On Monday, the Disney World theme park in Florida began allowing all visitors to use its new $1 billion system of electronic bracelets, which enable visitors to enter their hotel rooms and ride attractions wirelessly.
NB: This is a viewpoint on seamless travel is an excerpt from the report, Shaping the Future of Travel: Macro trends driving industry growth over the next decade, released today by Oxford Economics, a consultancy, commissioned by Amadeus, the travel IT giant.

Disney's system is an ideal example of "seamless travel". Disney World is "a model village", not just for families wanting an idealized escape but for the entire global travel industry looking for ways to innovate.
Case study
Walt Disney World, in late 2013, took a bold step in the direction of seamless travel.
Before this move, Disney, by virtue of its multiple offerings across the entertainment, accommodation, and dining spheres in one area, was already able to offer a somewhat seamless travel experience. Disney has now taken this concept a step further with the introduction of MyMagic+.
MyMagic+, via the provision of special wristbands and a specialised mobile app, allows travellers to plan and execute their Disney vacation in a seamless way.
Travel between Disney hotels, attractions, and the airport had already been made seamless by the provision of a transportation network combining monorails, trams, buses, and boats to take travellers between different Disney destinations and the airport.
Travellers at Disney hotels can also check in for their flights at the hotel, get a boarding pass, and drop off their luggage before hopping on Disney-provided transport to the airport. [The process even works with guests staying at off-site hotels.]
MagicBands and Disney’s mobile app, however, give travellers an extra degree of personalisation and convenience for their journeys.
MagicBands, specialised wristbands for each traveller, have multiple functions in the provision of a seamless travel experience.
--they allow travellers to gain access to the theme parks they have booked tickets for;
--they serve as a room key for Disney hotels;
--they store any dining reservations scheduled at Disney properties during the stay;
--they store the traveller's credit or debit card details so that purchases can be made using the band, essentially serving as a virtual wallet; they store FastPasses for certain theme park attractions, allowing travellers to skip the queues for attractions they pre-book; and
--they store any photos taken by Disney at attractions can be stored on the band, allowing the traveller to later access their holiday photos.
The My Disney Experience mobile app is used to tie the entire experience together, giving travellers the ability to pre-plan their vacations by exploring
travel options and booking them via the app.
Then, during their travels, they can use the geo-linked app to pinpoint their location, along with schedules and times of nearby attractions in the parks, access dining reservations and FastPass tickets,and share travel plans with family and friends.
This is an example of economies of scope, where the average cost for a company of producing two or more products is lower, making product diversification economically efficient. Disney is able to provide this seamless travel experience because it operates in the same geographical space, which means it does not experience the same coordination problems that multiple travel providers would experience in organising themselves to provide a joint seamless experience.
Together, the mobile app and the MagicBands allow travellers an unparalleled degree of customisation for their holidays. In addition, they combine that with the convenience of a wristband that holds all travel bookings, payment card details to make purchases, and collects personal mementos from the trip for later access; and a mobile app that provides up-to-the-minute information on all attractions and geo-enabled services to navigate between attractions.


Disney's seamless travel model is inspiring. But at present, because many providers appear to be focused on improving their own offerings, seamless travel is effectively left for “someone else” to worry about.
As suggested above, one common element between the infrastructure and the technological aspect of seamless travel is coordination. Infrastructure provides the different modalities of transportation, and technologies connect the different modes of transportation.
Seamless travel exists in many forms but an “ideal” case would be booking a single “door to door” service which took a traveller from their home to and through an airport, onto and off a plane and to their destination hotel.
In practice, much seamless travel currently exists in selective “bubbles” because the businesses required to provide the infrastructure and the technology are very different. In addition, there is a “market failure” at work that makes the provision of truly global seamless travel solutions very difficult.
But mobile application providers must be able to coordinate with different travel providers, for example, to provide mobile tickets and boarding passes. Similarly, different transport providers in a city need to coordinate with each other -- and/or with a common aggregator -- to provide a smooth journey to airports and rail stations with cross-ticketing across services, and so forth.
NB: This is a viewpoint on seamless travel is an excerpt from the report, Shaping the Future of Travel: Macro trends driving industry growth over the next decade, released today by Oxford Economics, a consultancy, commissioned by Amadeus, the travel IT giant.
EARLIER from Tnooz:Smarter Disney: Theme park visitors to use electronic wristbands as tickets
ELSEWHERE:A Billion-Dollar Bracelet Is the Key to a Disney Park [NYT]