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Impact of technology on travel and tourism - statistics & facts

What are the main technology trends in travel and tourism, travel apps: two countries dominate the market, key insights.

Detailed statistics

Revenue of Amadeus 2010-2022

Amadeus: number of bookings 2010-2022

Revenue of Sabre Corp. worldwide 2012-2023

Company Insights High-Growth Companies Asia-Pacific

• Great Deals E-Commerce Corporation
• Spofeed Co., Ltd.

Editor’s Picks Current statistics on this topic

Current statistics on this topic.

Online Travel Market

Most downloaded travel apps worldwide 2022, by aggregated downloads

IT Services

Tour Operators & Travel Agencies

Travel agencies and tour operators using cloud computing services EU 2016-2021

Related topics

• Online travel market
• Digitalization of the travel industry
• Digitalization of the hospitality industry worldwide

Online travel trends

• Artificial intelligence (AI) use in travel and tourism
• Travel and tourism in the metaverse
• Mobile travel trends

Online travel companies

• Booking Holdings Inc.
• Expedia Group, Inc.
• Trip.com Group
• Tripadvisor

Recommended statistics

Global distribution systems (gdss).

• Basic Statistic Revenue of Amadeus 2010-2022
• Basic Statistic Revenue of Amadeus 2010-2022, by segment
• Basic Statistic Amadeus: number of bookings 2010-2022
• Basic Statistic Revenue of Sabre Corp. worldwide 2012-2023
• Basic Statistic Revenue of Sabre Corp. worldwide 2019-2023, by segment
• Premium Statistic Revenue of Travelport worldwide 2010-2022
• Basic Statistic Revenue of Travelport 2013-2018, by segment

Revenue of Amadeus worldwide from 2010 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Revenue of Amadeus 2010-2022, by segment

Revenue of Amadeus worldwide in 2022, by business segment (in million euros)

Number of travel bookings made using the Amadeus distribution platform from 2010 to 2022 (in millions)

Revenue of Sabre Corp. worldwide from 2012 to 2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Revenue of Sabre Corp. worldwide 2019-2023, by segment

Revenue of Sabre Corp. worldwide from 2019 to 2023, by business segment (in billion U.S. dollars)

Revenue of Travelport worldwide 2010-2022

Revenue of Travelport Worldwide Limited worldwide from 2010 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Revenue of Travelport 2013-2018, by segment

Revenue of Travelport worldwide from 2013 to 2018, by business segment (in million U.S. dollars)

Travel apps

• Premium Statistic Revenue of the travel apps industry worldwide 2017-2027
• Premium Statistic Travel apps revenue in selected countries worldwide 2022
• Premium Statistic Most downloaded travel apps worldwide 2022, by aggregated downloads
• Premium Statistic Number of aggregated downloads of leading online travel agency apps worldwide 2023
• Premium Statistic Average number of reviews of travel and tourism apps worldwide 2022
• Premium Statistic Average number of ratings of travel and tourism apps worldwide 2022
• Premium Statistic Average retention rate of travel and tourism apps worldwide 2022
• Premium Statistic Leading travel apps in the U.S. 2022, by market share
• Premium Statistic Leading travel apps in Europe 2022, by market share

Revenue of the travel apps industry worldwide 2017-2027

Revenue of the travel apps market worldwide from 2017 to 2027 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Travel apps revenue in selected countries worldwide 2022

Revenue of travel apps in selected countries worldwide in 2022 (in million U.S. dollars)

Most downloaded travel apps worldwide in 2022, by aggregated number of downloads (in millions)

Number of aggregated downloads of leading online travel agency apps worldwide 2023

Number of aggregated downloads of selected leading online travel agency apps worldwide in 2023 (in millions)

Average number of reviews of travel and tourism apps worldwide 2022

Average number of reviews of travel, tourism, and hospitality apps worldwide in 2022

Average number of ratings of travel and tourism apps worldwide 2022

Average number of ratings of travel, tourism, and hospitality apps worldwide in 2022

Average retention rate of travel and tourism apps worldwide 2022

Average retention rate of travel, tourism, and hospitality apps worldwide in 2022

Leading travel apps in the U.S. 2022, by market share

Market share of leading travel apps in the United States in 2022

Leading travel apps in Europe 2022, by market share

Market share of leading travel apps in Europe in 2022

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Premium Statistic Number of companies using ChatGPT within their business 2023, by industry
• Premium Statistic Share of travel firms that implemented AI strategies worldwide 2021, by AI maturity
• Premium Statistic AI-influenced revenue share of travel companies worldwide 2018-2024
• Premium Statistic Travelers expecting to use AI to plan trips in 2033 worldwide 2022, by aspect
• Premium Statistic Expected usage of ChatGPT to plan next trip in the U.S. 2023
• Premium Statistic U.S. adults that thought a Chat-GPT text on travel was AI/human-made 2023
• Basic Statistic Interest in AI-related products among U.S. adults 2023

Number of companies using ChatGPT within their business 2023, by industry

Amount of companies using ChatGPT in their business function in 2023, by industry

Share of travel firms that implemented AI strategies worldwide 2021, by AI maturity

Share of travel companies that implemented Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategies worldwide as of September 2021, by maturity of AI strategies

AI-influenced revenue share of travel companies worldwide 2018-2024

Share of travel companies' revenue that was influenced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) worldwide in 2018 and 2021, with a forecast for 2024

Travelers expecting to use AI to plan trips in 2033 worldwide 2022, by aspect

Share of travelers that would trust using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to plan travel in 2033 worldwide as of August 2022, by travel aspect

Expected usage of ChatGPT to plan next trip in the U.S. 2023

Likelihood of using ChatGPT in the process of planning the next trip among respondents in the United States as of April 2023

U.S. adults that thought a Chat-GPT text on travel was AI/human-made 2023

Share of adults that believed a ChatGPT-generated text about travel was made by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) or a human in the United States as of March 2023

Interest in AI-related products among U.S. adults 2023

Share of adults in the United States who are interested in artificial intelligence (AI) related products as of February 2023

Metaverse and extended reality (XR)

• Basic Statistic Leading business sectors already investing in the metaverse 2022
• Premium Statistic U.S teens and adults on enhanced experiences in the metaverse 2022
• Premium Statistic Interest in metaverse travel activities of Gen Z in the U.S. and the UK 2022
• Premium Statistic Interest in AR in the U.S. 2022, by use case
• Premium Statistic Interest in VR in the U.S. 2022, by use case

Leading business sectors already investing in the metaverse 2022

Leading business sectors worldwide that have already invested in the metaverse as of March 2022

U.S teens and adults on enhanced experiences in the metaverse 2022

Experiences expected to be better in a virtual or metaverse environment according to teens and adults in the United States as of May 2022

Interest in metaverse travel activities of Gen Z in the U.S. and the UK 2022

Interest in metaverse travel activities of Gen Z in the United States and the United Kingdom (UK) as of February 2022

Interest in AR in the U.S. 2022, by use case

Interest in augmented reality (AR) in the United States as of October 2022, by use case

Interest in VR in the U.S. 2022, by use case

Interest in virtual reality (VR) in the United States as of October 2022, by use case

Use of technology

• Premium Statistic Travelers' expected use of selected planning tools for trips in 2033 worldwide 2022
• Premium Statistic Expected comfort level with selected payment methods for trips in 2033 worldwide 2022
• Premium Statistic Global consumer and merchant acceptance of crypto payments 2021, by industry
• Basic Statistic Popular goods and services to buy with crypto 2022, by gender and income group
• Premium Statistic Travel agencies and tour operators using cloud computing services EU 2016-2021

Travelers' expected use of selected planning tools for trips in 2033 worldwide 2022

Share of travelers expecting to use selected planning tools for trips in 2033 worldwide as of August 2022

Expected comfort level with selected payment methods for trips in 2033 worldwide 2022

Share of travelers expecting to be comfortable in using selected payment methods for trips in 2033 worldwide as of August 2022

Global consumer and merchant acceptance of crypto payments 2021, by industry

Willingness to use/accept cryptocurrencies for payments by consumers/merchants across various industries worldwide as of 2021

Popular goods and services to buy with crypto 2022, by gender and income group

Most popular goods and services bought by consumers worldwide when using cryptocurrencies for online shopping in 2022, by gender and income group

Use of cloud computing services among travel agencies, tour operators, and related activities in the European Union (EU 27) from 2016 to 2021, by cloud service

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Opinion The top travel-tech trends set to revolutionize tourism in 2023

Technology-driven innovations are reshaping the travel industry, with smart hotels, ar/vr experiences, contactless solutions, and ai-powered personalization leading the way towards a more seamless and efficient travel journey.

• FairFly rebrands as Oversee, adds Rapyd CEO Shtilman to board
• HyperGuest raises $23 million Series A to connect hotels, suppliers, and travel distributors
• Travel insurtech startup Faye lands $10 million in Series A

11 Travel Technology Trends Emerging in the Tourism Industry in 2024

With widely available vaccines and lower numbers of Covid-19 cases, travel is slowly returning to its pre-pandemic levels , although travel risks and disruptions are still present. Extreme weather conditions, political instabilities, and hardware malfunctions. With the emergence of artificial intelligence and mobile devices, customers expect a much greater level of personalization than ever before. These are the main reasons why the travel industry is consistently striving to find new and innovative ways of integrating breakthrough technologies into its operations.

What is travel technology?

Impact of technology on the travel industry, why is technology important in the tourism and travel industry, key statistics and forecasts for travel technology in 2024, what are the latest technology trends used in the travel industry, 1. advanced travel search engines, 2. ai dynamic pricing engines, 3. dynamic scheduling systems.

• 4. Internet of Things
• 5. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

6. Contactless payments

• 7. AI chatbots

8. Big Data

9. 5g and fast wi-fi networks, 10. recognition technology, 11. cybersecurity practices, future of travel technology, building a travel application or extending your development team.

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Travel technology is an umbrella term to describe the multitude of different uses of modern technology such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality and mobile technology within the fields of tourism, travel, and hospitality industry.

Technology solutions can be deployed at virtually every point of travel in one form or another, significantly influencing the overall customer experience.

Do you remember buying an airline ticket from a real human being?

Neither do we.

We all got used to the presence of modern technological advancements in the travel industry.

There are many more ways in which modern digital technology influences and improves the travel industry.

The ultimate motivation behind implementing these technologies is pretty straightforward. It as always boils down to increasing profits and expanding business, which in turn has a positive impact on customer experience.

First and foremost, it leads to improved efficiency and decreased operating costs.

In fact, it is a win-win situation for online travel agencies, airlines, as well as the travelers.

For companies, digital transformation in travel industry means better margins and healthier cash flows. For customers, in turn, it means many more attractive tourist destinations and lower prices.

[Read also: What’s the Future of Digital Transformation and Its Trends? An Expert’s Point of View ]

These days, almost everyone has a smartphone or other mobile device, granting access to an immense choice of online services.

It is thus crucial for travel companies to allow their customers to book their trips, check-in for their flights, and find information about their destinations online.

Even though we are taking all of these modern utilities for granted, they are still a key factor for improving user experience in the travel industry. As a result, they have to be improved and optimized consistently.

Latest travel technology trends refer to the innovations and digital solutions that are transforming the travel and tourism industry. Some of the trends include online travel booking, virtual tourism, mobile travel apps, chatbots and artificial intelligence. Here are some of the latest quantitative statistics and forecasts on travel technology trends:

• Generative AI tools like ChatGPT will become more popular for trip planning, as half of travelers surveyed are interested in using them to find the perfect stay.
• Destination “dupes” and “set-jetting” will continue to be in vogue as travelers seek affordable alternatives to crowded or expensive places, or follow the locations featured in their favorite shows or movies¹.
• Global travel app revenues will grow by 17 percent in 2024, reaching nearly $400 million.
• The share of digital ad spending in the travel and leisure industry will reach 14.5 percent in the United States and 13.9 percent in the United Kingdom in 2024.
• The world’s leading online travel agencies (OTAs) will spend $2.3 billion on Google advertising in 2024.
• The global travel and tourism market will shift from 66 percent offline sales channels to 54 percent online sales channels from 2017 to 2027.
• The global travel technology market will grow by approximately 45 percent from 2020 to 2026, reaching $12.5 billion.
• The Asia-Pacific region’s recovery will be evident as travelers flock to destinations such as Taiwan, Thailand, and Australia, which have successfully contained the pandemic and reopened their borders.
• Travelers will need to be more creative and flexible in their destination choices, as travel restrictions and regulations may change frequently due to the ongoing health crisis.
• Travelers will opt for carry-on only luggage with a twist: they will use smart luggage that can track their location, charge their devices, and weigh themselves.
• Travelers will rely more on their travel advisors, who can offer more than just flights and hotels, but also personalized experiences, insider tips, and access to exclusive benefits.

Sources: Statista , Travel + Leisure , Smart Flyer .

There are plenty of different technology trends that are shaping the future of the travel industry.

Below, we’ve listed 11 of the most important travel industry trends.

Let’s compare here travel search engines to the Google search engine.

On the surface it is a pretty simple concept. A user introduce certain keywords of their interest and the search engine matches the most relevant results.

But what if you are looking for a hotel room in a specific location with certain room facilities? A simple Google search won’t be able to compute so many details.

This is where metasearch engines enter.

Metasearch engines are the tools that send search queries to many sources and organize results in a comprehensive list.

The main objective of such sites is to aggregate results in a unified way, so that the client can access the maximum number of available options on the market. It allows users to have a reliable source of objective information and to compare offers with one another.

Results presented by metasearch engines are obtained with less amount of exertion on the end user side.

Instead of searching one single search engine to find a specific website or browsing through different services, the right amount of data can be obtained by a metasearch engine.

It definitely improves the user experience. Ans save their precious time.

In the tourism industry, metasearch engines are used to search through and compare travel agencies’ offers to provide clients with as many suitable options as possible.

Nowadays, these services have grown quite robust. Many provide smart price alerts or tempting last-minute deals.

When developing a metasearch engine for an online travel agency , lodging reservation service, hotel booking engine , or a hotel inventory management software key factors are performance and scalability .

A team of Stratoflow Java developers when tasked with improving the travel search engine for a major hotel bookings aggregator decided to extract the availability search into a separate cache layer based on an in-memory data grid (IMDG) platform. It allowed for a major decrease in SQL database usage, as well as improved efficiency.

Interestingly, our client saw almost an immediate commercial effect right after the initial implementation.

Higher overall throughput of the travel search engine allowed the existing customer base to query the platform more frequently, generating higher revenues in the process.

[Read also: Introduction to a hotel channel manager ]

Airlines such as Ryanair or Southwest are known for their extremely low price model.

You can hop anytime you want on a plane from Warsaw to London for less than 30 dollars.

You may have been wondering – how are airlenes able to break even, and run a successful business model with such low prices?

The answer is artificial intelligence.

These days, the pricing of airline tickets is completely automated and run by advanced systems that aim to fill a plane with passengers at the most optimal prices.

These systems take into consideration different types of clients. Those can be either business travelers who value convenience and comfort the most or leisure travelers who are more cost-conscious regardless of long layovers.

All of these factors are summed up by the pricing system. The goal is to fill as many seats on each plane as possible. But at the same time to avoid situations of complete tickets’ unavailability for potential clients in a very complex balancing act.

Airlines’ pricing systems have to process an immense amount of customer data as well as travel trends about local destinations.

It is worth mentioning that during the COVID-19 pandemic pricing systems of many popular airlines were pretty severely disrupted. This led to a rather peculiar situation when we could book flights from Europe to the US for less than 200 dollars.

How was that possible? The dynamic pricing engines weren’t prepared for such an exceptional situation.

Nevertheless, as pandemic restrictions loosen, and airlines worldwide resume their normal routes and operations, dynamic pricing systems continue to play a vital role in their business model .

[Read also: Benefits of Digital Transformation for Your Business ]

Airlines are characterized by their large involved capital and incredibly slim average profit margins hovering around 5% (ignoring COVID-19 disruptions).

What does it mean for travel technology trends?

It’s simple. For an airline to make money, it has to adapt fast and consistently search for profitable routing opportunities.

This task has to be handled by automatic scheduling systems .

Aside from the cost, the major factor for customers determining which flight they will choose is the overall travel time.

Airlines, therefore, put an enormous effort into assembling the most optimal schedule that they can offer in the shortest travel time possible.

Modern dynamic scheduling systems have to take into account these three factors pointed by Nawal Taneja :

• Scheduling optimization system – An automated solution created by a team of experienced developers that process operational data and identify the set of possible routing and scheduling changes. These have to be both profitable and operationally feasible.Such a system works based on all the possible arrangements of feasible schedule changes. Then it sorts them by their profitability.
• Access to reliable market data – A dynamic scheduling system uses only reliable and accurate data on the routes popularity and its profitability.Considering a fairly short time horizon of flight scheduling operation, the best source for booking and revenue data is an internal Revenue Management system .
• Knowledge about potential operational constraints – Many factors dictate whether a certain route is feasible operationally or not.These include maintenance costs at airports, gate availability, and miscellaneous aircraft-specific constraints.Only understanding all of them can ensure that a dynamic scheduling system can return positive results.

In terms of profitability, it is estimated that dynamic scheduling can result in a 1-3% increase in revenue , depending on its utilization rate.

It constitutes a substantial amount when it comes to the airline industry.

Stratoflow developers have a great deal of experience in this particular field.

They were tasked by a global flight information company to improve their existing system.

Stratoflow proposed a replacement of major calculation logic with an open-source, high-performance framework that dramatically lowered TCO when compared with the existing code.

4. Internet of Things (IoT)

Another emerging technology that is slowly being adopted by the tourism industry is the Internet of Things (IoT)

This concept refers to the network of physical devices —“things”—that are equipped with various sensors in order to connect and exchange data with other systems within the network over the internet.

Depending on the use case, these “things” can range from ordinary household devices to sophisticated industrial machinery.

When it comes to its role in the tourism industry, we’ve already seen some practical implementations beginning to appear.

Some airports, using IoT devices, tag passengers’ bags to alert them of their luggage’s current whereabouts and send them a notification when it arrives at the carousel.

Hotels are also starting to leverage some IoT-enabled sensors and voice control devices to adjust things like air conditioning. Using an in-room tablet, hotel guests can seamlessly control the temperature, music, lighting, and curtains, changing the atmosphere of the room and personalizing their experience to a whole new level.

5. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual reality (VR) has recently once again come into the spotlight when Facebook rebranded itself and announced Metaverse. It’s a conceptual virtual universe that will be a future replacement for well-established social networks.

These visions seem exciting and a little eerie at times. But can virtual and augmented reality also influence the tourism industry in the future? As it turns out, the answer is “yes”.

Virtual Reality allows people to explore new places without leaving the comfort of their homes.

Virtual tours will enable people to have a glimpse of a certain exotic place before their visit in person. What’s more, popular travel platforms like Booking.com can set up virtual hotel room previews in order to better manage customer expectations.

Contactless payment methods take pride of place among recent tourism technology trends.

As the pandemic forced people to shy away from physical coins and banknotes, contactless payment options like GooglePay and Apple Pay have gained a lot of popularity.

When using them, the user’s device with a payment app communicates with the reader using RFID technology.

To see how it works in practice let’s take a look at the contactless payment method designed by The Walt Disney Company.

Disney offers Disney World guests custom wristbands, known as MagicBands. Visitors can link their credit card to their MagicBand to make purchases with a simple and effortless swipe of a wrist.

From a business standpoint, this solution offers Disney an unmatched opportunity to track customer behavior in order to optimize its operations even further. It is a trend that is undoubtedly gaining traction in various sectors of the travel industry.

7. AI Integration and AI chatbots

AI is expected to be increasingly used in the hotel and travel industry, creating more seamless travel experiences and supporting new innovations to meet higher guest expectations.

Recently a story has surfaced that, allegedly, an advanced AI chatbot developed by Google has become self-aware.

AI chatbot technology has gone a long way in the last couple of years. It can also play a significant role in the development of the travel and tourism industry.

AI Chatbots stimulates human conversation, mostly using text interactions on various websites and services. Their main objective is to alleviate some congestion in call centers by proving at least basic help for customers 24/7.

When it comes to their usage in the travel and tourism industry, AirAsia is a good example of the use of a successful chatbot. Their advanced chatbot, AVA is able to do a multitude of things from helping travelers to choose seats and book flights to answering more difficult questions about current COVID-19 restrictions.

Data is a company’s most valuable asset.

This is also one of the main reasons why companies in the travel and hospitality industry are investing more and more funds into Big Data solutions.

Put simply, Big Data is a term that refers to large and unstructured data sets obtained from various data sources. These data sets are so voluminous that traditional data processing would have a hard time processing them into useful information.

Modern hotels and travel agents are using big data solutions to more effectively track customer behavior and preferences. This information is later used to improve the guest experience.

Big data measure precisely business performance.

Thanks to receiving data from previously untapped sources, the system allow for better yield management and demand prognosis.

[Read also: Fintech Trends That Shape Financial Future ]

As travel tech trends grow more robust with every passing year, connectivity develops at the same rapid pace.

A couple of years ago, 5G made its debut in some of the largest cities around the world, offering up to 20 times faster download speeds than before.

Even though that might not be such a big deal for an ordinary person, the connection between smart devices can now be more efficient than ever allowing more advanced IoT networks.

We have also seen an emergence of other breakthrough communication technologies, such as the Starlink internet.

Thanks to thousands of satellites in low earth orbit, people in virtually every corner of the world can enjoy internet speeds in excess of 100mbit/s and low latency unmatched by any other satellite internet provider.

A poor WiFi or Internet service in a hotel room can lead to bad online reviews for the hospitality and travel industry. With Starlink, even hotels in the most remote places can have a stable and fast internet connection.

[Read also: What is a GDS? ]

Facial recognition is the software that classifies a single face according to its gender, age, emotion, or other characteristics in an attempt to confirm a person’s identity.

It is currently one of the most powerful surveillance tools ever made.

While many people are happy to use it to effortlessly unlock their phones, companies and governments are beginning to use it to a much greater extent.

Facial recognition devices are beginning to appear in various airports across the world as an advanced security measure and potential deterrence.

According to a recent report from the Department of Homeland Security, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to dramatically expand its Biometric Exit program to cover 97 percent of outbound air passengers within four years.”

To verify accounts on virtually every major travel and tourism offer aggregator, you would have to provide a photo of your ID card and other sensitive personal data.

It’s natural to feel a bit uneasy to share so much personal information, regardless of the service’s squeaky clean reputation and impressive market share.

Tourism companies and travel businesses understand that. That’s why they dedicate a substantial amount of resources to developing reliable and safe cybersecurity practices.

As virtual reality and augmented reality technologies are becoming more and more advanced, some people speculate that they will negatively influence the tourism industry, but we beg to differ.

We predict that future tech advancements will push the travel industry towards better travel experiences and even more personalized experience.

Travel technology trends – summary

The travel and tourism industry is the one where proper interactions with the consumer are essential. As new technological breakthroughs enter the market, they are letting corporations understand their customers a bit better, and provide them with improved services and experiences.

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What AI means for travel—now and in the future

“Revenge travel.” It’s what a lot of people are doing these days—hitting the runways in big numbers to make up for travel time lost during the pandemic. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast , McKinsey partners Alex Cosmas and Vik Krishnan join global editorial director Lucia Rahilly to discuss a new report on travel in the age of AI : what the technology’s promise and pitfalls are and what it may mean for the travel industry overall.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Roberta Fusaro and Lucia Rahilly.

The promise of AI

Lucia Rahilly: Much of the research for the report drew from interviews with executives at 17 companies across five types of travel businesses. One of those executives is Luca Zambello, CEO of Jurny—an AI-fueled hospitality platform. He says AI will be the new normal.

Luca Zambello: We’re at the very beginning of the hockey stick. Economically, we are at the start of what is potentially the biggest technology disruption that humanity has ever seen.

Lucia Rahilly: So everyone is talking about the disruptive juggernaut that is AI, and particularly gen AI [generative AI]. At a super-high level, and acknowledging that we’re still in early days, what do we expect this to mean for the travel industry in particular?

Vik Krishnan: The travel industry is unquestionably going to be significantly disrupted by AI. Whether it’s gen AI or other forms of AI that have been around for some time remains to be seen. It’s quite clear that if you work through the customer journey and the process of trying to understand where you want to go, where you want to stay, what are the things you want to see, how you want to plan your day-by-day itinerary, gen AI significantly eases the process of travel discovery.

If you then step into what this means for travel suppliers, which includes airlines and hotels and cruises and car rentals and rideshare providers, the promise of AI is very much to help them deliver on the promises, both explicit and implicit, that they make to their customers.

Gen AI significantly eases the process of travel discovery.

What I mean by that is, very often, the expectations of travel are that your flight is on time, your bags get delivered to you safely, you then get to your hotel, your hotel room is available to check into when you get there, and you have a room that provides exactly what you asked for. That baseline expectation is one that many travel companies have historically struggled to meet.

What AI can do is help airlines ensure that planes are on time. It can help hotels ensure that what they deliver in terms of staffing and the product promise is consistent with what they advertise in their marketing and branding strategies.

Alex Cosmas: Not only is travel and hospitality the world’s largest sector, but it’s actually the most intimate sector. That means the answer for each of us to what a good experience looks like—whether I’m traveling for leisure or for business—is, by definition, fundamentally different. And the promise of AI has been to take the pattern of history, take the pattern of millions, and boil that down to the individual response that is relevant to me as a segment of one.

Nowhere is that promise needed more than in travel, where the experience should be a segment of one. That’s what makes it magical. To be clear, AI is already being applied in the travel sector in spades—specifically, in the operation of schedule assets and the optimized allocation of rooms and crews. That’s been true for decades, and it’s only getting better.

But the customer-facing applications of AI are only now really becoming next-generation. And for the most part, in travel, the best AI applications will largely be opaque to customers, because they’ll still be delivered through the mediums that customers prefer: often through humans, through the front line, through desk agents, through guest agents.

AI is already being applied in the travel sector in spades—specifically, in the operation of schedule assets and the optimized allocation of rooms and crews.

That’s ideally the promise. But the starting point is to say we can’t suddenly expect that customers will prefer to interact through more digital channels than they have in the past. Travel is a very human-centric business. And so the best AI, the best models, will be delivered through traditional channels.

How AI can change travel—for the better

Lucia Rahilly: What kind of value might come from using gen AI in the travel industry?

Alex Cosmas: Our latest estimates suggest that gen AI alone, across sectors, is bound to unlock $2 trillion to $4 trillion of incremental value.

Lucia Rahilly: Wow.

Alex Cosmas: Therefore, not surprisingly, capital is chasing the disruptive sector of AI.

Lucia Rahilly: What are some good examples of products that customers might expect to be using or that might be in the background enhancing customers’ experiences in the future?

Want to subscribe to The McKinsey Podcast ?

Vik Krishnan: Imagine the last time any of you tried to book a trip. You probably started on a search engine such as Google, or you started at an online travel agent such as Expedia, or you started at an actual supplier website if you had some certainty on what airline you wanted to fly or which hotel you wanted to stay at. You probably started with a little box where you put in your destination, you put in your approximate dates, and then you had the search engine present to you a series of results that may or may not have met your needs.

What we’re imagining in a future with gen AI or AI in general is that you start with something much more free-form and say, for example, “I’m looking to plan a trip with my family to New Orleans for a week in October. Can you help me find a hotel that has a pool for my seven-year-old and is within walking distance of the French Quarter?”

Wouldn’t that experience be much easier in terms of trying to figure out where you want to stay and what you want to do, as opposed to getting a list of a thousand hotels in an order that may or may not meet your specific preferences and what you actually want out of that trip? It is one of the most obvious examples wherein customers can see a real difference in what gen AI can do to help them with the travel discovery process.

Alex Cosmas: The other application of AI that I’m excited about is this: every customer gives tells. They drop digital breadcrumbs of things they like and don’t like when they bounce off of the page of a dot-com when they’re shopping; when they abandon a cart; when they return less frequently to search; when they arrive on a page only to check a single itinerary on a single day, on a single fare, rather than browsing for 20 minutes.

All of these are small tells that we as consumers provide travel brands. And so the ability to record, “I actually know what Alex is keen on in general and frankly less keen on and less likely to convert on,” and turn that into relevant offers is really important.

AI is only part of the answer

Lucia Rahilly: Where are we in terms of companies really embracing the use of this next-gen AI and other related technologies?

Alex Cosmas: We’re pretty far down the path of companies both embracing traditional AI and experimenting with gen AI. Very few of the airlines, hotels, cruise lines, and suppliers that I’ve interacted with are not already embracing deployment and actively experimenting with advanced tech. It’s only going to grow.

But there is risk. More is not always better. Faster is not always better. There’s a bit of, let’s say, a cautionary tale that we’ve learned from other sectors, which is that first off, AI is only part of the answer.

I like to say it doesn’t matter if you got the answer right if you got the delivery wrong.

The digital-delivery mechanism is how I go about delivering the answer: a mobile app, a push notification, an e-commerce experience, a kiosk, digital signage, or data just given to the front line. Those mechanisms are as equally important as or, I’d argue, even more important than the predictive and gen AI models behind them.

Vik Krishnan: To build on Alex’s point about getting the delivery wrong, many of you listening have probably been on an airplane in the last year. How many times have you experienced the outcome of landing, pulling toward the gate, stopping short on the tarmac somewhere, and it turns out the gate’s not available yet. Therefore, you have to wait for the other aircraft to taxi out, so your plane can then pull into the gate.

The reality is that putting together an operational execution plan involves data from so many different sources that aren’t necessarily pulled together in a large model. So it doesn’t necessarily enable or unlock this type of orchestration. And this is where AI can be enormously helpful.

There are companies out there that try to understand turning an aircraft, which is the process of essentially getting it from arrival to departure for the next flight. That involves actions both above the wing—for example, getting passengers off and onto the plane, getting the aircraft catered—and below the wing—for example, getting bags on and off the plane.

It involves refueling aircraft. It involves a number of other maintenance-related and ground-handling-related activities that many consumers don’t see. All of that is an extremely delicately orchestrated ballet that happens at an airport every single day, while involving multiple third parties and several different suppliers. It involves a fuel provider. It involves a ground handler. In some instances, it involves a different gate agent than the airline itself. That orchestration requires data and communication of very, very large volumes of information.

There are companies out there that are now saying, “We can actually identify when, during an aircraft turn, something didn’t happen according to schedule.” In other words, that catering truck didn’t pull in three minutes after arrival as it was expected to, which induced a delay. And that delay then allowed for a replanning of the entire turn process, so as to deliver an on-time departure. AI has an extremely large role to play in helping deliver on that promise in a way that suppliers have historically struggled to.

Don’t be AI stranger

Lucia Rahilly: In order to deliver on that process, understanding the data is critical. Here’s Ella Alkalay Schreiber, the GM of fintech at Hopper.

Ella Alkalay Schreiber: Machine learning is important, gen AI is important, predictive AI is important—but the actual challenge is to understand the data, ask the right questions, read prediction versus actual, and do this in a timely manner. The actual challenge is the human thinking, the common sense.

Lucia Rahilly: “Know your customer” is really a business axiom at this point. What does understanding your customers mean specifically for the travel industry?

Alex Cosmas: It means a few things. AI models learn the same way humans learn. It’s a test-and-learn process. I ask a question. I observe a behavior. That reinforces either my false or positive conception of who you are and what makes you tick. If you can’t measure cause and effect precisely, then avoid running an experiment entirely.

This is what our general advice is to our clients. I’d rather they experiment correctly on something small than swing for the fences and have no idea where the ball lands. That’s particularly true in microexperiments, where I have individual customers, where I provide individual treatments, but I have to be able to measure the response. If you can’t measure it, don’t bother. Focus your energy and resources on a different experiment.

This is what our general advice is to our clients. I’d rather they experiment correctly on something small than swing for the fences and have no idea where the ball lands.

If a brand, for example, doesn’t have the digital tech to be able to send a tailored offer to me as an individual, then you don’t really need to know my personal willingness to pay. In that case, stick to the microsegment or the macrosegment and take action that way. If you can’t send a personalized message without making it feel generic, then don’t.

Vik Krishnan: The experience of hyper-personalization has to feel authentic. So in other words, a flight attendant coming up to you and saying, “Hey, I know you normally like a Diet Coke with a slice of lime. Is that what you’d like this time?” is different from presuming what your preferred drink might be. That might be an example of how AI actually delivers on hyper-personalization, but with a bit of a human touch so it doesn’t appear creepy.

Lucia Rahilly: Both of you are deep in this industry. Any examples that come to mind of companies that are really doing AI right? And if so, how?

Vik Krishnan: Hotels that actually understand or acknowledge your past history of staying at that specific property—that’s quite a personal touch I really appreciate. But the reality is many hotels struggle to even understand basic facts such as the frequency, duration, and purpose of a recent stay. Many hotels don’t easily make that type of information available to their frontline staff. And so empowering those employees to use that information to deliver a hyper-personalized greeting or experience is a good example of companies using AI well.

Alex Cosmas: If done right, the frontline workforce should look and feel like superheroes powered by AI. There’s a luxury fashion retailer that arms its sales associates with iPads to link shoppers to the styles and the sizes they searched for online. That’s pretty cool. Now, augment that with the propensity models in the background that give the agent a steer to what a customer wants, and suddenly they appear clairvoyant. Think about that application in travel. There are far more interactions on average in a travel journey.

So as consumers, how do we preserve the magic of travel, which is more about heads-up time and being immersed in our surroundings, rather than about heads-down time and researching on a device? It means more agents who surprise and delight; say, “Welcome back”; say, “Happy birthday”; know you arrived earlier than planned; and swap the room preemptively so you could get in and get on your way. And that’s what we call knowing your customers like you know your friends.

I’ll share one example. When I check into a hotel, I really don’t like the kiosk and the app check-in. But I love it for checking out. For other customers, the complete inverse is true. My hotel can know that. It certainly knows how I check in and check out. It should act on that or understand the why, just as you understand your friends. This is the test-and-learn experiment that we talked about earlier and that most suppliers can begin right now.

AI and talent: What’s next?

Lucia Rahilly: Alex, that makes a very nice segue to Christiaan Hen, chief customer officer at Assaia, talking about frontline talent using AI as an assistant.

Christiaan Hen: Sometimes, people say automation might be a risk to people’s jobs, but that’s not the case here, because there are not going to be enough people to do these jobs in the first place. I like to see it as we’re equipping people with the right tools to do their jobs in a better way to accommodate for the additional workload that is coming.

Lucia Rahilly: This clip invokes the palpable fear that AI and automation will eliminate people’s jobs. We hear that time and again. How do you see these advanced technologies changing things for the front line in the travel industry?

Vik Krishnan: I see technology helping frontline employees do a better job more than I see it eliminating those jobs. We don’t necessarily see, for example, AI reducing flight attendant staffing any time soon, because those flight attendants are on the airplane to provide primarily for your safety, followed by the guest experience.

We see AI in many instances allowing those flight attendants to deliver a better customer experience, because they know that passenger in seat number 17C better as a result of the information provided to them. But it’s not replacing their jobs.

In certain pockets of the economy, technology and AI will end up replacing people. The reality in travel, though, is that the quality of the guest or passenger experience for so many people is tied to human interaction. Consequently, we don’t necessarily see a large-scale replacement of people here by technology and AI.

Alex Cosmas: Let’s look at the facts for a moment. Post-COVID-19, the travel sector employs 12 percent fewer staff than pre-COVID-19. And that’s not necessarily by choice. It is hard to find folks with the hospitality gene who genuinely want to deliver for guests, engage with them, and serve at the highest level day in and day out.

That’s part of the reason we see a smaller workforce in travel today than we have in the past. It takes twice as long, an average of five to six weeks, to fill roles as it did before the pandemic. Those with that hospitality gene would love nothing more than spending less time fixing broken itineraries, fixing issues that frankly could be automated. They’d rather spend their energy serving, which is what travel and hospitality is all about.

It should be a net-positive growth. The travel sector itself should grow as a result, creating jobs. We estimate the travel sector to grow at roughly 6 percent over the next decade, which is twice the rate of the overall economy.

Lucia Rahilly: Could AI and related technologies help with training folks who don’t come by that gene naturally but could be trained to fill those roles more efficiently?

Alex Cosmas: Absolutely. We’re already seeing applications of virtual reality, augmented reality, and AI coming together to offer more efficient ways to enhance and accelerate employee training, because you can throw live, immersive scenarios in front of employees at a higher clip than they would get organically on the job.

Oftentimes, the same is true not just of the front line but also of training corporate and call center employees. AI can learn from the patterns of thousands upon thousands of call-ins and transcripts—which no single human can ever be expected to go through—boil them down to the top ten core issues and suggest outcomes that seem to resolve 70 percent of situations. That’s the power of AI in training.

Lucia Rahilly: Alex, you mentioned virtual reality. Would travel drop if you could experience Bhutan from your sofa rather than actually having to take an arduous flight?

Alex Cosmas: Here’s my honest read on it. We’ve been able to visit Bhutan virtually for over a decade through YouTube and through National Geographic . And yet, travel is at an all-time high. And it’s because we all, as social animals, continue to enjoy experiencing new things, meeting new people, hearing new stories, and being inspired by a new site’s history and cuisine.

The numbers also suggest that we are in an unprecedented growth phase for travel. We are also in a phase where, over the past 15 years, customer satisfaction has steadily grown, despite how much we all like to beat up on our travel suppliers.

Consumers are admitting that the area they want to splurge on in the next year is travel and hospitality, such as experiences and restaurants. So they’re giving us that gift of their wallets and their trust. We have to deliver on that expectation as a sector. Gen AI, traditional AI, augmented reality, virtual reality, and digital technologies are going to help us deliver on the promise.

Alex Cosmas is a partner in McKinsey’s New York office. Vik Krishnan is a partner in the Bay Area office. Lucia Rahilly is the global editorial director and deputy publisher of McKinsey Global Publishing and is based in the New York office.

Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of McKinsey & Company or have its endorsement.

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The Faroe Islands is just one destination using new technologies to create a virtual tourism experience Image:  Knud Erik Vinding/Pixabay

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Stay up to date:, travel and tourism.

• The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the travel and tourism industries;
• Businesses in this sector must build infrastructure and practices that allow people to travel safely in a post-pandemic world and support local communities that benefit from tourism;
• Augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies can offer alternative ways to travel the world and an exciting new model for the industry.

The tourism industry has hit a nadir owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will continue to feel the effects for at least the first three quarters of 2021 – according to a recent UN report , tourist arrivals globally in January 2021 were down 87% when compared to January 2020.

Travel will prevail over post-pandemic anxiety, making it incumbent on the aviation and tourism industry to build safer infrastructure and practices that take care of travellers’ well being.

Have you read?

International tourism is set to plunge by 80% this year – but some regions could recover more quickly, how global tourism can become more sustainable, inclusive and resilient, virtual reality adds to tourism through touch, smell and real people’s experiences.

After a year thwarted by the pandemic and with the future not looking too upbeat for the industry at this juncture, tourism business owners should look at alternative modes of interaction for holidaymakers that can also aid the people and economies who depend on tourism.

The COVID-19 pandemic has noticeably hastened the testing and rollout of forward-looking technologies. Technology has not only enabled citizens globally to interact with loved ones, but also helped industries such as healthcare, information technology, education and many more to work remotely.

In the last few decades, technology has helped travel and tourism industries increase their reach through travel booking websites, videos, blogs and travel photography. Digital tools and content are a vital source of information for vacationists organizing their next holiday or creating a destination wish list. Whilst remote or virtual tourism has been a futuristic theme within industry forums for some time, the world today, shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, might now be ready to accept it.

A human-centric design that draws insights from cognitive behaviour, social psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics applied with cutting edge technologies such as augmented, virtual or mixed reality (AR, VR, MR) could be a game-changer. AR, VR and MR can enable a seamless, uninterrupted interactive experience for viewers from their own private space. The design principles will create a frictionless digital user experience and construct a positive perception of a tourist destination.

There have been previous attempts to achieve this feat: if you are an aqua sightseer, you might be aware of a documentary exploring the Great Barrier Reef . Through an interactive website, one can view the clear, tranquil currents of the Pacific Ocean and the biodiversity of the reef, and experience the sounds of a healthy coral reef. Another much-discussed VR experience is Mission 828 which allows you to take a virtual parachute jump from the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The Official Tourist Board of the Faroe Islands has also crafted a virtual experience to entice post-pandemic visitors from across the world.

Imagine a human-centric designed, interactive space online that makes a destination accessible and so real for a sightseer with sound captured by electro-acoustics researchers. You could view holiday sites in a video or through self-navigation using voice or joystick controls, interact with people using video-calling platforms, travel through the streets of said location, eavesdrop on local music and much more. This could be stitched together in a single platform individually or in silos on the internet and further enhanced by setting up physical experience tourism centres locally. Such a setup would allow tourist guides, artisans, craftspeople, hoteliers and transport business to create their own digital and virtual offerings and interact with possible customers.

Here’s how it might look: a vacationer starts their experience from the time their flight commences. The plane descends to the destination runway and pictures of the vicinity from the aircraft window pane are captured. The airport signage welcomes passengers and directs them to a pre-booked taxi. The vacationer gets to choose their first destination and travels through the streets in a chauffeur-driven car whose interactions en route become part of their cherished memories. On arrival, a tourist guide walks you through the destination all controlled with just a tap on your gadget. During the sightseeing, you hear random people speaking, posing for photographs and more. You take a photo to post on social media, go shopping and negotiate with a local vendor to purchase an artwork and get it delivered to your door. You learn how a local dish is prepared and get familiar with local customs.

A virtual platform could even provide an opportunity for people to explore areas that are affected by or fighting terrorism. For example, imagine seeing the diverse wildlife and snow leopard of the Gurez Valley, in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It doesn’t stop there: if thought through, one could experience travelling to the South Pole, space and beyond. It could also serve as a learning portal for students to understand geographies, culture, art and history.

With technology improving lives globally, virtual tourism could reignite the tourism industry and its people and help build a more sustainable economic model. As a human-centric platform, it can establish local tourist guides, artisans and others as global citizens in the tourism industry.

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5 pandemic tech innovations that will change travel forever

These digital innovations will make your next trip safer and more efficient. But will they invade your privacy?

In the 20 months since the COVID-19 pandemic began, technological innovations have gone from futuristic to familiar. These days it’s hard to be out in the world without encountering QR-coded menus or supplying digital vaccine passports.

As the tourism industry—which logged a billion fewer international arrivals in 2020 than 2019—sputters back to life, masks may begin to disappear, but many pandemic-era tech tools will continue to factor into your trips.

“Consumers will come to expect technologies that make them more confident about travel,” says Steve Shur, the president of the Travel Technology Association. “Some of these changes are here to stay.”

In fact, a 2021 Pew Research survey of 915 policy leaders, science researchers, and other experts predicts that, by 2025, our daily lives could be even more influenced by algorithms, remote work, and what some call “tele-everything.”  

While novel interventions such as real-time translation devices and facial recognition passport control may make travel safer and more efficient, there are downsides, including concerns about privacy , data security, and biased technology. Here are some of the innovations that travelers will continue to see and use.

Virtual and augmented reality

When the pandemic shut down travel, museums and tourist destinations turned to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to create online exhibits and experiences. While some of these experiences are best seen with a VR headset, most can be enjoyed with just a computer or smartphone.

The Xplore Petra app launched in June 2020, allowing users to “visit” Jordan ’s most iconic archaeological site by projecting a scaled-down version of the ruins. Lights over Lapland, an Arctic travel company, launched a VR experience to show off the Northern Lights using VR headsets or computer screens.

( How virtual reality might change your next trip, even after COVID-19. )

Post-pandemic, VR and AR may enhance actual trips by adding experiences such as a simulated climb up the Matterhorn at Lucerne’s Swiss Museum of Transport . The Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland, has a VR attraction in which visitors immerse themselves in “ The Garden of Earthly Delights ,” a 500-year-old painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

The Museum of Natural History in Paris has an AR exhibit that brings visitors face to face with extinct animals in digital form. The National Museum of Singapore has an installation called “Story of the Forest,” where sightseers explore a virtual landscape comprised of almost 70 nature drawings from the museum collection. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History , in Washington, D.C., has an app that uses AR to show what some of its animal skeletons would look like with skin and muscle over the bones, offering a new view of a collection dating back to the 1880s.

“VR is not going to replace travel and tourism. It is just going to enhance tourism,” says Anu Pillai, who runs the Digital Center of Excellence at Wipro, a technology company.

Crowd control

To help enforce social distancing, cities, airports, and museums tested or rolled out crowd-control technology including Singapore’s roaming, vaguely terrifying robots that announce people are too close together and signs indicating how large crowds are at airport gates . As throngs of travelers return to popular destinations, similar methods and devices may be implemented to prevent overtourism.

In Italy during the pandemic, Venice began tracking visitors using cameras designed to catch criminals. Post-pandemic, it plans to harness them to keep tourist numbers at manageable levels, perhaps in concert with the mayor’s proposal to add electronic gates at major entry points (cruise ship docks, train stations) that can be closed if the city gets overcrowded.

(These tech changes could make your next flight safer.)

“We know minute by minute how many people are passing and where they are going,” Simone Venturini, Venice’s top tourism official, told the New York Times . “We have total control of the city.”

Amsterdam , which also struggles with overtourism, tracks how visitors use Amsterdam’s City Card, a flat-fee pass to museums and public transport. Beach Check UK launched this summer with real-time information on how busy dozens of beaches are along the English coast, guiding travelers away from packed areas.

“Technology can be used to collect data in order to both make better decisions and communicate those decisions,” says Christopher Imbsen, director of sustainability at World Travel & Tourism Council.

UV-C cleaning

Hospitals have used UV-C light to disinfect and kill viruses for more than two decades. Now, indoor public spaces including airports, gyms, and movie theaters are adding UV-C to halt viral spread.

“UV-C is having its heyday right now,” says Peter Veloz, CEO of UltraViolet Devices, which makes UV disinfecting technology.

UV-C has germicidal properties that combat COVID-19 and other nasties, both in the air or on surfaces. Depending on the location, new UV-C installations go into HVACs, on escalator handrails, or through airports and planes via light-equipped robots that disinfect as they go.

If installed and operated correctly, a UV-C system can kill all sorts of bacteria and germs. Even seasonal flu bugs might be zapped before they spread. “COVID-19 could come and go, but what won't disappear are normal pathogens,” Veloz says.

QR codes at restaurants

In the early days of the pandemic, when transmission of the COVID-19 wasn’t yet well understood, restaurants hurried to provide QR codes. The little black boxes of pixelated dots and dashes could be scanned with a smart phone to bring up a menu, let you order from it, and then allow you to pay your bill, all with limited virus-spreading interactions with servers.

While earlier fears that people could catch the virus via menus and other surfaces have been disproven, the codes have proven convenient and will probably stick around, especially with late-pandemic worker shortages.

Such convenience might mean a trade off with privacy, however, since the little codes can potentially gather a large amount of information from users. Some QR programs just take a food order, but others mine data like a patron’s dining history, age, and gender. The restaurant could use that info to send them coupons or event invitations—or sell it to third parties.

“It’s an example of companies exploiting COVID-19 to extend tracking,” says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU. “Moving everything to mobile opens people to new ways of tracking and control.”

Travelers should know that QR codes can be hacked; you might scan one, place a dinner order, and wind up compromising your credit card instead. Stanley recommends treating QR codes just as you do links in unknown emails. Either use your phone to look up the restaurant’s menu on the internet or install a protective app like Kaspersky QR Scanner , which will give users a warning if the code isn’t safe.

Contact-tracing tools

Public health groups used contact tracing methods to identify and track down people who were potentially exposed to infectious diseases such as Zika and HIV, and offer counseling, screening, and treatment. These traditional tools were usually based on phone calls to ask individuals about who they were in contact with and to continue researching exposure. The pandemic pushed officials to scale up such efforts and implement new, higher-tech ones to track viral spread and provide information.  

For instance, Apple and Google added contact-tracing functions to new smartphone software, allowing users to opt in and get alerts if they come into close contact with an infected person.

(If you must travel during a pandemic, here’s how to protect your health.)

“There’s been a strong recognition about the value of and the important role of contact tracing for infectious disease prevention and control,” says Elizabeth Ruebush, a senior analyst for infectious disease and immunization policy at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “But we’ve never seen it implemented at the scale of COVID-19.”

Other technologies, such as automated texts, viral heat maps and even CCTV with facial recognition could help track other infectious illnesses or make us ready for the next pandemic.

Even with fancy new apps, however, phone calls and personal outreach will still be at the center of public health. “These tools are aimed to enhance, but not replace, traditional contact tracing,” Ruebush says.

COVID-19 has sped up our adoption of technology . The downside is that this may make it even harder to turn off smartphones while on vacation. Then again, wanderlust is now stronger than ever—and getting lost in the moment still hasn’t been harnessed by a digital code.

Jackie Snow is a Washington, D.C.-based writer specializing in travel and technology. Follow her on Instagram .

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6 Ways Travel Technology Is Improving Your Trip in 2024

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Table of Contents

1. Apps for booking hotels — and picking your room

2. smart devices as digital room keys, 3. the rise of virtual queues, 4. delivery apps to replace room service, 5. robotic and app-powered food delivery in airports, 6. the growth of app-powered car rentals.

These days, travel and technology go hand-in-hand. Many of these technological advancements were spurred by early pandemic pressure for contactless payments, food service and more. For example, between February and March 2020 alone, Mastercard saw the number of contactless payments at grocery stores grow twice as fast as non-contactless transactions. Meanwhile, the number of active restaurants on the Uber Eats food delivery app grew by over 75% between Dec. 31, 2019, and Dec. 31, 2020.

Technology is seeping into travel in a way that most travelers are finding enormously beneficial. Whether shortening queues, helping travelers save money or eliminating the need to get within six feet of others, here are some of the top travel technology evolutions to know about in 2024.

Most large hotel chains have long had free apps with features like booking and live chat, but many recently got big-time improvements.

Hilton launched a feature in June 2021 that lets you book and instantly confirm connecting rooms on its app and website, which has proven especially helpful for groups.

Its app also can display a map of the hotel and allow you to select your exact room of choice, whether it’s the peaceful room farthest from the elevator or the one nearby for easy access.

The Hilton app can be used to unlock rooms at many U.S. properties so you never need to go to the front desk to retrieve a physical key card. (Photo courtesy of Hilton)

Some apps serve as a digital front desk, which then allows you to use your smartphone and smartwatch as digital keys. For example, digital keys in Hyatt’s mobile app use Bluetooth technology to let you unlock your hotel room with your phone at more than 600 hotels worldwide.

Hyatt made things even easier for Apple users in December 2021 by becoming the first hotel brand to offer room keys in Apple Wallet. At certain Hyatt hotels, you no longer need to open the Hyatt app; instead you can tap your iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock rooms.

Over at Hilton, which has offered digital keys to some degree since 2015, last year saw a huge update in Digital Key Share, which allows more than one guest to have digital access. The feature is currently available at about 80% of Hilton’s hotels worldwide.

(Photo courtesy of Disney)

In January, Clear 2021, a private biometric screening company that lets paying members bypass certain security lines at busy areas including stadiums and airports, announced that it had acquired another company designed to reduce wait times — Whyline. The acquisition could allow Clear to improve virtual queues for processes like checking vaccine status or accessing airport lounges.

» Learn more: Is Clear worth the cost?

Meanwhile, Disney rolled out a feature in its U.S. theme park apps in October 2021 called Genie, which is intended to help vacationers better plan their day. By analyzing current lines and crowds, it can suggest more efficient itineraries.

Food delivery apps have been disrupting room service lately by delivering food from around town — and eliminating the need to pay $10 for a bowl of room service cereal.

Hotels are leaning into the idea of letting other companies handle it . For example, Hyatt launched a pilot program with snack delivery service Gopuff in 2021 to deliver prepackaged and hot meals to rooms at select Hyatt Place locations. Hyatt says the program has been successful, and has since grown to more properties nationwide.

(Photo courtesy of AtYourGate)

Speaking of food delivery, the days of waiting in long airport restaurant lines might be gone. Apps like AtYourGate allow you to order, pay and pick up food from participating airport restaurants.

More recently, AtYourGate is testing services where you don’t even need to physically grab your food. Instead, robots bring it to you. A pilot program that launched in September has robots roaming around Los Angeles International Airport, bringing food directly to your gate.

The rental car industry has sometimes been brutal to travelers, but peer-to-peer car-sharing alternatives are expanding, providing consumers with more choices.

Getaround cars can be booked on an hourly basis, and there’s no need to meet up with the owner to exchange keys. Cars are booked and unlocked through an app. Getaround expanded to Hawaii at the end of 2021, marking the 10th state that Getaround added to its portfolio in 2021 and the 22nd state in its history.

» Learn more: Rental car alternatives you might not know about

How to maximize your rewards

You want a travel credit card that prioritizes what’s important to you. Here are our picks for the best travel credit cards of 2023 , including those best for:

Flexibility, point transfers and a large bonus: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

No annual fee:   Bank of America® Travel Rewards credit card

Flat-rate travel rewards:  Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card  

Bonus travel rewards and high-end perks: Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Luxury perks: The Platinum Card® from American Express

Business travelers: Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card

This article was written by NerdWallet and was originally published by The Associated Press.

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60,000 Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 when you redeem through Chase Travel℠.

1.5%-6.5% Enjoy 6.5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel; 4.5% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and 3% on all other purchases (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year). After your first year or $20,000 spent, enjoy 5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel, 3% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and unlimited 1.5% cash back on all other purchases.

$300 Earn an additional 1.5% cash back on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) - worth up to $300 cash back!

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2x-5x Earn unlimited 2X miles on every purchase, every day. Earn 5X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, where you'll get Capital One's best prices on thousands of trip options.

75,000 Enjoy a one-time bonus of 75,000 miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within 3 months from account opening, equal to $750 in travel.

How Technology Is Changing the Travel and Tourism Industry

The tourism industry is changing rapidly, and new technologies are opening up new ways to experience the world. Here’s a look at how mobile technology might change the way we visit, explore, and enjoy the world.

The tourism industry has been heavily impacted by the advances in mobile technology. Two years ago, only 27% of tourists made reservations for their stay before arrival; this year it is closer to 40%.

How to use technology to make your vacation more personal and interactive, new apps that allow you to explore the world around you, and how mobile technology is changing the tourism industry for good.

Lets begin!

Table of contents

Introduction

What is mobile technology, types of mobile technology in the tourism industry, how mobile technology is changing the tourism industry, the impact of mobile technology on tourists, pros and cons of mobile technology in the tourism industry.

The tourism industry is one of the most important industries in the world. It is responsible for a large part of the world’s economy and employs millions of people. The industry is constantly changing and evolving, and mobile technology is one of the biggest drivers of change.

Mobile technology is changing the way people travel and how they experience destinations. It is also changing the way businesses operate within the tourism industry. Mobile technology has made it easier for people to research and book travel, and it has also made it possible for businesses to offer more personalized and convenient services.

There are a number of ways in which mobile technology is changing the tourism industry, including:

• More people are using mobile devices to research and book travel.
• Mobile devices are being used more for on-trip activities such as navigation and trip planning.
• Businesses are using mobile technology to offer more personalized services.
• Mobile payments are becoming more popular within the tourism industry.
• Augmented reality is being used by businesses to enhance the customer experience.

Mobile technology has revolutionized the tourism industry, making it easier and more convenient for travelers to book trips, find information about destinations, and stay connected while on the go.

With mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, travelers can now book their flights, hotels, and rental cars all in one place. They can also use apps to help them plan their trip, find things to do at their destination, and stay connected with family and friends back home.

Mobile technology has also made it possible for tour operators to offer interactive experiences that allow travelers to get up close and personal with the places they visit. Using augmented reality and other cutting-edge technologies, tour operators are now able to offer virtual reality tours, educational games, and more.

As mobile technology continues to evolve, the tourism industry will continue to change along with it. With more travelers using mobile devices to plan and book their trips, it’s important for tour operators to keep up with the latest trends in order to provide the best possible experience for their guests.

Also Read: How Mobile Technology Has Modernized the Construction Industry

There are many types of mobile technology in the tourism industry. The most common are GPS systems, which can be used to track the location of a person or vehicle. Smartphones and tablets are also widely used in the tourism industry, as they can be used to book hotels, restaurants, and flights.

Other types of mobile technology that are used in the tourism industry include contactless payments, such as Apple Pay, and mobile applications that can be used to plan trips and find attractions.

Mobile technology is having a profound impact on the tourism industry. Tourists are now able to use their mobile devices to book hotels, purchase tickets, and get directions. This has made planning a trip much easier and more convenient.

In addition, mobile technology has made it possible for tourists to access information about their destination while they are on the go. With apps like Google Maps and Yelp, tourists can easily find restaurants, attractions, and activities in their area. They can also read reviews and get recommendations from other travelers.

This increased accessibility to information has made traveling much more enjoyable and hassle-free. It has also allowed for new business opportunities in the tourism industry, as companies are now able to target potential customers through mobile advertising.

Overall, mobile technology is changing the way we travel and experience the world. With its many benefits, it is clear that this trend is here to stay.

Also Read: How Will 5G Transform Industrial IoT?

The mobile technology revolution has had a profound impact on the tourism industry, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the way that tourists now plan and book their trips.

In the past, travelers would typically go to a travel agent to plan their trip and book their flights and accommodation. However, with the advent of sites like TripAdvisor and Expedia, travelers are now much more likely to research and book their own trips online.

What’s more, with the ubiquity of smartphones and apps like Google Maps , travelers are now able to easily find local attractions and activities while they’re on vacation. This has led to a boom in so-called “experiential tourism” where travelers seek out unique experiences that cannot be found at home.

Overall, mobile technology has had a hugely positive impact on the tourism industry, making it easier than ever for people to explore the world.

The tourism industry has been quick to embrace mobile technology, and there are many good reasons for this. Mobile devices offer a level of convenience and flexibility that can be extremely beneficial for both businesses and consumers in the tourism industry. However, there are also some potential downsides to using mobile technology in the tourism industry that should be considered.

Convenient: Mobile devices make it easy for tourists to research and book travel arrangements on the go. They can also be used to easily access information about attractions, restaurants, and other businesses while an route to their destination.

Flexible: Mobile technology gives tourists the ability to tailor their travel plans to suit their individual needs and preferences. For example, they can use mobile apps to find last-minute deals on hotels or flights, or book tours and activities that fit their schedule.

Increased Engagement: Mobile devices allow businesses in the tourism industry to better engage with their customers. Through push notifications and location-based services, businesses can send relevant information and offers directly to consumers’ phones, which can result in more sales and higher customer satisfaction levels.

Security Risks: Mobile devices can be lost or stolen, which can put sensitive customer data at risk. In addition, businesses that accept mobile payments may be vulnerable to fraud.

Dependency on Technology: Relying too heavily on mobile technology can lead to problems. If the devices malfunction or there is an interruption in service. For example, if a tourist’s phone runs out of battery power, they may not be able to access information about their hotel or find directions to their next destination.

Increased Costs: Implementing a mobile strategy can be expensive, and businesses may need to invest in new hardware and software, as well as train staff on how to use it. In addition, businesses may incur additional costs for data usage if customers use their mobile devices to access the Internet while traveling.

Also Read:   Benefits of 5g in Industrial Environments

The tourism industry is constantly changing and evolving, and mobile technology is playing a big role in that. With more and more people using their smartphones and tablets to book travel arrangements. It’s important for businesses in the tourism industry to keep up with the latest trends. By staying ahead of the curve, they can ensure that they’re providing the best possible experience for their customers.

Feel free to schedule a free 60-minute consultation with one of our experts. We’ll talk about the opportunities and address any concerns you may have. Our consultants will suggest solutions and outline how they can be implemented.  Let’s talk!

Aeologic Technologies  is a great place to start!

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The New Technology and Travel Revolution

Millennials have also played a significant role in this paradigm shift. They love to travel and are also passionate about new technology. This combined interested has given way to a new context where social media, apps, blogs, and so more have an important part to play when it’s time to play a trip. By that same token, the industry, as it becomes increasingly aware of this trend, has followed suit by adapting its business model and product offering to attract this coveted target. 

Who hasn’t gone somewhere just because Ryanair was offering round-trip tickets for 30 euros? If we merely feel like going somewhere, we go online and look for what the budget airlines are providing, we see what destination will be the cheapest, and voilà, let's go! This scenario, so ubiquitous today, was unthinkable some years ago.

Trends and updates in travel and tech 

As we mentioned in our tourism trends report , the industry is in the midst of a deep metamorphosis. There are many mitigating factors but the new technological solutions coming about are some of the main actors. 

Eurecat Tourism Innovation Department Director Salvador Anton Clavé commented during the Forum TurisTIC de Barcelona event that “the change goes beyond improving processes or the tourist experience; it entails transforming the tourism system itself.” We’re participating in making improvements to processes, customer service, relationships with customers, and the creation of new business models. All this naturally leads to benefits for the traveler, letting them simplify, and often enrich, the travel planning process.  

Booking.com Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Arjan Dijk recently echoed similar sentiments and stated that “in this new decade, we’ll see how the travel industry tries to respond to the needs of a type of a traveler more concerned with sustainability, and with more tech knowledge or curiosity, through developing products, functions, and services make discovering the world easier for all.”

Next, we’ll take a look at some of the technological advances currently leaving their mark on the industry and will, according to various studies, bring significant short-term changes to the sector. 

The seven most important tech solutions for the tourism industry 

1. mobile technology.

This is undoubtedly the main character in the new ways of travel. The cell phone has become our tour guide, travel agency, best restaurant locator, map, and more. It's by our side during the entire purchase journey. In fact, according to TripAdvisor, 45% of users use their smartphone for everything having to do with their vacations.

This is why there’s a need to adapt corporate services and communications to these devices. KLM, for example, has already created an information service for passengers using Facebook Messenger. 

This system, once someone has made a reservation, sends the user information regarding their ticket through Facebook Messenger as well as their boarding pass or updates about the status of their flight. This way, the user has all the pertinent information about their trip in the palm of their hand using an app that they already use , eliminating the need to download anything else.

2. Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) have also entered the travel world, and the truth is that it’s a trend due to all the possibilities they can offer . More and more companies use it to show users a cabin on a cruise ship or transport them, for a few seconds, to the Great Wall of China. 

Today, it’s possible to “teleport” ourselves to the most remote corners of the globe without getting off the couch . That’s what you can get using Everest’s EVEREST VR app, which lets you see the top of the world without having to climb to the top. Or, if you would prefer, you can cross the Grand Canyon in a kayak enjoying the landmark’s sights and sounds. 

3. Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to bring significant updates to the tourism industry. They include integrating sensors connected to the Internet inside items like cars, suitcases, buildings, and more.  

In fact, Spain’s Hotel Technology Institute (Instituto Tecnológico Hotelero, or ITH) affirmed that the Internet of Things “is going to be the major transformative factor in the personalization of the customer experience over the next few years.” 

Some Virgin Hotel properties offer an app to their clients that lets them interact with the room’s thermostat or control the television in the room. There are also suitcases that have devices that allow users to use their cell phones to follow where their suitcase is at any time to avoid lost baggage at the airport or other public places.

4. Virtual Assistants

We’re all familiar with Siri and Alexa, the virtual assistants that meet all our needs: what’s the weather like today in my city, turn the radio on, open my email, and more. 

Hotels are now starting to enlist this “help” thanks to the arrival of virtual assistants that are specifically designed for this environment. IBM recently launched Watson Assistant, an AI-powered virtual assistant that creates an interactive and personalized experience for consumers.

This is the open technology that firms can employ and adapt to their needs . This way, the virtual assistant won't be called Watson but instead, have the name that the hotel chooses.

5. Big Data

There has been a lot of recent talk about Big Data, but they have yet to show all the opportunities it offers for the travel industry. Nonetheless, many industry players are already using it .

The Meliá hotel chain uses information about their guests to figure out what is the best target for marketing campaigns. Primarily, they examine their database to look at the amount spent, the reason for the trip, the country of origin and cross-checks this information with public data from government sources to develop the most appropriate customer profile and achieve a higher success rate. This way, they make a better segmentation for their campaigns to increase their efficacy and optimize the investment required for these campaigns.

6. Blockchain

Blockchain is a technology poised to transform the world as we know it. Although it’s mainly associated with finance, it also appears that it can impact travel. 

While there has not been that much experimentation with it, it is possible that it will be useful in identifying passengers at the airport, guaranteeing transparency in tourists' opinions, and easy and secure payments.

Travel technology becomes all the more powerful with help from 5G networks. They promise much faster loading and downloading speeds, wider coverage, and more stable connections. Beyond downloading content 20 times faster than before, 5G allows us to develop and deploy technology that 4G limited us. That means the connection between smart devices will be more efficient and we’ll be able to start to truly enjoy the Internet of Things (IoT). 

Immersive tourism, where technology turns travelers into the experience’s protagonist, will be a reality. Plus, augmented reality (AR) or 360° video will be more ubiquitous and accessible.

The BBC ran a test project that used 5G and an AR application at the Roman Baths in Bath, England where users could go back in time to reconstructions of the site in key moments throughout history. This video shows the pilot testing, which saw that over 80% of participants reporting they would be more willing to visit a museum if it had experiences of that caliber:

My personal experience: The techiest Eurotrip

I confess that I am one of those travelers that value the comfort that comes with mobile technology; above all in those “non-stop trips.” That’s why I want to share my experience in how technology has influenced my latest trip to Budapest, Vienna, and Krakow.  

Planning: Online reservations

While planning my trip, I made all the hotel reservations online. I've been doing this for years, but this time I found myself with a different surprise: they gave me the option of downloading a free guide about every city I was going to visit . I like to look for more information about the cities I'm going too, but I also recognize that this is an Inbound tactic that motivates people to reserve using that web portal again the future.

All these reservations, for both flights and hotels, stayed inside my inbox avoiding me having to print everything out and then worry about losing anything.

On the road: My cellphone, the best co-pilot

Traveling with a Smartphone and mobile data (thanks to the end of roaming in Europe) has been a revelation. It reminded me of all my journeys and reservations; it was there to guide me when I got lost (more than I could count) in a city, to keep me busy on long travels, or to help me find out interesting facts about the places I was visiting.

Post-Trip: sharing is living

When I come back from a trip, I always like to review the hotels, restaurants, and activities I’ve been in and done to share with others my experience and help them on their upcoming trip. I am a fan of the Internet philosophy: collaborating and sharing knowledge so everyone can find them. I did it all comfortably with my phone and on the couch at home.

The travel industry is one where interaction with the consumer is becoming more critical, and the technological advances are letting corporations get closer and know their customers a bit better.

Steve Jobs said: "technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them.”

We have the tools. Now the question is: what are we going to do with them?

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Technology: Disruptive Innovation in the Tourism Industry

Digital transformation is reshaping jobs and customer relations in the tourism industry. Technologies such as machine learning, which can predict how many hotel reservations will be canceled, and Wi-Fi analytics, which monitors user behavior, are revolutionizing our understanding of business management. In addition, apps and bots have emerged as new tools for increasing customer loyalty. In this mobile environment, disruptive companies like Airbnb or Uber have created communities of users where customers double as owners and managers. New companies must adopt a resilient attitude and expand their scope, cultivating connections and empowering users in order to create exponential growth.

Not all innovation is technological. Although digital transformation has reached the tourism industry in earnest and is gradually changing jobs and customer relations, it is important to understand that technology is not an end, but a means, and that tourism is an individual experience, often shared on- and offline.

Not all innovations are specifically sought; sometimes they arise in response to a problem or need. Sixty years ago, the manager of a busy hotel realized it was time for breakfast and none of the staff responsible for serving it had come to work. He decided to place a long table in the hall and lay out everything the guests needed to serve themselves; hence, the breakfast buffet was born. It may not have been a technological solution, but it was certainly an innovation.

In short, to be innovative, an action must mark a milestone, such as:

• Opening a new market.
• Creating a new product.
• Modifying an existing product.
• Improving a production method.
• Finding a new source of supply.
• Creating a new form of organization.

Technology: Transforming Jobs and Relations

We live in a time of transformation, a time of change in which many questions that once had simple answers have become difficult, even as other questions are arising for the first time. One question that is no longer simple is that of occupation. Myriad new positions have emerged in response to new jobs and ways of working: CMO, CEO, COO, CFO, etc. Soon we will have space debris managers, virtual habitat designers, biohackers, and even designers of human parts for 3D printing.

At a time when robotics and artificial intelligence are posing new challenges, it is also worth asking how many of the jobs today considered normal and necessary are likely to be automated or replaced by new technologies .

Not all innovations are specifically sought; sometimes they arise in response to a problem or need.

In the world of tourism, one issue that has been simplified is travelling itself. The sharing economy has given rise to platforms such as BlaBlaCar, which has undergone exponential growth in services, profits, and number of users. In this context, we need to consider how humans are evolving in the context of a society deeply impacted by technology and, at the same time, how we, the business world, and, consequently, markets all work.

One key to understanding this whole change is that technology permeates the reasoning and experiential part of the brain much more powerfully and markedly in the new generations. In the current era of digital evolution, generations understand their environment and the tourism experience differently: some people live in the moment, interacting with all five senses at an individual level, others share it with their close friends and family, and still others do all that and also share it on social media in real time.

This reality is increasingly present. Our thinking may be linear, but technology and the incorporation of these habits by younger generations are exponential. In a linear approach, if you take one step, you advance one yard; if you take two, you advance two yards; and so on successively until you have taken fifty steps and advanced fifty yards. Technology, on the other hand, presents us with a different reality: like Moore’s Law, it works exponentially. Thus, if you take one step, you advance one yard; if you take two steps, you advance two yards; but if you take a third step, you will travel twice the distance as in the previous step, that is, four yards. And so it goes: four steps, eight yards, etc. This exponential progress is clearly reflected in the time it has taken users to adopt different technologies (see Chart 1).

Machine Learning

Machine learning offers a new way of understanding business management. The huge data and information repository we have today, i.e., big data, allows us to intelligently predict what will happen tomorrow and to access that information. In other words, in addition to information based on the forecasts of our hotel or business’s computer system, we can access reliable information on what will happen in the future, the number of reservations that will be cancelled, the number of no shows we can expect, and other variables that will help us adequately meet our human resource needs, streamline management, and deliver a better service. It is a technology -based work methodology that uses past information to predict future events.

For the tourism industry, big data can be very interesting from a macro perspective, but it is less so at the micro level. While the macro approach can provide massive amounts of information with regard to aspects such as tourist flows, ultimately, we are talking about individual companies, which need functional information to help them make business decisions. Machine learning takes the massive information available today, polishes it, and uses it to predict the future and meet the company’s objectives. In the case of hotels, data are extracted from three sources: the property management system or PMS (hotel management software including a record of the last years of business), big data, and manual inputs, i.e., the data the receptionist, manager, or sales associate directly includes as key.

Machine learning takes the massive information available today, polishes it, and uses it to predict the future and meet the company’s objectives.

Wi-Fi Analytics and Geolocation Technology

Another factor that will undoubtedly have one of the largest impacts on the tourism experience is the rise of the Internet of Things and the digitalization of places.

The driving force behind this reality is currently smartphones. We have reached a point where, before leaving home, we check to make sure we have three things: our wallet, our house keys, and our phone. This shift in habits has opened up an interesting field of work in technology and innovation , giving rise to solutions such as positioning beacons and beacons that can be used to identify mobile phones and, thus, their owners with a certain ease. The next step is to use mobile apps to contact users at given points, thereby generating an interaction with a place, hotel, leisure area, city, museum, etc.

Thus, it is possible to determine how much time a customer will have to wait to be served or how many have left because of the wait. This information can then be used to reorganize and streamline management, increasing the return and improving the service. It will likewise be possible to monitor production processes in order to organize and distribute tasks more efficiently based on need. For instance, it will be possible to monitor a hotel cleaning process, so that it can be analyzed with the same precision as a factory production line, determining the actual cleaning times, flows, paths, and waste of the process, as you would with the Lean Management method.

Apps vs. Bots

In the current mobile environment, virtually all businesses seek to have their own app. Consequently, users often download apps only to delete them one or two days later. In light of this reality, it is important to consider why users should download a hotel’s app if they are only going to stay for a few nights. To make it worth their while, hotels should focus on value, seeking additional services that encourage guests to download their app and use it with some frequency, so as to establish a bond with the guest and generate a new way to increase guest loyalty.

However, in today’s fast-paced world, game changers can happen overnight, as when Facebook opened its Messenger platform to chatbots. Because such a large percentage of people have the Facebook app on their phone, the social network’s decision prompted many companies to develop intelligent information systems to deliver information to customers through these bots, allowing them to cover some of the services provided by many standalone apps developed especially for customers with considerably more agility. These chatbots, which imitate human behavior , are also more likely to be used because they work with the Facebook app, which customers already check daily.

Of course, whether to use a system based on an app or a bot depends on the type of business, the service being provided, and the type of customer a company is seeking to serve. Above all, it depends on the type of people who will be overseeing the activity of these types of applications. This, in turn, gives rise to new professions, new tasks and activities that will give rise to new jobs (see Chart 2).

As a result of these realities, not only are products changing and improving, but markets and organizations are changing too. The mobile start-up generation is seeing exponential growth in users and revenue. The next step is the Internet of Things, which will surely usher in a disruptive change in how companies grow and develop. The Pentagrowth Report, by Ideas for Change, identified five laws of growth for these new companies:

• Connect: with people, situations, and things.
• Collect: the smaller the effort an organization has to make to build its available inventory, the bigger its growth potential.
• Empower: integrate users into the company’s business processes.
• Enable: develop tools that others can use in the company’s environment to create overall value.
• Share: to create a community loyal to the resource created by the company.

The next step is the Internet of Things, which will surely usher in a disruptive change in how companies grow and develop.

Companies grow in relation to these laws based on what might be called the generative principles of exponential growth : Reach, Interaction, and Resilience.

The Reach principle correlates the Share and Connect levers with user growth rates. The organization’s potential reach depends on the number of people, situations, and things connected through the networks on which it operates and the number of value units that users can freely share with others.

The Interaction principle is the result of the correlation between the Collect and Empower levers, i.e., the number of value units included in the inventory and the number of roles that users can play.

Finally, an organization’s Resilience depends on the number of business partners that have developed their commercial offerings and lifestyles based on its standards and market and the number of people who feel a sense of shared ownership of its open resources.

When we analyze these levers and principles in relation to some of the most disruptive companies in the tourism industry, such as Airbnb or Uber, we find that they owe their initial edge to their community, their exponential growth in terms of connected users. These users establish different roles by incorporating their own assets, such as their apartment or car, into the company’s centralized and intermediated offering. Thus, in addition to being users, they become sales associates, service managers, and influencers, all based on an enormous network undergoing exponential growth driven by user feedback.

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Information Technology & Tourism

Information Technology & Tourism  is the first interdisciplinary journal focusing on the nature and role of digital technology in tourism, travel and hospitality.

• Addresses issues emerging from the intersections between IT and the field of tourism, travel and hospitality.
• Embraces both technical and social science perspectives.
• Topics include, but are not limited to, development, adoption and use, management and governance of digital technology.
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• Luisa Mich,
• Zheng Xiang

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Volume 26, Issue 1

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Simulation of recommender systems driven tourism promotion campaigns.

• Greta Piliponyte
• David Massimo
• Francesco Ricci

Investigating the impact of autonomy on presence: a comparative analysis on sense of presence and telepresence

“Technology Application in Tourism Fairs, Festivals and Events in Asia”

• M. Silahul Mu’min

Quantifying differences between UGC and DMO’s image content on Instagram using deep learning

• Ángel Díaz-Pacheco
• Rafael Guerrero-Rodríguez
• Ramón Aranda

Does algorithmic filtering lead to filter bubbles in online tourist information searches?

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• Andrew J. Mowen

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