White Paper: The Future of Travel is Local

In the near future, Facebook (thanks, in large part, to the constant crowd-pleaser Instagram) will know where a traveler is dreaming of going. Google (thanks to Google Flights) will know when a traveler has moved from dreaming to planning. Apple (thanks to Maps and Calendar) will perhaps know about how long a traveler is planning to stay in a city and if they’ll opt for a hotel or Airbnb. Amazon, a company that often refuses to post a profit while focusing more on growth, may move on from its current focus on groceries and web services to online travel and run its own low- to no-margin online travel agency, quickly capturing a large swath of the meatiest part of the industry.

It's important to talk about these four companies because travel - with its $1.3 trillion in annual spend - may be an industry these innovative and cash-rich companies believe is worth pursuing more aggressively. This may be particularly true as millennials become a greater and greater force within the travel sector, as Forbes details, and begin throwing our collective weight around as digital native, mobile-first users of data-hungry apps less concerned with privacy than more focused on personalization and geo-location.

Five years ago, I co-founded Localeur on a simple belief that the future of travel was local and experience-driven. Early conversations in Silicon Valley had me answering questions like, "is this just an Austin thing?" then "is this an American millennial thing?" and now "how do you expand to every city in the world?" This belief was founded largely in the fact that I looked at a travel industry with many Gen X and Baby Boomers, predominantly white males, at the helm of leading online travel companies and few who truly understood the needs and desires of millennial travelers, minorities and women, whom control much of leisure travel spending and are growing more powerful with the almighty business travel segment.

#experiencelocal has been our hashtag since day one. At the time, it seemed Airbnb was the only online travel company that fully shared this belief, as companies like HomeAway focused messaging around bringing comfort and convenience (often using the words “the whole family”) rather than neighborhoods and local experiences.

In writing about an entire ecosystem of startups that blossomed as a result of the success of Airbnb, Localeur was the first company mentioned by noted tech industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang, who wrote: “While these startups are not formally related financially or through partnerships to Airbnb, guests and hosts may often interact with them to foster a better experience. Localeur is a curated community of local insiders who want to help you experience what the locals know are the best places to stay and play. It’s proving to be more reliable than tourist reviews.”

So today while the majority of online travel companies continue to focus on transactions (flights, hotels, transportation, and bookings) in an effort to reap all the financial benefits of traveler behavior today, companies like Airbnb and startups like Localeur are well positioned – through deep investments around local and experience – to reap future rewards by offering millennial and minority travelers the experiences they truly seek.

But perhaps the tide is turning not only with millennial-led companies, but within the high ranks of some of travel's most established brands, as the threat of tech's four behemoth looms on the trillion-dollar-plus global industry.

AccorHotels has developed a broader strategy around local services for travelers, prompting Skift.com to remark: "This is a sign of a much bigger shift in the entire travel industry where travel brands no longer want to just be “travel” brands. Hotels don’t want to just be hotels. Instead, they want to be platforms for offering you experiences whenever and wherever you may be."

European airline Ryanair's chief marketing officer recently stated, 

"It’s such a rapidly changing and fascinating landscape involving us, other airlines, other travel companies, Amazon, Alibaba and Google. I still have my own prediction that you’re going to be left with a couple of digital superpowers, globally."

Pair this sentiment with recent moves by Facebook, introducing its own Local app, and Google, and we begin to see just how different the future may look with four horsemen - as NYU business professor Scott Galloway deems Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google in his new book, The Four - beginning to lean into travel more heavily.

Mind you, Amazon took its own stab at travel a couple years ago to lackluster results, which - like their acquisitions of Zappos or Whole Foods, that helped them expand their footprint in industry segments they perhaps couldn't dominate internally - may mean they become a buyer in the space moreso than a builder in the coming years. 

Lastly, in writing about Google's continued investments in travel, travel-tech site Skift.com wrote,  

"Google wants consumers to buy more travel on it. That may prompt industry players to closely patrol the gray line between the search giant referring more customers to them and Google becoming customers’ first choice for booking trips."

If all this is of great or even little interest to you, I've written a detailed white paper on the Future of Travel that I'd like to share with you directly. Simply share your email address in the comment section, InMail me your email address or write to me directly at [email protected] with "Future of Travel" in the subject line.