A glimpse of a not too distant travel future was shared by speakers from Sabre and Thomas Cook at the WTM Travel Innovation Summit in association with TTI.
The event, held today at World Travel Market, the leading global event for the travel industry, highlighted how some existing technologies are being experimented with in travel as well as what we might see going forward.
Sabre innovation manager for EMEA Joakim Everstin shared three technologies the company is watching and experimenting with as well as two ‘wild cards.’
From a prototype developed by Sabre Labs harnessing data and advances in location to show travellers progression through airports to a project analysing text around hotel images from Instagram and flight search application for devices such as Google Glass, Everstin demonstrated the rapid pace of change.
His ‘wild cards’ were virtual reality and using the technology to explore real people and places virtually and multi-sensory interactions where the senses such as sound and touch can be combined with data and perhaps used to present information in more user-friendly ways.
John Straw, chair of the Thomas Cook digital advisory group, shared some insight on how the travel company is trying to innovate against the back drop of so much technology disruption.
He too highlighted technologies such as augmented reality and wearables and how they can be integrated to improve the travel retail experience online and offline and increase conversion.
Both speakers concluded that rather than a technology backlash, we would see faster adoption rates especially amongst younger generations and that it was a matter of taking cutting edge technology and creating something useful out of it.
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About World Travel Market
World Travel Market, the leading global event for the travel industry, is the must-attend four-day business-to-business exhibition for the worldwide travel and tourism industry.
More than 50,000 senior travel industry professionals, government ministers and international press, embark on ExCeL – London every November to network, negotiate and discover the latest industry opinion and trends at WTM.
WTM, now in its 35th year, is the event where the travel industry conducts and concludes its deals.
WTM 2013 generated more than £2 billion of travel industry contracts, revealed independent research by Fusion Communications.
WTM is owned by the world’s leading events organiser Reed Exhibitions (RE), which organises a other portfolio’s of travel industry events including IBTM Events, the world’s leading showcases for the meetings and events industry and International Luxury Travel Market events.
In 2013, RE held more than 500 events in 40 countries bringing together more than six million people from around the world generating billions of dollars in business.
Reed Exhibitions
Reed Travel Exhibitions (RTE) is the world’s leading provider of exhibitions in the travel and tourism industry, with a wide-ranging portfolio of 21 international events in 14 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa.
Its market-leading, business-to-business events cover all elements of travel and tourism, including leisure travel, luxury travel, meetings, events, incentives and business travel, as well as golf, ski and spa travel.
RTE is part of Reed Exhibitions.
www.reedtravelexhibitions.com