While Travel Companies Laser-in on Technology, the Travel Industry might be Missing its Own Purpose
It’s no doubt that we live in a more advanced world than ever before with companies continuing to innovate. With remote work on the rise and social media upping its game, technology is in the forefront of most companies including the travel and hospitality industries.
When you hear a company talk about what they are doing that is new and forward-thinking, they’ll most likely tell you about their best-in-class technology, whether that is a platform, app, or another tool that makes a process more user-friendly, seamless, cost-effective, or quicker.
Travel companies today, all say that they are innovating to redefine the future of travel, are enhancing travel experiences, provide unrivalled value, and offer forward-thinking solutions that address the ever-changing needs of the traveler. Yet, their innovations still focus on faster bookings, cheaper pricing, and easier payment processing.
Are these the right needs that are being met?
When does an innovation become an expectation of the traveler and redundant across competitors? I mean, doesn’t every traveler expect a platform to be quick, easy, and help them save money?
Where are the foundation and purpose of travel? These are travel and hospitality industries after all.
Think about the wellness travel sector. Without a doubt, wellness was catapulted to the forefront across most industries, in particular the hospitality and tourism industries. And no, by wellness I am not referring to sanitation, social-distancing, or anything else Covid related, that is health.
We all know that the wellness tourism industry was built upon the spa industry but the depth of why people turn to travel is more profound than a luxurious hotel spa or a yoga retreat. It’s become quite popular for travel companies to put wellness into their messaging while still focusing on the past definition of the industry or involving technology. People don’t need a faster and easier way to find a wellness experience or retreat. What they are looking for instead is a company, brand, and experience that takes them back to the foundation of travel and fulfills their personal needs.
Let’s look at why humans travel in the first place. We travel to discover, explore, and connect. We travel to heal from heartache or traumatic life events. We travel to rejuvenate from our hectic lives, get inspired for a creative project, meet new people and have meaningful conversations, learn new skills, soul-search, self-reflect and find our purpose in life, tests our strengths and weaknesses, celebrate and create magical long-lasting moments, collect stories to share with our loved ones, relax and disconnect from our work life, have a sense of fulfillment, give back to others, learn about other ways of living and new cultures, transform our mind, body, or soul, and so much more.
Travel is healing and transformative.
After almost two years of travel being restricted or limited, people realize the value that it holds in our personal and professional life. We need human connection, healing, inspiration, joy, and experiences that address us as a whole more now than ever before.
It’s one thing to slap a wellness or transformative travel label on the experiences that your company provides and it’s another to actually believe in the power that travel holds to make the world a better place, bring people together, improve our wellbeing, help us succeed in life and business, and so on.
So as your travel company innovates with technology and slaps a label of meaningful, purposeful, or transformative travel on its website, don’t forget to tap back into the foundation of why we value travel in the first place and incorporate it into your branding and messaging. It just might set you apart from competitors.
