The Future of Global Travel Industry and the Role of Technology

Whether its war, pestilence, record debts or high oil prices, nothing can actually extinguish human desire to travel to lands far or near, to explore the unexplored and experience the exotic, to look a distant customer in the eye or stretch near a sempiternal shoreline with a Ruskin Bond book in hand. With man’s desire increases the challenges for the travel industry, but past few years’ observation certainly proves the industry’s agility and creativity to survive such challenges and come up with services, technology, business model and new working culture that proved fruitful to cope up with the situation.

Technology solutions including communication technologies, distribution systems, sensing and identification technologies etc. are perceived by many as the driving force to advance the growth of travel industry in the coming years. From big business houses to small-scale organizations, everyone is considering modern technological developments to help them deliver a more efficient, seamless and engaging experience at all stages of consumer’s journey.

Speculating on the future of travel, marketers believe that trends like globalization of business, growth in global migration, globalization of travel and tourism and rising affluence are some of the prime reasons that will transform the travel industry in the coming time. According to the experts, the future is already here. From planning the travel to sharing the travel experience, technology has its impactful presence in every phase of a person’s travel experience. In the present scenario, social media networks are becoming popular as the potent channels to market travel products and services. In next 5 years, around 76% of globetrotters are expected to book their travel as suggested over the social sites by the people on their network.

In the mid part of 20th century, technological innovations like booking engines showed a rapid growth in air travel market. The popularity of this technology soon made it popular among other divisions of the industry including hotels, travel agencies, cruise liners etc. Today, it’s hard to find a hotel that doesn’t have a website and an online hotel booking engine. It not only makes the entire booking procedure easier for the consumers, but makes it extremely convenient for the hotels to track the customer records and manage the entire reservation system.

Surveys show that cloud computing is gradually becoming popular in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry too. Cloud computing lets the company’s technology infrastructure up and running round the clock. Cloud computing reduces capital expenditures and the need to replicate hardware environment at each location.

The consumerization of technology is changing the way travelers interact, obtain information and purchase travel needs. Surveys show that from March 2012 to March 2013, there has been noticed a 54% increase in the number of Facebook mobile users; this increase has also resulted in a surge of people preferring to opt for travel services and products recommended by their friends over social networking sites. Travel service providers are now becoming more active on social network to reach their potent consumer section.

It’s been also observed that people prefer to search, evaluate and book travel services using their mobile devices. Mobile applications are thus a good way to serve consumer section with a value-added service. Mobile applications make it easy for the consumer to search and book travel deals while on the go. Moreover, mobile applications are greatly replacing hotel concierge services.

A discussion about future travel trends would be incomplete without mentioning about mobile devices and portable internet services. From business travelers to leisure seekers, and from honeymooners to adventure explorers, everyone wants to stay connected 24*7. To meet the growing needs of the travelers, hotels are including WiFi services. But an in-property WiFi wouldn’t be sufficient to serve the travelers, who seek internet everywhere they go; thus, in the coming years WiFi portable hotspots are speculated to replace traditional hotel WiFi services.

By the end of 2016, it is expected that 60% of global travel operations would depend on travel technology that not only meets the requirements of the travelers, but lets the service providers minimize the management hassle and maximize their profit margin.