The New Digital Normal, and What It Means for Travel
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New technology has transformed the travel industry. Digital behaviors now define how consumers evaluate, anticipate, experience, and reflect on travel. This presentation is geared toward opportunities in high end, educational travel.
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The New Digital Normal, and What It Means for Travel
- 1. Stranger in a Strange Land The New Digital Normal, and What It Means for Travel #ETC2015 Perry Hewitt | Harvard University
- 2. 1. Travel today 2. Digital opportunity checklist 3. What’s next
- 3. We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. − Pico Iyer
- 4. Let’s start here: “My name is Perry, and I have a travel problem.” Image credit: Elliot Verhaeren for The Noun Project
- 9. TRAVEL TRENDS INTERSECT WITH DIGITAL ADVANCES
- 11. Image credit: Archives New Zealand
- 15. There is a lively intersection (collision?) of the global travel industry and the internet Image credit: Atelier Iceberg for The Noun Project
- 16. Booking: ubiquitous, flexible, mobile
- 21. We live in an era of blurred lines and high expectations.
- 22. A new trend started in 2007 which affected not only the researching and purchasing, but the experience of travel Image credit: George Agpoon for The Noun Project
- 23. The four phases of the user experience of educational travel Evaluate Anticipate Experienc e Reflect
- 24. Optimize digital presence for 24/7 searchers Embrace email as a killer app Ask for social profiles Provide shareable content about the trip itself Recognize that WIFI is the oxygen for travel Consider a template for tour leaders Recommend website and photo/video sharing tools Digital opportunities checklist
- 25. Evaluate 1. Optimize your digital presence for 24/7 searchers
- 29. Evaluate 2. Embrace email as killer app. • Lists clean? • Brand consistent? • Voice? • Send strategy baked? • Mobile first? • Measured and optimized?
- 31. Anticipate 3. Ask for social profiles upfront to enable (but not mandate) social connection
- 33. Anticipate 4. Provide shareable content to your guests about the trip before they travel
- 35. Experience 5. Recognize that WIFI is oxygen for travel
- 38. Experience 6. Consider templates for tour leaders – plug in two photos a day with location
- 40. Reflect 7. Recommend website and photosharing tools for traveler connections post travel
- 43. On the horizon …
- 44. Where can I go with a beach and nightlife scene that also has things for teens to do? On the horizon …
- 45. On the horizon …
- 47. Embrace digital capabilities to complement rather than threaten travel
- 48. Thank You
Editor's Notes
- Good morning. Many thanks to Philip for the kind introduction, to Trearty Bartley, Director of Alumni Education and Travel, and to the organizers of this conference. Today is the first day I’ve gotten over here, but it’s been fun watching the conversation on the Twitter stream.
- So, what are we here to talk about today. Three things – what are some of the megatrends in travel today, analog and digital, that shape our experiences. What are some of the digital opportunities in educational travel. As William Gibson said, the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Third, we’ll talk about a few ideas about the future and travel, coming soon! Most of the pictures today will be from my own travels. I took this picture in the Galapagos. This guy looks pretty happy sunbathing.
- So, why travel at all? I think Pico Iyer, who spoke here earlier this week, said it far better than I ever will. Losing ourselves and finding ourselves – and inspiring learning.
- Why do I personally travel? So, I’m pretty lucky. My parents valued travel a lot. We started out in Philadelphia and they up and moved twice with a whole bunch of kids. Once to Switzerland and once to the Virgin Islands. So while I may have a problem, I come by it honestly!
- My first adventure in educational travel took place when I was 13 years old. I did an exchange program in Hamburg Germany focused on language and culture. I am sure I was holding that beer for a friend.
- Travel quickly became a lifelong habit. Here I am with my son at 10, 11, and 19 being subjected to a photo in the Galapagos, Sydney, and Berlin. He himself did an educational travel program during a gap year in Sevilla. During that time he learned some Spanish, and apparently conducted extensive research into the local customs of nightclubs. Clearly, he inherited his mother’s love and travel and learning.
- Let’s fast forward to the present: this past New Year, I took my first formal travel and learning adventure as an adult. It was fantastic. It also gave me an opportunity to consider all the digital opportunities throughout the trip lifecycle.
- These observations were brought into sharp focus occasionally by abject terror. I recorded this on my iPhone 6 with an app called Hyperlapse.
- First I want to set the stage, and talk about how some of the global travel trends you are well familiar with are intersecting with digital advances
- The ability to engage in international travel is extended to many versus few. In addition, there is tremendous growth in emerging economy destinations. I know an earlier presenter spoke of milliennial travel aspirations around local culture and local cuisine. We’ve come a long way from the trunk tours of Europe in the early 20th century.
- While airplane travel used to look like this …
- Now it looks and feels, for most of us, anyway, a lot more like this.
- Alongside these shift in the mobility of people, we’ve seen the emergence and growth of the internet. And the speed of adoption is dwarfing anything we’ve seen before.
- And its rapidly rising global penetration
- Perhaps the biiggest disruption has been to booking. The most successful travel companies have always focused on the transaction, and the ability to book is becoming even more ubiquitous, central, flexible and mobile. Just in time booking is changing possibilities and expectations.
- And there are new ways to get around. Uber is now a 40B company that has changed the way we get around. When I get into an Uber, I know what to expect. Even more compellingly, they know what to expect from me. When I am in an Uber vehicle, music coming from my personal device plays on the speakers. And it’s in 54 countries without owning a single vehicle. That’s disruption.
- So your travelers can see, firsthand, the stories places tell about themselves
- AirBNB was named company of the year 2014 in Inc magazine. The service has over 20 million users and listings in 34,000 cities. These are not fringe backpacker communities – these alternative travel options are direct competition.
- Not only can you see directly into hotel websites and email with airbnb hosts, but you can now read reviews from travelers all over the world. I was surprised to see the number of physical instantiations of this logo across Asia last month. Everyone is a publisher. Everyone is a reviewer. Search and social is making this content visible to all, and savvy owner/operators are aware.
- Blurred lines are everywhere. We come up against it a lot in education. Before it was clear who competed with whom, but the internet has lowered the cost of entry and enabled the market to determine value such that a Khan Academy can be a credible rival to a Kaplan. In travel, this means your brand may defend your service for a while, but other aggregators have a lower cost to remix and market travel experiences. High expectations stem from algorithm-enabled personalization. Amazon knows me well enough to show me travel fiction and dog treats. The bar is high for vendors and resellers of experiences. What do you know about your users, and how much do you surface that information to them?
- Smartphones are everywhere. And they are changing the game through phases of travel.
- Today, marketing is about experiences. And as software eats the world, more and more of those experiences are digital. These are the four phases of travel I am going to isolate here. Evaluate: Where? When? How much? Anticipate: What happens in the period when you are packing? And spending? Experience: According to Skift, which si a terrific provider of global travel industry intelligence, 58% of spending occurs during the trip, That numbr is likely lower for educational travel, Reflect: What’s your leave behind. I understand from Trearty that retention is generally high for mott of you, but what are the ways you help keep memories fresh. User experience: the overall experience of a person using a product …
- This is page one of your digital presence. Did you know that 25% of searchers yield Google Knowledge graph results? How do you think about structuring your website data so you put your best foot forward in search? ~350K pageviews a year
- Make sure basic search options are present.
- Not why it is important – in 2015 – but how to make it differentiated and great. Lists: Cleaning your lists is like flossing. No one wants to do it, but trust me, you’ll be a lot happier if you start early. Strategy: Scheduled sends for marketing. How do you create an editorial calendar for knowlable events? On the Chinese New Year, which was yesterday, are you emailing a Happy New Year message to all those who took a trip to East Asia in the past five years? How do you ready yourself for unknowable event, like a surprise Conde Nast feature on one of your best destinations? How do you ready email for that opportunity? Mobile first: Litmus says that as of January 2015, 47% of email is now opened on a mobile device. Will your messages pass the test? Measured and optimized: How effective is your copy and imagery? Are you drawing guests into cross-channel immersive experiences?
- There’s an opportunity to connect users back to the group that sponsors the travel – but that may be another channel for you to maintain. Think also of the value of connecting users to one another. As the web becomes more visual, people seek ways to share.
- Opportunity for Harvard branding! Templates for different social network sizes
- Why it matters to you: Enables low cost sharing of content Turn off wifi to share content – and related data cost
- What does that look like? Is anyone familiar with Google Word lens?
- Could culminate in a PDF photo book
- Remember when people bought and sent postcards? What if you had a daily digital diary. Thoes photos were taken on a recent trip. I can’t remember where.
- It can be a list of basic tools. Tour leader can set up, or ask for a volunteer. When these assets are in one place – many ways to make memories from them, including a physical book!
- Drone video of experiences to share
- Better and cheaper semantic search. Dropdowns are a great start. This technology exists today, but getting it cheaper and smarter is still a challenge.
- Many opportunites for virtual and augmented reality. The Oculus is getting there, and the software applications to support it.
- I think there’s often a false dichotomy drawn about digital intermediation. No one wants a museum full of selfie sticks, or a groups of vacationers frozen behind a lens. Still there are opportunities to take meaningful advantage of digital throughout the phases of Evaluate, Anticipate, Experience and Reflect. Technology is a wild ride, but as seasoned travellers, you are ready for anything.