9 WAYS TECH IS CHANGING TRAVEL
From subscription services to a simple way to tell someone your location anywhere in the world, tech is making it easier to get around
1 FACE RECOGNITION IN AIRPORTS
Air traffic continues to grow at a rapid pace, with airports now turning to technology to cope with the rise in passenger numbers.
Biometrics and face recognition have been used by airports for a while. However, the technology is getting so good that as well as extending to automatic check-in kiosks and self-service boarding, face recognition could soon be used to get rid of physical boarding passes – and passports – by just using faces to identify passengers.
However, the same technology is capable of searching for faces in a crowd; as well as identifying suspects around an airport, the airport’s security cameras could also locate passengers who are late to board their flight… they might want to try the airport Wetherspoons first.
2 ‘NETFLIX FOR TRAVEL’
You pay £5.99 per month for access to TV movies, so why not do the same for travel? A new start-up called Be Right Back is a subscription-based business like Netflix that takes £50 off you every month and puts it towards three European holidays per year.
That includes both flights and accommodation. Catches: for the £600 you give BRB every 12 months, your three trips are to mystery destinations, all leave from London airports, and airport transfers are not included.
3 WHAT 3 WORDS
“We’re over by the third tree on the left behind the hill.” That’s no way to talk to a pizza delivery man while you wait for your dinner at a campsite. Nor is it easy to meet anyone in a rural area away from roads, addresses and postcodes. So what3words was born.
A free app for iOS and Android smartphones, what3words divides the entire planet into 10ft x 10ft squares and assigns every square a unique three-word address. Able to share specific locations on the planet, and much more accurate than postcodes, it’s already being used by nomadic reindeer herders in Mongolia to rent out their yurts on Airbnb.
4 POST-BOOKING PRICE DROP MONITORING
Most websites selling hotel rooms offer ‘best price guaranteed’, and many others give you
the option to cancel a booked room up to a few days before you travel.
Next time you do the latter, take a look at the price of that same hotel room you’ve already booked just before you travel. There’s a good chance it will have gone down in price (often as much as 40%). Pruvo is a free, automatic web service that tracks price drops for your existing hotel reservations and notifies you if it detects a better price for the exact same hotel room.
5 ‘SPOTIFY FOR TRANSPORT’
What if you could find bikes, buses, trains, taxis and car-share schemes all within one app? That’s what’s promised by Whim, a Finland-based app that’s now being trialled in the West Midlands. Calling itself the ‘Spotify of the transport world’, Whim integrates journey planning, reservations, payments and subscriptions into one app. It’s planned to roll out in 15 cities across the globe by the time you read this.
6 MONETISE YOUR TRAVELS
There are now ways to make money from your travel plans thanks to a new platform called IQplanner. It starts off with a traveller writing up a trip when they return home, remembering to include mentions of the travel companies and modes of transport that you used.
IQplanner has commercial relationships with all key travel sites across UK, so peppers your itinerary with links to third party websites. Those third party websites then pay IQplanner for traffic from people who read your trip report, and IQplanner in turn pays you a small fee.
Even if you don’t contribute, if creating an itinerary for trips is becoming a headache for you, IQplanner might be worth consulting.
7 TALK TO YOUR PET MID-FLIGHT
If you’ve ever travelled long-haul with a pet, you’ll know the stress of worrying about how safe Rover is in the cargo hold. If only you could talk to your best friend instead of watching a heavily censored version of
Marley & Me. Unisys just launched Digi-Pet, a service that allows owners to keep track of their pet’s well-being during flights. Sensors attached to the pet’s carrier in the hold detect your pet’s temperature, oxygen levels, vibration and light, and send the stats to the owner’s phone. Automatically alerting you if anything requires action, owners can even stream live video of their pets, complete with two-way audio.
8 A TRULY PERSONAL HOTEL EXPERIENCE
owners the ability to proactively identify and resolve guestroom issues.
Connected Rooms are currently live in four US hotels, with a big rollout planned in 2019. More personalisation is planned, such as digital photo frames which display your family photos before you enter the room.
9 ODOUR-FREE UNDERWEAR
Queueing up in an airport to check in luggage you don’t need is a ridiculous way to start a trip, and yet travelling light comes with its own challenges and it’s likely that you’ll struggle with cutting down on underwear. After all, surely you need fresh socks for each day of your journey?
Actually, you don’t any more, thanks to advances in fabrics. Cue the MP Magic Socks, which are infused with silver, copper and zinc, as well as a mineral substance, to create a completely antibacterial fabric. The upshot is they don’t smell, at least not for about four days in our tests, which means you could take just two pairs on any trip. The maker has launched them in a Kickstarter campaign.