The future of travel

· 12 minute read · via Punchkick
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Introduction

A woman packs a leather weekend bag in a bright bedroom, wearing a smartwatch on her wrist

Digital technology has transformed nearly every industry, but perhaps has impacted no industry more profoundly than travel. From the moment Expedia and Orbitz democratized the process of scheduling flights and hotel accommodations, and provided new transparency and renewed competition into prices available online, digital has owned the experience of planning travel for billions of people.

“The process of booking something—buying tickets and so on—has already been disrupted by mobile,” said John Norton, iOS engineer at Punchkick. “The traditional experience of relying on a personal travel agent is completely different today.”

The notion of instant access and empowering customers with information are core to the mobile revolution, so it should come as no surprise that travel arrangements are a natural extension of digital technology and online services. The ways in which travel has been transformed by mobile—instant visibility of available tickets and prices, seamless e-commerce integration, and paperless travel passes that simplify customer experiences—were pioneered first for the travel industry in many cases, and its trajectory has been representative of the larger mobile transformation.

“But modernizing travel agencies is just the starting point,” said Norton. “How long before the processes involved with using Orbitz or Kayak become even easier? How long before the system itself can compute the best course of action based on the traveler’s preferences, and make a predictive recommendation?” The technology isn’t as far off as it may seem—as web services become smarter and make connections between users’ explicit and implicit needs, they can begin to make better recommendations and achieve levels of usefulness once reserved for human beings.

“People sometimes assume that technology can’t go further, that things can’t possibly get easier. But there are technologies in motion that are going to be integrated into systems like this soon, and applied in useful ways for the first time.” —John Norton, iOS Developer

Most of these optimizations are focused on streamlining existing processes that waste time or resources throughout the travel experience. “Half the time, it feels like you’re just waiting in line to get a key when you’ve already paid and verified and taken care of all this stuff,” said Norton. “These systems and new mobile technologies are going to do away with these needless processes, and give people back the most valuable resource on their trip: time.”

As technologies continue to emerge that make our lives easier and more connected, travel remains one of the foremost examples of these optimizations in action. At every stage of the connected travel experience, digital and mobile innovations have helped travelers shave time and costs off of their experiences. Travel is the testing ground for new technologies just before they go mainstream—and transforming the travel agent is just the beginning.

Streamlining the journey

While digital technology tackles many of the travel tasks traditionally reserved for human travel agents, mobile has transformed the stages involved with travel in massive ways. From the process of booking travel to making necessary arrangements along the way, mobile has enabled a new generation of connected apps that provide new utility and relevance to customers of every type.

According to recent Google research into the online habits of travelers across a range of demographics, an overwhelming majority of travelers for both business and leisure begin their travel journey with online search engines. Whether it’s getting inspiration for travel from YouTube videos or monitoring flight prices, travelers first look to Google and others to assist in their travel planning. And, like many others, this trend has begun pivoting toward mobile traffic over time.

“Why do we book flights on a computer, and then view our boarding passes on our phones?” asks Andy Detskas, Punchkick designer. “There are some operations that seem best suited for one device and inconvenient on another. Why is that? Are we making these device decisions based on what provides the best experience, or because that’s the only possible experience for that task?”

“Customers expect to be able to manage every aspect of their travel arrangements from whatever device is most relevant to them. Travel companies and search engines are only beginning to catch up to that expectation.” —Andy Detskas, Interactive Designer

To accommodate these expectations, Google has begun aggregating flight information into search results, bringing a new era of transparency and competition to airlines online. But the impact of mobile in the travel journey extends beyond buying tickets, and has more to do with providing seamlessness across the various devices that customers use. Some processes are best reserved for the web, others make sense for native apps, and companies are trying to bridge these experiences with varying degrees of success.

“Today, there are technologies built into mobile operating systems to make these processes easy,” said John Norton, iOS developer at Punchkick. “But it’s sometimes frustrating to make all these systems work together. You book a flight online, and the airline emails you a record number or something. And then you download their branded native app, try to find your record, and maybe at that point it’s possible to check into your flight. Only then can you download a boarding pass to Passbook. How can this process be simpler?”

“I buy tickets online, get an email with some number, and then wrestle with native apps to download a boarding pass. Why does it take so many different experiences to accomplish one task?” —John Norton, iOS Developer

Digital experiences aren’t the only ones to be streamlined by new mobile technologies. Over time, the growth and sophistication of mobile platforms during the travel process will obviate some traditional physical roadblocks, as well. “Just five years ago, it was a production just to get to the airport,” said Norton. “You had to coordinate a taxi to pick you up, stand in line to check your bags and get a printed boarding pass, watch these displays in the airport to make sure your gate hadn’t changed and your flight was on time.

“Today, that experience is completely different because of mobile,” Norton continued, “Now, an Uber comes and gets you on demand, your digital boarding pass lets you check in without talking to anyone behind a desk, and it remains up-to-date about gates and delays and everything. Mobile is getting rid of all this useless friction and time-wasting redundancy to create a series of seamless transactions where you don’t have to spend time figuring the old things out.”

“Mobile eliminates all this useless friction and redundancy, and creates an ecosystem of seamless transactions instead.” —John Norton, iOS Developer

Mobile makes the processes and formalities of travel more obvious and accessible throughout the travel journey. With mobile boarding passes instantly accessible from the lock screen, passengers have up-to-the-moment information and can skip cumbersome lines at the airport. Biometric authentication and mobile payment platforms enable quick transactions and identification to accelerate past obstacles. And wearable integration of all of these systems will only make tasks more instantaneous.

Those few obstacles that remain are bastions of the old processes—mandatory online hurdles and incongruent stages in the booking process—but travel companies promise to streamline these soon. In the future, the process of purchasing tickets and getting on the plane can only be further accelerated by more contextual awareness, platform-specific features, and systems that go beyond making information accessible, and begin making it relevant instead.

Virtual assistants on steroids

Despite technical efficiencies, the process of booking travel arrangements remains a very human task. Travelers have to manually find flights that work for their schedule, book hotel accommodations that work for their plans and price range, and estimate times of arrival while accounting for weather delays or possible layovers. Digital technologies have made this information more available and contextually relevant than ever before, but it still requires a human hand to comb through the data and make connections. However, as computers become more sophisticated and gain access to more data about travelers’ requirements—their calendar appointments, their membership programs, their travel preferences—these systems will soon be able to make these inferences for themselves.

“Can a system compute the best course of action to reach a destination based on a number of preferences?” asked Punchkick iOS engineer John Norton, “For example, you like leg room, you’re cost-conscious, you hate layovers. How can we design systems that take all this disparate information and arrive at the best solution?” This process typically necessitates human intervention, but it’s conceivable that an advanced search algorithm might process these variables with different filters or switches. But there are some kinds of travel plans that seem like they will always need a human eye.

“There are a few classic examples of where these problems can get really complex,” said Punchkick strategist Dan Cortes. “Imagine you’re trying to plan a multi-city trip through Europe. Your trip is going to take a few weeks, and in that time you want to visit a handful of the major capitals—London, Paris, Rome, and so on. You also have a few preferences—you don’t want to waste time on layovers, you prefer window seats, you’ll only fly certain airlines. What’s the best route for you to take through Europe, so that you see all the sights you want, all while keeping costs down and accounting for your preferences? Computers today would choke on that many variables.” To date, the only computer that can successfully balance this number of objective and subjective variables is a human brain. But computer scientists are hard at work building a processor that can match it.

One of the most exciting fields in computer science is quantum computation, which might offer one solution to problems of this complexity. Quantum computers differ from classical computers in that, instead of processing instructions encoded in ones and zeroes—also known as “bits”—they accept instructions in the form of quantum bits—or “qubits”—which can be a one, a zero, or any combination of both at the same time. Building on the science of quantum mechanics, which governs how the strangest subatomic particles behave, qubits are an extension of a concept called quantum superposition, which explains how two particles can occupy the same space at the same time.

For computer science, qubits expand the possible range of information and variability for computers exponentially. Why does that matter? Quantum computers would not be faster across the board than classical computers we use today—they’re only better at solving very specific calculations, called optimization problems, many of which classical computers cannot even begin to tackle. “If you’re just doing simple things like browsing the web or playing music or whatever, a quantum computer would probably feel kind of slow,” said Cortes. “But for complex problems with tons of moving parts, they might be the only kind of computer that can solve them.”

“Someday soon, you’ll call up Siri and say something like, ‘I need to be in San Francisco by noon on Thursday,’ and she’ll just take care of it. Your calendar, your preferences, your airline rewards program, all taken into account on the backend. And Siri on your phone just says, ‘Okay,’ and books everything.” —John Norton, iOS Developer

So, that’s a lot of theory. What kind of experience would a quantum computer deliver for the end user? In the future, more sophisticated quantum computers could drive some of the web services and algorithms behind search products we use every day. The European trip scenario above is a common example of an optimization problem that quantum computers might be well suited for. “Someday soon, you’ll call up Siri and say something like, ‘I need to be in San Francisco by noon on Thursday,’ and she’ll just take care of it,” said John Norton. “Your calendar, your preferences, your airline rewards program, all taken into account on the backend. And Siri on your phone just says, ‘Okay,’ and books everything.”

There are products already that aggregate data and simulate similar experiences, like Google Now for Android. Google Now accesses information like your Gmail messages, calendar appointments, or weather and traffic conditions to provide contextual and timely information right from the launcher. As services get more access to information, and as the backend computers processing the data become exponentially more powerful, this experience won’t need to be simulated—it will be real.

“The next step is for the system to take care of things without you having to ask,” said Norton. “If you schedule a meeting with someone in San Francisco, and add it to your work calendar, you could authorize your phone to make flight and hotel accommodations automatically, and charge your company credit card.” The idea takes the notion of a virtual assistant to new heights. “Someday, I expect that I’ll schedule something out of town, and the first time I’ll have to think about it is when the Uber arrives at my house to take me to the airport. My phone will already have my boarding pass, my hotel key, and everything else ready to go.”

Technology is becoming increasingly aware of its context, and increasingly proactive in making real-time data relevant to the user. As the supportive backend systems become more sophisticated, and as smartphone apps become better attuned to their users’ needs, these predictive experiences will leave the realm of science fiction and enter the realm of Apple television commercials.

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