POI Data in Action: Use Cases and Business Impact
Point of Interest (POI) data has become essential for decision-makers involved in location-based strategies. From choosing the site for a new retail outlet to managing the reputation of a specific coffee branch or expanding into new markets, POI data offers the insights needed for informed choices.
But how does it work, and, most importantly, how can POI data help businesses stay competitive and meet customer needs?
Offering detailed geospatial insights into the physical locations of businesses, attractions, and amenities, this data delivers valuable information, from visitor sentiment to peak visit times, making it a highly versatile tool. And with such versatility comes different use cases.
In this article, we’ll dive into 3 key uses of POI data, featuring real-world examples of problems across different industries: food and beverage, logistics and postal services, and hotel sectors.
Points of Interest data refers to specific locations or landmarks that hold significance within a geographic area. These range from businesses like restaurants and hotels to landmarks such as parks, museums, and historical sites—and more.
POI data typically includes geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) along with details like a location’s name, category, address, operating hours, and user reviews, with each Point of Interest varying in appeal based on factors such as popularity, cultural significance, or business relevance.
By adding insights like sentiment analysis, which shows how popular a place is from opinions and reviews, and popularity trends, which reveal how often people visit, businesses can use POI data to gain valuable location insights.
POI data can be used in many different ways across industries. Here are some of the most common and impactful applications:
Expanding into a new market can be challenging, even for the most successful businesses—often involving navigating unfamiliar landscapes, understanding local dynamics, and identifying unique growth opportunities.
This needs thorough research, strategic planning, and versatility to adapt to new customer needs and competitive environments. However, many of the challenges associated with market expansion can be addressed by leveraging POI data.
By analyzing insights into key locations, customer behavior, and competitive presence within a specific area, businesses can achieve two important goals:
This allows companies to choose locations that align with their product and offering, as well as their ideal audience. This is invaluable information for businesses to determine where to establish new outlets, target marketing efforts, and optimize their distribution chain, among others.
For example, let’s take a fitness center looking to expand into a new city. They could discover a popular district with high visitor sentiment by analyzing POI data on customer behavior, high-traffic areas, and competitor distribution.
This area might include a mix of tourist attractions and office buildings, few competing gyms nearby, and several complementary services, such as health food stores and wellness centers.
These insights would help them select the ideal location for a new gym, catering to professionals and health-conscious travelers.
The food and beverage sector makes extensive use of POI data—particularly for site selection. A coffeehouse chain needed POI data to overcome the uncertainties of entering a new market unfamiliar to them—Eastern Europe.
Expanding into these regions required understanding:
To do this, the coffeehouse chain used POI data enriched with sentiment and popularity data. Through POI data analysis this business accessed granular insights into high-traffic areas, customer sentiment, and the local landscape—allowing them to make informed decisions about where to open new locations.
This data-driven approach enabled them to:
Read the full success story.
To improve customer experience, businesses must focus on personalizing interactions to align with individual preferences and needs. Through POI data enriched with sentiment and popularity insights, companies can determine:
For instance, a business could use POI data to identify areas with high foot traffic and positive customer sentiment, tailor marketing messages to resonate with local preferences and behaviors, and optimize promotion timing to align with peak customer engagement periods.
This data-driven, personalized approach can foster stronger business-customer relationships, boost overall satisfaction and retention, and build loyalty by making customers feel valued.
Poste Italiane, Italy’s national postal service provider needed a complete, and accurate profile of their traders and potential customers to improve their overall experience. This process required adding detailed information on:
To achieve this, Poste Italiane turned to data enrichment, a method of enhancing proprietary data by incorporating additional insights from various sources. Through Data Appeal’s proprietary Sentiment Score, Poste Italiane could supplement their existing information with customers’ opinions and their evolving needs. The Popularity Index gave them insights into the popularity and frequency of visits of their branches.
By gaining deeper insights into customer preferences and behaviors, they were able to:
The integration of real-time feedback and enriched data enabled Poste Italiane to enhance customer interactions and identify new areas for growth.
Read the full success story.
Hospitality is one of the most rapidly evolving industries—as guest and traveler patterns and preferences change alongside advances in technology, social trends, and more recently, sustainability concerns.
Remaining competitive is a must, yet one of the greatest challenges for businesses in the industry—such as hotels, resorts, and restaurants. By analyzing POI data on guest behavior, preferences, and activity patterns, businesses can:
For example, a hotel chain might analyze foot traffic to determine the most frequented local attractions to tailor its services accordingly—such offering guided tours or shuttle services. Similarly, by understanding peak visitation times and guest sentiment, hotels could better their offering such as adjusting restaurant hours or promoting special events that align better with guest expectations to improve their overall satisfaction.
Similarly, POI data, especially when enriched with sentiment and popularity insights, supports personalization, as it reveals which activities, locations, or services resonate most with guests. For instance, a hotel could use POI data to recommend or even collaborate with nearby attractions and businesses that align with guest interests to enhance their stay.
Furthermore, tracking sentiment and real-time feedback helps businesses make proactive adjustments to improve service quality and customer satisfaction—all of which lead to higher guest retention and increased profits and revenue.
The city of Cremona in Italy required hospitality analytics to integrate into their tourism strategy, to increase tourist inflows and improve visitor experiences.
Destinations like Cremona are vital in helping hospitality business owners and managers understand local trends. By providing insights into visitor behavior, these destinations enable businesses to:
This collaborative approach enhances individual performance and raises overall industry standards, ensuring that local stakeholders can adapt and thrive in a competitive tourism landscape.
Through the analysis of POI, the city identified which attractions were most popular among tourists, revealing patterns in visitor behavior and preferences. This data highlighted emerging trends, allowing the city to promote lesser-known events alongside major festivals, thereby distributing tourist traffic more evenly across the city—benefiting local hotels and restaurants.
At the same time, sentiment analysis provided valuable feedback on visitor experiences, revealing how travelers perceived various attractions and events. This insight allowed local businesses to tailor their offerings and improve service quality, ultimately enhancing visitor satisfaction.
As a result of leveraging POI and sentiment data, Cremona could develop targeted marketing strategies and optimize event scheduling, significantly benefiting the hospitality sector. The data-driven approach empowered local operators to align their services with visitor preferences, fostering growth in tourism and enhancing the overall appeal of the destination.
Read the full success story.
POI data is changing the face of many industries—and the above are just some of the use showing how such data is transforming how businesses understand and respond to customer and guest needs.
And as the industry landscape continues to evolve, embracing these insights will be essential for businesses aiming to thrive, remain competitive, while giving their customers the offering they need, and ultimately deserve.
The Data Appeal Company provides AI-powered Location, POI, Sentiment, and Market Intelligence data from over 140 sources, offering insights for any Point of Interest, brand, or region. Serving industries like Tourism, Retail, and Finance, our data enables decision-making, optimized resources, and better business performance.
Ready to be part of their success stories? Discover more about The Data Appeal Company’s data solutions on Datarade.
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