6 eTravel trends

The e-travel has been, is and will be the next years one of the main engines of online commerce. The competition is very hard and the sector is suffering a certain process of concentration. But at the same time small startups are born and fight to be able to make a gap between so much giant. Some of the trends that are already accelerating are the following:


-Only the giants will survive in the long term:

This is a race towards size. The size does matter. The big players in each e-travel distribution segment have everything to win against the small ones. These little ones only have the technological and product innovation to differentiate themselves and win battles. But a giant can stop being it very fast. No one has the insured position.

-The technology and the product are and will be in the center of the game:

A few years ago the large e-travel companies differed in their capacity to invest in advertising and marketing. This does not work anymore. With the great investment capacity of Silicon Valley companies, only those players that have a process of innovation and product development that meet, among others, these premises will survive: -Totally focused on the need of the client; -Lean startup, that is, it is developed based on customer feedback in minimum product units with the capacity to occupy large cash cow segments; -Have disruptive vision and not just "copy paste" of the competition; -Be central to the organization (not a passing fad of a department) and therefore develop from all departments; -And of course, be led from the people who lead the company. Big data, machine learning, AI, blockchain, etc., will be disruptive technologies that will allow new business models, new products and services, and the optimization of current technology platforms.

-Multi-product and multi-channel distribution:

The big sellers of e-travel will not only sell their flagship product, but will also cover other segments. In turn, only those who know how to maintain the quality of the product they distribute, will be able to maintain their leadership positions.

Not only will it be sold through the company's own channel, but through distribution APIs, competitive products will be distributed worldwide through a multitude of channels. Here again, technology will again play a fundamental role. Only the best will be able to achieve it.

-Usability and multi-"device":

This is already a trend of the past. Only large monopolies can afford to have a bad usability and a bad web shopping experience of the client. I recently heard a manager of a train monopoly say that for them the client's usability was secondary...

The online shopping experience will have to be perfect in any "device", and more "devices" will continue to appear like personal assistants. Everything related to mobility, virtual assistants and augmented reality will generate good opportunities for new products and services.

-The talent is and will be the central axis of the organizations:

Closely linked to the previous one, not only large organizations will be able to attract talent, technological startups are and will be centers of innovation that talented people will seek to participate in order to fully develop their capabilities. The great organizations that know how to incorporate in their DNA processes of organization and leadership similar to startups will triumph. The more capacity to give freedom to create, the more talent organizations can attract, and better products will eventually develop. Stagnation and bureaucratization will bring with it the loss of talent.

The e-travel has against it the fact that it is part of the tourism sector, probably one of the oldest industries in the world. And consequently, many great glories continue to command in this sector. The old models no longer work for the young talent who will prefer to go to new and dynamic companies. The good part is the great capacity for investment in renovation that large companies have, and the large number of e-travel startups that appear every year.

-The startups will lead the creation of new products and services:

In many cases only startups have the necessary ingredients for the creation and cooking of new products and services. Only startups have a process of creation in fire, trial and error, where they either get a successful product or die. Many times it is more profitable for large companies to buy products through the purchase of startups than to have to build them from scratch with high probabilities of failure.