The use of mobile devices have disrupted how people move around the world. (Unsplash photo)
Smartphones injected ultra-convenience into our society that we had previously never encountered. Some industries claim that smartphones have caused the most significant changes to their business model, but the travel industry has a good claim as the most affected.
In the latter stages of the 20th century, booking a holiday, especially an intercontinental trip, was a layered process that involved a travel agent going through the process with you, checking through travel options and different packages. If you wanted to hire a car once you arrive at your destination, a travel agent would deal with this process from beginning to end.
It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to blame the smartphone industry for the changes; the Internet enabled the bulk of these changes and transformed how many of us book our holidays. However, smartphones have introduced apps, flight comparison websites and VPNs that people can use to get the best deals on their flights, hotels and everything else in between.
Tracking the impact of digital change
It isn’t just the travel industry that has had to shoulder some of these profound digital changes; every industry has had to adapt to the rise of the Internet. Those travel companies that were able to see this change on the horizon and adjust their business models and promotional strategies accordingly gave themselves an excellent chance of becoming the new face of the travel industry.
Other industries that had to adapt to this seismic change include the online casino sector, which, in the same manner as the travel industry, went from relatively localized physical branches to competing with a rapidly growing global market that was emerging online.
These changes were on a global scale, so instant payout casinos in Canada with the fastest withdrawal times could use the advances and innovations that had occurred in the broader online industry and tailor them for Canada-based customers. The same model was applied to the travel industry in Canada, too. Companies had to adapt, branch out and offer a digital, international version of their service or face being swallowed by much larger competitors.
Adding convenience on an industrial scale
For international travellers, going on the trip of a lifetime is on their bucket list. However, before the advent of the Internet, much of the research in this market operated via paper-based books and travel agencies.
For many, it was a cumbersome and convoluted process involving high fees to travel agents, but once the Internet emerged, it knocked these walls down almost overnight. If Canadians were looking to travel across their own country, it became a far easier process, whether via a road trip or a domestic flight. There was a lot more domestic knowledge to draw on.
For international travellers looking to find information about Ontario travel tips, instead of going to a bookstore and purchasing a generic book about Canadian travel, people could now find tailored and bespoke guides from locals for free and access a range of tips via social media and travel vloggers, resulting in them taking more control of their travel from beginning to end.
Of course, some people prefer using a travel agent. While this market hasn’t completely disappeared, it has shrunk significantly in light of the cheaper and more convenient avenues that emerged online. Millions of people can do all their planning and booking on their phones, and the move was a transformative leap forward in the travel industry.
Using your smartphone overseas
Some readers may be old enough to remember a time when travelling abroad essentially cut you off from all news back home. If you went to the US or Asian countries for a few weeks, you’d only hear about the local news when you returned from your trip. Phones did not have the capability they do now.
Access to WiFi, if it existed, was far more expensive and impractical in some parts of the world. Phoning home was costly, and apart from the odd postcard, there was no feasible way of letting your family or friends know what you were up to in real time.
In the modern era, smartphones allow us (for better or worse) to keep fully updated with all the news and to know what’s going on back home. If you’re in a country where they do not speak your language, you can use AI apps and translation tools for instant translations rather than struggling to speak the local lingo.
Instead of relying on a local or a taxi driver for directions, we can bring up a map on our smartphone and navigate our way around. Instead of having to barter our way around specific destinations, the rise of international apps like Uber results in these practices being undercut in popular tourist spots. While this isn’t an ideal scenario for local taxi drivers, it has transformed the travel industry.
Conclusion
Two constants have emerged from the rise of smartphones: convenience and cost-effectiveness. Sure, there’s still a market for travel agents, but by the same token, if you’re proficient in technology and have a worldwide data plan and a smartphone with the capability, it’s much easier to do all this yourself.
Being overly reliant on your smartphone can pose some challenges abroad. Still, given how smartphones are such an integral part of the global economy, with only a few cities and countries on Earth not having Internet access, they have changed the travel industry forever. Over the next couple of decades, they will continue to enact the same levels of seismic changes we’ve seen over the past 25 years.
