Travel inspiration is poised for Hollywood treatment

Awe-inspiring limestone cliffs jutting out of sapphire waters accentuated by swaying palm trees capture your attention more so than the flimsy plot line. Where is this place and how can you book a trip there now? A dialogue pops up on your television screen or mobile advising you that the scene’s location is Thailand and flights are cheap. You book your trip in one fell swoop and suddenly dreams of a tropical holiday become reality.

This is the type of travel inspiration experience the Amadeus Innovation & Research team is currently experimenting with. By enabling an integrated travel shopping experience on top of any media content – you’ll be able to turn Hollywood backdrops into real life experiences.

Within the travel industry, little has changed in search over the last 16 years. The travel search box is still restricted to the traditional ‘to-from’ box and inspirational search is in its basic form.

By the time leisure travellers click the ‘Book’ button, they have already gone on a long journey. They’ve poured over pictures, dissected reviews, sought advice from friends and relatives, read travel blogs or destination guides and apps, shopped on several websites for different travel components and fretted over which flight to book.

Travellers are often frustrated by their travel planning experiences. Why? Information overload, fragmentation, and inadequate decision-making tools in destination selection are just a few of the pain points. All of this makes travellers search over 40 websites on average without a common place to store all the information.

But this is evolving towards a more unified and end-to-end experience. According to our Future Traveller Tribes 2030 research “By 2030 travel providers will reach customers by offering immersive purchasing experiences. To this end, Simplicity Searchers will want to be shown a video or virtual reality experience that aggregates and simplifies the entire trip. They will not want to buy a service on a tablet, and then another service at check-in, and then another service using their wearable tech, for example. This is too complicated for them. Rather, they will want a single channel to buy everything, a one-stop-shop.”

Currently, we’re refining the value proposition of this experiment – so we want to know what you think. Would you plan your travels using this kind of inspirational technology? Leave a comment below or send us a tweet with hashtag #TravelCast to share your opinion and be sure to check out this video and read this post about the prototype unveiling with United at SXSW for more details.