Travel and Hospitality - Trends, Challenges and use of IT Services

Travel and Hospitality - Trends & Challenges

Supply, meet and Demand

Travel and tourism make up 9% of global GDP and the industry is the world’s largest employer, responsible for one in 11 jobs.  Within the next decade, it is anticipated that this industry will create an additional 75 million jobs. The tourist population has doubled in the past 20 years and is expected to double again over the next 20. (Source- Forbes.com)

Customer demands are changing

Mobile travel services will continue to be a hot platform, as will social media, digital innovation and analytics tools in a bid to engage customers and build loyalty. By using the information captured by these tools, differentiated experiences are created, which motivate customers to visit more frequently, stay longer and spend more.

Technology Driven Self-Sufficient Travelers

Innovative technologies on a mobile platform will be expected as more individuals rely on digital concierge services. Mobile check-in and seamless connectivity across platforms and devices is now expected.  Not only do they do their research via mobile, they want to book while mobile, too.

Use of social media

The use of social media has become a prevailing part in how customers shop for their hotels.  Customers are checking out many websites before clicking the "buy" button.  They tend to follow the advice of their favorite bloggers and/or friends through vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp to form their opinions before they make their purchase decisions.

Offering a personalized service

One of the biggest challenges is identifying customer segments for addressing individual needs and optimizing the customer experience. Segmenting customers based on their needs, behavior, preferences and demography ensures deeper insight into your customer base.

Increasing customer expectations

As customers invest a large sum of money while travelling, any factor that can negatively impact their experience reflects poorly on the company and their customer support. A key challenge is to deal with customer complaints promptly and efficiently before they escalate the issue and post their complaints online.

Business Needs

Some of the business needs of our existing Travel and Hospitality Customers include the following:

§  Expanding globally while managing costs, optimizing and standardizing processes

§  Creating an agile IT architecture capable of seamlessly integrating merged or acquired entities

§  Increasingly complex customer acquisition and interaction lifecycle

§  Improved speed-to-market and management of an ever-increasing portfolio of products and services

§  Leveraging technology to innovate business models and improving competitiveness

§  Using Technology (social media, business intelligence, mobility) to increase business revenues.

§  Meeting ever increasing customer demands by providing proper customer support service.

§  Maintain Customer Loyalty

§  Modernizing Legacy Applications

Looking at the customer needs, We have formed our own practice in Retail domain. We help companies in the Travel and Hospitality industries better align their IT strategy and initiatives to their business goals and leverage technology to comprehensively, innovatively and cost-effectively address their most pressing business needs.