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employment. Workforce Suppliers & Restaurants/Eateries: The workforce in the hoteling industry has been reduced due to the pandemic, leading to mass unemployment concerns in the sector. The pandemic has adversely affected suppliers (food, toiletries, etc.) to hotels, and even restaurants have had a significant reduction in revenue.
2. Corporate Travel: Historically, corporates hand employees a company credit card to cover their payments. An upcoming technology is the use of a virtual card (O'Neill, 2020). A virtual card can be initiated in a traveller's phone, and a limiting value can be set as well. Spend limits can be set on food, drinks and recreation; it will work exactly like a credit card but without any kind of contact.
Uses of Contactless Technology
Figure 3: Top contactless technology people want (Blackbox, 2020) A recent survey indicated that nearly 76% of travellers would prefer destinations that offer more contactless experiences (Blackbox, 2020). In a bid to make the travel experience safer, contactless technology can be implemented in the following touchpoints: 1. Hotels and Rentals: It is expected that most hotels will start implementing some mobile app to improve the consumer experience. Customers can enter their rooms, control room temperature, adjust lights and operate the TV using their phones. Room service requests like cleaning, extra amenities etc. will be done through the same app. Chatbots, robots, automatic check-in kiosk can reduce face to face contact significantly. The dining experience in hotels is also very likely to change. Room service will be the primary mode of ordering food. The paper menu is a hotspot for germs; it needs to be replaced with a digital menu in the mobile app or through a QR code. Methods of payment have been going digital for a long time, and the pandemic will push this further up.
3. Airlines & Airports: Airports can use contactless technology like facial and iris scanning for bag drops, boarding gates, access gates and duty-free shops. Digitalized passports can reduce contact at checkpoints. Making e-boarding passes compulsory and introducing sensor-controlled touchless lavatories can make airports a lot safer. Crowd management can be automated through Lidar (used in Apple iPad pro) that can check the distance between people and sound automated alerts when people camp close together (O'Neill, 2020). The inside of aeroplanes can be automated by linking the seat and table trays with Bluetooth and adjusting through an app.
Figure 4: Facial Recognition and its uses (Bhattacharya, 2020) Contactless Technology around the world (TN Bureau, 2020) Biometric Boarding: A partnership between Beijing Capital International Airport and the Swiss tech company SITA has automated entire
