Flight booking worse than the dentist? Expedia’s 2024 Air Travel Hacks Report
What could be worse than going to the dentists? Or filing tax returns? Try booking a flight, survey of 1,000 Singapore flyers by Expedia has found.
Close to a third (32%) found booking air travel is more daunting than filing taxes (22%) or the dreaded dentist visit (27%).
“In terms of stress levels, booking your next flight shouldn’t be in the same ballpark as getting a cavity filled,” said James Marshall, vice president of Expedia Group global air account management.
“The good news is many of the things that contribute to travel stress are getting better, and Expedia is constantly releasing new tools like Price Tracking, that make the whole booking and flying journey smoother.”
When to Book
- Those who book on Sundays instead of Fridays tend to save, on average, around 11% on economy flight bookings and 36% on premium bookings.
- Travellers that booked 128 to 142 days prior to departure saved 10% on average compared to those who waited until the last minute. International airfares tend to increase nine weeks prior to departure.
When to Travel
- Sundays are the priciest days, on average, to start a trip.
- Some travellers like to maximise their trip by flying out after work and taking a red eye flight. However, year-to-date flight status data reveals flights that depart after 9pm have a 74% higher chance, on average, of being cancelled than those that depart earlier in the day.
Metaverse: Is anyone watching?
‘Is it game over for Metaverse?’ was a question posed by EU-Start-ups on LinkedIn.
More than 1,200 people responded to the question with just two percent spending more than 20 hours per week on the Metaverse, another two percent spent between five and 20 hours, while four percent spent one to five hours and a massive 93% of respondents spent no time at all on the Metaverse.
Among comments posted on LinkedIn, one respondent suggested Facebook would have been better off spending its billions on campfire fuel rather than Metaverse, while another suggested the survey was probably demographically skewed and the results might have been different if those who responded were gamers or younger people.
Goodness on the go at Indian airports
Computer vision technology specialist Prisma AI has expanded its strategic partnership with multinational conglomerate, the Adani Group, to improve the welfare of airport visitors, especially elderly travellers, mothers with infants, and individuals requiring wheelchair assistance.
Leveraging Prisma AI’s proprietary Visual AI algorithms, the system proactively identifies incidents such as falls or unusual passenger behaviour.
Equipped with smart tablets, “goodness champions” stationed at an airport desk receive real-time notifications about travellers in need, enabling swift assistance.
Prisma AI specialises in predictive information technologies, more specifically visual based artificial Intelligence applications for body behavioural analysis, sentiment analysis along with OCR, image, video, face and object recognition.
Prisma AI and the Adani Group collaborated to launch the “Desk of Goodness” system at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad and have since delivered the system to five more airports.
SITA hops onboard with Costa Cruises
Travel industry IT provider SITA is working with Italian cruise company, Costa Cruises, to manage the frustration of trip disruptions.
Via a cloud-based application equipped with an intuitive user interface, Costa’s operations team can link real-time flight updates to the associated vessel and the relevant booking codes.
Costa Cruises, part of the Carnival Group, offers Fly & Cruise packages encompassing both dedicated charter flights and scheduled flights.
The flight updates provided by SITA empower Costa Cruises to handle the embarkation and disembarkation process for Fly & Cruise guests more efficiently, as well as improve planning for crew movements and allocations.
In the event of a cancelled or delayed flight, continuously refreshed data becomes crucial for promptly arranging guest transfers to the next port of call. Similarly, disembarking guests in a timely manner enables passengers to remain onboard the ship while allowing Costa Cruises to optimise airport transfers.
Abu Dhabi’s terminal of tech
Abu Dhabi International Airport’s new Terminal A, due to open on 1 November, promises a “transformative” passenger experience, say the airport authority.
The new terminal, covering 742,000 sqm, is set to become one of the largest airport terminals globally. It can accommodate up to 45 million passengers annually, and 11,000 passengers per hour.
The airport authority said Terminal A will be a “shopper’s paradise” with nearly 335,000 sqm of retail locations and food and beverage concessionaires, plus two health and beauty spas and a hotel with 138 rooms.
The terminal will also embrace technological innovations to enhance the passenger experience. It will be the first in the world to include all nine biometric airport touchpoints with biometric solutions installed at self-service bag drops, immigration eGates, and boarding gates during the first phase.
Later, the terminal will utilise facial recognition technology to screen passengers and minimise wait times.
