WNS identifies five travel industry trends
Changes include greater digitisation and enhanced customer service
Business Process Management firm WNS has released a list of five key trends that it says will change the travel industry by 2025.
The company says that ‘human-centred technology’ will be a primary focus of innovation in the coming years, alongside demand from customers for greater personalisation and sustainability.
Customers will have elevated expectations as Covid restrictions ease
WNS predicts that pent-up global demand generated by the Covid-related travel restrictions of the past two years will cause heightened expectations among travellers seeking to make up lost time.
The firm highlights research conducted by American Express as part of its Global Travel Trends Report, which found that 87 per cent of people surveyed worldwide have a trip planned for the future.
To meet the demands of these picky post-pandemic travellers, WNS says that travel industry leaders will increasingly explore new technologies, such as the use of virtual reality (VR) experiences of destinations to enable prospective tourists to ‘try before they buy’.
WNS cites the work of Chile’s national tourism board, which launched a series of virtual experiences in April 2020, which included a virtual tour of Santiago’s National Museum of Fine Arts, as well as free apps that enable prospective travellers to explore Chilean landscapes and heritage sites virtually.
WNS also predicts that travel firms will also increasingly adopt other digital technologies, including internet of things (IoT) flight analytics, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies to help identify customer preferences and automate complex processes.
Data-driven customer profiling will become more common
WNS says that as advances in data collection technologies progress to become increasingly real time, enhancing businesses’ ability to deliver hyper-personalised travel offerings to customers. WNS also says that businesses will increasingly consolidate and centralise this data through Master Data Management (MDM) systems.
The firm says that by 2025, personalised services will be employed by many brands to gain and sustain customer loyalty.
Travel providers will use technology to augment employee expertise
WNS also predicts that travel providers, particularly in the online travel agency (OTA) sector, will increasingly employ digital technologies to assist employee expertise to support rising demand for authoritative travel advice.
WNS notes research conducted by the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA), which found that 27 per cent of respondents to the survey said they always or often used a travel advisor pre-pandemic. Post-pandemic, 44 per cent of respondents to the same survey said they would now be more likely to use a travel advisor.
Pre- and post-travel ancillary services will become more common
WNS predicts that the travel industry will increasingly offer pre- and post-travel ancillary services that aim to improve the overall experience of customers, as part of efforts to maintain customer loyalty.
The firm highlights a recent partnership between digital platform developer AirPortr and Swiss airport ground services and air cargo handler Swissport in September 2021, to provide all airline passengers, regardless of travel class, to pre-book at-home baggage collections for departing flights.
WNS also cited a partnership between US-based hotelier Zero George and meal delivery service Sakara to offer a post-journey meal plan to customers to re-establish healthy eating routines following a holiday.
WNS also predicts that both airlines and hospitality brands will adopt predictive analytics, AI, IoT, machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to support the implementation of these ancillary services.
Demand for sustainable travel will increase
WNS says that it expects sustainable travel to grow in demand in the coming years, citing research by Booking.com released as part of its 2021 Sustainable Travel Report, which found that 83 per cent of global travellers now think that sustainable travel is vital, and that 49 per cent believe there aren’t enough options currently available.
WNS also highlights the emergence of apps such as Aerial, which aggregates flight reservations, Uber and Lyft ride receipts, and train tickets to provide an estimate of users’ travel carbon footprint.