There’s no arguing that travel these days, whether for work or pleasure, is an arduous task. Our ground and air transport networks are experiencing unprecedented volumes of traffic and congestion. Travellers want to get the most from their travel experience from the time they start planning their trip right through to when they return from it.
What’s a travel provider to do?
Technology, as always, is the answer. However technology is only as useful as the way it’s used – at the end of the day, it is access to useful and timely information that the traveller wants, and technology merely facilitates this. What’s even more important is the organic way in which the traveller creates uses and shares this information.
Imagine going on vacation to an exciting new destination only to find that quiet little hotel you booked on a coastal hideaway is now surrounded by new large-scale tourist developments, or that the latest winter weather reports have meant that it’s a great time to go skiing but the destination airport is snowed under.
“From chaos to collaboration”, a recent research commissioned by Amadeus that included interviews with over 1,400 travellers from seven of the world’s key markets including the UAE, found that 86 per cent of the respondents wanted to have instant access to aggregated intelligent travel recommendations throughout their travel experience. The research which also included input from technologists, leading travel industry representatives and social trends experts, interestingly found 82 per cent of the travellers surveyed also wanted an intelligent ticketing system to update them on delays and changes to their arrangements.
In a telling sign of the times, 82 per cent of respondents also wanted mobile applications to measure and help them reduce their levels of stress which I’m sure many of our well-travelled readers will relate to. Moreover applications such as these could prove useful particularly to the older or business traveller.
As a travel technology provider, it’s hard to ignore strong figures like these which clearly reflect the age-old challenge of taking the stress out of the travel experience. The good news is technology that could help bring traveller and travel provider together as partners working in collaboration in order to share knowledge and enhance experience, is mostly in existence.
This peer-to-peer sharing of information is already popular online with the numerous travel review websites and social networks especially among frequent and savvy travellers, developing an entire travel information sharing eco-system between travel providers and their customer base is simply a natural progression of this trend.
In the UAE, perceptions towards the sharing of information in return for a better and more streamlined travel experience are quite relaxed; however to safeguard against the sharing of false information, the travel agents of the future will essentially be expert curators on hand providing credible and trustworthy advice to travellers.
The future of travel is becoming ever-more sophisticated; our basic needs when travelling have been satiated giving rise to more advanced requirements such as increasing our cultural understanding and language of the places we visit through the use of live information.
Augmented reality is another up and coming technology that’s gaining a lot of traction in many applications. In the UAE, home to some of the most transient populations on earth, nearly all participants wished there was a mobile application that superimposes useful visual information like the nearest restaurant or cinema onto a live image.
Within a decade we could be sampling a destination of our choice virtually without having to leave home before actually travelling there. The core requirement for all travellers is to learn from the experience of others and if they in turn experience something novel on their journey, they can rest assured knowing that they will always have an audience to share with.
The modern day traveller can once again become empowered through a confluence of the tried and tested method of sharing travel experiences through fast evolving technology. In this landscape the travel technology provider will need to facilitate the interaction between fellow travellers connecting them according to their similar experiences and again its role will remain crucial.
Antoine Medawar is vice president, Middle East & North Africa, for Amadeus, the IT software and solution provider for the travel industry.
BY ANTOINE MEDAWAR