This year’s Skift Global Forum took place at Lincoln Center in NYC. Hitit and Skift had a positive working experience earlier, that’s why I was thrilled to be part of this 3 day eventThe Skift Global Forum is the annual business gathering for the travel industry. As a company Skift provides travel reports, they connect with industry experts and see where trends and technology are going all around the World. One of this year’s topics was “Permanxiety”. Rafat Ali described the concept as the near-constant state of anxiety that exists now around the world. Travelers undergo a different dimension of concerns about terrorism, security, racial tension, “Trumpism” and the role of technology.
Travel industry struggles between comfort and adventure everyday: escape from the ordinariness of everyday life, way to experience new places and cultures. What tourists’ want don’t always align with what is socially acceptable in a country these days. Platforms like Airbnb fulfill the tourists desire to live like a local. Technology makes it simple to research a new place however, they cannot teach the traveler to keep an open mind and respect the locals. Travel companies need to find new ways/mediums to show these aspects in the time where there is a lot of tension in the market. e tourists desire to live like a local.
With this tension state in mind new industries, services and gadgets are being created. Meditation apps & retreats, body monitoring devices and fidget spinners are becoming popular. What is the travel industry's role here? “Travel is where all the Permanxies show up in concentrated form.” Says Rafat Ali. From the security lines to travel bans, laptop restrictions and extreme weather disruptions, they all create. So how the airlines make the customers experience more pleasant? What are the roles of OTAs? Hotels vs Airbnb? Many platforms partner with complementary industries to provide more at once, does it help? With this in mind, I believe every player in the industry will need to check their customer satisfaction and follow the traveler in every step of the way to offer a more pleasant experience. Let's face it, “anxiety” is there in our everyday life and traveling should be a pleasant experience to reduce the stress not make it worse.
With all this in mind, I was pleased to see Hitit offers its partners the necessary tools in its customer-oriented PSS solutions. By offering end to end solutions to the Airline industry Hitit is ahead of the game with its flexible platforms. Moreover, it started this path more than 20 years ago, when being ‘customer-centric’ was not even a worldwide trend.