Sounding Off: Innovation is a tricky balancing act right now

Rohit Talwar, Fast Future

"A lot of online travel players are also some of the most conservative companies out there, they came in as disruptors but are now very tied to their platforms."

Quote from Rohit Talwar, CEO of Fast Future, in an article on PhocusWire this week about cryptocurrencies assisting the recovery of the travel industry. 

Each Friday, PhocusWire dissects and debates an industry trend or new development covered by PhocusWire that week.

The ability - or inability - for established companies to innovate in major ways is the subject of a long-running debate in the travel sector.

After bursting onto the scene, with fancy technology, cutting edge user experiences and buzzy branding, they fail to move forward and, well, move with the times.

The label of being "conservative" with their strategies speaks to a challenge that many of them face, both in terms of attitude and whether the ideas that got them to where they are can be adapted.

Often, as Rohit Tawar suggests, the label is accurately applied, with new technologies and trends around the appliction of those techniques pushed aside as the effort to embrace something new appears to be too much to handle.

As a result, they may find themselves getting left behind or doing their customers a disservice.

This holds true for countless new processes or technologies (history is littered with brands that didn't take action on an emerging form of innovation) but some believe the subject of cryptocurrencies is a far trickier one to get a grip on.

The arguments for and against crypto-based decentralization are being thrown around as if the industry is on the verge of a revolution.

In some respects it is - but in many other respects it is not.

The sector, decimated as it has been since early 2020, is still unraveling its way through a complex set of procedures to get itself back in a stable place, which will capture some of the demand that is still piecemeal at best.

To overhaul so much now may seem to be a step too far for many companies, especially when the existing strategies do generally work and customers are hardly screaming out for innovation behind the scenes that doesn't have a notable impact on them.