When Satpal Chana joined VisitBritain as deputy director of Data, Analytics & Insight, it was not a quiet onboarding. The very week he stepped into his new role, Britain went into lockdown. International travel froze, airports emptied, and tourism—the lifeblood of VisitBritain’s mission—collapsed. Chana, a data strategist with roots at Manchester United and Accenture, found […]
When Satpal Chana joined VisitBritain as deputy director of Data, Analytics & Insight, it was not a quiet onboarding. The very week he stepped into his new role, Britain went into lockdown.
International travel froze, airports emptied, and tourism—the lifeblood of VisitBritain’s mission—collapsed. Chana, a data strategist with roots at Manchester United and Accenture, found himself tasked with plotting a digital route out of the most turbulent period the UK travel industry had ever seen.
“People were asking, ‘Where is the work going to come from next?’” Chana recalls. “But with no one travelling, our research-based surveys—the cornerstone of our insight—stopped flowing. It was a transformation moment. We realised something had to change.”
Football finance to national tourism
Chana’s career has spanned the private and public sectors, always with a keen eye on how data drives performance. At Manchester United, he explored how brand assets could boost financial outcomes through better data-led sponsorship strategies. Prior to that, he had stints at Publicis Media and Accenture and even began his career as a government economist.
“I love numbers, I always have,” he says, as he sits down with TechInformed in a cosy side room in vendor Databricks’ Central London HQ, where he has just participated in a round table on AI with a fellow data leader at Virgin Atlantic.
Satpal Chana, deputy director of Data, Analytics & Insight
“I wasn’t sure where I wanted to work, but I knew I liked using numbers to solve problems. Data and technology became natural bedfellows—I just followed my heart.”
It was this passion that would be tested immediately at VisitBritain, the UK government’s national tourism agency, an “arm’s length body” tasked with promoting Britain abroad and boosting inbound tourism.
The organisation supports a vast and fragmented sector that includes over 200,000 SMEs employing around three million people, from hoteliers to airlines, and everything in between. It also serves as a trusted advisor to Parliament, providing insight for policy and national strategy.
The challenge? The data underpinning these efforts had traditionally been fragmented, survey-based, and retrospective—unfit for navigating a global travel freeze or the accelerating demands of modern decision-makers.
Business objectives and data strategy
The pandemic lit a fire under VisitBritain’s digital transformation. Chana’s remit quickly became clear: ensure that never again would the organisation be left blind in the face of crisis.
“For the last few years, our objective has been simple,” he says. “Use the power of data to get insights to people when they need them, how they need them, so that this never happens again.”
The organisation is now three years into a far-reaching data transformation programme, with AI at its heart. At the core of Chana’s strategy is the creation of a joined-up view of the traveller’s journey—from inspiration and booking to post-trip sentiment—across markets from North America to Southeast Asia.
The transformation is not theoretical—it’s yielding tangible, measurable benefits. Chana gives the example of VisitBritain’s campaign analysis process, which used to require “three to five days of grunt work” just to clean and structure data.
“Now that grunt work is done in seconds,” he says. “Which means we get to focus on the story behind the data and how we deliver it.”
Campaign evaluations are now dynamic, real-time workshops instead of static PowerPoint decks. One example: analysing 27,000 survey responses from a single “wave” to assess campaign effectiveness.
AI tools now summarise topics, extract sentiment, and identify performance trends within seconds—insight that would previously have taken a week of manual analysis.
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Chana cites the organisation’s “Don’t Spill the Tea” campaign assessment, where AI flagged audience discomfort with specific creative elements (namely, floating heads). The insight was swiftly relayed to marketing teams and used to fine-tune future creative decisions—something that once would have taken months.
Agentic AI and Synthetic Data
According to Chana, the use of agentic AI—AI models capable of performing tasks semi-autonomously—is now reshaping how VisitBritain handles data quality and harmonisation.
Internally, these agents support master data management by standardising disparate datasets, validating them against known benchmarks, and helping the organisation move toward predictive, not just descriptive, analytics.
Externally, Chana sees potential in letting SMEs engage directly with AI agents to interrogate national datasets. “Our customers know what they want to ask,” he says. “We’re exploring how to use agents to let them have a conversation with the data. And we expect uptake and enthusiasm to go through the roof.”
Chana blends a philosophical mindset with the hard, often gritty reality of enterprise data work. That contrast: poetic thinking applied to very technical, complex systems — gives him a distinctive voice.
We talk about his exploration of synthetic data—artificially generated datasets that mirror real-world ones. Rather than “making up” data, Chana likens the process to “reverse baking a cake”: deconstructing data into component parts, interpolating new insights, and then recomposing it to simulate missing pieces.
It’s a delicate process. “Synthetic data should augment, never replace,” he says. “But if another pandemic hit, God forbid, we now have the ability to pivot quickly, to simulate probable outcomes using what we have, and to plan with far more flexibility than before.”
An ambassador’s reception
For Chana, transformation isn’t just technical—it’s cultural. A central pillar of his approach has been change management through advocacy. Early in the programme, his team identified key influencers— “that ambassador piece” — those with the CEO’s ear or an innate curiosity about data and tools—and brought them into the development process.
“They become architects of the solution, not just users. That way, I don’t have to sell the platform—they do,” he says. “And crucially, we let them take the credit. That creates authentic momentum.”
This tactic has elevated data literacy across VisitBritain. Teams now seek out the data team rather than avoiding them. Conversations have shifted from transactional requests to strategic collaboration.
The rollout of Databricks as a central cloud platform has been instrumental. Chana praises its “agnostic architecture” and usability, noting that it allows VisitBritain to maintain control over their data environment while integrating with whichever machine learning models or BI tools are best suited at any given time.
“Databricks is the glue,” he says. “We’ve created a nucleus that can power both technical teams and business users, all within secure, well-governed guardrails.”
The platform is enabling deep analytics on travel trends, bookings, and spending. It also caters to different audiences: dashboards for marketers, detailed data tables for sector stakeholders. Chana’s team can now provide predictive insights, not just post-campaign analysis.
New data language
Overall, perhaps the most revolutionary shift is linguistic. “The biggest impact Gen AI has had,” Chana explains, “is that the language of data is no longer inaccessible. It’s now English—or whatever your mother tongue is. That’s never happened before.”
It means non-technical users can engage with data meaningfully. Insights aren’t siloed within specialist teams—they’re shared and acted on collaboratively.
Chana is clear-eyed about the risks, however. As VisitBritain continues to scale AI usage, transparency and ethics are non-negotiable. “Everything must be explained by design, aligned with public sector guidelines, and clearly communicated.”
Looking ahead, his focus is on connecting the most varied dataset in the economy—travel and tourism—and telling a compelling, real-time story for the UK government and industry alike. “Travel is diverse. Very few organisations have managed to connect all that data together. We can. And that’s the opportunity.”
Main picture credit: VisitBritain/Peter Seaward
