Role Of Technology In Travel And Tourism

The pivotal role that technology plays in every sector, the travel industry too is expanding at a great pace. For sustaining and staying relevant in the market, many portals and services are taking great initiatives. 

To acknowledge this, BW Businessworld’s Tourism conclave had its first session dedicated to Technology. Mr. Avijit Arya, Founder, Internet Moguls: Chair of the session initiated the discussion by stating that the Inhouse technical team needs to be there in every organisation so that outsourcing reliance shall be minimized.

Another panellist, Sandeep Dwivedi, COO, InterGlobe Technology Quotient said that how many people are there to adopt technological change, however, many people are migrating their business from institutions' websites to the digital application (Apps). With an optimism in his attitude, he said that there is always an opportunity against a challenge, so we need to move faster to tackle the challenges of latent technologies. 

Pankaj Nagpal, Managing Director, Travstarz said that Tourism has reached a saturation point with same old conventional systems but after going digital, a new market is being captured. Another fellow panellist Suyash Gupta, CEO, Transportal said that we (his organization) are reaching to different cities without physically going there. In this he said, Technology is the key source behind this. 

Rajnish Kumar, Co-Founder & CTO, ixigo.com  said that we (ixigo) thought a little bit ahead without thinking about profitability in initial years and later after AI and ML, we managed to map our data which was so huge, and we possibly could not have done it without these technological advancements. Now our Apps are doing the pre-emptive actions on consumers' behalf. We have also created a new user interface for the semi-literate audience and we created automated bots who respond to the rural audience who come from Tier II and Tier III cities of India.

Kapil Arora, Co-Founder, Travographer said that Travel is all about experience and everyone travelling need to capture the moments. We (his organization) are travel photographers who capture for people and deliver it to them to make their vacation hassle-free. Kirubel Shitahun, Manager Sales, Ethiopian Airlines –North India said that Technology accelerates our (Ethiopian Airlines) business and gives us a better understanding in terms of our customer needs and preferences.

Anirban Sarkar, General Manager, Country Inn & Suites by Radisson – Gurugram said that Indian tourism industry is dependent on changing forces like market opportunities and other co- relevant factors.