How Technology Has Changed the Way We Travel

What is Travel Technology? 

Travel technology is the use of IT in the tourism, travel, and hospitality industry. The goal of travel technology is to automate travel in order to save time, lower costs, and provide an easy travel experience for customers. Travel booking, payment, and other back-office jobs are able to be automated and streamlined through travel technology. Travel agencies can book trips and accommodations faster and easier through IT and e-commerce. Customers are even able to make their own bookings for hotels and flights without the help of a travel agent when they use travel technology.

Impacts of Tech on Travelling 

Technology has made planning travel more accessible, faster, and more efficient for both travel professionals and customers. Tech has automised the travel industry and has also increased the ability to promote, maintain, and deliver travel services to customers.

Three important impacts of tech in travelling can be seen through:

• Improved Communication – Smartphones, high-speed internet, and other countless technological advances all help to facilitate effortless communication between travel companies and their customers. In a matter of minutes, customers can connect with travel agents or tour operators from anywhere in the world or receive personalised information about hotel or airfare options.

• Easy Booking – Whether it’s ordering a car from the airport from your phone or booking a hotel room via contactless payment, reservations, tickets, and excursions can easily be booked via websites or apps, resulting in fast and accurate travel plans that leave travel companies and customers happy. 

• Improved Digital Marketing – Adapting to new digital technologies and allowing the power of the internet to aid in marketing efforts, travel companies allow customers to have memorable experiences with their brand. Improved digital marketing allows travellers to be able to quickly read reviews, look at pictures or participate in VR of travel destinations, and gain insight into different travel options via social media and targeted advertisements.

Travelling in the 90s 

The 90s were a time filled with emerging technology and changing travel trends. An audio cassette and a paper map were quintessential when road tripping or finding your way around a new place, compared to the iPhone and GPS systems we have today. As the internet was not available to the public until 1993 (complete with slow speeds, limited websites, and the rarity of even having a family computer), booking a trip meant going to a local travel agent’s office or spending hours calling and organising hotels, airfare, and activities.

Travelling in the 00s 

In the 2000s, the internet had grown to normalcy in everyday life. Travel review sites began to launch, such as TripAdvisor, in 2000, and the creation of social media sites such as Facebook in 2004 allowed people to share travel tips, photos, and stories. Slowly but surely, the travel industry was moving in a digital direction.

Travelling in 2023

As discussed in a previous Nezasa blog, 10 Key Technological Trends Emerging in the Travel and Tourism Industry in 2023, today’s travel is extremely digitised, largely autonomous, and increasingly accessible. The creation of contactless payment, virtual and augmented reality, voice search and voice control, facial recognition technology, and many more technological advancements allow travel companies to have a larger reach to travellers and for increased affordability and globalisation within the industry.

How Tech Changed Travel Brands

Travel brands have to adapt to the constantly changing technological advancements in order to maintain their success. For instance, here are three major ways that tech has changed travel brands.

1: Changing and Booking Reservations

Mobile sites and apps have completely shifted how making or modifying reservations for flights, hotels, and tourism activities is done. Travellers have total control over their reservations and can connect with customer service agents, chatbots, or automated booking systems in just a few clicks to initiate anything related to their reservations.

2: Social Media

Whether seeing a post of a travel company that offers appealing trips, receiving special follower perks such as deals and discounts, or reaching company representatives through instant messaging or direct website links, social media now largely influences one’s travel industry experience. If travel brands want to become and remain relevant, having an accessible social media presence is an absolute must.

3: Personalised Travel Experience

Customer analytics and data provided by technological and digital collection tools allow travel brands to understand travellers’5 needs better. Travel companies are able to adapt and improve their customer’s experiences by being able to keep track of preferred dining, hotel accommodations, and airfare ticket patterns and preferences.

Will TripBuilder Change the Way We Travel? 

TripBuilder is Nezasa’s software solution that empowers travel brands to sell end-to-end itineraries to travellers in a digital, interactive and hyper-personalised way – throughout the complete travel life cycle. TripBuilder absolutely will (and has already begun to) change the way we travel for the better. With Nezasa’s software solution, real-time planning and booking is made easy through features such as the selection of pre-designed itineraries, the creation of individual trips, help with starting the planning journey, simplification of itinerary planning with the unique route builder, flexible reservation systems, and much much more. TripBuilder is an innovative way to build your own personalised itineraries and adjust them according to your needs even after the initial booking is done, which allows for many positive changes to how we travel.

Will Tech Replace Travel Agents and Tour Operators?

Travel Agent Central describes the relationship that travel agents and tour operators have with increasingly intelligent technologies by stating that “although Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered digital assistants [and other technological trends] are poised to revolutionise the way customers book vacations, travel agents who embrace technology can adapt and thrive. ”Technology allows travel agents and tour operators the chance to increase the level of customer satisfaction they can provide. Although travel technology technically could completely automate travel, the travel industry is a place of human hospitality, emotion, and experiences; something which technology could never truly replicate. The travel industry needs travel agents and tour operators to connect with travellers and maintain the irresistible draw of exploring new places and meeting new people.

How Can Travel Agents and Tour Operators Prepare to Stay Ahead of The Curve?

Travel agents and tour operators must be adaptable to new technologies to stay up to date with the industry’s changing digital and technological trends. Travel agents and tour operators are able to widen the ways they can communicate with customers through technology, resulting in more productive and satisfactory client interactions. By familiarising oneself with social media, understanding how to optimise online travel booking platforms, and keeping up to date on current travel technology literature, travel agents and tour operators can stay ahead of the digitisation curve by incorporating their knowledge, professionalism, and amiability with travel tech in order to have even happier customers and better travel capabilities than before.