Showing posts with label travel technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel technology. Show all posts

15 September 2015

2015 PATA Technology Forum, Bangalore

06 September 2015, I had the pleasure of attending the first Pacific Asia Travel Association Technology Forum, at Bangalore International Exhibition Center, in partnership with phocuswright.com and connectingtravel.com. PATA is the travel and tourism industry association for the Asia Pacific region, now headed by artificial intelligence investor Mario Hardy. Phocuswright is the global nexus for technology in travel and tourism. Connecting Travel is a new professional social network initiative for the travel and tourism industry by Travel Weekly. (Both Phocuswright and Travel Weekly are now owned by Northstar Travel Media.)


 The opening speaker was the prominent investor and philanthropist Mohandas Pai, in his role as chairman of the Karnataka Tourism Vision Group. Pai, who is heavily invested in tripfactory.com, provided a 360 degree overview of the skyrocketing digital economy in India, as well as its impacts on travel and tourism, both domestically and internationally. One of the most interesting things he mentioned was the Aadhaar, or Unique Identification Authority of India, basically the world's largest national identification number project, set to biometrically empower millions of people without conventional paper trail or fixed abode.


Tony D'Astolfo, managing director of Phocuswright, introduced this new "Phocuswright Fast Track", by calling it an event within an event. Phocuswright offers recent research on the Indian travel market, and not only maintains a dedicated team in India, but also is planning a full Phocuswright India travel technology conference 21-22 April 2016 near New Delhi, in Gurgaon.


Chetan Kapoor, Phocuswright research analyst for Asia Pacific, put the spotlight on Indian holidays and package travelers, highlighting the evolution of the Indian traveler, and how their shopping and booking habits are transforming traditional holidays and packages.
In the first executive roundtable, titled "Beyond Air - The Next Phase of India's Online Travel Story", Chetan Kapoor presented three of India's new travel and tourism heavyweights:
In terms of traffic, Tripadvisor is consistently within the top 3 travel sites in India, listing more than 30,000 Indian accommodations, with the largest number of reviews. HolidayIQ is a Bangalore-based travel information and review portal, with over 3 million members, listing 2,000 tourism destinations, and more than 50,000 accommodations, in India alone. Cleartrip is one of the top online travel agents in India, attracting more than $70 million in funding.


In the second executive roundtable, titled "Travel Innovation Summit Alumni Spotlight", Tony D'Astolfo introduced three of India's most innovative entrepreneurs to discuss how they are transforming the travel industry, at home and abroad:
Intuitive travel planner Mygola has recently been acquired by MakeMyTrip, one of India’s leading travel companies. TableGrabber, India's first real-time online restaurant reservation system, has recently launched RezGuru, a middle-layer software for restaurants. TripHobo, a travel itinerary-planning portal, recently announced a partnership with Zomato, a leading restaurant discovery platform made in India.


For the executive interview, Tony D’Astolfo did a one-on-one with Ritesh Agarwal, 21 year old founder and CEO of OYO Rooms, India's largest branded network of hotels. Not only is he one of India's youngest CEOs, but also India's most successful college drop-out. Agarwal was the first Indian to receive a $100,000 fellowship grant from Peter Thiel, which he invested in developing OYO Rooms. And mostly recently, he has raised $100 million from Japan’s SoftBank for OYO Rooms. Legend has it that Agarwal started OYO Rooms, which stands for "On Your Own", because his relatives would not let him control the TV remote when he was a child in India. On a personal note, I can say for sure that I am staying in better places in India, and paying less, now than I was a year ago, due to the phenomenal concept that is OYO Rooms.


Following lunch, Connecting Travel organized the "Technology Trends Defining Business Strategy" session, moderated by Tony Tenicela, IBM executive and global leader managing business development. This session focused on how global market players are redefining business models to adapt to the accelerated pace of communication, marketing, and loyalty initiatives. Social media, and virtual networks, figure prominently in creating vertical platforms that are aggregating professionals, consumers, advisers and investors into communities.
Helena Egan, director of industry relations at TripAdvisor, is primarily concerned with building relationships with destination marketing organisations, as well as educating the industry on the benefits user-generated content. Kenny Picken, CEO of Traveltek, a leading provider of travel technology solutions, shared valuable insights of how Traveltek empowers industry stakeholders, rather than by-passing them. Philip Napleton, VP at Open Destinations, providing software for tour operators and wholesalers, emerged as the voice of the younger generation, with his insight into social media and mobile applications. Rika Jean-Francois, head of corporate social responsibility for Internationale Tourismus-Boerse Messe Berlin, was the only person to emphasize the potential of travel technology in developing sustainable tourism. Mike Kistner, CEO of RezNext, a real-time hotel distribution technology company, provided perspectives of the seasoned travel technology professional. Daniela Wagner, Connecting Travel at Travel Weekly, spoke of how their new social network platform can benefit travel professionals.

 References:
Note, YourStory is the largest platform for news, reports and analysis on India's booming startup ecosystem.

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07 December 2013

Taking It On The Road, Travel Technology 2013

I spent much of this year mountaineering in Europe, and re-visiting India after 34 years. Since my father's passing earlier this year, I've been free to travel again. My father was my chief technology influence. People often ask how I got into technology, since my education was in psychology and most of my career was in tourism. It was all due to my father, Lucian J. Endicott Jr.,who worked nearly three decades for IBM, and then became a professor of computer science before retiring altogether.

On this journey I've been watching closely to see what technologies I find most useful. Unlike most of the young people traveling today, I'm not traveling with a phone. I did have an Apple iPod Touch for awhile, which I enjoyed, but passed it on in favor of the new Google Nexus Android tablet. I find phones and tablets great for everything other than real work, like programming. I did buy the most economical, top rated Consumer Reports laptop for students, and have been very happy with it.

A man can only travel with so many devices though; so, the Apple iTouch and Android tablet both went to nieces, and I'm still happily traveling with my affordable laptop. In both Europe and Asia I have found locally available, prepaid "data cards" or "dongles", basically a phone chip on a USB stick, very helpful for freeing myself from dependence on wifi. However, some of the new, higher end phones come with built-in wifi "hotspot" capability, which I've seen quite a few young people using with their laptops. Without a phone per se, Skype has proven super convenient, especially premium Skype to local landlines and SMS, for literally calling from anywhere to anywhere.

I have to say that I use Skyscanner a lot, and feel it's saved me a tremendous amount of money. The only caveat is that some of the smallest new budget airlines are not included. For accommodation, I have tried both Couchsurfing and Airbnb for the first time this trip. I've actually found Couchsurfing more useful for meeting interesting, colorful people at my destinations than for easily organizing free overnights. I have also been surprised by the amount of people running accommodation operations under the radar via Airbnb, rather than truly private persons renting spare rooms, though I've been satisfied with the service.

Problematic as it may be, I do find myself using Wikitravel precisely because it provides less information rather than more. I like Wikitravel because it gives me a really quick overview of the high points, what to see and do, even for out of the way destinations. I sometimes download the entire page for offline reading, when there is no wifi available. I find both its strongest and weakest points are accommodation. Strong because anyone can add to it, so often gets places under the radar, and weak because it's totally unorganized and un-rated. Because of this deficiency, I find myself often referring to TripAdvisor reviews to double check the lower end accommodations.

Another relatively new technology I'm using a lot is Google Maps, of course frequently for directions, but also particularly for the "Search nearby" capability. I find Google Maps Search nearby capability delightful for discovering new places of all kinds, many perhaps never visited by tourists before. Especially in India directions should be taken with a grain of salt, because places usually seem to be "pinned" imprecisely, so caveat emptor. I find screenshots great for capturing Google Maps directions, easily cut and paste with the "prt sc" key for convenient offline reading.

More than ever before, travel for me is more about people than places. These days I love to visit with friends, old and new, at home or abroad. The reality is that people are now using Facebook more for personal communications than email. Facebook even makes it easier for people traveling in the same regions to meet up along the way. Another reality is that places, particularly low end places, are as likely to have Facebook pages as websites, essentially turning Facebook into its own parallel universe – no other Internet required. In fact, I only use Facebook for people, places/pages and events – and no other bells or whistles, such as innumerable travel apps, etc.

It was Facebook (and my nieces) that finally made me break down and get a small camera (Nikon Coolpix) for posting travel snaps as I go along, often the same day. Though that could be the number one use for phones I'm seeing on the road, not only for taking pictures but also for uploading them in virtual realtime….

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