INTERVIEW WITH PASCAL CLEMENT, HEAD OF TRAVEL INTELLIGENCE, AMADEUS : 'EUROPEAN DATA PRIVACY RULES WILL BE AN ADVANTAGE IN THE LONG RUN'.

• Position: Interview

Amadeus, a Madrid-based company specialising in offering IT solutions in the travel sector, is seen as one of the European examples in the use of big data. Pascal Clement joined the company recently to maximise the value of the vast amount of information generated by the firm every day.

How do you use big data in Amadeus?

We use quite sophisticated technology to provide almost immediate information when you search for example a plane ticket, buffering data into memory. It's a complicated story because analysing all the different capabilities of going from one point to another, with all the options of airlines, prices, has been an issue for many people.

What is the next step for you?

We operate one billion transactions every day, an enormous amount, with all the data that go with it. The next step for us is to extract value for our customers from these data.

How?

Today, most data are stored in silos. In the travel industry, all the processes you follow are disconnected, since you take a taxi to the airport, and then the plane, until you reach your hotel. We have an industry where the major issue is not mining but processing the data. In order to integrate the information, we put all the data together in a place where they are accessible, the data lake'.

Could you give a concrete example when pricing a plane seat?

When you start adding data from hotel occupancy or search logs for a certain destination, you can be much more proactive on pricing. You may see that suddenly a lot of people are interested in going to London. Maybe there is a good reason, but I cannot track all the good reasons they are going there.

According to some experts, this is the big revolution brought by big data: the vast amount of information, the quantity, allows us to forget about the reasons, the casualty

We are moving in that direction faster and faster. More real time information is being provided, and it's not only for the benefit of the supplier, but also the customer. If my supplier has a better idea of what I want, I could spend far less time looking for it.

Is the amount of data a big challenge?

Yes, this is an enormous challenge. What I saw coming in the last two years is a complete shift in how to address that. Until now we had a race trying to get the performance through much more powerful hardware, or very complex data architecture. Now thanks to big data, and a new technological approach, we do it a different way. Today we create data lakes where we put...