[100 Challenge] DanJi’s reading note_95

The Future of Travel: How Will Millennial Travel Be Different?

Dayoung Kim

Publishing the Window of the Future

2020.04.28

Google is building a system to ensure that all payments, from aviation, hotels, transportation, food, and beverages, are made within Google. This is why the future of OTA is dark.

In Korea, flight tickets and hotel reservations have already exceeded the scope of OTA. Following various online shopping malls, social commerce, and two major portals (Naver and Kakao), Lotte Duty-Free and Shilla Duty-Free entered the overseas travel reservation market in 2020. Travel reservation services are rapidly combining with the existing e-commerce market.

Design Hotels, a global design hotel network, predicted that a new traveler, Promad Promad, will emerge to consider "why and how" you travel rather than "where and what" you want to do. 

Promad is a new word that does not exist in the dictionary, meaning 'radical nomadic progressive nomad.'2 The emergence of traveler Promad, whose sense of responsibility and purpose have been strengthened through the COVID-19 incident, is expected to be faster. 

Online travel services ATA Expedia and Priceline, the two major mountain ranges leading the Online Travel Agency, were established in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Interpark, which led Korea's nascent travel booking market, opened in 1997. All of them are companies that were born and grew with the popularization of the Internet.

The growth of the online travel platform accelerated about a decade later with the advent of smartphones. The number of reservation service companies entering this market exploded as consumers began to book tickets and accommodations themselves, and a meta-search service that compares the prices of these services was also created. Price comparison services such as Skyscanner, Tribago, and Kayak look up the selling price in real-time without having to sign a direct contract with an individual airline or lodging company and organize it at a glance.

Millennials know that what travel information they secure determines the number and quality of trips they can enjoy for the rest of their lives. 

As the stage of comparing the prices of various services has been drastically shortened, an era has begun in which customers are no longer loyal to a single travel service.

In the case of Naver, it launched "Naver Hotel" following "Naver Airlines" and recently launched "Naver Tour," which searches for the lowest prices of guided tours and ticket and pass products.

The emergence of meta-search services has broken the 'balance in price information' and made it possible for anyone to check the lowest price of flights and accommodations quickly. Therefore, this can be cited as the most decisive factor that changed the pattern of travel consumption.

Why is price information so important when it comes to aviation and lodging? This is because, unlike ordinary goods, there is no 'price' for airline tickets and rooms. Air and lodging are unique products in which prices fluctuate sensitively depending on supply and demand. In particular, because demand varies significantly between high and low seasons, prices inevitably rise and fall accordingly, and travel agencies have maximized sales by taking advantage of this characteristic. It is better to use TripCom in China and Hotels Dotcom in the United States.

The service that calculates individual customized air routes and costs, mainly for large airlines, is the most necessary service for travelers who want to design a trip according to their needs and schedules. I think a more professional theme and specific 'curation' are needed to increase the satisfaction of millennials. It means combining and introducing travel information from different themes and perspectives becomes essential. 

In the future, services that make the "remaining time" more and more valuable than the act of travel itself are expected to emerge.

It has moved from buying a schedule to buying an experience that wants to fill a valuable experience rather than traveling according to a set schedule.

Tour and activity reservations have become the most crucial topic in the global travel industry since 2018 as the need for "local experience" and "quality travel experience" has exploded in the overseas market.

Generally, location information is the core of travel information, but Google has Google Maps, the world's most potent location information service. Therefore, combining searches such as ticket prices, hotel room prices, and public transportation prices with maps is possible.

However, from a long-term perspective, it is expected that it will be increasingly difficult to catch users who attempt to pay directly after viewing Google's customized travel information, which provides enormous data.