What’s Ahead for Travel in 2019? Tech and Much More (VIDEO)
Did you know the average adult (age 16 and up) looks at their mobile phone every 12 to 13 minutes? 78% say they can’t without their phone. No joke. These are some of the statistics shared in the recently released TRAVELPORT DIGITAL TRAVEL REPORT.
I poured through all 40 pages of the report recently and found quite a few interesting trends ahead for 2019. In my video below, you’ll hear the highlights of the report, and some thoughts behind what’s changing and why.
Some of the highlights:
This year digital travel sales worldwide will increase 10.4% to $694.41 billion! Billion with a B!
When it comes to travel, 64% of travelers would be willing to use an app to track their bags in real time on their next flight (yes, please!). Imagine being able to follow the bag from your phone–seeing it making it to the tarmac, being loaded on the plane, off the plane, then to the baggage carousel when you land! It’s possible.
When it comes to online searches for information, including that for travel, 50% of searches will be via voice by 2020, and 6.6% of web searches are now done on Amazon and YouTube combined.
And not just that, the future of search will be about pictures rather than keywords. Think about the easyJet app and Look&Book, already in play. The app detects the location of the photo and performs a geo- lookup to find the destination and its nearest airports and suggests flights for the user to book–the search happens with no context, keywords or additional information needed. According to the report, since it launched in October 2018, Look&Book has matched approximately 10,000 photos to destinations on the easyJet app and is running at a 5.3% conversion rate in its first two months.
There’s a lot more information to share. Just watch the video above and brace yourself for some big changes in the next year or so!
[hana-code-insert name=’tttt 121818′ /]
