One of the key takeaways from Amadeus and Microsoft’s new report - Delivering Travel Value: Inspiring, understanding and fulfilling expectations throughout the travel experience and beyond - is that traveler expectations have significantly changed over the past three years. Having seen the pace of technological change accelerate in other areas of their lives during the pandemic, many travelers now expect planning a journey to be more intuitive, s
One of the key takeaways from Amadeus and Microsoft’s new report - Delivering Travel Value: Inspiring, understanding and fulfilling expectations throughout the travel experience and beyond - is that traveler expectations have significantly changed over the past three years. Having seen the pace of technological change accelerate in other areas of their lives during the pandemic, many travelers now expect planning a journey to be more intuitive, seamless and digital.
To maximize the value of each trip - be that building better relationships, creating memories or raising revenues - we must therefore rebuild our industry to reflect these new demands.
Below, I would like to explore the changes we have seen and how a deeper understanding of the context around a journey can help us across the tech and travel industry respond.
Experience gap
Spotify offers us a great example of how things have changed.
The app is able to use the time of day, previous musical choices, those of other listeners and a myriad of other factors to determine the context of listening. Logging on early in the morning on a weekday might mean a user is going for a run, with the app suggesting something motivating. Or, if tuning in late on a Friday evening, something more attuned to either downtime or socializing might be recommended.
This use of data, to build an understanding of context, is what travelers have come to expect in new parts of their lives – including travel. Seeing what is possible, many are now seeking tailored itineraries, curated recommendations and personalized accommodation options when taking a journey.
Unless the travel industry refocuses on contextualization, this ‘experience gap’ between what consumers see is possible elsewhere and what they are offered by the travel sector will continue to grow.
Delivering value in travel
Desire for change is also coming from within the travel industry too.
Pre-COVID-19, the sector had seen a sustained period of growth, with millions of additional trips taken each year. Now, as it rebuilds, travel budgets have been tightened and there is an increased focus on securing a return on investment. If the industry understands the traveler and what they value, it can offer them new services, potentially driving increased revenue for providers and improved return on spend for travelers and corporations.
While there has been innovation across the travel industry, the pace has been quicker elsewhere. This now offers us a chance to learn from best practice we have seen elsewhere to build more contextualized trips.
A new era
With pressure for change coming from within and without, what can be done?
Imagine if antiquated, disjointed journeys could be replaced by new, end-to-end experiences, those driven by an understanding of the traveler and their ambitions. The mental burden of search, organization and booking could be lifted from the traveler and taken up by new intuitive technical solutions.
Effective use of data will be key to this new world.
The travel industry is now in a position to knit information together across open, cloud-based platforms, creating an end-to-end view of the entire trip. This insight can then be shared, understood and actioned in order to present options to the traveler as and when they are useful. When fully realized, prompts will be actioned in real time.
The new opportunities gained as the industry deepens its understanding of the context of a trip are relevant to the entire journey.
Travel sellers can act on every touch point - and even create new ones. During the inspiration phase, contextualization can improve the search offering. If stakeholders know who a traveler is planning to travel with, why they are traveling and the constraints in terms of date or price, the options on offer can be tailored with increasing sophistication.
In terms of accommodation, room preferences, mealtimes and checkout can be tailored to the needs of the customer without an explicit request from the traveler, while onboard aircraft entertainment preferences and allergies can be known ahead of time.
In this world, data insight can be used to deliver the locations, rides, meals, people connections and virtually any service travelers need – often before they even know they need them. This is the next step in the technological evolution of the travel industry.
Great expectations
Travelers are open to sharing data if it means these news opportunities are realized.
As part of the Delivering Traveler Value report, our research partner, Northstar , surveyed 2,400 business and leisure travelers in six key markets around the world. Over half of the sample were open to sharing previous trip itineraries with travel sellers, while smaller numbers were willing to provide demographic information, access to social media accounts or make financial data and health documents available.
Only 14 per cent were unwilling to share any data at all in order to personalize a trip.
If travelers can see the value of sharing data to allow travel stakeholders to better understand the context of a journey, they are willing to do so. We must capitalize on this openness to build the tools, solutions and platforms needed to meet the needs of the traveler of tomorrow.
Interested to know more about how understanding context in travel can improve the traveler experience? Download the report below.
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