New kinds of tour operators in 2022?

Nowadays, the Internet is just there and in the western countries hardly anyone under the age of 55 can imagine living without being electronically connected. Customers like searching information for travelling. An increasing part of the guests/ passengers book online. There are many tools in place, which help the travellers to make their choice. Meta search-engines, map based information, recommender systems or review platforms etc. help the user … or not? Customers have the problem to find the relevant and trustworthy content today. Tour operators such as thomascook.com, expedia.com and intermediaries such as ab-in-den-urlaub.de as well as big brands of serviceproviders such as ACCOR can bridge the lack of trust. Given the assumption, that only a part of the vision of the Web 3.0 (semantic web) becomes true, customers might find relevant, trustworthy information easier and faster. Moreover the average age of the offline-bookers is increasing and more offline-bookers are dying out. In the age of semantic web, customers will be more likely to book online with the service provider. New business models and perspectives for tour operators and intermediaries (online or offline) must be discussed. It will be crucial to find out what the real added value of new business models is going to be.

Dr. Andreas Liebrich