What does the future of travel looks like?
For a blog named ‘Future of travel’ here is me sharing our vision for what the future of travel looks like
In the era of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain influencing and disrupting entire industries, what does the future hold for travel? As a traveler, what changes can I expect to see which will improve my experience? Or rather, as a traveler, what areas do I want improvement in the near future, to make my life and my travels easy? This blog attempts to answer each of those questions.
I have always felt that the travel industry has shortchanged its users in favor of near term revenue. The websites we use have not changed in the last ten years, the apps that were released focused on less content, but ultimately could not find much use except for last minute situations as they could not offer the same functionality as the websites. With websites, all of them offered the same User Experience, laid out in the same manner, offered similar results only differentiated by price, brand, and some convenience fee here and there.
This is what Expedia looked like in 2012.
There are a few optimizations that have happened in the past few years. However, those are conversion optimization tactics which essentially push the user towards booking faster, and not aimed at improving the overall experience. The above layout from Expedia is similar to that of Kayak, or MakeMyTrip, or CTrip, with a few small modifications here and there. If you compare the apps, they too look the same. These companies work hard to differentiate themselves, in terms of offers, discounts, and branding, but not so much in terms of helping a traveler, making a user feel wanted and special.
So, as a traveler, what should our ideal travel experience look like?
If I could change anything, what would I change about travel today that can make my experience better?
1 . Personalization:
Strangely, this was not much of a problem a few years back when there was not so much content. Things were easier to find and were not scattered everywhere on the web with main information concentrated on a few sites. With the increasing amount of articles, blogs, photos and other travel content published on the web, finding the relevant result is getting more difficult than ever. Every publication/website invests a lot in content, but they try to make the article one size fits all, and try to cater to everyone in one go.
How many times have we read the articles such as “11 things to do when you are on a trip to Spain” or “9 places to visit if you love beaches.” only to find out only two or three of them were really relevant for us?
For those who used to rely on Google and travel forums for trip research have had similar experiences recently. It is no more a hard task to rank an article higher up in the search results — for most keywords, and frankly, articles are written from that perspective. Travel forums have the bots which are on the lookout for question remotely close to the article they have and can seed the content.
What this leads to is that finding the relevant information takes up 80% of the entire planning time. And many a times, quite a few travelers give up, or choose inefficient options, because of the fatigue and overload it brings. A lot of travelers have indicated they would take two or even three trips a year if planning did not involve so much research. Personalization would be god send in this regard.
Imagine a system, which can give you personalized information. If you plan to go to Spain for a cultural vacation, it will give you more content about the historical places etc. and if you like nightlife, it will give you places like Ibiza and Barcelona, and the most happening spots.
When the research is more focused and targeted, it saves time, saves energy, and enables users to go deeper, and find the hidden gems which makes any vacation research worthwhile. This is one thing a lot of travel planning and itinerary building tools fail to acknowledge — the research is part of the experience, and travelers want to be able to do it better, not have someone else do it for them. As a bonus, we will be able to count on reviews of travelers like us, rather than an average, which like Netflix is for media, will always be a better indicator of whether we would like an activity or not. (not that netflix is perfect)
The end state potential is a system with travel recommendations that you can follow as blindly as you follow GPS and google navigation.
2. Global currency / Inter-operability
This requires a lot of changes on the institutional level but helps fellow travelers by not having to worry about currency exchanges, conversion rates, and do the mental math of figuring out how much they would be spending.
Whenever we travel internationally, getting the local currency (despite having digital payment systems) and how much will we need is one important aspect to figure out. It is not ideal that these exchanges are carried out by intermediaries who charge service fees on both sides — converting your currency to destination currency and then converting it back. Ridiculous to think how it has spawned an entire >$100B industry. It is a really inconvenient and needless task that stems back to 1930s, and something that can be avoided.
Why can’t I just use the same currency everywhere? Blockchain (with Bitcoin, or any other global standard) could provide an answer to that. We can use the same currency everywhere and get rid of these pointless exchange tasks. I think Europe already leads the way in this regard, and solves it well without even needing a blockchain based system. While traveling to Europe, I can use Euros in various countries, wherever it is accepted, and the value is pretty much the same during the journey.
Another way to do it is through digitisation, although there are a lot of challenges there too, as it is limited by the global reach of technology. A quicker way to do it is, if the various wallets and apps allow for inter-operability, that is one wallet compatible with another, though that is just replacing one system of intermediaries with another more efficient one.
I am really looking forward to anyone who can solve this efficiently.
3. Transparency in prices / properties
Kind of feels weird putting this at third, since this would be very high on the list of many of us. There are two three facets I would want to see the travel booking sites — OTAs or direct retailers like airlines or hotel chains — be transparent about.
For flights, a site needs to be upfront about all the cost I might incur when I am choosing a flight. That includes the charges for baggage, late show, cancellation, no show, lounge charges, seat charges, and even airline food charges if applicable. It is a really unpleasant experience when you book a flight only to find out that baggage charges would be extra, and it becomes a double whammy when there is no way to club them with the ticket. Also, the cancellation fees are well hidden, and the flows to cancel a flight are really cumbersome. Then, the additional fees for window seats, and change requests too make me feel like I am cheated. No improvements, but if these are taken care of, the experience will be far better.
For hotels, first and foremost, many sites do not show which room is being booked for me. It is because I am paying for a type of room at the hotel, and not the specific room. Why should that be the case? Then again, the charges are so vastly different, as are the cancellation, and additional services provided by the hotels. This is where AirBnb succeeded, as they at least managed to show the photos of the room I would be staying in (in addition to the lower costs).
4. One click checkout
This one is quite straight forward. Think of when you buy a product on Amazon or Instacart, how quickly you can check out and confirm your purchase. While booking a flight ticket, you always have to fill so many details, go through so many steps, before you can finally make a booking.
Ironically, every travel site tells you that their process is quick and easy, but is it? Infact, all the sites have more or less same fields. Quite a few fields are repeated, but I am still asked to fill those even when I have logged in. Surely a faster checkout cut short an already cumbersome process.
5. No cookie/browser based price fluctuation or dark patterns
This one is so obvious, but still the most abused aspect whenever one is booking travel. From Orbitz showing inflated prices to Mac Users, to Expedia artificially inflating the costs of a return flight, everyone of us have experienced higher prices, if we make a search once in our browser. This is even more creepy when you see ads related to your search everywhere after you have closed the window. Many a times, the prices are lower if you search on another browser or in ‘Incognito mode’. This is an unproductive exercise, which achieves nothing but just makes us invest a little more in finding the right price.
Future travel sites should invest a little less in these dark tactics, and try to be more useful to a traveler, they will be able to create loyalty, which is currently unheard of in the travel industry. I have high hopes for apps like Hopper, who are confident enough to ask us to wait if they think the prices are going to go down. For other travel sites, they make us stressed about seats being over in a few minutes.
6. Multiple service steps and fees
When I book various aspects of travel — flights, hotels, taxis, experiences, for me it is a one step process, but under the hood, there are multiple service intermediaries, and steps after which it is truly booked. Each step costs a fee, and handover of information. Of course, I as a traveler is paying for all the intermediaries fees, at each service step, which inflates the total cost. Add to it, the convenience charges every site has, the overall cost comes out to be upto 30% for hotels and experiences. This is also the reason why there are discrepancies in booking and sometimes your hotel reservation could not be found.
In fact, for quite a few hotels, after you pay the provider, even today, there is someone who makes a call on your behalf to the hotel to book it. This lack of reliability and increased costs, can be combated using tech and enabling the small hotels to connect to large chains online directly, and reducing the service steps.
7. Rewards, and Frequent Flier Miles
Yeah, we all own them, and don’t know how to use them to get the max out of them. An estimate reveals that there are $300 Billion worth of frequent flyer miles in circulation, with only a small fraction being redeemed.
If we can get a system to have the points exchanged, or combined, we can always get way better bookings at much cheaper prices. The good news is that there are a flurry of startups who have recently started solving for this, and I am sure this will be the first thing on the list that we have a fully fledged solution for.
8. IoT in travel
Why do I need a separate physical boarding pass for each flight? And then a check in at hotel again requires more identification information? Why cant all this be done using a unique QR code, or even my device which I carry with myself at all times. This eases the lines at the time of checkins, make the entire process faster, and more automated, making it more efficient.
9. User controlled data Privacy
This should not be the last point on the list, but I believe this is something of a trend entire internet is moving towards. People have been more aware and more vocal about their data, and are fighting to protect their privacy.
While Google and Facebook have been on the wrong side, not much has been said about the travel sites. Those sites too, know much more about you than you think. Also, I tried to find out what they were storing as per GDPR, but to no avail, as no one gave a direct response. Not even TripAdvisor.
This is a broader question than just travel, but if a user can control his data, instead of it being kept in different silos with different websites, this enables a more robust and secure environment, and even enables the users to have a better search and booking experience.
These are obviously some of the changes I would want to see in travel in the future. Each point is a separate product in itself. We are solving a few of those — personalization, transparency, combating dark patterns and so on.
What are the changes you would like to see in travel?
