Happy new year. Everyone had a good break, all ready to take on the new year, whatever it may bring?
The good news is, travel is alive and well. All over the world, people were going places, experiencing new adventures and finding escape in new scapes and climes while the work world hibernated for a short spell.
It seems among my friends living in tropical places, there was a preference for colder places. Yes, cold is the new hot in South-east Asia and China seemed to be the go-to place, proving that when you remove visas for your neighbours, you release pent-up demand. My inbox was inundated with photos of friends enjoying the cold weather in Yunnan, Chengdu and Harbin, as well as some from Japan and Korea.
Those who returned from China were full of wonder not just at the different scapes but how digitally advanced it is. China’s always operated within its own digital bubble, the pandemic made it even so and out of those locked-up or locked-down years, however you choose to see it, a new digital spring has blossomed.
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“Everything is so integrated,” marvelled one millennial living in Singapore, “and it makes it so easy for someone like me who’s not that fluent in Chinese to travel within the country. With Alipay, I could pay for everything, hail rides (Didi Travel) and book flights and trains and hotels (Trip). The speed and convenience which payments can be made on the app is very good.”
She did struggle with the fact that she had to upload her passport to be able to use the app. “It is known to be a secure app but to the extent of getting passport information felt a bit far reaching,” she said. “It’s like Grab asking us for our IC before we can use the app, but it is also precisely due to the lack of personal data privacy in China that allows for the depth and breadth of integration,” she laughed.
She and her friends did have a (short) debate about the trade-off between personal data and convenience and tech advancement but their conclusion – was their data so precious anyway and besides, “corporations like big tech, telco companies, wifi companies, Spotify etc etc can get our data in other ways”.
Clearly in the end, they felt the trade-off worth it for ease and convenience and by so doing, they experienced a taste of the future, of what a truly digitally-connected travel experience feels like.
This is the kind of seamless integration and connectivity most travel tech companies dream about providing for their customers, wherever they may travel, but it requires an open-ness to data sharing and surrender of privacy that most societies in the West would struggle with but somehow, in Asia and other markets such as Middle East and Africa, consumers are more open to the trade-off.
It is this sentiment that will propel the next generation of digital adoption in what I call “new world markets”. The rise of intra-Asia travel, powered by low cost airlines, and the ease with which travellers in the region can now pay digitally in each other’s countries, fuelled by tech innovation from travel and payments companies, will be THE defining force in travel in 2025 and beyond.
And I see this common thread developing in the Middle East and Africa.
At WiT Singapore in October, numerous speakers spoke of how because of this more open environment, travel brands would be able to innovate faster – be it in providing the connected trip or personalisation – setting new standards for the global market.
But clearly there are problems still to be fixed if we are to truly give our customers what they wish for or may not even know what they want, until we give it to them.
In our “Year in Review” summary, we asked industry leaders two key questions – “What’s the biggest problem the travel industry has yet to fix” and “One important trend that no one is talking about yet”.
Here’s a summary of their answers.
Problems to be fixed
• Transparency. It’s still far too complicated and confusing for travellers to book with confidence.
• Introduction of true digital traveller ID services
• Lack of data connectivity
• Tech Deficit and the breaking point of technical debt in legacy systems
• Over-tourism
• Balancing growth with sustainability
• The industry’s influence on authorities and societies remains disproportionately small compared to its size.
• Lack of serendipity due to social media – 80% of travellers visit just 10% of the world’s tourist destinations.
• Manpower challenges
• Personalization, efficiency in during trip/experience fulfillment (eg check-in)
• The fragmentation of travel data and services, which prevents truly seamless travel experiences.
• The reliance on gateways, FAANG, to attract customers.
Important trends that no one is talking about yet
• The rise of “silent travel”
• The rise of all-inclusive travel
• Micro-Sabbaticals
• Corporate travel – the total elimination of the expense report
• Climate-Responsive Tourism and Migration
• Diminishing returns of LLM training efforts
• AI’s ability to automate routine tasks, ultimately increasing productivity and freeing up time, changing how we work, live and travel.
• Travellers are choosing the experience first, then booking flights & hotels later
• Cybercrime
• Less is More
• Predictive travel curation – where AI anticipates and suggests travel arrangements based on life events and behavioral patterns before travellers even start planning.
• Data quality and orchestration
• The global backlash to accelerating change
May this serve as your guide to 2025. Whatever the new year may bring, keep your eye on what matters.
Happy new year.
