RongjiaHu&KeZhao
It is firmly convinced that the technology plays an important even vital role in the travel and tourism industry. Nowadays, in our daily life, the innovation of technology facilitates the global transaction of information, shortens the physical distance and makes it easier to connect people from all over the world. Recently I’ve read an article that talked about the new digital technology overturned the tourism industry. In this article, it mentioned several technologies, such as biometric baggage, cloud passport, personalised travel, spontaneous travel apps and virtual reality travel. We take an example of biometric baggage solutions and cloud passports, there is no need for tourists to take the paper passport, the airport can use the biometric technology to identify the tourist, and in the meanwhile they also use the biometric technology to chase the location of the baggage, this kind of technology is already used in some organizations such as Dutch airline KLM and Dubai International Airport.It decrease the risk of loss of passport and baggage and enhance the security and efficiency of transport.
Passport is regarded as a necessary ID document when people go abroad for any kind of activities, especially for travellers, they may not go anywhere without their passports with them.However, the paradoxical aspect is that we even worry about the lost of our valuables when we have them with us.So cloud passport seems a good news for all the outbound travellers since the physical passport is no longer on the must-list of traveling items. It means IT industry again help tourism industry eliminate a trouble thing. According to the data from the DFAT that 38718 passports [1] are reported lost during 2014 to 2015, which means the government has to solve the problem for instance making a new passport.In short, the cloud passport cuts down on the tourist’s concern about the loss of the passport and also decreases the workload of the tourism department.The article also refers to the biometric baggage solution, which is a new self-service of check-in luggage. People go to the kiosk to print baggage claim tag and drop their luggages on the belt instead of manual service, for example, Air New zealand installed its first biometric enabled self-service bag drop in 2015 [2]. Both of the cloud passport and the biometric baggage solution are supposed to improve the passengers’ experience and make boarding service more efficient and convenient. As an indispensable part of tourism, the facilitation of transportation service also rises people’s desire for traveling and promotes the development of tourism in reverse. Moreover, the paper also mentioned the virtual reality experience in hospitality which is a means to increase in-room spending. The implementation of new technology in any process of traveling can have a butterfly effect on the other industries such as food and beverage, entertainment industries since they are complementary to each other.
I never had the experience of these new technology mentioned above, but personally I like the concept of cloud passport because it is quite useful, we would never be worried about boarding or shopping in duty free shops without paper passport. However, I have read about some experiences of self-service luggage check-in from the article “<<Bag drop issues>>: automated luggage systems drop the ball”[3], which indicates some disadvantages of the automated service. People who use the self-service machine tend to save the queuing time somehow but even meet more difficulties, they may find it is not an easy procedure without clear instruction. From the point view of first-class passengers, automated service should not be the one and only choice in the airport even though it is convenient because more paid air ticket should have more considerable service. It may not the resonant idea for everyone but at least it should be taken into consideration. All in all, IT definitely shortens the running cost somehow for tourism industry and improves the travellers’ experience but it lengthens the distance between the customer and the staff. What do you think about an airport in completely silence without any conversation between each other because we do everything with automated machine.
To summarize, just like the Colliers International said in the article, "Like the rest of the world, the travel industry is adapting to our highly digitalized lives and this is presenting huge opportunities for innovative thinkers to pioneer new solutions." We still need technological innovations to ensure that the whole tourism industry keep the path of the changing world, and also we need to think that whether every innovation is really positive for people’s life.
Article:http://www.khaleejtimes.com/technology/digital-savvy-holidaymakers-upend-travel-tourism-trade
References:
[1]http://www.gq.com.au/entertainment/tech/7+facts+you+need+to+know+about+the+cloud+passport,39973
[2]http://www.futuretravelexperience.com/2015/12/air-new-zealand-launches-biometric-enabled-self-bag-drop/
[3]https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2016/01/23/bag-drop-issues-automated-luggage-systems-drop-the-ball/#comments
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