Skift Research’s New Decision Briefs: Insights + Intelligence

Skift Research is launching a new report format: the Decision Brief. Each Brief lays out the key evidence, context, and paths forward behind strategic choices facing travel leaders.

Skift Research has always been about insights. We know raw data on their own are useless and that insights are what matter to a business. That’s why our formula has always been data plus. Data plus analysis. Data plus industry context. Data plus forecasts.

But Decision Briefs don’t stop there. We’re also adding actionable intelligence built for an AI world.

The pace of business is accelerating as AI tools get rolled out and adopted across organizations. Customer demand is shifting fast. The cycle from research to operational rollout has compressed. As a result, the intelligence layer is becoming more important than ever.

If insights are data plus analysis, then intelligence is insights plus decisions. You need the best insights, backed by the best data, to make the best decisions to drive your business forward.

Each Decision Brief contains a signal and the key evidence supporting it. The signal puts its finger on a fault-line in the industry where there is still active debate — why does this decision need to be made now? It’s followed by key evidence that backs this signal with data. Then, at the heart of each briefing sit the three paths forward: decision trees that a travel leader could plausibly make. Skift will often have a recommended option.

For our first Decision Brief, we turned to our recent research report on what drives travelers to return to destinations they have already visited. The report covered the drivers of repeat visitation, the economics of visitor spending, lessons from other sectors, and more.

It’s a great deep dive, but we heard from many of you that you wanted us to go one step further and make it easier to surface the key decisions that flow directly from the research. In other words, what to do if those travelers love you — but just aren’t coming back.

We identified three major decisions that travel leaders grappling with repeat visitation need to focus on. Each of these is now live as a standalone Decision Brief.

We are building out more Decision Briefs quickly and more new report types are in the works. Expect detailed intelligence and decision briefs across online travel, hotels, and more to come soon.