to enable its members to transform the way they engage with travellers and capture, through data, the business opportunities of tomorrow.
