Research firm’s PhoCusWright’s recent Travex trade show made it clear the travel industry is facing what Information Week called “unprecedented change.”
Some examples of trends:
- A growing number of companies are using industry-specific versions of XML as the messaging language behind direct connections with partners but widespread adoption is still a long way off.
- In the ongoing trend towards dynamic packaging, a key consideration continues to be guarantees of opaqueness so that travel consumers can’t see the discounted prices of individual pieces of packages.
- In search tools, what’s needed from a search depends on who’s doing the searching – a panel of travel search providers showed how specialized the field has become.
- Harrah’s model of moving towards an operational CRM model with all intelligence rewarded customers in real time was specifically tailored for the gaming industry, but some observers said it had implications for other hotels and travel companies looking to get a better handle on revenue flow.
Report by David Wilkening
