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Traveler Tribes in the Americas - Making memories and forging new tech
Anyone who knows me understands how much I value experiences and am always open to trying new things and visiting new places. Over the last year, I’ve seen travel blossom back to life, and it has fueled a newfound excitement in me to again explore both familiar and new places. It’s no wonder when I took the Traveler Tribes 2033 quiz, it categorized me as an Excited Experientialist.
Identified as one of the four Tribes defined within our Traveler Tribes 2033 report, these instinctive explorers are labeled as having an open-minded outlook, will opt for speedier modes of transport and own progressive technology. What I find most intriguing about my traveler tribe, is that we represent an opportunity for the travel industry to explore how technology can drive our experiences.
Traveler Tribes: an Americas view
As part of this global research, Amadeus also studied travelers in the Americas. According to the Traveler Tribes 2033 Americas report, which surveyed 1,508 travelers from the United States and Mexico, revealed travelers from these areas are largely open to adopt new technology. Today they own more emerging technologies than travelers from other regions. This is important as it suggests they’ll be open to how technology will shape travel in 2033.
The Travel Tech-fluencers, another traveler tribe, will have even higher expectations that travel should leverage technology to create smoother and better-connected experiences. Travelers from the Americas region are more likely to currently own progressive technologies, such as a virtual reality headset, a drone, or smart speaker, compared to those from other regions. Therefore, travelers are more excited about technology’s ability to reduce problems in trips in 2033 compared to travelers from elsewhere. The Americas region could possibly be the geography that drives the future force of technological innovation in travel.
The trajectory toward such evolution aligns to Amadeus’ ethos and vision for investing in research and development and working with customers to innovate on new technology. Our technology prowess and track record of collaboration with customers and partners help us stay on the cutting edge of technology and trends.
Future forces to shape travel
According to the Traveler Tribes report, 72% of travelers from the Americas region are prone to using super apps – all-in-one applications that are expected to be prevalent in 2033. When it comes to daily life, consumers demand more accessibility to a variety of services at their fingertips. They want to buy groceries, clothes and, within the same swipe, book travel from their phone. We’ve seen goods and services apps capitalize on the opportunity to diversify into travel.
Amadeus recently partnered with the most popular super-app in Latin America, Rappi, to include travel services. While leveraging the search and automation capabilities of the Amadeus Travel Platform, Rappi and Amadeus are innovating together to further develop the travel vertical.
The report also calls out the ever-growing advancements of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will be a major future force in shaping travel in the Americas region in 2033. As people continue to use travel agency services, there is a level of expectation for agents to respond quickly and accurately, while still maintaining a one-to-one relationship.
For our travel agency customers, the biggest differentiator can be customer service and relationship-building. However, economic challenges such as inflation can impact budget constraints and staff shortages. To address this need, Amadeus partnered with Aimendo to integrate its natural language automation into the Amadeus ecosystem through Amadeus Web Services, as well as the agency’s current ecosystem. The artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities enable agencies to execute specific actions to help offset manual tasks and improve efficiency, so they can focus on building relationships with their customers.
Another traveler tribe, the Memory Makers, value travel’s fundamentals, including the memories they make and the places they visit. When travel advisors are not bogged down with mundane tasks, they have more time to curate memorable vacation experiences. Similarly with Pioneering Pathfinders, our fourth Traveler Tribe, who will combine people and technology to plan travel for them, will equally balance the roles of people and AI in supporting the trip planning experience.
As travelers and the industry evolve, we prioritize helping our customers deliver the best products and services for travelers. It’s been our mission to dive deeper into psychographics and people’s behavior and how they travel. Only then can we understand what’s important to travelers – their preferences and how they feel about the future.
Read the Traveler Tribe 2033 Americas report to find out more on what we expect from travelers in the years ahead.
Eduardo Schutte is the SVP, Account Management North America Travel Sellers & OTA Americas for Amadeus. Connect with Eduardo on LinkedIn.