How is the travel sector adapting to change?

Application programme interfaces (APIs) – which, in essence, allow different systems to ‘talk’ to each other – continue to play a key role for travel businesses by streamlining day-to-day operations and opening up new revenue streams.

By leveraging APIs to facilitate connectivity between different systems, travel companies can integrate additional services with their platforms to enhance their offering – while also reducing the risk of fraud and human error.²

Aside from offering greater efficiency within businesses, APIs can be used to deliver benefits to customers by enabling a more connected and seamless end-to-end booking and in-journey experience.

A booming industry worth £81bn³ , AI and machine learning continue to demonstrate their potential to transform the travel sector. As an already highly digitised industry with 81.8% of customers spend happening online, this provides a wealth of granular data. Operators can use these technologies to better meet travellers’ needs throughout the customer journey – from planning and booking through to in-trip experiences – by offering information, emergency assistance, recommendations, translations and other interventions in real time, among many other applications.

“Combined with the right transactional data, many travel businesses we speak to are looking to deploy AI to be more responsive to customers’ needs and provide them with increased flexibility and hyper-personalised experiences.” says Laura.

To adopt AI successfully and responsibly, businesses need to invest in the right people and skills, focus on developing a source of rich data, and ensure they understand how to mitigate the associated risks, particularly in terms of data privacy and security.

Regulatory requirements across different jurisdictions means addressing sustainability could be seen as a priority for the industry. “From speaking to our clients and leaders in this space, there is a justified emphasis on enhancing sustainability in the travel sector, with a focus on getting the balance right. Our conversations at a strategic level, unpack thinking on how companies meet their objectives to become more sustainable. We often see large companies looking for BCorp certification, as well as smaller businesses looking to use sustainability as a differentiator to unlock commercial opportunities. More businesses are also plugging into advancing technologies to manage their operating costs. When these strategies are executed efficiently, they can both create value and help transition the sector to a low carbon economy.” suggests Marco DeBenedictis, Head of Structuring & Sustainable Lending, Barclays.

“The question on the mind of many of our corporate clients is "how?". How can they, as a sector, meet their objectives of being more sustainable while gaining a competitive advantage in the process? The answer could potentially lie in linking sustainability to finance.

Many of our clients have been successful in using financing as a tool to demonstrate sustainability commitments by linking bonds, loans and trade and working capital facilities to environmental and social targets.” says Laura Galvin, Head of Sustainable Transaction Banking, Barclays.

Find out more about how our green solutions could help support your transition to becoming more sustainable.