TravelTainment, the Amadeus-owned technology brand, is well known for its focus on research and development - an area of the business championed by its enthusiastic chief executive, Andrew Owen-Jones.
Add Microsoft Surface into the mix and the result is a rather exciting interesting technology prototype for travel agencies.
TravelTainment purchased a Surface table earlier this year and started developing a number of applications over the summer.
The result is an retail agency-based tool which allows customers to browse a Google Earth mashup featuring 400,000 photos of hotels and points of interest in the TravelTainment system.
Customers can select individual properties to learn more about availability and facilities.
Once a product is selected the Surface table sends the information to the agent’s desktop computer to finalise the details.
Owen-Jones says the table has the ability to “change the way people look and book travel in hte retail environment”.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8dl8tvTfjs
This looks great.
This will help make travel agents revert back to centres of travel inspiration rather than just offices to service bookings.
Brilliant idea… How about a similar app for desktops and laptops too?
When Apple release this iPad/iTouch and larger format touch screens go mass market I suspect technology like this will be commonplace in the home. It’s all highly visual and intuitive.
Great technology and definitely a terrific proof of concept.
Two challenges as I see it are:
1) The need for a user interface that can provide hard & soft filters to provide the user with a more refined and relevant experience.
2) Cost of the surface hardware. Last year, the prices of the surface units were $12,500 & $15,000 US. That’s steep for anything but an extremely high volume agency with lots of office foot traffic. The hope was for economies of scale to reduce the price, but I have not heard much recently.
Microsoft does have a second generation Surface product under development code-named Second Light, but there is not much information available. Hopefully, they will come in closer to the original estimated pricing target of $5,000 to $10,000 US when Surface was announced in early 2007…
At $5,000 travel agencies could start affording to install the system and developers could project a sufficient market size to justify the creation of a viable product.
A touchscreen Google Earth mash-up is a very cool toy and certainly opens ones eyes toward future possibilities. In this economic environment, travel agencies desperately need tools that can drive ROI.
Robert@ it is my understand that the TravelTainment surface table cost around Euro 11,000?
Kevin@ Found the UK order form for Microsoft Surface here: http://bit.ly/3mpDzG. Looks like the Commercial version is £8,500 & the Developer version (hardware + 5 seat licenses) is £10,000. There is also Shipping £210, Installation £510, Annual Maintenance £680 and Protection (coverage I assume) £1,300.
Software development is obviously extra and the units are understandably quite complex to program, with a very limited pool of experienced developers.
Another risk from my perspective is that the software version is 1.0 (although there has been a service pack.) I am sure bugs will get fixed, but the enhancement pipeline could also be questionable. Without a large or growing installed user base and a new generation of the technology under development, MS Surface could become an expensive novelty very quickly.
I was with Four Seasons in the early 1980′s when they purchased 22 Apple LISA computers (one for each property at the time.) A great concept as it was the first graphical user interface, but from a speed and functionality perspective, it was a boat anchor. The second generation, the Apple MacIntosh obviously became a legend.
For hospitality applications, Sheraton’s lobby unit has the greatest utility with its virtual concierge for local search, although the snapshots of global Sheraton properties and the music playlists are fun and attract traffic. A cool toy, but aside from the unique interface, not really providing any utility that a guest can not get on their own notebook or at a traditional business center PC.
The most interesting application and studied hospitality business case I have seen for Surface in at Harrah’s. They have installed it in bars and have reported positive ROI. However, their primary interest longer term is to deliver a more immersive casino gaming experience – that learning is definitely worth the investment.
Wow, where to start on this one?
First, just to get some facts correct. The price in Euros is indeed 11,000 Kevin, and the UK£ prices you quoted Robert are indeed correct. Lesson: Buy in £ now!
The Surface product is a full release product and we’re now on SP1 – which everyone knows is the stable version of any Microsoft OS!
So it’s not quite version 1.0
Second Lght builds on Surface technology but isn’t planned (as far as we know) to be a successor to Surface. Speculation on the future of the Surface hardware in public forums suggests that this roadmap is more about making lighter devices with less depth to allow more flexibility about how and where it can be deployed. Second Light looks more likely to be destined for quite specialist applications – but again, all this is pure speculation.
Some interesting other things spring to mind:
Getting the experience right is key to a Surface app working. The design of a Surface app is the hard thing – and that’s not just what it looks like, but how it works. If you don’t do this right, you end up with something fun and pretty, but over time it won’t add any value. Some of the comments on this thread are spot on, suggesting that the best use of a natural user interface is to enable people to root through a huge range of options and filter them down. That’s definitely an appropriate use.
Why would anyone choose to use Google maps on Surface when Bing Maps is already tightly integrated, i.e. they’ve reinvented the wheel; and for the level of usage / traffic that each unit would get, I’m sure they’d be within the free licence of both technologies. Why make life hard? Use what’s already working and focus on the rest of the experience…
To me, this is very obviously an early day Surface application designed to prove the concept that Surface could transform the travel agent. It has in it some things that don’t go well with Surface, such as orientation (it won’t work for people sitting on the other side of the table), not making best use (or any use) of object recognition, and mixing interaction types.
But the point is that this is a proof of concept application that is aiming to demonstrate that Surface could have a role in the travel agent – with this statement I vehemently agree, it has the potential to transform. There are travel agents in the Middle East that use a variety of NUI technologies highly successfully, and particularly in the luxury travel market this could be incredibly helpful.
As for ROI – well, yes the unit cost is around £8,500 (and of course you need a good software application) – and if companies like Amadeus, Travelport or others are looking to create applications that do indeed revolutionise the travel booking process, then they are in a position to be able to invest in the infrastructure in the same way that years ago they would supply the VDU terminals and keyboarsd that were required by travel agents to access the GDS.
When Surface was deployed in the iBar at Harrah’s Casino in Las Vegas, bar takings went up 37%.
If a high street travel agent achieved that in a year, I think that’s probably worth £10-£15k worth of investment. After all, they probably spend more than that on local press advertising, don’t they?
As for transofrming the travel agent? Surface could be a big part, but it has to be a part of the current consumer research & planning cycle – allowing two-way integration with the web e.g. research on Surface, post your research back to the web to share with friends or family, and then booking through channel of customer choice.
But in addition, I think that travel agents need to extend what they do. They need to add much more value to the overall travel booking experience and move into the travel management experience.
Paul Dawson, Experience Director, EMC Consulting
Microsoft Surface design and development partners since 2007
As someone who has seen Surface in action, I have to say it is very impressive… I completely agree with Paul. High Street travel agents have a short window now to up their game – and technology like this could be a serious opportunity. Wind the clock forward a few years (maybe sooner?) and online apps will be so good that the inspiration phase of booking a holiday will be catered for online… right now it isn’t… at all… and a real person who knows there stuff can make a massive difference. But once that threshold is reached and websites are more intuitive, better able to provide real time, accurate recommendations there really won’t be much left for travel agents.
It was, as you have all noticed an experiment. However we had enough feedback at the FVW conference to believe we can turn it into a viable product. We have several concrete requests to implement it. We have done no substantial usability tests in a live environment, however it was fully integrated with our travel agency software suite for the exprimental version and it is easy to see how it can be made into a full product quickly. In fact this integration was one of the features that gave the system credibility with travel agency users.
Actually the Google earth piece was quite easy and we have good experience of that, but we will try all sorts to get the best experience in the next weeks.
in our short experience it raises lots of interesting questions about the role of the Travel Agent and what they need to be able to do. The “pilot” of the system becomes more like a guide. (Non-sweaty fingers being a pre-requisite for success). We see tools such as this as a way in which the travel Agent can buy a user experience not currently available on the internet, in the same way Avatar is positioned as a way to bring people back into the cinema and off DVDs.
It also suggests that there may be a way to get customers to “book” time in a travel agent. Too many visits are unscheduled. To guarantee a 30 minute slot on the surface table would require an advance call.
Finally we see this as both a technology and a marketing tool. It can easily be customised by agency chain or by tour operator.
Very early days, but once you start playing with these kinds of things, the opportunities explode…