Search for quotes on travel and they flow in an unending line… and as you read them one after another you realise how much the activity resembles actual travel. To move and to keep moving is what travel really means, from the subliminal to the surreal plane. The focus should be on moving, on the journey… and one can never really be sure if it is travel-related data, information, and key-actions that happen first or is it people who travel that catalyses them.
A recently held summit on travel was initiated by Phocuswright on the 21st and the 22nd April 2016 where everyone who is someone in travel or who has the potential to be someone in travel came together to listen and discuss ‘the key trends transforming travel across Asia Pacific’. I was rather surprised to be informed that in just twelve years the APAC online travel market has pole-vaulted from 4.8 billion dollars to 140 billion US dollars ‘and is nearly as large as the U.S. – and growing much faster’.
The first Asia Pacific Travel Innovation Summit was far more than just data being flung all over the place. There were strategies carefully unfolded without letting everything out because, as Raghav Bahl remarked, ‘content to commerce is really hard’ and there are some facets that had better be left for others to discover for themselves. If Bikram Sohal from SavvyMob sought to link the 200 million smartphone users and the 40% unsold rooms in hotels by bringing in the corporate last minute travellers, there was Kavita from MyTripKarma pointing out the relevance of a collaborative travel app where content could be accessed on-the-go. If TravelClick had set up the right bits-n-bytes for providing forward-looking real-time data for hotels to allow them to plan or tweak their marketing strategies, there was Gautam from AudioCompass informing us that because 35 percent of travel spend out of one billion happens to be from Asia, the days for audio-driven content and a digital DIY experience was poised to invade.
Myles car, Travog, Repufact, InterGlobe technologies, DJUBO, PickYourTrail, Stayzilla, Amadeus… name a company that has some link to travel, it was there and interacting with the others to find out if it was time to re-strategise. I got a distinct feeling that the travel industry in India was happily plodding through miles and miles of quantified reports and seriously in love with this data-driven phase. Travel, however, is much more than seeking, analysing, and extracting meaning out of data chunks… there is the matter of allowing technology of varying sorts to enter and accepting the chromosomal influences that they bring along. My discussions with Anup from MindIQ flew right in the midst of artificial intelligence and the way it can be applied to make travel a more complete experience for both the consumer and the companies selling travel-related stuff. Understanding the mind of the consumer faster and prodding him to ask the right questions and enabling the entire process is what the inclusion of AI in travel can spell.
But let me get back to the Phocuswright summit for some time now because their hard work must be applauded. They have not just brought everyone together on a platform to interact and move ahead as one but have also made the summit rather interesting with every session having Phocuswright Dragons, a panel of investors and subject-matter experts in travel and technology as judges to determine the region’s innovator of the year and runner-up. Attendees of Phocuswright India determined the People’s Choice Award. The Asia Pacific Travel Innovator of the Year went to QuadLabs Technologies & Travog. The 2016 People’s Choice Award went to AudioCompass. The Amadeus Next Awardwent to AudioCompass. The Asia Pacific Travel Innovator of the Year was Myles.
Travel was what was being analysed without romanticising any element or without glossing over any of the inadequacies. It was pointed out that the region has a massive chunk of middle class that is responsible for the surging demand for travel and includes 62 mio from India and 231 mio from China and 9 mio from Australia. Another interesting fact was that 2 in 3 Indian leisure travellers who took an overseas trip in 2014 did so for the first time and nearly half of Chinese travellers went abroad in 2015 had 3 out of 4 who didn’t plan to. So travel isn’t a phenomenon common only to the upper classes now. There is also a rise branded budget accommodation and they need to be ready to tackle the long-standing challenge of quality inconsistency across Asia’s fragmented hotel market. Thus by offering branded experiences that promise certain service-level standards, economy accommodation brands are winning over millions new value-conscious travellers across the region.
It is obvious that the travel enthusiasts in the region are getting to be more experienced and with this comes the rise in à la carte purchasing. The use of mobile devices to browse, decide and then even do all the travel shopping and booking are leapfrogging. The Phocuswright representative was forthright about stating that ‘Asia Pacific is a common marketplace in name only. There is such extraordinary diversity – from the relatively mature and large online travel markets of Japan and Australia and still emerging markets of Southeast Asia, to the established but fast-growing and incredibly raucous markets of China and India.’ Phocuswright, by the way, is headquartered in the United States with Asia Pacific operations based in India and local analysts on five continents. Phocuswright is a wholly owned subsidiary of Northstar Travel Media, LLC.
The one thing that came up again and again was that travel is no longer about opacity in deals and that a high degree of transparency is the mantra of the day. Survival for travel businesses is directly proportional to what opinion and state of mind the consumer walks away with. The role of the consumer is on the increase and, therefore, a meaningful interaction with them is sought at every level… and isolated attempts to take them for a ride are no longer a reality. With so much consumer interaction and interplay on the digital plane going on, it is only right to conclude that travel is getting incepted in the traveller’s mind. We are fast becoming willing nomads for at least a few days every year.
.
This post was possible because of an invite extended by travel-tech media platform TravHQ
.
.
Phocuswright Summit
.
This post was published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 26 April 2016:
2016_04_25_The Education Post_Travel has changed
.
.
.
Arvind Passey
27 April 2016
