Dynamic pricing and resource management for accommodation and food-beverage serving businesses

Application Track:

Code:

Domain:

Proposed by:

Entity Logo:

Summary of the entity:

Instituto Tecnológico de Informática (ITI) is a Research & Technology centre specialized in ICT, located in Valencia, Spain. ITI research and innovation activity is developed by a team of 200 highly-skilled researchers and technicians, focused on 6 key digital enablers around the Data Cycle: Cyber connectivity, Cyber-Physical Systems, Computing Infrastructures & Platforms, Big Data Analytics, Optimization Technologies, and Artificial Intelligence. All this knowledge and experience is brought to the industrial and public sector through a range of services: Access to infrastructure and technology platforms, Access to specialist expertise on digitisation & applications, Collaborative research for Industry needs, Demonstration of best practices, Training and Education, Showcase technologies in pilot factories, and Support experimentation in real-life environments.

ITI provides a Big Data Space offering infrastructure, tools and data for research and experimentation with Big Data Technologies, which has been awarded with the BDVA i-Space Silver label and is a key infrastructure for the Data Cycle Hub. The Data Cycle Hub (DCH, https://thedatacyclehub.com) is the reference one-stop shop DIH in the Valencia region to foster data driven and artificial intelligence-based innovation. The objective is to bridge the gap between research and industry, specifically SMEs, providing innovative solutions and services that require advanced data analytics, automatic learning and artificial intelligence. The DCH is one of the 3 Spanish members of the European Network of Artificial Intelligence DIHs (https://ai-dih-network.eu), and was one of the 5 finalists to the DIHNET DIH Champions Challenge 2019.

Summary of the challenge:

The challenge is to develop a friendly and affordable solution for accommodation and/or food-beverage micro-SMEs that facilitates the implementation of data-based dynamic pricing strategies based on customer demand forecasts and resources costs planning

Description:

Stakeholders: Accommodation and Food-beverage serving businesses

Description:

In most destinations, accommodation and food-beverage serving services are provided by SMEs and micro-SMEs. For them, the KEY challenge right now is the survival in the very short term: keep the business viable and avoid the closure of the services. And to address this, they need to be able to efficiently manage their assets (staff, stocks, resources, bookings) to plan and optimize costs, as well as to reach potential customers interested in their services. The access to relevant knowledge is key to better configure their offer and adapt to a changing demand. However, most of SMEs have not been fully able to integrate new digital capabilities in the way that larger businesses have, with barriers as low levels of digital fluency and the difficulty to identify and react to market trends.

The challenge is to deliver affordable data-based tourism intelligence solutions (for instance, through SaaS models) that let micro-SMEs and SMEs dynamically optimize costs and better manage their assets (in the short term), according to customer demand forecasts (such as the provided by REACH-2021-THEMEDRIVEN-ITI_6.2 solutions). These solutions must enable the collaboration/connection with other stakeholders of Tourism value chain that can improve the offering, thus complementing each other (for instance, adventure and recreation, attractions, events, transportation).

Data:

REACH Data Providers

JOT Internet Media: Keyword list (mobile) and Keyword statistics in tourism marketing campaigns. When filtered appropriately, the dataset reflects the impact of marketing campaigns in the Tourism sector with relevance to the Valencia region and its cities (e.g. restaurants in Valencia, romantic dining in Castellon, cheap hotels in Alicante, …). It shows the main interests and trends of people aiming to travel or visit Valencia region, which could be used to dynamically adjust the pricing strategy or the planning of resources.

External Data Provider:
Turisme Comunitat Valenciana – INVAT.TUR: Tourism Dataset Region of Valencia. Different datasets could be provided, under a private agreement with the applicants. Datasets dealing with: source of tourism flows to Valencia region and some of the factors influencing them (source countries, age, language, climate, safety, satisfaction), tourism products (main products, product satisfaction, sentiment analysis, gender and age distribution, language per product, …), attractiveness factors, accommodations (prices, customer reviews, satisfaction, flights (capacity, prices).
Open source datasets:

Open Source: Valencia Region data portal, including tourism data and others http://www.dadesobertes.gva.es/es/dataset

Open Source: Spain open data portal, including tourism data and others https://datos.gob.es/en/catalogo?theme_id=turismo

Other datasets could be used if needed, such as end-users bringing their daily data on which to train and test the solution developed.

Expected outcomes:

• Increase the digitization of micro-SMEs and SMEs and facilitate access to data-based intelligence solutions.
• Data-analytics solution for implementing dynamic pricing strategies, based on customer demand forecasts and resource cost planning