Technology Now A Necessity for T&H Industry

By Naresh Ramaswamy
With advent of niche players in the Indian Travel Market, the eco system of Travel and Hospitality industry in India will witness a huge change in terms of emergence of new business models. Travel and Hospitality is one of the biggest revenue generator of ecommerce arena in India. The existing players face enormous challenge in terms of changing behaviour of existing consumers, demands and expectations of Millennials, advent of new business models.

Travel and Hospitality players have to undergo Digital Transformation in terms of the Strategy, Structure and Culture. Important enabler of Digital Transformation is technology that drives the new innovative business models.

Technology being enabler of Digital Transformation, the important trends to be witnessed in 2015 by the industry are 1) Monetization of the social media data 2) Adoption of Mobile Platform (86% of mobile bookings) 3) Moving to Cloud from on-premise model for robust infrastructure, and minimize Capital Expenditure Spend 4) Harness the power of big data for more predictive analytics as well as to personalize the consumer experience.

Both the existing as well as new players in the market need to understand the nature of the consumer psyche so that they can cater to the needs of the consumer. The enterprise needs to have their strategy redefined to have everything around the consumer behaviour.

In order to devise the strategy around the consumer behaviour, the important sanity check every enterprise needs to do is the following 1) Are we building content for the guest in a consistent manner that is beautiful and reflects brand as well as the consumer experience? 2) Are we measuring value and impact across all the customer actions? 3) Do we provide the medium through which the consumer can interact? 4) Do we have ability to acquire and retain the consumer who is changing the way he/she interacts? 5) Are we equipped to handle recent trends in the industry?

If the answer is YES to these queries, then we are on the right path otherwise it is time to undergo Digital Transformation.

While overall change in the way the business is being done in terms of strategy, culture and structure will drive the digital transformation process, technology will be the enabler.