Future Traveller Tribes 2020

With each new challenge comes a new service, an unexpected business model, a new way of working or a technological innovation. Four tribes of future travellers are introduced in this report together with a description of trends fuelling their emergence and technology that could enhance travel experience from booking to arrivals.

The surest way to navigate this turmoil of transformation is to stay focused on your customer. In the case of the travel industry, that customer is someone who travels, a traveller. And as travel becomes cheaper, and people become richer, the word “traveller” represents an ever-growing variety of people, cultures, needs, expectations, aspirations and lifestyles.

This report is an attempt to understand how demographic, geographic and political trends might shape travellers of the future. It is intended to stimulate debate about what the future holds for the travel industry and where opportunities might lie. Forecasting experts were employed to identify and segment groups – or tribes – of traveller; four groups in particular were singled out for further analysis. Experts from the airline industry kindly devoted their time and considerable intelligence to help us tease out the practical implications of these emerging types of traveller.

Because we are Amadeus, and that is what we do, we also looked at the implications for technology. Whilst some of the technological insights are new, others are already in use but will grow in importance in the future.