How to future-proof travel: Global Travel Tech Thinktank Report - WIT - Web In Travel

On October 3, about 40 industry leaders gathered for the first Global Travel Tech Thinktank, held by WiT, Phocuswright and Phocuswire, and hosted by Accor Asia.

The event’s purpose was to brainstorm the way forward for travel under the umbrella theme of “How To Future Proof Travel By Creating More Resilience and Acting Responsibly and Respectfully”.

This is the summary report from the two-hour thinktank. Something worth digging into as we end the year and look forward to rebuilding back, stronger, better and kinder, in 2023 and beyond.

Download the full Global Travel Tech Thinktank report here

If there was one key takeaway from the Thinktank, it was that it cannot be business as usual for the industry. The robust travel recovery being seen across the world, as well as beginning in Asia, cannot be used as a reason for things to go back to normal.

It was a sentiment expressed by Keith Tan, CEO of the Singapore Tourism Board, in his opening statement to the Thinktank. He said that even though Singapore would achieve between four and six million visitors in 2022, putting it back on track, “we cannot go back to life as it was, as though it hasn’t changed. That would be a dangerous perception”.

Keith Tan, CEO of the Singapore Tourism Board

He outlined three pillars on which Singapore was rebuilding its future – sustainability, wellness and technology. Its mission is to “change perceptions and blaze the trail in a destination reset”.

Following his opening, the group identified key themes that would meet the three objectives of Resilience, Responsibility and Respect.

Policy Making/Government Regulation: How to have a more credible and heard voice in
policy making
Talent: How to attract new, smart talent and reskill
New Models/Agility: How to develop new models based on lessons learned and improve
agility and dexterity of businesses
Technology: How to harness data and technology to build a more robust infrastructure
and innovate to solve common problems
Save The Planet: How to minimise travel’s footprint’s and maximise social and economic
contribution to Mankind
Supply Chain: How To Deal With Rising Costs
Empowering The Longtail & Local Communities: How to protect, nurture and empower
this ecosystem which is what people travel for

1. Policy Making/Government Regulation: How to have a more credible and heard voice in policy making

Challenge: Resource Allocation and Government Policies
Call To Action: Collaborate

Recommendations:

Resource Allocation: That a portion of incentives offered by governments go towards human
capital and talent development in the industry
Building Resilience: A post-pandemic audit be done to make data-informed decisions and
recommendations with current crisis dynamics.
Standardised Process and Procedures Across Travel: Create mandated and trusted
governance mechanisms that fully engage the private sector, local communities and promote
an “Industry Wide + Government” approach.

Kerry Healy, Chief Commercial Officer, Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, Accor

2. Talent: How to attract new, smart talent and reskill

Challenge: How do we rebuild trust in the industry to make it attractive again
Call To Action: Rebuild the brand of travel – “a cross industry public relations campaign to
support why of the industry, and to talk to the depth of the opportunity that exists”

Recommendations:

Promote mobility/transferability: Frictionless talent mobility creates more opportunities to
explore full potential.
Align Employee, Organisational & Industry Purpose: Authentic purpose enables employees
to appreciate the connection between their work and the broader impact of their organisations
within the industry.
Cross-Industry External Communication: A collective industry communication on the
potential opportunity and exciting career pathways that travel provides.
Industry Perks & Benefits: Fix employee perks and benefits and emphasise flexibility,
wellbeing and sustainable working norms.

QUOTE: “How do we get the industry together, out of the silos we’re in and get together to work
to build that brand of travel and tourism?”

3. New Models

Challenge: Admit there’s a problem. Business model (hospitality) has not changed since the
1950s, while customer behavior has – accelerated by rising young traveller, fully adopted
computing platforms, degree of automation.
Call To Action: Flip The Model

Recommendations:

Think about product development from the customer’s point of view – business and leisure
blending, living as a service, how are customers thinking about automation and are willing to
accept?
Reinvent the value chain of accommodation
Engage with startups – the voices agitating for solutions.

QUOTE: There’s a lot of bad ideas coming out of startup land but every now and then, there’s an
Uber, or an Airbnb, or some sort of rethink of the whole value chain. The industry needs to learn
how to actually embrace that source of innovation, bring it into their DNA, experiment, iterate,
test, and work with them and stop thinking that we have it all figured out inside our ivory
towers.”

Timothy O’ Neil-Dunne, Principal, T2Impact

4. Technology

Challenge: Technology is seen more as a means to reduce cost rather than improve customer
experience, and the big problem is democratic access to data on demand trends, which affects
several areas.
Longtail suppliers: “Do they have access to demand data pre-emptively the way OTAs and
metas do, so they can plan better and help improve customer experience?”
Access to talent: “The best techies want to go work for blockchain, we failed to adopt some of
the sexy stuff and build some meaningful use cases out of it.”
Personalisation: “We’ve been talking about it for 20 years – the only thing we’ve managed to
see is that I see a different pair price than he does on a particular airline or OTA.”
Carbon offsets: “Other than an optional checkbox you need to check; can it actually be a part of
the ticket value for every ticket sold on platforms?”
Call To Action: Build an open decentralised3ecentralized network where travel can be bought
and sold and rules of what is bought/sold and at what commission levels are decided by the
buyer and seller.

Recommendations:

Build a globaln open network decentralized travel commerce platform for suppliers to come onto the Internet globally, like an app store, in order to sell travel products & services to buyers across the world.
Make it extremely simple for any travel supplier to upload supply, availability, rates business logic etc. into the platform and to make control the visibility and rules of sale of inventoryit visible to any entity who wants to sell it on the other side to buyers through open
APIs provided by the network – OTA, metas, GDSes, airlines, corporates, third parties,
marketplaces, super-apps, or just anyone can pick the relevant inventory and sell against the rules
pre-defined by the suppliers.
Make the supply data content and demand trends data accessible to everyone (with supplier
consent) on the platform in a transparent and trusted manner, with pre-defined commercial rules
for distribution with a small marginal cost per transaction to the extent it supports the platform’s
cost of operations. Provide for a low-cost cross-border payment / settlement process for
processing transactions and their refunds.
Has to be run by a non-profit body with a governing body representing diverse entities so that
we keep it neutral and free of commercial interests – “commercial models’ interests will kill the
whole reason for doing this which is to democratize distribution of long tail travel suppliers”

James Marshall, Vice President, Global Transport Services, Expedia Group

5. Save The Planet

Challenge: No clear standards around what good looks like in the travel industry.
Call To Action: Create objective measurements of what good looks like and educate consumers
of what good looks like.

Recommendations:

Agree on fair and transparent, minimum attributes for suppliers
Make sure public understands it – what does it mean to have carbon offsets, where’s my money
going, what’s the transparency?
With metrics in place, we can give consumers additional value/discounts for choosing
sustainable options
For longtail, big companies could subsidise their investments in for eg solar panels
Flatten the peaks and not have travellers visit at the same time
Involve children in the education process and making good choices at an early age
Make more efficient business trips – longer, combine with leisure, volunteer for local projects
tied to sustainability

QUOTE: “Make sure that the quality of the sustainable product is just as good as the quality of
the unsustainable products – if I get a glass bottle, it doesn’t fit into my refrigerator, I would
rather have a small plastic bottle. Give customers reasons to change to the good options.”

6. Supply Chain

Challenge: Rising Costs and Deflationary Pressures
Call To Action: Engage with Governments & Develop A Co-op Model

Recommendations:

Tax incentives for SMEs to help them sustain the volatility and rising costs
Working capital initiated by government to help businesses get through the initial period of
rising costs – after that, it’s law of attrition
Outcome-driven government grants that reward companies for improving efficiencies, for
example
Improve talent mobility – bringing in talent from other markets to defray the high cost of talent
in some markets
Develop co-op models to get economies of scale

QUOTE: “We need to work with the governments to develop what these tax incentives are. A lot
of it is driven by the agenda of the government and then trying to work with industry to coalesce
around that. The other one is a co-op model where you get economies of scales – when small,
medium enterprises coalesce and pull together, you get better margins and economics.”

Chris Hemmeter, Co-founder and Managing Director, Thayer Ventures

7. Empowering the Long Tail & Local Communities

Challenge: Critical need to protect and nurture this vital, but fragile part of travel
Call To Action: Get the big boys (governments, tourism boards, tech, OTAs) behind this.

Recommendations:

Develop a holistic strategy across tourism boards, governments, tech, bigger OTAs to educate
and empower SMEs around digitisation (gamification/badging)
Empower operators to take on education and integrative activity in their local communities
Recruit champions among the SMEs to drive home the message
Develop an open network platform (like the ONDC example) to bring longtail players onboard

QUOTE: “Everybody in here, the leaders actually need to come together and commit to educate
the SMEs that are around us, because actually, they will make us great, and they will drive travel
and they will drive the good experience.”

The pandemic forced a reckoning upon the industry. It exposed our weaknesses but also amplified our strengths. We are macro, and micro. We matter to humanity at large and communities at the local level. We create jobs. It’s a golden opportunity to rethink and reset. We need to collaborate to future-proof our industry and build back stronger, better and kinder.

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