What if you could plan a business trip collaboratively with colleagues within the tools we use every day? Searching for options, proposing ideas to the group based on calendar availability and booking there and then, without ever leaving the platform.
Or consider the convenience of organizing a check-in and luggage collection service all from the comfort of your hotel. And if the flight was disrupted, being informed well in advance so you could select alternative options with a single click. Or order that extra drink at the bar. Imagine then strolling calmly through the usual airport check points without a care in the world as biometrics identify you.
How about paying for trip extras like meals and taxis directly from the company’s account using your smartphone, so there’s no need to file expense reports. If the return flight is delayed, wouldn’t it be great if your car service knew and adjusted the time of your airport collection behind the scenes? And do you wish you had a travel consultant available to you in real time through your trip?
This doesn’t sound like an average travel experience today, but will be possible in the not too distant future. In this blog I’ll break down the traveler journey into its different phases and explain why I believe transformation is possible acrossthe entire trip .
Inspiration
Picture yourself being able to talk to a virtual assistant as you would to a friend about what you’d like from your next trip. Or being able to plan and book travel collaboratively with colleagues from within the productivity tools you use on a daily basis.
Yet today, travelers tend to search across a number of different websites or navigate to a specific corporate self-booking tool to plan their trip. The experience can be complex, with multiple searches across different sites required to find the right option.
At Amadeus, we believe searching and planning travel should be intuitive, and an inherent everyday part of people’s lives. Consider that you can buy groceries via Amazon or add financial services at the supermarket. Travel needs to be available everywhere people might choose to be inspired to book.
Advances like massively scalable cloud computing are making it possible for near infinite combinations of flights, hotels and experiences to be made available much more easily, in new digital locations like social media and productivity tools.
On-trip
Envision receiving a notification on your phone from an airline 48 hours before you travel, advising you there is an 80% chance that bad weather will delay your expected flight. Then being automatically presented with alternative travel options allowing you to rebook with a single click.
This approach sees airlines and airports work far more collaboratively together, so the traveler doesn’t end up stuck at the terminal desperately trying to find an alternative way to reach their destination. Instead, plans are changed ahead of time and airports can plan their resources more effectively as a result. This is the future disruption management experience I wish to help create.
It’s one of my personal missions is to help different segments of the industry to collaborate in orderto deliver a better overall journey experience for the traveler . Today this rarely happens and it’s down to the traveler to make the best of being handed over from one stage of the journey to the next. Disruption really highlights how difficult it is for the industry to work as one to deliver a complete journey experience.
I believe technology has a fundamental role to play here. By bringing data from airlines, hotels, cars, rail, airports and travel sellers together we can overcome the silos and empower different providers to take a traveler-centric view of a journey. This is what I believe is best for travelers and also what’s best for the industry, because people will be willing to pay more for travel if we can get this right.
So, what could this look like if we broke down silos? A hotel, for example, would understand which flight its guest is arriving on. A vital piece of information that’s always been missing but which can make an enormous difference. The hotel would know if a plane is delayed and can automatically adjust a taxi pick-up, whether the guest’s room is ready, or even the duration of the guest’s stay.
It would mean that each player involved in the journey gains the knowledge they need about a traveler’s previous and next move. It enables tailored service, pro-active disruption management, and more personalized offers. But even more is possible. At Amadeus we envisage different players sharing data so that advanced machine learning can alert and re-accommodate travelers before disruption even occurs.
In this scenario we believe it is possible to gain a complete 360-degree view of the aviation network and combine it with external data like weather to predict disruption. Again, this is enabled by a modern data platform that makes advanced machine learning and automation possible.
This is what we hear travelers want too.In our latest Censuswide survey of 9,074 travelers across nine markets, commissioned by Amadeus, travelers said technology would increase confidence to travel in the next 12 months. 44% of travelers said they want mobile applications that provide on-trip notifications and alerts, 41% said self-service check-in and 41% said contactless mobile payments.
This research demonstrates travelers are looking forward to advancements in areas such as touchless technology, as well as other areas such as digital health and sustainable travel. Now is the time to listen even more closely to travelers’ needs so we can rebuild our industry in a way that is more traveler focused, resilient and sustainable.
The future is bright
While we recognize the on-going difficulties the travel industry faces as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic , we believe it’s important to keep an eye on the future. Doing so helps us to remain focused on our core mission to power better journeys with technology.
The possibilities open to travel companies have never been more exciting, enabled by a new generation of cloud, data platforms and machine learning.
Travel is on an enormous digital transformation – one that will usher in an era of more enjoyable and less stressful journeys. Thinking beyond individual silos, and truly collaborating with industry stakeholders (and beyond) is the industry’s chance to improve the entire journey.
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