The #UX of Vacations: How technology can provide a better experience

It’s summertime, and to many of us that means one thing: vacation. I’m one such person, with two trips scheduled, with a third (potentially) in the offering. Travel of any sort often comes many anxieties… Delayed flights, lost reservations, and long lines at attractions being a few of them. In the past, travel agents used to handle all of the details of trips for you, and while the occupation still exists the 21st Century has brought tools and technology to bear that made the traditional travel agent obsolete.

Kinda.

Because there’s still services and values that travel agents provide technology doesn’t. The good travel agents provide personal service, getting to KNOW you and your needs in order to steer you towards the right destination and activities once you get there. Yes, you can book your own travel easier and cheaper than through a travel agent, but you have none of the “white glove” treatment that REALLY GOOD travel agents can bring you.

Which is why I have been thinking about how this can change. How intelligent agents and/or a dedicated application can help people plan and have a perfect vacation, as stress-free as possible. What would this entail? Well, here’s a few modest ideas.

(And for those travel agents reading this, my intent is not to put you out of work. Mostly.)

Getting to know you

Good travel agents ask direct questions when they start working with you to plan a vacation. There is no reason an intelligent Bot could not ask the same type of questions. What does your family like? How active do you want to be on holiday? Those type of direct questions can inform a decision tree to not only inform destinations but also planned activities.

And that doesn’t stop at simple directional questions. Even better, a smart Vacation Assistant (a term I will be using for the rest of this post) should be able to connect to any and all loyalty programs you have… Providing insights based on your historic travel AND spending habits. Let’s say you want to go to the beach – what beach? How far? What type of hotel? Does it need to be near chain restaurants or fine dining? The more your Vacation Assistant knows, the better it can support your vacation planning.

(And yes, this type of machine learning is more than viable with current technology – especially with technology from Microsoft. Trust me, I know…)

Smart Recommendations (based on what you like and do)

My wife, whom I lovingly call She Who Must Be Obeyed, is somewhat indecisive. Especially when she is faced with an abundance of options to choose from. And that abundance of choice is everywhere – when you have sources like Yelp who lists every place of business within your location, the simple choice of “what do you want for dinner?” becomes hard for anyone. And when you look at locations like Las Vegas or New York City – home of some of the best restaurants in North America – well, that choice becomes harder still.

Leveraging your travel history, as well as data from your Yelp profile or social media, your Vacation Assistant can let you know what three restaurants near your hotel that fits your tastes and price point.

A smart itinerary

My wife is not very decisive when it comes to setting an itinerary for activities to do on vacation, so the onus falls on me to do most of that planning. What would help her (and many others) is a smart itinerary based on the best reviewed most popular activities in the area. This could leverage public data from sites such as Trip Advisor and Yelp as well as social media. It can also be a “bespoke” plan based on what we tell the Vacation Assistant. Again, simple questions can lead to a fully planned set of activities that we can accept or tweak.

Proactive Notifications

The airlines do a pretty good job letting you know about delays and new gates… but that’s not the only thing that people need to know when they travel. What is the UV Index going to be? Is traffic bad at the time of day you are planning to go to a destination? Are there roads closed or construction? And so on.
Leveraging public data and social media, your Vacation Assistant can let you know all this and more, reducing anxiety – or, if the notification is a bad one, at least you’ll be in the know.

(You can even build such a solution much like some of the health apps out there do – If the app has access to you fitness device data and see your heartrate is elevated or your sleep is not restful, it could recommend a quick weekend getaway to help relieve some stress. though being that “smart” of an app may come off as creepy to some.)

A shareable travelogue

Google Photos does a great job of creating short movies and stylizing images in the background, and that’s awesome – but imagine if it also created a true travelogue that showed public images along with your own. Android phones already track where you are (for reasons both good and bad) so why not have an animated map that people can watch highlights along your journey? All of which can be shared though Twitter or Facebook. Again, not hard to do, but a feature that may potentially creep some users out.

Automatic special requests

If you always stay on a lower floor, or need extra towels, the Vacation Assistant can let the hotel know for you. After setting your preference, the hotel reservations team will get an a message letting them know what you like.

There you have it: How an intelligent Vacation Assistant can help take care of your vacation needs, letting you relax… and actually enjoy your time off.

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