This is the time of the year when predictions and trends in almost every sector are being made or revealed by businesses worldwide. Joining in is Travelport unveiling the 2020 Trends that will shape travel experiences at the start of the next decade.

The independent research carried out among global travellers, travel professionals and brands leaders revealed among the trends impacting online travel are the rise of the environment travellers, demand for more self-service options, superapps domination and changes in retailing travel.

Here is a brief summary of the trends (view the infographic here):

Travellers are becoming more and more conscious of the environment when on the road for pleasure or business. Travelports survey finds 42% of leisure travellers make travel choices based on environmental factors, while 55% of business travellers choose eco-friendly travel options.

Travellers are moving towards self-service options with 55% of those surveyed preferring to hear about travel disruption via digital communications rather than speak with a person on the phone. This trend is prevalent among Gen Z (born between 1996-2010), deemed the future business traveller in the report, who manage their high expectations through technology.

Superapps give users a one-stop shop to communicate, shop online, book travel, bank, find a date, order food and pay for anything within a single, unified smartphone app. They are well established in South-east Asia with tech giants WeChat, Grab and Gojek leading the way in providing their customers with the all-in-one app.

According to Travelport, superapps are spreading west from their established base in South-east Asia. Travel brands that want to deliver holistic mobile customer experiences have to think about how they engage travellers within these apps and in their own mobile channels, advised the technology company.

The research find that 2020 will see an accelerated rate of change in the way travel is retailed and purchased online. This includes wider and more complex multi-content reach, more enriched and comparable offerings, more focus on relevance than magnitude and increase in automation that enables customer self-service.

These insights into the forces which will shape travel experiences as we start a new decade show were seeing rapid change in content retailing particularly online and an evolution of mobile travel as we all increasingly depend on our devices to help us navigate the world, commented Fiona Shanley, chief customer and marketing officer at Travelport .

Its clear to see customers are driving change across the travel industry with new topics, such as the environmental impact of travel and when an agency could successfully employ a bot, showing the 2020s will be another era of rapid change for travel.

Featured image credit: hanohiki/Getty Images

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These are the trends that will shape travel experiences in the next decade - Web In Travel