The Beat recently did a piece on the UK based ITM's study on the Use of Technology in the travel process. The report is wide ranging and contains a lot of trend information.
However picking through the data to obtain valuable nuggets on what lessons can be learned is not that easy. So allow me the indulgence of picking on one area. IE the need for broader content availability.
If by now you have not surmised that the Professor is clearly biased in favor of multi-content platforms - then you have not been paying much attention. But it is not my bias really - rather it is an acknowledgement that fragmented content has existed for a very long time. The options for access to fragmented content were few and far between. Now that is changing and changing fast.
With the airlines starting to flee the one-size fits everything (aka via the GDS) they join the other sectors such as hotels and ground transportation that have had this issue for years. The acknowledgement that content is full fragmented and that the aggregation of content is a valuable service, players are changing how they source and what they source.
it should never be underestimated that Travel Technology vendors tend to accentuate the positives, there is now a general acceptance that the current generation of technology has indeed improved the lot of the user community as represented by the ITM members. I would guess that the vast majority (ie in excess of 95%) of all the PNRs generated by ITM members are indeed touched by a third party (read non-GDS) system. The ITM study states that the most commonly used type of technology among those polled was online self-booking, at 70 percent.
But more interesting for me was the demand for access to Non-GDS content with over 60% of ITM members stating this as a requirement. This is a pointer to the changes coming. The term full content is already a misnomer. The legacy GDSs can no longer provide full content. Not that actually they ever did. The caveats in the definition in GDS contracts are wide enough to drive a truck through.
Use this information wisely.
You can purchase the study from the ITM directly. Members will get free copies in about May 2010.
Cheers
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