travel tech insights

A great deal of the discussion around travel technology involves highly visible customer-facing solutions: travel apps; responsive websites; social media and the like. Operational technology, focused on helping management and staff run the business, tends to get overlooked. A perfect example is enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems specifically developed for the travel industry.  An increasing number of travel agencies, tour operators and TMCs are deploying them, but there’s not much discussion about this technology in general travel media. If you aren’t familiar with the Travel ERP topic, you need to be: the trend for these systems isn’t based on hype or superficial value; it’s driven by real process benefits and significant competitive advantages.

The travel business is hard. It sells a high-priced, discretionary item at a time when every region of the global economy is growing slowly – if at all. The travel industry is facing its own particular challenges – consolidation, intense competition, eroding margins and high customer expectations.  Of course there are bright spots, particularly in the way technology is making people so much more aware of the delights and truly unique experiences travel has to offer. Travel may be a discretionary expense, but it also provides the customer with – literally – a way to leave their worries behind and step into an entirely different world. 

Based on the frequency of articles focused on millennials over the past two years it’s apparent the travel industry views them as an important demographic. That’s not surprising, the Baby Boomer generation is retiring – perhaps gaining more time for travel but likely with less disposable income to pay for it. Millennials, on the other hand, are entering the workforce and starting to climb the income ladder.  As was the case with the Boomers, these Millennials might have limited travel budgets at the moment, but they’re likely to transform into a lucrative age group for travel agencies over the next ten years.

A Q4 2015 e-commerce survey, condensed into these infographics, provides good insights and guidance for what mobile technology means for the travel industry in 2016. Key take-aways:

Tours and activities is one of the most difficult sectors of the travel industry to define and analyze. For example, just gauging the size of the sector isn’t easy. A report released this month said, “Consumers spend somewhere between $100 billion to $200 billion annually on tours and activities according to some estimates.” When estimates vary by 100% (could be $100billion, or could be $200 billion), it’s hard to view them as little more than educated guesses. However, even these rough figures make it clear the sector is huge.