fse

Hi Rave Endran, thanks for taking the time to read the
report and to engage in the discussion about future technologies in travel. We believe we can only make robust assessments of what the future might look like if travellers are involved in our research process. For this study the methodology used by the Futures Company (our research partner) involved gaining the views of over fourteen hundred travellers from 7 major markets around the world and also involved futures modeling of social trends. It’s this traveller-centric approach to the research process that ensures the technologies highlighted are aligned to changing traveller needs. After all, travel providers and sellers are keen to understand their customers, the business or leisure traveller – and
that’s how we are trying to add value with this type of study. The report’s findings completely agree that the traveller to traveller collaboration you mention will be fundamental to the future travel experience and I would direct you to the ‘Next generation of experience’ and ‘Intelligent recommendation’ sections of the report in particular. In regard to the specific platform you
mention, I’m afraid we didn’t have the scope with this report to include every technology that will be important to the future of travel and we wouldn’t want to comment on a specific company or case. Thanks again for engaging with the ideas and providing your perspective.

The new horizons on the travel technology front, portrayed by the report are indeed exciting. It is also gratifying that the report discusses at length with the collaboration that will “reshape travel in the next decade and beyond” and the “potential to significantly improve the travel experience for the traveller – reducing the stress of travel and making the experience more fulfilling”. But we are constrained to point out that the report disappoints by conspicuously skirting the technological possibilities of collaborative action between and among the travelers. Amadeus seems to have an overarching excitement about the new era of collaborative travel that will herald greater opportunities for travel providers and sellers. What about the actual travellers? Understandably, Amadeus is excited to work together with travel providers and sellers to support the development of a travel industry. While the report acknowledges that the travel industry is intrinsically focused on the traveller, there seems to be a great degree of stress on benefit of everyone. Apparently, in the order of priorities the traveller is seem to get a raw deal in the Amedeus scheme of future technology.The reference to collaborative eco system (versus the one-to-one transactional relationship that predominate today) did raise expectations especially as the report refers to collaborative action between peer groups, the internet and experts, brought together by technology, it stops short of discussing the possibility of airline passengers coming together through means of the same technology to collaborate and be able to enjoy better travel experience in terms of not only comfort and ease of organizing their travel, but also in terms of more favourable economic terms.If the future travel technology is of great potential to travel providers and sellers, the future technology also belongs to the traveling public at large, who will be able to use the emerging technology platforms to collaborate and as  a leading player in providing travel solutions, it is also the duty of Amadeus to service this requirement. It’s not just duty, but a great opportunity for Amadeus.In this context, we would like to cite the efforts of Skylogue (http://skylogue.com) in forming the first collaborative platform of airline passengers, which is getting active in the Middle East (as it is a highly expatriate dominated travel market, with millions of low-paid immigrant workers unable to make it to their homes on holiday as air travel is beyond their means, but air travel is unfortunately their only option for travel). Skylogue seeks to bring airline passengers together, using social media networking, and then act with a united voice to demand more favourable terms. The idea of skylogue is that the individual passengers who become members of the community can log their travel requirements on skylogue’s technology platform and the system can pool these requirements together to create bulk booking orders so that these can be taken to various airlines for the best bargains.The idea evoked spontaneous response from all segments of the travel industry including airlines (because bulk bookings help them) and communities (because it benefits their members), but technological barriers are proving to retard the idea’s progress.We at skylogue have been scouting around for an appropriate solution that can make this happen, but we haven’t found any success so far. The closest that we have come across to the requirement is a reverse auction program, which nevertheless meets only a limited part of the requirement.So when we found that Amadeus has produced a report on the future travel technologies, we were very excited to see if there was any reference to some kind of a solution that would address this issue, but were soon disappointed to find that Amadeus has somewhat limited its vision, but not considering the possibilities of the travellers themselves coming together, just as it wags eloquent about the technologies possibilities for travel providers and sellers.No offense whatsoever to Amedus or any other providers of travel solutions; but the point raised here relates to a great opportunity that lies ahead, for all segments of the travel industry, including the most important segment of passengers, along with providers and sellers, currently the toast of the travel servicing industry.

Hi Ron,
Thanks for engaging with the Chaos to Collaboration study and for your kind comments about the report offering a vision of the future, it’s definitely a first step in that direction and through dialogue with the industry and travellers we will move a step further forward. As with any other area of life and business there are some barriers to a technology-centric future for travel and it’s our hope that by increasing debate and collaboration we can overcome many of them. Many of IATA’s programmes are geared towards upgrading the airline industry’s processes through new technology and have already given us great innovations such as e-Ticketing, Common Use Self Service Equipment which speeds up check-in at airports and there are working groups looking at how standards for NFC (referenced in the report) can help the industry. We enjoyed looking
over your slides on collaboration, there certainly is some way to go!
Thanks again, Amadeus team

this  report is quite interesting and  i need to visit one of the touristic attractions one of these fine days

Glad you enjoyed it.

[...] Read the rest of the article. [...]

[...] ne peux que conseiller la lecture de l'excellente étude d'Amadeus, From chaos to collaboration – insight into the future of travel.  Les technologies auront de plus en plus pour but de faciliter la vie du voyageur et de le [...]

[...] parallel, it is worth noting that another recently-launched corporate Amadeus study explores, amongst other issues, how to deliver a more seamless door-to-door experience for the [...]