Customer Acceptance of Digitizing Travel

Travel and tourism have experienced huge leaps in terms of digitization. According to Friedrich et al, (2011), the trend in digitization is driven by three key factors: consumer pull, technology push and economic benefits. Consumers are getting adapted or are fully adapted to the digital ecosystem. As a result, they expect to keep connected to each other and to the digital life throughout their lives. The technology is also becoming widely spread across the world making it easy to keep the connection in virtually every corner of the earth. The economic benefits of digitization to both consumers and the industry players are immense. These benefits have been a great push towards acceptance of digitization in travel.

Another factor driving the acceptance of digital travel is trend towards digitization of the hospitality industry. Hospitality has become a driving force for travel innovations ranging from social media, digital content, and to mobile development. There is a large number of information sites specifically created for hotel reviews around the world. These sites are authored by travel guides (virtual) who show their followers the cultures, climates, people and places they have visited. They command a huge following base of people with a need for leisure and travel accompanied by a huge purchasing power (Salerno, 2016).

Consumers are also easily getting attracted to the digitization of travel because of the efficiency that emanates from its use. Previous travel arrangements have been largely inefficient and uneconomical. However, with the modern, digital travel arrangements, customers can book a travel schedule and pay without getting to an airport or train station. This has made travel so much easy and economic while also improving gains to the travel and tourism industry (World Economic Forum, 2017).