Adapt or perish, your choice!

Different sectors of the tourism chain are adapting technology in innovative ways and the pandemic has only hastened the process. From use of Artificial Intelligence to speeding up the airport experience through faster check-ins and boarding, technology seems to be the way to go. Have you jumped on the wagon yet?

Airline marketing strategy firm

Shashank Nigam, CEO, SimpliFlying

Touchless travel is set to improve passenger experience. Necessity is the mother of invention. Ideally, it would not have taken the tragedy of the pandemic for the industry to embrace touchless technology wholeheartedly, but I’m convinced that the end result will in many ways be better and more seamless all around.

State tourism board

Menino D’souza, Director, Department of Tourism, Goa

Social media is going to be key in gathering data – culling out relevant information, analysing it and coming up with
a response system to be able to respond promptly. Such intelligent systems have to be put in place. AI-based interventions are something we are looking forward to in the coming years.

Corporate

Rajdev Bhattacharya, Global Head Travel & Hospitality Services and Way2Go, Wipro

Technology doesn’t mean that the human touch will completely disappear. The customer is ready now and if you don’t do it now, then when? The time is now. Now is the time to reset your business OTP – Operations, Technology and Process. For many agents, it is their last chance to act.

Academia

Natasha Moorhouse, Research Associate, Manchester Metropolitan University

Virtual reality certainly offers a solution to overcoming several challenges the industry is facing at the moment. It will likely play two pivotal roles: a powerful destination marketing tool to entice people to travel again, and a temporary escape for those who are not yet willing to travel.

Passenger experience company

Aaron Hornlimann, CEO, Elenium Automation

We thought there must be a better way to travel, so we started by building kiosks, bag drops, and boarding gates and trying to make them as quick as possible with the whole idea that somebody checks-in in five seconds, drops off their bag in five seconds, and boards in five seconds.

Airline

Lindsay White, VP, Eastern Region (APAC & ISC), Etihad Airways

We have utilised the past few months to innovate and adapt. We are about to launch self-service check-in and health screening at Abu Dhabi Airport which will read guests’ respiratory system, heart rate and temperature. Thermal cameras have been installed at immigration which will measure their temperature.

Inputs by Hazel Jain