There is a trend developing at WebinTravel - something that may well resonate with other Gen-Yers working for travel companies.
There appears to be a major disconnect between what the leaders of our industry see and the reality of what is already happening in the online world.
It has been said over and over again that Gen-Z will soon be the target demographic for our marketing budgets and that innovation will be key to our success in this space, so they still fighting the trends?
As previously mentioned, Japanese youths are moving towards virtual tourism instead of physical travel.
In fact, the Japanese see a whole area where the virtual world will marry with interactive travel games and augmented reality.
However, the general response to this idea from a panel of topp execs were quite different from their Japanese counterparts, going as far as denying that virtual tourism will ever be a wider trend.
Out of touch?
Going further in to the mobile and social media arena, Sabre Hospitality Solutions Asia-Pacific VP, Patrick Andres, predicted there will be "hundreds" of niche Facebook platforms popping up that the industry will have to market to in the future.
Although this kind of thinking is somewhat logical, chances that we could be seeing any new social networks gaining huge traction in the foreseeable future seem quite slim.
With Facebook Like pages and groups, surely we will simply see this segmentation happen within the platform itself?