Why Cloud Computing is the Future of the Travel Industry
That’s the thing about technology. It benefits everyone!
There’s always a lot of talk about how technology has made life easier for consumers. Travel planning is easier, bookings happen in a jiffy, and the journey is smooth…well, a lot smoother than it used to be anyway! The amazing thing about technology is that it has also made life easier for travel agencies. Web-based travel search, smartphones, chatbots, big data analysis, and Travel ERP & CRM tools have reduced the tasks that were manual and exhausting for those sitting behind the desk, planning trips for their consumers.
One technological advancement, though, has revolutionized the travel industry in an unprecedented manner. We call it the cloud computing.
Why is Cloud Computing the talk of the town?
Cloud computing is like the giant cherry on the cake that everyone eyes because it looks tastier than the cake itself! The Internet is the cake, which made the life of travel agencies easy but the cloud made things even better. It brought so many benefits to the travel industry that it gave the word “easy” a whole new meaning.
Having said all this, many travel companies, particularly enterprises, are still reluctant to move to the cloud. They still prefer to keep all their applications and data on-premise. They have fears of data security, regulations, migration etc. But are those fears justified? The fact is, cloud computing has come a long way since its early days, and many of the concerns businesses have had about it, have largely been addressed by cloud providers.
The Exceptional Benefits of Cloud Technology
Now that we have raved quite a bit about online travel solutions and the cloud let’s get to the crux and discover the biggest benefits of this wonderful advancement. Let’s speak about its benefits to understand why it is the future of the travel industry.
It is Flexible
The travel industry is dynamic. The demand shoots up during specific seasons or holidays and hits rock-bottom some other times. When you invest in on-premise infrastructure, you pay a heavy price even when you don’t really need the bandwidth and end up struggling for more storage and processing power when the demand goes up. Either way, it is cumbersome.
Cloud computing is a pay-as-you-use service that’s easily scalable. When the demand goes up, the number of servers and storage can easily be increased. When the traffic goes down, the usage goes down, as does the price.
It is Mobile
More than 50% of web traffic comes from the mobile phone. Clients and staff members are a part of this traffic as well. Cloud computing makes access to data and applications so easy that one doesn’t need to be present in the office to cater to sudden needs. All your booking and mid-office applications are available on the mobile. This is particularly helpful during meetings, business trips, etc.
It Satisfies the Need for Speed
With attention span reducing drastically by the day and with consumers expecting everything to download and buffer in record time, travel agencies are in a race against time. However, cloud computing has enabled them to relax as it reduces download times, page rendering time, etc. by a significant margin. This is thanks to Content Data Networks (CDN) that almost all cloud providers offer today.
Cloud computing allows you to provide consistently fast speeds to users across the world. Other than the obvious user experience benefit, it has a positive impact on your SEO too.
It is Secure
Data sharing and online payments pose a security threat. Many consumers are still wary of data theft.
While in-house infrastructure is also secure, the additional security comes at an extravagant price and an in-house IT team that’s always on the lookout for upgrades to fight the latest threats. Cloud services, on the other hand, offer security updates by default. They upgrade their systems regularly so that threats stay mitigated.
It Comes Handy During Disasters
When disaster strikes, you’re at a risk losing everything….except in the case of online travel solutions on the cloud! Cloud platforms often have multiple copies of data saved in various locations. When the first copy fails due to a disaster, the other copies are still safe. The time taken for recovery is also very quick. With on-premise infrastructure, there’s usually a certain lag during disaster recovery that can cause tremendous amounts of loss.
It Enhances User Experience
User experience (UX) can make or break a travel app. With so many competitors in the market, travel agencies must focus on traffic retention and user engagement. Otherwise, customers will find another app that is satisfying their expectations. Thankfully, with cloud travel solutions, enhancing UX is easier than before. Travel agencies can make data easily accessible even in real-time without glitches. They can also improve the overall app performance, giving users a reason to stay on, use, and engage their apps.
Cloud computing also makes it easier to integrate with other cloud-based applications to build an end-to-end platform and provide clients a seamless experience.
If you’re looking to build an integrated solution for your brand, visit our website to learn how our industry-first Travel iPaaS can help you achieve that.
P.S. Major cloud platforms offer 99.9% uptime, which means that users can almost always access businesses without hassle. This directly means that agencies will not incur any loss due to downtime.
It Makes Personalization Easier
One size no longer fits all. Recommendations, discounts, and the relevance of offers vary from one user to the other. Cloud-based applications work brilliantly to aggregate individual data in the cloud, facilitate statistics, and enable travel agencies to provide personalized experiences based on their behavior, searches, etc.
It Cuts Down Costs
Most business decisions revolve around profitability and cloud computing ranks on top here. Almost every aforementioned benefit has a bonus benefit – cost reduction. From minimal capital costs to very low scalability costs, disaster recovery, storage, in-house IT team, etc., cloud computing aces it here. It costs travel agencies a fraction of on-premise infrastructure. In other words, when travel agencies switch to the cloud, they get onto cloud nine!
Travel Companies that are already on the cloud (nine)
Now, let’s underscore the benefits of cloud computing with some examples. Expedia, the travel giant, is on AWS (Amazon Web Services). It started using the cloud for its Expedia Suggest Service and in 2018, announced that 80% of its mission-critical apps would migrate to AWS in the coming years. Thanks to AWS, Expedia is able to develop apps faster, scale easily, and troubleshoot issues quickly. Airbnb migrated to AWS in 2016 to improve responsiveness and flexibility.
But hey, it’s not just AWS! Hilton Honors chose Google Cloud to enhance the booking process and customer experience. Hyatt, on the other hand, uses Adobe Marketing Cloud for better delivery across platforms and digital asset management.
The story is the same with all giants. So, why shouldn’t every travel agency follow suit?
All these examples demonstrate the same point – cloud computing is the better choice for travel companies, regardless of whether they are SMEs or enterprise-level firms. Because who doesn’t like savings and convenience?
Conclusion
Cloud computing is not the future of travel agencies. It is the present. The sooner firms jump onto the bandwagon, the better because just about everything from profitability to ease of use and customer experience depends on it.
TravelCarma offers a wide range of cloud-based travel technology solutions. Visit us on www.travelcarma.com or get in touch with us to know more.
