Over the past decade, our journeys have been changed. We book a hotel on Booking or Expedia, buy tickets through the airline’s website, and show the boarding pass by unlocking the phone’s screen. Also, today we can rent a car in just a few clicks – you just should go to Rental24h. For example, modern technology makes it possible to book Payless car rental in Miami and many other places in the world. All you need to do is enter the desired location and the search engine will provide a list of available offers.

This only confirms the fact that nowadays you can plan your trip in a few clicks. Could you imagine something like this 15 or 20 years ago? Probably not. But even this doesn’t reflect all the changes happened in a couple of decades. How is technology changing the field of travel today and what will it look like tomorrow? Let's look at the major trends…

•  Personalization

As with other industries, user experience is playing an increasingly important role in the travel industry. Hotels, companies, car rental services...Today, they all want to make customer’s trip more seamless and minimally influenced by external factors. That’s why companies focus on personalization. In addition, this has a positive effect on user commitment to the brand.

Companies strive to meet user expectations and even anticipate them. For example, you have landed at the airport and you urgently need Payless car rental at West Palm Beach FL. Even with the complete absence of cars at the disposal, the provider will offer available options in its nearby locations, or even deliver the car to the airport especially for you. This means, companies always want to know your preferences, and in such critical situations to take care of your future experience.

Also, more and more attention is being paid to analytics. So, thanks to technology, the airport can calculate and predict the replacement of parts in each of the buses that deliver passengers to aircraft. If it’s possible that one or more of them will require technical inspection, this may affect the speed of the airport services. In this case, thanks to analytics, the company will be able to replace spare parts in advance or repair the bus before any problems occur.

• Recognition

When arriving in Europe, EU passport holders catch the envious glances of passengers standing in line at the ‘All passports’ window. The thing is that EU residents undergo passport control in an automatic way, which implies only scanning the passport and the photo of the passenger. This greatly simplifies and speeds up the border crossing process.

The trend with face recognition is not new, and in the travel industry it’s starting to be applied more and more often. For example, in China, when you ask the camera to recognize your face, the scoreboard will indicate which gate and which way you prefer to get to, and provide the necessary information about the flight and the seat. In this country, technology is already massive. 557 security check corridors at 62 airports, including Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, are now equipped with auxiliary facial recognition systems.

According to representatives of these airports, the system has proven its effectiveness and accuracy after being used in approximately 80% of the country's airports, each of which has an annual throughput of more than 30 million passengers.

• Virtual and Augmented Reality

VR glasses can be easily bought in electronics stores, and video games with virtual reality included are becoming more accessible every year to a wide range of players. How is this technology used in travel?

Tour operators and hotels want to sell more services with extra effort. For example, you are in a hotel and want to visit an excursion. But the offer market is huge: some excursions may not suit you by time, while others – by budget. You may need more information about each of them to make a choice. 

This is where VR technology comes in handy. You put on glasses, try firsthand this or that tour, becoming a virtual participant in some part of it, and make a choice in reality.

In addition to tour operators, airlines can also offer interesting VR applications. How many times have you booked a seat on the plane and were not sure - is this the place near the window or will you only partially be located near it? Yes, you can choose a place, focusing on the scheme of a specific model of an airplane of a certain airline. However, with the help of virtual reality, you can walk on the plane and choose the place that you like the most.

Also, airlines offer VR as an entertainment system. Recently, British Airways announced plans to provide first-class passengers with virtual reality headsets during their flight. Unlike most other devices, it weighs only about 250 grams. Passengers will have access to films, TV shows and other content in 2D, 3D or 360-degree format.