TECHNOLOGY
The brave new world of technology-driven travel and tourism By Septi Bukula, founder and director of business events firm Osiba Management and Seeza Tourism SME Network.
I
n a 2018 report, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) identified “enabling technologies” as one of four megatrends shaping the future of tourism. The report highlighted the current and future role and impact on travel and tourism of technologies such as booking platforms, virtual reality, augmented reality, machine learning and artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain. It concluded that digital technologies would continue to reshape tourism value chains, driving an evolution 34 Business Events Africa April 2021
of business models and opening up new entrepreneurial opportunities while at the same time disrupting some of the existing business models. In a 2016 article, Bournemouth University e-tourism academics Dimitrios Buhalis and Adrian Tanti capture the pervasive role of technology in travel and tourism. They visualise a traveller embarking on a trip, listening to music on Spotify while on the way to the airport. The traveller keeps socially updated on Facebook and completes online check-in for the flight, which most likely was
booked online via an OTA. To board the plane, the traveller uses a boarding pass retrieved on a smartwatch. Upon arriving at the destination, the traveller books a ride to the hotel with Uber using an app on a mobile device. At the hotel, the visitor searches for and books a restaurant via TripAdvisor, and then navigates to the eatery using Google Maps. The visitor captures a photo of the food and uploads it on Instagram and www.businesseventsafrica.com
