Salman Syed is vice president travel solutions for the EMEA region at Sabre
If there is any silver lining to Covid-19, it's that it has provided all industries with a unique opportunity to reassess how they operate and focus on what is required to ensure customers trust their businesses and services.
The pandemic completely changed the way in which organisations work, creating a landscape that encouraged digital transformation and innovation, and highlighting that being able to rely 100 per cent on technology for efficiency, stability and reach enables us to free up more valuable time to do what really matters: make sure our customers are happy.
Looking ahead, I believe that travel will continue to be a growth industry in the long term, and we are certain that there is pent-up demand for travel after the restrictions of the past year. As travellers gain confidence through the safety procedures put in place by the industry, we expect they will return to travelling. And we expect further increases in traveller confidence to come from widespread vaccination and testing.
We are therefore at a pivotal moment for the travel industry. Travel companies are acting fast to secure their recovery and need to stay agile as the global situation develops, while making long-term investments in robust technology that supports future growth.
As such, a trend we are seeing fast-emerging among agencies in the OTA and bricks and mortar space is the streamlining of their GDS relationships.
Rather than focusing purely on reach, agencies are choosing to invest in technology that can future-proof them long-term – they see looking beyond the recovery as crucial, to gain an edge in the “new world”.
Added to this, increasing complexity in the industry – particularly as a result of Covid-19 – means that budgets need to be managed more efficiently, so consolidating and investing in the right technology is crucial.
The world we now operate in is highly digitalised with rapidly evolving consumer expectations. This has only become more pronounced with the accelerated technological transformation that has occurred over the past year.
Further to this, the demand for personalisation has increased, as consumers have become accustomed to the tailored offering seen in areas such as remote working and e-commerce, which have been used increasingly in a Covid world. Users are looking for an Amazon- or Netflix-like service, an experience where the platform recognises the user and then delivers a customised, transparent, trustworthy, seamless, more functional or enjoyable experience as a result.
The message from the agency community in response to this is consistent. They are looking to secure a competitive edge and so recognise that they must immediately invest in technology that creates this highly intelligent and tailored shopping experience in order to meet the expectations of consumers and tap into recovery growth.
Bricks and mortar agencies in particular need to be laser-focused on optimising conversions and performance. Their technology now, more than ever, requires the ability of scalable, end-to-end, open-platform developments.
To meet these needs, technology partners today should offer travel agencies the freedom to create their own platform and build applications that connect to the GDS agency desktop, going beyond the previous concept of the GDS.
GDSs should support open-platform development, enabling travel agencies to create a bridge to external applications, eliminating many manual processes and empowering TMCs to handle future complexity in a multi-source world.
Like other companies, we have been taking advantage of the lower volume environment created by the pandemic as an opportunity to test, learn and potentially accelerate progress on several fronts, including artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.
There is no doubt that 2020 was game-changing. It presented the greatest challenge ever faced in the travel industry, but I am certain that our resilient industry will rebound. Technology will play a major role in facilitating recovery, ushering in a new era of personalised travel that will present more opportunities for businesses and a better experience for travellers. We believe that the new tools and initiatives that have been introduced as a result of the pandemic will reshape travel in the years and decades to come.