Have you ever wondered why the ads that appear on the Internet are what you have previously searched on travel websites? Well, these sites know you and know what offers you want to buy. You should not take this initiative as if the brands are spying on you. Nowadays tourism companies are innovating themselves to provide unique experiences to their customers. Thus, the technology and good user experience combine themselves to provide added value and achieve competitive differentiation in the market.Â
Here, we have noted down the technological trends that are marking the passage in the travel and hospitality sector and will bring great changes in the short term:
Artificial Intelligence – For tourists there are services that help them to plan travel. They accumulate reports from various search engines with photos and videos, reviews and guides, offers of airlines and hotel chains. The user enters requests in areas of interest to him, and the program generates a personalized offer.
Suppose someone loves extreme entertainment, bike rides, vegetarian cuisine and ancient art – a neural network will remember these requirements and create a non-standard travel plan. The program also takes into account financial aspects: preferred prices for air or railway tickets, cost of the living, food system, etc. In such services, you can compare flight fares, rent accommodation, and pay for excursions, view lists of entertainment venues and current events.
Virtual and Augmented Reality – VR technology allows you to travel while sitting at home on the couch. When choosing a travel company it is not at all necessary to go there. You can visit the office through the AR application. Using these services, you can look at the interior of the hotel rooms and then choose what you like.
The simultaneous combination of travel through the real and three-dimensional worlds is no less interesting. Imagine: you are traveling by train, and outside the window – the depths of the seas and oceans. It sounds fantastic, but such entertainment is already provided by the European railway company Eurostar. The service is exclusive – it can be used while traveling by company trains. Virtual reality glasses are handed out in the carriages, and passengers only need to put them on and connect to free Wi-Fi – and now they are no longer on rough terrain, but are swimming next to mermaids and dolphins.
Augmented reality applications will help you locate and display direction indicators. AR browsers will talk about an object if you point the camera on your phone. Such services operate on the basis of databases downloaded from the Internet.
Internet of Things (IoT) – Today, technology is leaving computers and smartphones to integrate into almost all of the physical environments around us. The Internet of Things paradigm has opened up new possibilities to significantly improve the customer experience. The travel and tourism industry can also harness the potential of the IoT to serve its customers more effectively. From hotels offering customers and airlines intelligent control of the room environment and facilitating check-in and smooth boarding thanks to airport beacons, the number of offers in this segment is numerous.
Thanks to the progress made in the field of hardware sensors, it is possible to collect a large volume of data from the physical environment of a customer or a potential customer. Companies can use this data to offer personalized services. By focusing more on data security, today’s IoT platforms will provide end-users with personalized services without the risk of unauthorized access by impostors. From an operational point of view, companies such as airlines and hotels can use IoT platforms to automate several key operational tasks such as maintenance activities, in order to improve their efficiency, save on costs and reduce the risks associated with labor.
Big data – Tourism and travel businesses can take advantage of the wide range of data generated by customers and travelers, helping them make the best decisions for growth. This is facilitated by the powerful big data analysis platforms that are available today even on subscription. This makes the proposal smoother for small businesses, as they can now compete with the giants of their respective business communities by gaining essential knowledge about customer behavior, consumer habits, and interests. By analyzing data from previous travel experiences, hotels and travel agencies can provide personalized recommendations to customers and greatly facilitate their decision-making process. These systems allow travel agencies to suggest the most profitable routes both for themselves and for the customer, making it a win-win situation for everyone. It also allows them to separate travelers, based on several criteria such as cost preferences, location preferences, interests, etc. This allows them to create personalized marketing and promotion campaigns for each segment and to get more business opportunities.
For example, an example is airlines, which handle and process a huge amount of transactions with different travel data such as the plane number, seat number, traveler preference, purchase time, fare value, etc. With Big Data applications, airlines will be able to consolidate this information better and better and transform it into simpler groups to make analyzes and observations in a more organized way and with real meaning to help them make strategic decisions, as well as tactical actions and operational.
Conclusion
The travel and tourism sector will undoubtedly be one of the largest in the world in terms of investment potential. However, the future of this industry will largely be decided by whoever makes the wisest decisions regarding technology investments among its competitors. By bringing human interactions and technology together, companies in this sector can better serve their customers and manage their infrastructure more intelligently.
