Big Data as a Game Changer:How does it shape business intelligence within a tourism and hospitality industry context?

With the advent of web analytics, data mining and predictive modeling, businesses have nowadays a better knowledge in creating more efficient and effective processes for meeting customers’ needs, driven by a wealth of available information. The value of big data in influencing business intelligence in the tourism and hospitality industry has also been widely acknowledged, as the synergetic utilization of big data can enhance organizations’ decision support systems to reach process optimization. Notwithstanding empirical research on exploring the implications of utilizing big data in the tourism sector has been published in the last few years, there is still need of a framework that would serve as the bedrock of taking the relevant conceptualization one step forward. Therefore, this chapter demonstrates the crucial role of big data in matching organizational objectives with tourist needs through delineating and detailing the analytical frameworks to support an advanced B2C interface, based on various internal databases and external data sources. The role of stakeholders and necessary resources are explained, and the full potential of big data in tourism and hospitality is revealed.