[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Technology has made life easier for travel agencies. Web-based search, smartphones, chatbots, data analytics, and ERP & CRM tools have reduced the tasks that were manual and exhausting for those sitting behind the desk, planning trips for their consumers. One technological advancement, though, has revolutionized the travel industry. It is cloud computing.

Why Cloud Computing is the Future of the Travel Industry?

Cloud computing brought many benefits to the travel industry however, many travel companies, particularly enterprises, are still reluctant to move to the cloud. They still prefer to keep all their applications and data on-premise. They have fears of data security, regulations, migration etc. But are those fears justified? No, many of the concern’s businesses have had about it, have largely been addressed by cloud providers.

 

The Benefits of Cloud Technology

  1. It is Flexible

The travel industry is dynamic. The demand shoots up during specific seasons or holidays and hits rock-bottom some other times. When you invest in on-premise infrastructure, you pay a heavy price even when you don’t really need the bandwidth and end up struggling for more storage and processing power when the demand goes up.

Cloud computing is a pay-as-you-use service that’s easily scalable. When the demand goes up, the number of servers and storage can easily be increased. When the traffic goes down, the usage goes down, as does the price.

  1. It is Mobile

More than 50% of web traffic comes from the mobile phone. Clients and staff members are a part of this traffic as well. Cloud computing makes access to data and applications so easy that one doesn’t need to be present in the office to cater to sudden needs. All your booking and mid-office applications are available on the mobile.

  1. It Satisfies the Need for Speed

With consumers expecting everything to download and buffer in record time, travel agencies are in a race against time. However, cloud computing has enabled them to relax as it reduces download times, page rendering time, etc. by a significant margin. This is thanks to Content Data Networks (CDN) that almost all cloud providers offer today.

Cloud computing allows you to provide consistently fast speeds to users across the world.

  1. It is Secure

Data sharing and online payments pose a security threat. Many consumers are still wary of data theft.

While in-house infrastructure is also secure, the additional security comes at an extravagant price and an in-house IT team that’s always on the lookout for upgrades to fight the latest threats. Cloud services, on the other hand, offer security updates by default.

  1. It Comes Handy During Disasters

When disaster strikes, you’re at a risk losing everything, except in the case of online travel solutions on the cloud! Cloud platforms often have multiple copies of data saved in various locations. When the first copy fails due to a disaster, the other copies are still safe. The time taken for recovery is also very quick. With on-premise infrastructure, there’s usually a certain lag during disaster recovery that can cause tremendous amounts of loss.

  1. It Enhances User Experience

User experience (UX) can make or break a travel app. With so many competitors in the market, travel agencies must focus on traffic retention and user engagement. With cloud travel solutions, enhancing UX is easier than before. Travel agencies can make data easily accessible even in real-time. They can also improve the overall app performance, giving users a reason to stay on, use, and engage their apps.

If you’re looking to build your solution on AWS or Google Cloud, visit our website to learn how we helped business move the the cloud.

P.S. Major cloud platforms offer 99.9% uptime, which means that users can almost always access businesses without hassle. This directly means that agencies will not incur any loss due to downtime.

  1. It Makes Personalization Easier

One size no longer fits all. Recommendations, discounts, and the relevance of offers vary from one user to the other.

SaaS applications work brilliantly to aggregate individual data in the cloud, facilitate statistics, and enable travel agencies to provide personalized experiences based on their behavior, searches, etc.

  1. It Cuts Down Costs

From minimal capital costs to very low scalability costs, disaster recovery, storage, in-house IT team, etc., cloud computing aces it here. It costs travel agencies a fraction of on-premise infrastructure.

 

Travel Companies that are already on the cloud

Now, let’s underscore the benefits of cloud computing with some examples. Expedia, the travel giant, is on AWS (Amazon Web Services). It started using the cloud for its Expedia Suggest Service and in 2018, announced that 80% of its mission-critical apps would migrate to AWS in the coming years. Thanks to AWS, Expedia is able to develop apps faster, scale easily, and troubleshoot issues quickly. Airbnb migrated to AWS in 2016 to improve responsiveness and flexibility.

 

Conclusions

Cloud computing is not the future of travel agencies. It is the present.

All these examples demonstrate the same point – cloud computing is the better choice for travel companies, regardless of whether they are SMEs or enterprise-level firms.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]