by mcoletta | Feb 12, 2015 | Trends |
“1996 called, they want their crappy VR ideas back.” reads one comment on Wired’s September 2014 article describing Marriott’s recent virtual reality teleportation experience. It’s February of 2015, and pessimism still runs high when discussing virtual reality (VR). But evidence is mounting that this technology will be a game-changer across virtually every industry in the near future. Travel is a natural candidate for disruption, due to the inherent capability of VR to convincingly make a person feel like they are somewhere else. While every new technology has it’s detractors, the majority of feedback on the Marriott campaign mentioned above – and the latest generation of virtual reality technology as a whole – has been positively exuberant from those who have tried it. (more on the Marriott campaign below, including video of reactions from virtual travelers) My own first encounter was right in line – my initial experience made me an instant believer. It is difficult to move past the doubt and become excited about VR’s latest manifestation until you give it a go. But once you do, you understand quickly what the recent hype is about. It is a quantum leap better than anything you’ve seen or tried before. It is an amazing experience that sells itself. Virtual reality, a technology we have been hearing about about since the 1980’s, has long been beleaguered with a stigma of false promises, relegated to the domain of video games. But it is finally on the verge of primetime, spearheaded by the purchase of Oculus Rift by Facebook in March 2014 for $2 billion. As of that moment, VR officially staked it’s claim...
by mcoletta | Mar 12, 2014 | Trends |
Many travel tech predictions are made at the close of one year and beginning of another. I find it interesting and useful to look at trends a couple of months into a new year to see how things are taking shape. Here is the first of five travel technology trends that I believe will cause real transformation in the travel industry in 2014. While the iPhone has been around for seven years now, 2013 was the year that mobile matured and really took off. As late as April 2013 some travel brands were still questioning the value of investing in mobile, recognizing the significant cost and challenges in updating websites to be mobile-friendly, building mobile apps for a multitude of devices, and converting mobile users into bookings. Mobile was often enough still viewed as a user acquisition and branding cost. But the handwriting was certainly on the wall. Converting a legacy web business to be well-positioned in a mobile world is a monumental task. But the risks of falling behind are far more hazardous. Fast forward to November, and desktop was arguably still dominating, but after another Christmas season of frenzied smartphone and tablet purchases and the resulting mobile traffic spike, it was clear that a tipping point had been reached. As we hurtle into 2014, with both mobile web traffic and mobile app usage skyrocketing and the debate about mobile web vs mobile apps raging on, it’s clear that mobile is undisputedly the future. It appears that mobile apps will beat mobile web purely because of superior user experience, but that could change as HTML5 matures and as mobile computing follows desktop into the cloud. The window...
by mcoletta | Feb 11, 2014 | Trends |
I’ve been a believer in the power of mobile devices to help people organize and access information since 1999 after purchasing my first consumer mobile device, the Royal Davinci, and using it on a daily basis. The Palm Pilot had made it’s appearance not long before, in 1997. I enthusiastically upgraded to the (incredible at the time) Compaq iPAQ in 2000 and have owned a long series of mobile devices ever since. In my view, nothing especially game-changing happened in consumer mobile technology between 1997 and 2007. It was a period of experimentation and attempted innovation. Being a PC guy for most of my life, I generally bought Windows Mobile phones, and while every new phone seems cutting edge and impressive at the time of release, for the most part they were just more of the same. It still shocks me how Microsoft botched the mobile opportunity. And sure Blackberry had a good run, but also ultimately failed to deliver on the true promise of the smartphone. The release of the iPod itself in 2001 certainly set the stage for Apple to incubate the mobile revolution. But to me, the day that the iPhone was released (January 9, 2007) was the day that the world and our lives actually began a radical technology-driven transformation. Symbolically, the same could be said about the advent of Google search, and of course many other recent technologies. But the reason the high-quality smartphone is ultimately more significant to me is that it puts the entire world in our hands, including everything that Google can find for us and so much more, and enables us to carry it with us 24/7. The...
