Introduction:
Travel industry is on the rapid growth path now after the recent economic slowdown that disturbed all the industries across the world.
According to the US Travel associations forecast, Total Domestic (USA) Person-Trips (Millions) will increase from 1901 in the year 2009 to a healthy 2091 Total Domestic Person-Trips (Millions) in the year 2013.
Total international arrivals in 2009 are standing at 880 million persons and the expenditure is standing at 887 billion USD.
The expenditure on the USA domestic travel will increase from 704 billions USD in 2009 to 902 billions USD in 2013 and the international expenditure will increase from 887 billions USD in 2009 to around 910 billions USD in 2013.
Travel and hospitality companies are now gearing up to increase their investments to meet the demands and to grow their business.
The service providers of this rapid growth Travel and Hospitality industry are poised to grab a big bite of the spending from this growing industry.
Currently there are numerous service providers in the industry who are serving the Travel and Hospitality industry and there is no clear edge for any service player.
Now the question is on to how to differentiate your self from all other service providers.
Currently many service providers are responding to the single piece of work and are not having the vision to become the complete offerings service provider.
There is a great deal of opportunities if we think out of box and this will easily leads to out performing the other players in the service provider sector of travel industry.
Travel companies across the world are seeing rapid growth in their business and wanted to be competitive and just concentrate on their core business of selling their products, design new products and take the new products to the market fast.
In this scenario, travel companies are ready to out source their complete IT departments to the service providers.
The travel companies in the above said perspective are looking for the IT partners who can take these responsibilities.
Current trends
What is that travel companies are looking at their IT partners?
1. Very good technical expertise to help them in taking to the market on the new products.
2. Help them in identifying the current trends in the market and come out with a product that caters to the change in the trends in the market.
3. Do the complete BPR (Business Process Outsourcing) to increase the efficiency of the current operations to improve the ROI
4. Take care of the complete IT operations in order for them to concentrate on the core business. 5. Integration with Social media. According to USA Today, nearly half of U.S. adults using social networking sites, expect more time-sensitive "flash sales" offered via Facebook or Twitter, more real-time postings of travel experiences, and faster response from companies and institutions fearful that negative opinions will go viral.
What should be the strategy of IT companies?
1. Have the industry experts in the advisory board.
2. Have Consultants who can study the existing business and come out with the analysis as is and how it should be tomorrow. For example with more than 300 million people traveling each year for religious and pilgrimage reasons and with annual revenues that exceed $18 billion, faith tourism has become a significant global industry that extends from cruises to volunteer vacations.
3. Take over the knowledge and implement IT systems that improve the efficiency of business.
4. Seeing believes. Have a test IT infrastructure and Web site to show case the IT capabilities faster. For example all the GDS systems provide test beds to the developer community. So build a web portal to book rooms, air and Cruise. Do a dynamic packaging engine, Yield management, PMS, Accounting, Marketing, and EMS also.
5. Show casing the technology capabilities by building a Server farms, Web farms and DRBC also. Web 2.0 or Travel 2.0 in terms of end user facing capabilities.
6. Becoming the members of the travel associations of the respective countries will provide access to the invaluable data in exploring the business. For example US Travel association membership will provide a platform to know the trends and also a chance to network while exploring the new business.
