When I asked what GfK meant, Laurens Van den Oever (right), global travel director at the 80-year-old German company said three highly unpronounceable German words (to me anyway) but suffice it to say, in English, it means “Growth From Knowledge”.

And it is this mantra that this family-owned business (still 50% held by its family founders), which claims more than US$2 billion in sales, employs more than 13,000 full-time staff and whose work covers more than 100 countries, wants to bring into the travel sector in Asia when it set up its regional office in Singapore last January.

Among its first moves is to bring its weekly tracking services to the region. Market insights are based on live, forward booking information gathered from more than 10,000 point of sales revealing trends from travel agents, cruise lines, destinations, (low cost) carriers, tour operators and hotels, which will detail the overall market performance.

“Consistent and in-depth tracking and analysis of travel data — something that is currently still lacking in this part of the world, is important in order to identify and monitor the latest trends and developments in the travel market,” said Van den Oever.

It is launching two pilot studies in Singapore and Hong Kong – the former a Travelscan report to understand booking outlook and sentiment of the outbound market and the latter, an Omni-Channel Purchase Journey report that tracks what Hong Kong consumers do on their devices before they actually book a trip.

Thus far, it’s signed up several OTAs to launch the Singapore pilot study – among them AirAsia Expedia – but obviously it needs to convince more players – especially the traditional travel agents – to share their data to provide a more comprehensive report.

In Hong Kong, it identified 500 respondents who have indicated they will be booking a ticket in the next three months and GfK has installed its software into their mobile devices to measure “everything that they do before their purchase”, said Anthony Tan, associate director, APAC, Travel (above, left).

GfK, which covers industries such as food, retail and mobile, got into travel in Europe eight years ago when major tour operators such as TUI and Kuoni wanted to understand the impact online was having on their business. It took the company a couple of years to crack the market and build the platform – there is resistance to sharing data – but according to Van den Oever, “the incentive is if you give the data, then you get data back that gives you benchmarks and helps you make better business decisions”.

He sees similarities between Europe and Asia where the bulk of the holiday package market is still in the hands of traditional tour operators. In Germany, the statistic is 75% and in Italy, 95% and across Asia, the estimate is 75%.

GfK’s tracking of the European travel market revealed that the Internet has been growing in importance. Researching online for related information and the usage of Internet booking channels are now engaged by 9 in 10 of all travelers. There are two main groups with an almost equal split: fast bookers (51%) who conduct online research for 1-4 weeks prior to booking and intensive researchers who do the same as early as 27 weeks in advance. However, in spite of the heavy reliance on the Internet, travel agencies and catalogues are still important touch points for packaged tours.

“What we’ve learnt in Europe is that you need an integrated approach and you need to be present in all touchpoints of the purchase path,” he said. “25% of consumers have no idea where they will travel in the next three months and a third of all brands are forgotten after the purchase is made.”

He said the key driver behind GfK’s travel is to show the relationship between offline and online and how one drives the other. “We’ve heard for many years how the traditional tour operators were going to disappear but in actual fact, the ones that have done a good job of taking their business online are doing very well because they have the added advantage of brand and trust.

“We think the same scenario will play out in Asia but travel agents and tour operators here need to recognize the impact online is going to have on their business and adapt their business model.”

From initial findings, Tan said he expected mobile and the last-minute trend to feature more strongly in Asia than in Europe. “In Europe, people often book five months before but in Singapore, you have a range from one week to four months, so these customers have to be served in a different manner.”

Meanwhile in Shanghai this week at the World Travel Fair on May 9, Van den Oever will be presenting insights on how the omnichannel purchase journey is impacting today’s travelers all over the world. China is clearly a key market in GfK’s sights.

“The distinct global competitive edge presented by the immensity of the tourism market in China is accompanied by a distinctive set of shopping behavior that is unique to the Chinese market,” he said. “Social media is a particularly important instrument that help drives tourism among the local population as Chinese travelers are considerably influenced by social media — more so than their other counterparts from other countries.”