How Technology Has Transformed The Travel Industry

"Digitalisation has given us a great selection," said Tamara Lohan, co-founder and chief technology officer at the boutique hotel Mr&Mrs Smith. "More people are traveling than ever, and companies like Airbnb encourage younger people to explore earlier, and in a more cost-effective way. Technology has also provided us with more information about where we are going than ever before ". For travel agents, the rise of digital has severely disrupted the industry. “Traditional travel distribution in which high street travel agents played a dominant role has been revolutionized by online travel agents and distributed directly through airlines and hotels’ websites acquiring a key role,” explains Angelo Rossini, contributing analyst at Euromonitor International.

"As part of our multi-channel strategy, Thomas Cook has seen the need to ensure that our customers could seamlessly serve through any channel they wanted - online via mobile devices: tablet, desktop, or offline in-store or over the phone." says its group head of digital operations, Graham Cook. The company has pushed its digital innovations late, even introducing virtual reality experiences on selected stores (Berne, 2016). In line with the new trend of tourism, there is growing demand for special offers tailored specifically to mass tourism, as consumers are eagerly anticipating personalized solutions. In the last decade, digital development has opened the door to the practical realization of common economic theories. Nearly a decade ago, Chris Anderson (2009) introduced his pricing theory of digitization, essentially suggesting free products, based on the principle of commodity and shared resources. Although at the time that Anderson's theory was considered a technological solution, the principle of digital sharing has also caused serious social change.

One of the most important positive messages of the economy is sharing the maximum use of resources for social security purposes. Social well-being is also a top priority in tourism, because a well-managed tourism industry is profitable not only for business operators but also for the local community. In the digital platform business travel strategy, consumers are considered partners in business operations. Although the complex idea of postmodernism is hard to describe, its main characteristic - the collective participation and subjective passion of each contributor - can lead to a better understanding of phenomena.

It is clear that postmodernism will change some of the procedures of the classical market laws in the near future. While "sharing experience" has become an important marketing term for selling goods and services, special incentives certainly lead to market fragmentation, which also leads to fragmentation user. In a fragmented market, consumers will behave differently in time and space fragmented, paving the way for personalized services and the right solutions. At the same time, individualism has become a major feature of younger generations; a phenomenon will have to be taken into account when creating business strategies. Due to the rise of individualism, more and more young people are trying to create something unique that can serve the long-term interests of the community. Their drive for creating businesses based on their own ideas and experience accoutns for the growing popularity of startup businesses. These aspects of uniqueness, community thinking and an experience-based approach keep a great opportunity for the future of the tourism industry and also on tourism websites.