A lot is happening in the world of leisure as well as business travel. Car sharing, ride sharing, mobility integration and demand responsive systems like Uber are making waves in the new business model of corporate travel. So, what is becoming particularly important is a connected travel which will make the bleisure trips smooth for tomorrow’s travellers. With the passing of time, there will be more demand for a seamless travel experience. Right from the process of thinking on where to go, to buying tickets, arriving at the airport, travelling and then reaching the final destination — everything needs to be on the plate in all the sybaritic style. Even in the case of unavoidable disruptions, these travellers will expect to be instantly informed on how it will affect them and what could be the ways to come out of such quandary situations.
Smart airports and travelling through e-visas
Travel and tourism is one of the fulcrum segments of international trade. It has grown dramatically over the past 30 years and proved as a vital sector that generates enormous GDP growth and job opportunities. Archaic visa applications and processing, as well as long, tiring queues at security checks and points of entry (notably airports), cost governments billions of dollars each year in lost revenue.
For the Group of Twenty (G20) countries, it was estimated in 2011 that improving visa processes could generate an estimated $40 billion-200 billion in additional tourism receipts by 2015. A sharp increase in international travel and heightened security requirements is straining systems designed to handle a substantially lower volume of travellers. Integrated smart visa and automated immigration processes can exploit biometric identification, pre-interviews and e-visas to create national (or international) databases that ease the visa application procedure for international business and leisure travel.
Optimised traffic management for mega cities
To address the needs of growing megacities and the rapid increase in traffic, it is essential to have a holistic system which will provide accurate and punctual snapshots of traffic patterns. It should also allow for dynamic and real-time responses. COMET, for instance, uses real-time traffic monitoring from infrastructure and vehicle sensors, intelligent steering, dynamic tolling, smart parking and much more. Important technologies in the smart transport market are advancing rapidly and might record as much as 20% of annual growth in the smart transport investment by 2025.
Seamless travel planning
Travel planning is becoming increasingly complex because of the many options and decisions confronting the traveller and the lack of transparency regarding the alternatives. Business travellers spend much time and money determining the best travel plans and schedules and delays could be highly intimidating in terms of both branding and business. From the numerous travel planning platforms available, IPITA offers real-time information, natural user interface, booking, planning and travelling updates.
Transparent and efficient trade flows
Fragmentation of systems and lack of common documents in international trade cause significant inefficiencies and loss of revenues which is why it is mandatory to improve both B2B and business-to-government (B2G) information exchange. TATLO (Transparency and Traceability for Logistics Optimisation) concept is not new and many technologies do exist but standardisation and implementation is missing.
