Thinking of travel "as a service" can help build a better traveler experience

Most of us will have a story to tell about a journey gone wrong. 

Perhaps a delayed flight led to a missed car rental pick-up, or an overnight cancellation left us paying for an unused hotel room. Sometimes it can seem as if these frustrations are almost part of the travel experience – but does it have to be this way?

Many of the issues we face when we travel come down to a lack of connectivity among travel providers, with privacy concerns, limited technical interoperability and siloed data having proved a challenge to overcome. As a result, many travel providers continue to focus on a specific section of a trip at the expense of the whole traveler journey.  

But things can be different. If we are able to connect each section of the journey, we can build a cohesive journey, offering full visibility to all parties. This world is within reach. 

How did we end up here?

The prior, disconnected structure has significant costs and limitations. 

An airline may know a flight has been delayed but may not be able or incentivized to share that information with a hotel or a ground transport provider, which can have a domino impact. A hotel room may sit idle for the night instead of being reallocated, for example, costing the hotel an opportunity to resell it and the traveler a chance to cancel and save some money.

Each travel provider can be focused on improving their component of a journey, but the disconnect means the traveler has a poor experience, nonetheless. 

Into the cloud

Over the past few years, things have begun to change. 

As technology leaders move operations to the cloud, data becomes more easily accessible to all and we have a tremendous opportunity to utilize this information, to provide a true "travel as a service" (TaaS) approach.

Today, technology enables aggregation, normalization and orchestration of fragmented, complicated data. As a result, we are able to share information much more widely, with each travel provider having access at each stage of the journey. 

It is possible to know where a traveler is at all times and react accordingly. For example, with the right privacy protections in place, a hotel could potentially see a flight has been delayed and automatically offer late check-in with a prompt to a mobile device, or a transfer can be rebooked to a later time.  

There are many common areas of interest for a trip, but limited sharing of information in a meaningful way among all travel providers has previously slowed collaboration. Today, we are overcoming these hurdles, creating a single, unified location for data, accessible to all. 

What does the future look like?

How might we move forward from here, as technology continues to improve? 

More effective use of data combined with artificial intelligence (AI) means we can personalize travel, knitting together everything travel providers know about a traveler to ensure a smoother experience. This includes the pre-trip phase, where travel providers can offer flexibility in booking and managing travel, including easy cancelation or rebooking, dynamic pricing and real-time updates before departure. 

It also means integrating all travel-related services into one platform, reducing the need for users to visit multiple websites or apps to plan trips. 

These platforms are designed to enhance the overall travel experience by providing personalized, real-time updates and information to travelers. They leverage advanced data analytics to anticipate and address potential travel disruptions, such as delays or cancellations, before they happen, often with minimal input from the traveler.

Embracing the opportunity

By taking a holistic view of an entire journey, in the same way a traveler might, we see an opportunity to build something new out of the disconnected experiences of today. As we connect-the-dots across travel providers, across value chains and workflows, we can offer enhanced visibility to all, opening up new opportunities to deliver real change.

For travel providers it can mean reduced costs, from rebooking, reaccommodating and refunds, but also stronger brand perceptions, enhanced loyalty and greater willingness to spend. 

For travelers, it means an enhanced experience – making it easier to get to a destination with the minimum of fuss, safe in the knowledge that somebody is watching out for them during the entire journey, ready to anticipate and mitigate negative experiences before they occur. 

What needs to happen to make this new world a reality? 

• Travel sellers and providers need to continue to aggregate, integrate and structure data, making it accessible to stakeholders from across the ecosystem.
• Travelers need to be made aware of the opportunities on offer, while any privacy concerns must be addressed.
• Technology companies need to develop applications which take advantage of this new interconnectivity, harmonizing the travel experience in a single space.

This is an exciting opportunity, a chance to solve business challenges with technology. A chance to be creative about how we solve long-standing problems in the traveler’s end-to-end journey.