Travel Search 2.0: Is There Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Summary

In 2012, Phocuswright and Amadeus published a report “Empowering Inspiration: The Future of Travel Search.” While the research reflected in this report is dated, many of the key findings remain valid.  One finding that strikes a familiar chord is that travelers are significantly frustrated with the difficulties of planning and booking travel online. The perception is that online travel shopping is plagued with information overload, lacking filters for irrelevant information and data organization that makes navigation difficult.

This paper will address three potential solutions, one of which sounds great on paper and has had significant backing from the academic community but a limited future in the travel domain, one that is in production but needs further development and one that is still in the concept design phase but holds significant promise to address the traveler’s planning pains. The three approaches that will be discussed are The Semantic Web, Google’s Knowledge Graph and Information Cartography.