To gain insight into how the travel industry and governments can work to rebuild the traveller confidence, Amadeus, a large travel technology firm, commissioned research to learn more about travellers’ top concerns and what types of technology would help travellers feel safe and comfortable enough to travel and help spur recovery of the travel sector.
With inputs from over 6,000 travellers across India, Singapore, France, Germany, the UK and the US, the study found that technology plays a crucial role in supporting recovery, as over four in five(84 pc) travellers said technology would increase their confidence to travel in the next 12 months by addressing concerns around mixing with crowds, social distancing and physical touch-points. Approximately 1,000 respondents hailed from India.
When asked about what would make them more likely to travel, respondents in India said, access to technology that reduces human contact, queues and physical touch-points were the ultimate factor for getting Indian people to travel again (40 pc). This was especially important for baby boomers, where 73 pc of respondents cited it as their top concern compared with 28 pc of generation Z. This was followed by the need for effective test, track and trace programmes to contain infections (40 pc); visibility and assurance of sanitisation, hygiene and safety measures in hotels and accommodations (39 pc) and limiting the number of passengers on flights (38 pc).
Mobile applications that provide on-trip notifications and alerts emerged as the most appealing technology to increase confidence for Indian travellers (56 pc). This was followed by the need for contactless payments (54 pc) and the ability to have airline boarding passes on their phones (51 pc). Baby boomers were much more open to facial recognition technologies (53 pc) compared with their generation Z counterparts (24 pc). For millennial and generation X respondents, automated cleaning processes ranked similarly in the level of importance (49 pc vs 52 pc).
“India’s travel industry has started to show green shoots of recovery in the past months, and India’s aviation minister recently suggested that domestic passenger traffic could reach pre-Covid levels by the end of the year. This new consumer research further affirms the optimism for travel as many of the concerns can be addressed by the technology available now, at every stage of the traveller experience. We have seen Covid-19 accelerate trends that were already present, such as the drive towards digitalisation and contactless technology, which was key themes picked out by Indian travellers in order to feel confident about travelling again. These are areas that we are already working closely on with our airline, airport and hospitality customers, and we will continue to focus on this,” says Cyril Tetaz, executive vice president of airlines, Asia-Pacific, Amadeus.
The survey was conducted in late September 2020 by research firm Censuswide to explore traveller sentiment in light of Covid-19, how expectations and demands have changed and what can be put in place to strengthen traveller trust and confidence.
