The Future of Tourism is Technological, Smart and Sustainable

Tourism is not going through its best moment, but it looks like 2022 will be the right time to grow again. Given this situation, it is important that improvements are implemented, both in the customer experience and in the traditional way in which the sector has been configured until now.

Tourism activity will recover, but this will require a technological transformation of the entire sector. Customers now handle a large amount of information and are more demanding when it comes to assessing the user experience from the moment they start their search until the end of their trip, so a digital transformation focused on personalizing the traveler’s needs is crucial.

The answer to how to remain competitive and revive tourism is to make the most of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Augmented Reality, and mobile apps.

New Technologies Applied to Tourism

A crisis is the best moment to reinvent oneself and adapt to new circumstances in order to move forward and improve. That’s why the future of the tourism sector is marked by several technological trends that lead it towards a smarter and more sustainable model (environmental, territorial, and socioeconomic).

Artificial Intelligence For The Tourism Sector

There are so many applications of Artificial Intelligence that it would be impossible to list them all here, but we have already found solutions for the tourism sector to increase security.

One example is the use of Computer Vision, Voice Recognition, or Predictive Analysis to automate and reduce interactions between people in routine operations such as hotel check-in, access to public transportation, or the cleaning of busy spaces.

Another trend is AI-driven alternative experiences, such as video tours and digital tours, where you can see museums, archives, or libraries.

Mobile Apps and QR Codes

Although QR codes and mobile applications are already part of our daily lives, in recent months they have been key to transforming the way we travel and even consume in bars and restaurants.

Restrictions about paper menus in bars have highlighted the importance of digitalizing these documents. The digital menu that can be scanned with a phone allows moving towards a much more convenient model, both for customers and restaurants, which can make changes to the menu instantly without having to print the menus over and over again.

Another of the strong points of this modernization are applications, such as the much-talked-about “COVID-19 Passport“. The company’s own applications make it possible to personalize the services of an organization or a government agency, as in this case the digitalization of the vaccination certificate, which is now mandatory for travel or access to closed establishments.

Augmented Reality

More and more companies are using Augmented Reality to show their potential customers the destinations they can travel to without leaving their chairs. Given the growing demand when choosing the place to go or the type of trip, this technology is perfect to show the inside of a cruise cabin or the views they will have when hiring a balloon ride, for example.

The possibilities are endless and there are already several organizations that are offering their services around this technology, preparing virtual gymkhanas, stories, and mysteries to solve while visiting a city… Only in 2020, it became a business worth 120 billion dollars worldwide. And with the advent of the metaverse, this trend will grow in ways never seen before.

Internet of Things (IoT)

We are used to thinking that this technology can only be applied to the industry sector, but nothing could be further from the truth, because IoT applications will revolutionize the tourism sector in just a few years. Connected sensors can be incorporated into targets such as vehicles, luggage, or buildings to monitor and customize actions that improve customer experience.

Currently, we can find applications that allow interacting with their room’s thermostat or remote control from their cell phone. A sensor can even be incorporated into a suitcase to track where it is at all times and prevent it from getting lost at the airport.

Big Data

This technology is already established in many other sectors and the tourism industry can also benefit enormously from it. One example is the use of customer information to determine the type of campaigns to be launched according to the target audience.

Thanks to Big Data, audience characteristics such as expenses, ratings, nationality, or type of trip, can be compared. This data is then cross-referenced with public data to determine the most appropriate profile and achieve a higher success rate for each campaign, optimizing the investment.