SINGAPORE, June 2, 2014 — GfK will be joining hands with the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) to help drive growth of the dynamic travel sector, a major economic contributor in the Asia Pacific region. The global leading market research company will be imparting its expertise in the tourism and hospitality market through the upcoming PATAcademy-HCD event to advance the industry knowledge of the association’s members.
At the recent World Travel Fair held in Shanghai, GfK revealed that it will be launching its weekly tracking services to the APAC region. Market insights are based on live, forward booking information gathered from more than 10,000 point of sales revealing trends from travel agents, cruise lines, destinations, (low cost) carriers, tour operators and hotels; which will detail the overall market performance. Using its suite of consumer research techniques, GfK is able to combine the weekly tracking results to provide comprehensive insights on the different stages and types of interaction by consumers throughout the entire booking process.
“GfK has established itself as the market currency for tourism research in Europe and our plan now is to further expand to Asia”, said Laurens van den Oever, Global Director for Travel at GfK. “We are looking forward to collecting valuable insights into the tourism market to give the industry an additional intelligence boost.”
PATAcademy-HCD is a bi-annual program by PATA designed to build knowledge and business through the an educational programme, interactive sessions, case studies, networking, ideas exchange and group collaboration for rising stars in the travel industry professionals. Mr. Van den Oever will be sharing findings on how the economic downtrends impact travelers’ behaviors and the importance of understanding the omnichannel customer journey.
“We are pleased to have GfK’s involvement at the upcoming PATAcademy-HCD as we believe their expertise and vast experience from studying the tourism industry and travellers‘ journey will greatly benefit our members, ” said Mario Hardy, COO of PATA.
The theme of June‘s PATAcademy-HCD is Branding, Marketing and Social Media in the Context of a Crisis. Participants will be given an opportunity to work on case studies to build a marketing strategy plan to regain confidence of a destination visitors after a crisis.
“The contribution from GfK and other industry leaders during this program will provide participants with the necessary tools to strategise and develop more realistic and implementable programs for their respective businesses and organisations,” concluded Mr. Hardy.
