The two generations immediately behind us clearly believe that the ability to control, perhaps even rule, the travel-planning process of the future will involve not personal interaction but an agility with one's thumbs and a knowledge of mobile apps.
"There's an app for that" is now the literal truth. And while 99.9% of the travel apps that will be available to our clients in 2015 are still unwritten, today's savvy client can already find a universe of travel information and booking tools on the Web. Given the time and inclination, any consumer can research any destination as well as a travel professional.
This is not our parents' playing field. We know that travel searches, along with gambling and pornography, account for the vast majority of moments spent online. But the Web is no longer the endgame. The generations behind us have determined that technology must deliver information and choice in the palm of their hand 24/7. If they want to make a restaurant reservation in Marrakech while taking a bath in a hotel in Manhattan, they expect the information to be available.
Thus, travel sellers find themselves fighting for their professional lives on yet another battlefield. And there are some new applications in the works that could be game changers if we don't see them coming and learn how to harness the technology a nanosecond ahead of our tech-savvy clients. Here are a few emerging technologies that I think we overlook at our peril.
Click on
www.ontouch.com and you will be brought to the site of GuestLogix, a company that has invented a "mobile concierge" platform that will make it possible to pay your baggage fees, make a dinner reservation, reserve a car, purchase in-flight refreshments, book entertainment venues, reserve ground transportation and provide directions to the nearest airport bar. This is all done through a simple, single user interface.
While it sounds like something agency groups could use, this new technology will be sold to airlines that are eager to cut the middleman (that would be us) out of the reservation process and all its ancillary revenue potential.
As I've followed the progress of this particular technology and the way it is being pursued by some major airlines, it appears clear that airlines do not see $5 cheese-and-cracker snacks and outrageous baggage fees as the endgame in terms of ancillary fees.
Airlines also want your hotel reservations, your concierge services and your rental car bookings. And lest you think this is just a remote possibility, remember that airlines have one particularly strong ace up their sleeves. They possess the ability to lower the cost of an airline ticket for any consumer who books other companies' services on the airline's proprietary smartphone application or at its website.
CNET News recently reported that a tech blogger from "Unwired View" had uncovered the fact that Apple has filed a patent application for a "travel booking app" that will offer check-in, requests for in-flight services and arrival notification updates to people waiting at the airport to meet the traveler. The reporter working on this story believes that it will require integration into an airline's own internal reservations system.
But the story does not end there. Apple is said to have applications pending with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for technology that would seem to challenge the need for hotels to retain a concierge desk. The new hush-hush app would likely be linked into a hotel brand's central res system. It would enable a guest to manage most concierge functions before even arriving at the property. These could include pre-check-in, room service orders, pay-per-view TV, in-room movies (some interesting boxes to check on that order form), dinner reservations and ordering tickets to various events.
Just like the airlines, hotels will be told that they can cash in on the ancillary services that were once booked by travel agents. They can control the entire booking process. And also just like the airlines, they have one rather potent piece of ammunition in their arsenal: Their control of the room price provides them with the leverage to derive income from additional services easily deploying the new technology.
What's rather interesting about this secret project of Apple's is speculation regarding just how unique the technology will have to be to qualify for a patent. After all, you can do most of these things at a hotel today using existing software. But what is different, I think, is the acceptance by both the airline and hotel sectors that they must rigorously expand their business model to include, under a single umbrella, services that perform and expand the roles previously played by professional travel agents.
Earlier this year, as you have read in Travel Weekly, the Justice Department allowed Google to go forward with its purchase of ITA Software, the company whose technology powers many well-known travel sites, including Hotwire, Bing, Kayak and American Airlines.
We've been waiting for the size 13 Google shoe to drop, and now it has in the form of Google Flight Search.
Well, guess what? Right out of the box, Google found a way to make airfare searches much faster than they appear to be on any other platform. The level of user-friendliness is superior to that of competitors, something we might expect from Google, and it offers one or two impressive new features. My favorite is a clear listing of the least expensive days to fly your particular route.
What makes Flight Search all the more interesting is that Google does not sell airline tickets. It is set up to refer you to the airline's own site to make the actual booking.
Many in the industry will scoff at my mention of this particular piece of technology as a game changer. After all, you can't book international air or multicity pairs on the site, so few see Google Flight Search as a threat.
But this is Google. They've thought this through. Trust me on that. The technology will grow and improve, and it might take flight before we've even had time to think about it. And what of the online travel agencies? The Google model is designed to do ticketing directly through the airlines, not through travel agencies. You can't purchase your tickets through Expedia, Orbitz or Travelocity.
I'd like to think that in the right hands, new technology is something we ought to embrace. But when I find Google and Apple combining to vaporize our value to our clients by turning airlines and hotels into in-house travel providers, "embrace" is not exactly the word that comes to mind.
Contributing editor Richard Turen owns Churchill and Turen, a vacation-planning firm that has been named to Conde Nast Traveler's list of the World's Top Travel Specialists since the list began. Contact him at rturen@travelweekly.com.