How will the Travel Portal Development Company Turn the Industry into Digital in 2018?

A few years ago, IBM brought a revolutionary change in the travel industry with their voice search assistant. It was Watson-enabled robot concierge or “Connie”. But, market experts predict that 2018 will see the integration of more and more travel apps and hardware with voice and natural language search into the user interface of the travel portal solutions. This increase, no doubt will be sparked by the extraordinary success of the Amazon Alexa.

 

The advanced technology will enable the customers to talk directly to their digital assistants via smartphone, Alexa or other devices. They can also ask the assistants to provide the booking details, search for a hotel or book tickets immediately. The use of voice search is hugely different in the several corners of the world. As per a report, only 33% of the consumers in the United Kingdom has adopted voice search while 72% consumers in China preferred voice search. Significantly, the number of consumers using voice assistants has been doubled (almost 60%) in the last 2 years. This trend of the travel industry makes the travel development companies consider voice search more than other technologies.

Let’s have a look at certain platforms that will be targeted by the best travel portal development companies in the year 2018:

Artificial Intelligence Based Travel Platforms

With the advancement of technology, the expectations of the consumers are changing rapidly as well. Today, most of the consumers want to interact with their favorable brands through the channels like instant messaging, social media etc. People now are reluctant to open a different app every time whenever they need to travel related services. The change in the consumers’ behavior is boosted by the leaps in the perfection and affordability of artificial intelligence or AI. It indicates that there is a surge of data and advanced machine learning, able to offer a personalization and effective services.

The dependency of the travel portals on the AI technology will blur the division between a travel portal development company and the travel firms because these firms nowadays are heading towards AI-driven data and analytics to analyze the customer searches and provide results based on the supply and demand. Most of the advanced platforms are powered by built-in intelligence and learning. Therefore, the travel providers are more likely to be able to know more about the prospective customers and their requirements to work on these demands.

Mixed Reality Travel Experience

Virtual Reality or VR got a mixed response throughout 2017. Instead of VR, people tend to prefer MR or Mixed Reality, a blend of VR and AR (augmented reality). According to the market pundits, the travel industry is one of the industries which are going to be greatly influenced by MR in 2018. This technology will help the travel portal solutions offer immersive and interactive digital experience of the travel destination.

These days, the travel farms have begun to offer immersive experiences of the destination to make the customers feel and experience the trip in advance. Companies such as AIRBNB utilize AR technology to enable the consumers to experience their accommodation even before their arrival.

Blockchain

The blockchain is another platform that is going to create a history in the travel industry this year. Many travel portal development companies are inclined towards bitcoin and other forms of payment. Blockchain can successfully transform the ways of dealing with online payment processes and management. It encourages direct peer to peer payments. It also favors direct interaction between two more than two parties to regulate a decentralized sharing economy.

A Final Takeaway

These trends are going to rule the travel industry in this year. If you want to be one step ahead of your competitors, you should always ask your travel portal development company to implement these technologies as soon as possible to generate more revenues and encourage appreciations.