New entrants are disrupting all facets of the travel industry. New traveler expectations of the service experience are challenging all of us to continually improve how we operate.

New sources of data and information are challenging each travel brand to innovate in terms of how travel is sold, how travelers are serviced, and how disruption is managed.

Over the last ten years, we have seen two important trends. Firstly, the exponential rise of data and information on everything from traveler behavior, spending patterns, weather events, systems efficiency, and much more.

Secondly, the increasing scale of computing power, which can assimilate, process, and work with multiple and complex data sources to generate insights and action.

This is exciting because the potential for innovation, disruption, and new ideas is limited only by our imagination. It is exciting because instead of strategizing for months on end, we can instigate testing of new ideas quickly, and roll them out at scale within a shorter timeframe than ever before.

It is exciting because the future that so many of us have talked about for years is closer than we think, and in many cases, it is here today.

Last year, we looked at experimentation and travel intelligence from the perspective of airlines. Travel Intelligence refers to next-generation business intelligence solutions and services, designed primarily for the travel industry.

Such solutions transform raw travel data into meaningful information to facilitate strategic, tactical, and operational decisions.  This paper explores how destination marketing organizations (DMOs) can benefit from analytics, both today and in the future.