One thing that you can be certain of when predicting digital travel media trends for 2012 is that the tools we use will continue to get smarter.
It should come as no surprise that mobile technology will carry on as the fundamental driver of the digital travel world in 2012. As a general trend, technology will be more intelligent than ever. As it relates to travel, technology will be smarter in the sense that many of the tools we use will have fully responsive designs, have x.commerce capabilities bolted on, and may know where a specific traveler is as well as who their friends are.
Fully Responsive Design
A fully response design will scale a site to fit on all browser widths and resolutions on all mobile devices. To get a better idea of how this design works, use our site as an example. Our site uses this technology, so simply scale your browser window to various sizes in order to view the results.
X.Commerce
X.commerce is an end-to-end, multi-channel commerce technology platform designed for all the ways consumers choose to shop today. This platform truly opens up the competitive playing field to travel businesses of any size in any location.
Social Travel
I recently asked a friend who was just back from a PhoCosWright conference if there was any buzz around the topic of Social Travel. From his response, I gathered that the buzz was that nobody has yet nailed it. At this point, it seems as though Gtrot is closer than anyone else to presenting travel content using a person’s social graph. With travel being inherently social, something big is bound to develop very soon.
Camera Recognition
In increasing numbers, travelers will use the camera lens of their mobile device to find information. This past year, I used the Word Lens app along with my iPhone camera to instantly translate printed words. It will not be long before travelers point their camera at all kinds of things to pull in relevant information.
What other digital travel media trends do you see evolving in 2012?
IMAGE VIA: hmomoy
Gtrot is great, how about http://www.ajungo.com? Do you know that site? It builds social connections while you travel. That’s the power of social networks: get real time information from people in the actual place. With Ajungo you can also describe your trip by posting videos and pictures. Don’t know how this site will develop, there is so much a traveler can handle while he or she is on the road…
Thanks for including http://gtrot.com in your write-up. We’re working hard to make the best recommendation engine for things to do. We’ve now included the ability for your friends to up-vote their favorite suggestions to make it even more custom to you. We’d like to invite all of your readers to check our recently launched beta – Use beta code: PCW2011 to check it out.
Thanks!
Brittany, @gtrot Co-founder
Re “social travel”: Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any idea what percentage of the market is interested in “social” travel guides?
The big problem I see with “social” is that, except for mass-market destinations and activities (e.g., Disney World or a Carnival Cruise), most people don’t have a lot of friends and acquaintances who can provide reliable information. For example, I don’t know anyone who’s been to Brisbane (or at least I don’t think I do), so a Web site or app that draws on my social networks for information about Brisbane is likely to be less useful than a Google search would be. What’s more, the presentation of such information in a tool like Gtrot leaves a great deal to be desired: I’m not a great fan of TripAdvisor, but compared to Gtrot, TripAdvisor is a Lonely Planet guidebook.
It’s great to see the social travel space heating up. To Durant’s point, it’s not clear that friends alone can provide enough “coverage”. That’s why we at Twigmore ( http://facebook.com/go.twigmore ) have developed a travel networking tool on Facebook that refers you to relevant friends AND friends-of-friends for your trip. We believe this is a nice balance between trust and coverage when you’re looking for people who can answer questions about your destination, show you around or just help when things come up. It’s a brand new service and we’d love your feedback!
I’ve been traveling the world as The Social Traveler the past 2 years and I can tell you that social travel works. People have guided me to every place I want to go and invited me into their lives and homes whenever I was around. I’ve also let people challenge me… It’s been quite a social adventure already. I’ve recently build my blog and will start sharing my stories and social travel tips there.