Fragmented Travel Content: How to Deal With It?

Summary

Travel content is now and probably always will be fragmented at some level. The question is: “How to deal with it?” The travel industry has benefited over the years from visionaries who have foreseen the need for standardized data and communications processes to facilitate shopping and booking. Unfortunately, most of the early efforts and the best results were limited to air. 

There is so much more content than air, however. Figure 1 is an example from Transport Direct that shows what a fully integrated travel/trip planning site might look like. Note that it includes maps; drive times; air, train, bus and cycle information; road closures; and CO² emissions. It could be extended to include ferries. Unfortunately, the travel ecosystem is not sufficiently developed to make aggregation of this level of content and travel assistance easy. Except for air, it’s almost a free for all. In this analysis, Phocuswright explores how the travel industry can deliver quality shopping and buying experiences – despite being plagued with fragmented content.