Travel Technology Show 2009

Seems like less than a year ago since I travelled up to the last Travel Technology Show and how so much has changed since then. With hundreds of products and services at the show with exhibitors representing all areas of technology within the industry it’s a good way to get a feel for New Technologies as well as how fellow industry professionals are viewing the current market and how they are looking to approach the downturn.

As with last year there was something for everyone with well catered for seminars covering something for every Travel Industry Technology Specialist including “How to Optimise Your Search Engine” to ”When IT Projects go bad” and some interesting content covered in the Presentation Theatre with “Getting the best deal from your website” from the Royal Institute of Blind People to “Making Social Networks work for your Brand”

I caught up with a number of clients over coffee and got mixed feedback regarding the current economic climate or credit crunch or whatever the latest buzz word is, a number are being rather tentative during the first 2 quarter's of the year and looking to re-assess things after that, which was a pretty stock line I expected. However a few clients pointed out how it was a good time to kick off projects…why? Well a number have mentioned it is a good time to get ahead of the competition by either developing or implementing new technology before anyone else, others mention that they need to invest and implement new technology to save money on time consuming processes and money hungry legacy systems which aren’t working with new business models and another reason why now is a good time is because of the savings that can be made on contract negotiations with suppliers - be it software suppliers, out sourcing agreements, consultants or contractors.

Chris Yea, Travel Specialist