European Cities Marketing (ECM) provides greater insight into travellers planning information through a partnership with ForwardKeys

ECM, the European network of city tourist offices and convention bureaux, has just signed a partnership contract with Forward Data SL (FDSL), a market research company bringing a new approach to operational traveller data intelligence for the tourism industry.

ForwardKeys.com is the business intelligence tool, designed to help decision-makers in Hotel chains, Destination Management Organizations and other industry professionals to make data-backed decisions, anticipate demand and measure ROI. The system daily aggregates air reservation information generated by over 155.000 online and off-line travel agencies worldwide, allowing accurate identification of traveler true origin, transit(s) and destination. This outstanding tool provides permanent tracking of trip cancellations and modification to provide the most accurate analysis for future arrival trends.

Under the deal, ForwardKeys will provide ECM member cities with quarterly reports providing KPI on Europe as a destination with a focus on Top European City destinations: past arrival trends (by source market, length of stay, number of pax per booking, lead time, top 10 cities by volume and by growth) as well as arrival “on book” for the next two quarters (as per actual booking situation with arrival dates).

In welcoming the new partnership, the President of European Cities Marketing, Ignasi de Delàs, declared: “In the past few years, the need for data has intensified and ECM progressively extends the range and quality of its market intelligence tools incorporating data on travelers. Thanks to ForwardKeys, we can now quantify in real time the travellers planning to visit our destinations in the coming weeks and month and turn that information into a competitive advantage, a Key to our forward looking strategy.”

Commenting on the partnership agreement, ForwardKeys CEO Olivier Jager added: “We are delighted to partner with ECM, share information with Tourist Offices and Convention Bureaux and exchange more in depth about our tool to monitor inbound and outbound travelling permanently, compare their performance “in real time” with competing destinations, and monitor the impact of their marketing efforts.”

*ECM (European Cities Marketing) improves the competitiveness and performance of leading cities of Europe by providing a platform for convention, leisure and city marketing professionals to exchange knowledge, best practice and widen their network to build new business. European Cities Marketing is promoting and linking the interests of 110 members from more than 100 major cities in 32 countries.
For more information and pictures, please contact:
Flavie Baudot, press@europeancitiesmarketing.com,
+33 380 56 02 00

*ForwardKeys.com is a service of Forward Data S.L, a Market Research and Consulting Company registered in Spain. ForwardKeys is a Business Intelligence service bringing a new approach to operational traveler data intelligence for Hotels Chains, Tourism boards and Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) leveraging non confidential Air reservation information. ForwardKeys provides to:
– DMOs and Tourism Boards with travelers’ trends information and means to monitor and measure the impact of their marketing efforts to drive more business to their destination.
– Hotel chains with ways to quantify future demand and anticipate market trends to optimize sales, marketing and revenue management efforts, using traveler’s reservation, source market, arrival, return date and future travel information.

Contact information :
Sébastien Cron, press@forwardkeys.com
+33 972 221 570