I spent a good portion of this week in meetings with various companies and individuals in the Singapore travel industry. There were some interesting chats and some great feedback on what we're doing here at GottaGetaway. One of the most interesting conversations concerned how online travel is evolving. In short, the discussion went something like this:
The first phase of online travel was the arduous task of putting inventory online and making it possible for members of the general public to make (and pay for) a confirmed booking without the necessity of human intervention. This phase was a beast. Travel had historically been solely the realm of authorized agents, and being an agent often meant extensive training, licensing and in many countries, bonding. I'm not sure it's possible for someone who's grown up in the era of online travel to fully grasp what a big change it was for tickets to be sold online without a human being involved. The process of finding, reserving and then writing a physical ticket that had to be delivered to the client was the way travel booking was done until only just recently. All of us who are in this business today owe everything to those early travel innovators who cracked this nut. But, it was only the beginning...
>> Read the entire post on the GottaGetaway Blog
