travel tech insights

Travel professionals have many unanswered questions about how the business travel industry will recover post Covid-19. Will most of the countries keep their border restrictions? Will travelers quit Zoom to get back to meeting in person any time soon? Or can companies be sure their employees are safe when travelling abroad?

Nowadays, safety measures and risk management in corporate travelling have become main topics between travel management companies and customers. Closed borders, flight cancellations, national restrictions; all these subjects are shaking up their way to become mandatory information for every travelling event.

The word ‘delight’ may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of boarding passes, rental car vouchers, or confirmation e-mails - each of which are are elements of modern travel with its ever-increasing complexity. Replacing that complexity with simplicity, however, is a delightful proposition indeed, to say nothing of a major value proposition. And one of the best ways of cutting through this complexity can take the form of the right mobile travel app.   

Increasingly, modern travelers rely on their mobile devices for managing their travel, from bookings and scheduling to managing documents like boarding passes and rental car reservations.

According to a recent study by research group eMarketer, about 51 percent of travelers who complete bookings in 2016 will do so via a mobile device - primarily a smartphone or tablet. This figure represents an 8 percent increase from the year prior and reinforces what many in the travel industry have been saying for years now: Mobile bookings have arrived as a major player in how customers book and experience travel.

The more you dig into the numbers, the more startling the picture becomes about just how impactful mobile bookings are and how crucial it is for travel companies to embrace this technology. For example, out of more than 48 million customers who book travel arrangements in the United States in 2016, it’s estimated roughly 38 million will use a smartphone to do so. This represents a massive customer base without taking into account the number of smartphone users on a global scale.

You hear it all the time: “I really love the features of this travel app, but I wish I could actually talk to a travel agent…”

Even in today’s travel industry where interconnectivity and deploying the latest technology platform is the name of the game, travelers still crave the personal, one-on-one interaction brick-and-mortar travel agents provide. Such personalized connections have long been a critical challenge for online travel agents (OTAs) as they strive to maintain a foothold in the travel industry, particularly when attempting to reach millennials and other highly-prized demographics.