Presaging The Future Of Travel

By Timothy O'neil-Dunne / May 02, 1999

Presaging The Future Of Travel

By Timothy O'Neil-Dunne

<hr>After a career that included nine years at Worldspan and three at Microsoft, Timothy O'Neil-Dunne is now principal consultant at T2N International Ltd. on the Isle of Man.<hr>

Today, there is a global shortage of supply, especially of airline seats. Desperate for share, the new airline entrants into travel distribution willingly surrendered adequate compensation for the nirvana of scale. However they have failed to wrest market power from the supply side. In fact, the opposite has occurred. At the same time, the airlines are not taking their savings and reinvesting them in long-term advances. Distribution channels are now fragmented permanently and cross-channel conflict has become a feature of the environment.

So this is the background for the future of travel. What will evolve from this situation?

<CENTER>Access And Client Devices</CENTER>

Wireless technologies will finally become standardized and integrated in smart devices. Smart Pocket Devices (SPDs) will become an extension of your credit card. They will engage you in your request before connecting to the network, speeding you through the layers (and process) of interaction. You will book online or at a public kiosk and your smart credit card will load on your airline ticket. The SPD will also include an encrypted network certified device.

For turn-up-and-go services such as railways, you can book and ticket at the station or at home, or from your bank ATM machine. Intelligent automatic information syncing will occur in the background, providing communication between your SPD and your full-blown PC, without user intervention.

<CENTER>Speech Recognition </CENTER>

Neural network research will finally pay off when combined with Continuous Speech Voice Recognition. It will finally enable fuzzy statements to be comprehended and consumers to be serviced equally well by systems as by humans. CSVR will finally arm the mobile consumer (a.k.a. everyone) with the tools to initiate bookings, as well as make changes on the fly, away from the shackles of dedicated terminals or human beings.

<CENTER>Personal Agents</CENTER>

One technology will be driven in direct correlation to supplier dominance. Consider the tools a consumer has today to find the lowest fare actually out there. I predict that smart client engines, "personal agents," will seek out information for you. This is a nightmare scenario for a supplier oligopoly that dominates a particular market. Imagine the effect of presenting consolidated information--who has the lowest fare, what has been paid on average for that route and which fares are the best for you--and also telling you that leaving on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday morning saves you $200. Perfect information is already available. It is only a matter of time before someone figures out how to harness it effectively.

Multimodal travel will emerge in new self-packaging technology. Packaging will not be constrained to traditional travel products. Restaurants, taxis and event ticketing will all form part of the new personal itinerary used by a consumer. Updating will occur in real time.

<CENTER>Business Travel To Decrease</CENTER>

Videoconferencing will become popular as a replacement for expensive business trips. People will travel less for business, and the front cabins will price themselves out of the market. Differentiation will be--gasp--based on price and service but meaningful and measurable in relation to the value of the trip taken. Wild swings in activity will become the norm as perfect information pervades the marketplace. There will be a commodity market for airline seats; you will be able to bid for about 20 percent of all inventory.

<CENTER>The Downside</CENTER>

The most significant bad news will be our failure to develop a "safety net." Thus, we will be constantly susceptible to Net storms and blackouts. The lack of a safety net will become the #1 problem facing IT after the Year 2000.

<CENTER>Conclusion </CENTER>

We will learn to adapt to the challenges ahead. There is now a great opportunity to harness cross-channel conflict, rather than exploit it. Hybridization--planning, purchasing and fulfilling--will occur over multiple concurrent channels.

The world in five years will be distinguished by a move away from explicit information activity to implied assistance. Travel will become a background activity in corporations. Ultimately the consumer will reassert his rights and woe betide the supplier or intermediary who believes they control their market.

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