“Where can I go and what can I do, for the money I want to spend?”
This is an easy question for a traveller to ask, but extremely difficult for a computer to answer. If you’ve ever found the perfect hotel online, with the perfect flight, only to stumble at the perfect dates, you’ll know how frustrating it can be to find what you want.
This is where Extreme Search comes in. It’s a concept that takes innovation, inspiration, interaction, transparency, data quality and speed, and brings them together to serve the needs of people who want to travel. It enables people to query computers through their own criteria, rather than being limited to what is available. It wraps the technology around the traveller.
Affinity Shopper: extreme search in action
So, what does extreme search look like?
The answer to this question is Affinity Shopper. The first product of an Extreme Search suite of solutions.
Watch the demo:
This is a new search engine that transforms airline websites into a ‘traveller playground’. It is where consumers can explore and select their trip based on their desired holiday experience, rather than simply searching for flights along specific routes on exact dates.
Affinity Shopper enables airlines to improve their share of the leisure travel market, increase look to book ratios, boost customer retention and improve the online customer shopping experience.
Meanwhile, it enables customers to shop in the way they think, not in a linear destination-and-date way. They can now ask questions such as: “What can I do for what I want to spend? And where can I go? I want to go scuba diving, but I do not know where. And I want a beach holiday but I do not want the temperature to be above 25C.”
The Amateur-Expert Traveller: A new phenomenon, and the future of travel
At Amadeus we believe that people drive the technology, and this is borne out by our new report, called “The Amateur-Expert Traveller”.
Today, we are seeing a new generation of travellers. They have been empowered by the internet, with more information available to them, in particular user-generated information in the form of blogs, videos, pictures, ratings and reviews, and so on.
So, the relationship between travel companies and their customers is changing. Customers know more, need more, and expect more. We call them Amateur-Experts because they are often highly informed and discerning. And they present a great opportunity for the travel industry to improve to match their requirements.
Based on primary research with 2,719 travel professionals and 30 thought-leaders and senior executives from companies such as Kayak, Forrester and Qatar Airways, the Amateur-Expert Traveller report highlights three significant developments: the rise of the Amateur-Expert Traveller; the potential for massive technological innovation before, during and after a trip, which we term The Responsive Journey; and the way in which the industry is moving towards niche experiences which, again, offer huge potential for travellers and travel companies alike.
Download the Amateur-Expert Traveller Report.
Read about it in the Wall Street Journal: “Amadeus’s New Booking System Targets Leisure Travelers”.
Watch an interview with Amateur-Expert Traveller Steven Domanski:
