The democratization and ubiquity of data will continue at its
whiplash pace, altering the way travel is bought and sold in the
future.
And that means the travel agent of the new century must
successfully harness and manipulate this whirlwind of information
in order to thrive, according to a sampling of industry technology
providers.
But, curiously, as up-to-the-nanosecond travel data become
increasingly available to the masses, many technologists see agents
reverting to their original role as paid experts.
In other words, the agent of tomorrow will be a specialized
knowledge worker rather than a reservationist, said Bill McFarlane,
president and chief executive officer of London-based Travelstore.com.
"The travel agency has its roots in Mr. [Thomas] Cook and in
providing information that people couldn't get themselves,"
McFarlane said. "Tomorrow's travel agents will deliver specialized
services and will be used mostly by travelers willing to pay for
their knowledge, much like the earliest agents."
While McFarlane, like others, said he believes robotic software
programs, or bots, will handle travel booking, humans will still be
very much a part of the transaction.
Jeff Hoffman, president of the e-commerce division at Stamford,
Conn.-based Priceline.com, agreed, noting that expertise gained by
personal relationships in the industry and years of experience will
represent the true value of the agent.
"Customers will want to tap into their agent's brain, not their
library or bookshelves, and the reservations process will slowly
disappear from the agents' desktop," he said.
Volume and velocity
Key to the evolution of the travel market is the fact that data,
already available in overload abundance, will be everywhere -- and
will have to be managed.
By the year 2001, IBM predicts there will be 48 million non-PC,
Internet-connected devices that will be used to transact 50% of
sales via the Internet, according to Claude Guay, a global
executive of marketing and business development for IBM's travel
and transportation division based in Montreal.
In this world of "pervasive computing," as IBM calls it,
everyone will be networked via the Internet using devices like
smart phones, hand-held computers such as the wildly
successful Palm Pilot, PCs, interactive television, in-car
computers and various household appliances.
This vast network of data will hum across the Internet at
volumes and velocity so great that consumers will be forced to rely
on sophisticated software to manage the flow.
And that means human intervention in the transaction processing
of information will become largely superfluous, said Richard
Eastman, president of the Eastman Group in Newport Beach,
Calif.
"Humans will do the thinking and the planning, serving a niche
or the special interests of specific customers, and the computer
and the networks to which they are linked will do the transaction
processing," he said.
He said he believes there will be an ever-growing opportunity
for agencies that can assimilate, customize and deliver data in a
meaningful way to serve the needs of the travel buyer.
"The technology platform will have little to do with travel
within five years," Eastman predicted. "Rather, it will be about
how the agent uses the information that is available to him or
her."
Free agents
Because travel data will be freely and abundantly available to
the masses, manipulation of that information will be of paramount
importance to travel agencies.
Many observers believe travel agents will become sort of
free-agent assemblers of wholesale travel products that they will
sell according to market value.
They will act as intermediaries, as they do today, but will deal
directly -- and digitally -- with travel suppliers, said Antoine
Toffa, formerly chief executive officer of the Denver-based on-line
agency Trip.com and most recently cofounder of TamTam.com, a Web
business designed to foster international trade.
Agents will soon start snapping up unsold inventory such as
airline seats and empty hotel rooms, package and mark them up, then
sell them via a Web site "on a dime's notice," said Rock Blanco,
Medford, Mass.-based vice president, e-solutions at Cornerstone
information Systems.
"They will be able to focus on a niche and buy certain products
at a discount rate, package it and give customers the service," he
said. "They'll also provide the value-add with other things, such
as special touches like securing seats for clients at a Yankees
game."
To alert clients of these last-minute bargains and special
packages, retailers will need to employ automated e-mail or pager
messaging, he said.
As agencies begin to act as packagers of travel, it will become
increasingly imperative that they establish a brand for themselves,
according to Guay of IBM.
"In the digital world, branding is one of the biggest
challenges," he said. "People will be bombarded with volumes and
volumes of information from all types of devices, but they'll be
able to filter that data."
And that means retailers will need a strong brand to make it
through the filters and grab the attention of the buyer, he
said.
Guay cited Amazon.com as an example of the importance -- and
success -- of branding. "People have a lot of confidence in its
services," he said.
"If Amazon.com can gain the same confidence in travel, it could
easily invade the travel space."
He noted that Amazon.com already is accumulating massive amounts
of information about its customers' purchasing preferences -- data
that it will likely use in future marketing initiatives.
For instance, if you buy a lot of books about New Orleans from
Amazon.com, the on-line giant could take note of this pattern and
send you alerts on last-minute special deals to the Crescent
City.
Smart agencies will follow suit, aggregating, analyzing and
making use of knowledge from customers' past purchases to market
travel, McFarlane said.
Better bots
While merchants busily assemble databases on customers,
travelers will start to use robotic software to sort through the
oceans of data that surge into their inboxes.
This software will ferret out the best deals and suggest the
best possible purchases. Such software is available today but only
in a very rudimentary form.
In the future, more sophisticated bots will track a traveler's
purchasing history and preferences, apply that knowledge to his or
her electronic calendar and leisure habits, then submit bids for
travel purchases to CRSs, wholesalers and others.
In other words, bots will know the traveler and his or her
travel patterns, and they will even anticipate the traveler's needs
based on the time of year.
"They will actually propose a smart itinerary, one that you [the
traveler] didn't choose, by linking to the calendar on your
computer and build itineraries from that," Toffa said.
These bots will base their actions on personal "decision rules,"
he said.
"One rule could be that you like baseball, so whenever you book
travel to New York, the robot would check on the availability of
New York Yankees baseball games and tickets," Toffa said. "Another
rule could be that you require a nonsmoking environment that
applies to all air, car and hotel travel purchases.
"The bot would go out on the Net and search in real time or when
you're asleep to constantly to find good deals."
This level of intelligence will require massive computation
capabilities, however.
"It will be five to 10 years before this sort of artificial
intelligence is possible on a small appliance" like a Palm Pilot,
Toffa said.
CRS collapse?
These fundamental changes in the pervasiveness and management of
data pack huge implications for CRSs.
Some, including IBM's Guay, believe the CRSs will begin to help
travel agents undertake tasks such as mining client data and
distributing multimedia video that promotes travel
destinations.
Others see a rockier road -- and even total demise -- for CRSs.
Only those quick to adapt will survive, Eastman said, adding that
CRSs must begin to remake themselves within the next three
years.
"The CRSs have an installed contract base that will continue to
generate sizable revenue, but I estimate that the shelf life of the
collective whole of those contracts is about two and a half years,"
Eastman said.
"That's enough time to start the remake process, if [CRSs] opt
to do that."
Sabre, he said, seems to be furthest ahead, and Galileo is "the
last to wake up" with its appointment last year of David Near to
head its Internet strategy direction.
Nonetheless, the cast of players is likely to dwindle in the
future.
"I personally expect that at least two CRSs will be absorbed by
some other business entity within the next five years -- maybe
three," Eastman said.
Blanco was more blunt: "The death of the CRS is as certain as
death and taxes. And in just a matter of time, you won't need ARC
either, because it's just a transaction-clearing mechanism."