The Three Trends of Travel Industry on Web
These are my personal thoughts on the growth of the travel industry(until 2022). This article has a lot of my personal opinion.
Travel SaaS
There are more business applications and APIs available compared to previous years.
APIs in Travel
One easiest thing everyone knows is now almost every travel-related app or website has Google Maps embedded.
When thinking about traveling, navigation is the thing you can not skip. For the actual Maps app, you may still have other choices like Apple Maps, etc. But for other use cases, Google Maps API is the one actually dominates the market.
Software for removing friction in Travel
The current airline ticket system is developed maybe 20 years ago, but new challenges are coming.
Let’s use Wi-Fi as one example, how to add the new feature when you book? If you want to buy Wi-Fi via OTAs(Expedia as one example), there is currently no way to do it. Also, a similar thing happens to seat selection and other features. There are a couple of startups that are aiming to solve this kind of problem in air travel.
Another example is vacation rental. As it’s becoming a new trend in travel, customers are using vacation rentals. Then on the opposite side, the need for business usage is rocketing. For example, there are a couple of startups aiming to help the owner’s journey on vacation rental management, price, trend models, etc.
Be prepared to see more similar startups aiming to solve the travel industry business needs. We are in a world which is moving more offline interactions to online.
The New Verticals
Flights and hotels are still the oldest and biggest portion of the travel industry.
As the travel concept for tech companies goes bigger and much deeper in the funnel. COVID-19 also accelerates the pace.
Regarding the question of where to stay, now we can see vacation rental is growing so fast compared to traditional hotels.
Uber, Lyft, and car rental are now the top choices for the question about how to get from A to B. When talking about the rental business for travel, it was only about car rental. You pick up the car at the airport, then you will use it for the trip. However, the new platform makes people share a significant portion of the rental business. Now you can rent a personal car for the trip, a personal RV for a car camping trip, or a personal boat for the experience on the river. 10 years back, the user experience is totally different. You had to make a call to these management companies, then rent the car, RV, or boat.
After users are able to solve the problem online about transportation from A to B and where to stay. The nature question users are asking is where to eat, and visit. So the natural product is the restaurants and things to do.
Restaurants are hard to define. Not just travelers need to eat, local people also need to find a place to eat.
Things to do or sometimes it is marketed as a unique experience in travel. Just a couple of years back, if you really want to find some experience when you are traveling, you have to go to these travel forums. There might be reviews or guides written down, so you can follow other people’s travel plans.
But now things are easier, just search for it in the platform, and all your need is coming to you.
Booking to Planning
20 years ago, booking a hotel online may be a very fun thing. See more on the web history: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/mar/12/how-25-years-of-the-web-inspired-travel-revolution
If you can only book flight tickets, hotels, and car rentals online, that feels like a booking system. But now all things are changing, the platform really wants you to finish the whole journey online from exploring to planning to booking.