Travellers’ future needs change the travel industry
The travel industry is facing major changes, if it is to serve the travellers of the future. This is the conclusion of a trend report which Amadeus commissioned from future-facing research consultants Henley Centre HeadlightVision. The report, Future Traveller Tribes 2020, is the first of its kind to take account of changes in economics and politics, as well as consumer behaviour and technology.
In 15 years time, consumer behaviour in the travel industry will have changed fundamentally, with technical innovations playing a greater role in travel processes. Against this background, it has been possible to identify four different groups of travellers who will be driving the development of the travel industry, not least in technical terms.
Firstly, we have the global business travellers. They are a type of elite traveller using private jets to shuttle between the leading economies of the future, which will be Brazil, Russia, India and China. Another new group of travellers is active pensioners. These are all rich, healthy, older travellers aged between 50 and 75. They will be travelling the world on cultural trips and holidays to a considerably greater extent than is currently the case. Then we have city commuters who live in one city and work in another which is considerably further away. This distance means that they have to fly to get from home to work and back again. And finally the global relatives will affect the future of the travel industry. As we become more and more likely to have family members living in distant places around the world, there will be considerable traffic generated as relatives fly to visit family.
Technical innovations will be more noticeable in every part of travelling. From booking and check-in to the aircraft and then to baggage reclaim, technology will be responsible for the greatest changes. The phenomenon, called technology humanisation, explains how the technology of the future will be intuitive, predicting and meeting the unique needs of each traveller.
The new technology brought up in the report includes RFID labelling of both travellers and their luggage. The idea is that this barcode technology will simplify check-in and baggage reclaim. What is more, the travellers of the future will purchase their flight tickets from robotic self-service kiosks, and the rigorous security checks will be simplified with the help of new ID documents containing both biometric facts about the individual and information about their travel plans.
If you’d like to read the whole report, download Future Traveller Tribes 2020 here.
