[MUSIC] In 2010 David McCandless created a great twist on the now famous quote, data is the new oil. By relabeling it, data is the new soil, he encouraged people to see data as more than a driver of business, and instead to recognize the infinite potential for individual creativity if data is unlocked in a more visual and meaningful way. So in 2015, the industry appears to be rushing headfirst to implement big data initiatives, with the core demand being to make their data more frictionless, visual and easier to take action from. Sadly, however, the analogy of fertile, creative land fails and, instead, many hotels operate in a desert landscape. What I mean is that despite geographical variances, low investment and legacy non-cloud platforms, hotels globally suffer from poor connectivity, an ability to share and exchange data. As you can see in this slide here, a Southern European hotel group of approximately 50 hotels was asked to draw a map of its hotel distribution and technology landscapes. The group has a very clear vision about having an infrastructure that supports the conversion and management of its demand. The reality, however, was that it has become highly limited in its ability to conduct successful integration and collection of data. And this is due to the myriad of interfaces and relationships back to the hotel's main operating system, the PMS, more commonly known as the property management system. This is a great example of how even bigger hotel companies can increase the complexity of their distribution and technology landscapes. Ultimately, the industry doesn't need big data. It needs smaller and smarter data that removes the noise, and makes it more glanceable and easier to take action. The opportunity here is that we can promote higher collaboration between commercial teams, and focus on strategy that will promote long term asset value, and short-term profit optimization. So allow me to introduce myself. My name is David Turnbull, and I am the co-founder and chief operating officer of SnapShot, a company that specializes in helping hotels aggregate and use their data in a smarter way. We provide useful tools and services to empower hotels to take informed decisions in managing their demands to increase their profits. Over the duration of these sessions, I'm going to talk to you about how important it is for hotels to set up an effective and long-term demand generation strategy. So what is demand generation? This is the term the travel and hospitality industry uses to define as, Focused sales, distribution and marketing activities that drive interest and awareness in a companies services and products. As we can see from this interactive slide, demand generation can be broken down into the following chronological steps. We will start by exploring what is the hotel product, and help you to identify what a hotel really sells. We will then explore the subject of price value theory, and in particular how we create benefits for the customer, allowing them to recognize value by defining a clear value proposition. This will then naturally lead us to ask the question, who are our customers, and how do we effectively track them via logical buckets, or segments with big focus on customer behavior? We will then move on to the topic of pricing, looking in particular at how hotels set their prices around their customers and their expectations. Our penultimate subject focuses on the business mix, itself, which of course varies from hotel to hotel depending on its location and positioning. And, finally, we will turn our attention to the distribution landscape and their associated costs. As you progress throughout this MOOC, we'll come back again and again to this slide as a reminder of your progress. However, first up is the video on the hotel product and how this can be effectively offered to generate demand. See you soon.