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Travel Planning 2020: 
The Journey Toward 
Market Prosperity 
By harnessing Code Halo thinking, travel and hospitality 
companies can transform their business models by offering 
an automated and customized trip planning experience, 
ushering in a new era for the travel industry.
2 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 
Executive Summary 
Travel planning has changed radically in the last decade, thanks to the Web and social media. However, the research, scheduling, budgeting and booking processes, even for a simple three-day trip, are still labor- 
intensive and time-consuming. But by 2020 — if the current pace of consumer digital activity and technology advancements continues — travelers can expect a much more streamlined and personalized approach to how they plan vacations and trips. By that year, the capabilities will be in place for intelligent engines to automatically develop customized trip plans by aggregating far-flung pieces of data that travelers either provide outright or can be collected through their digital activities. This automated personalization capability will be driven by intelligent algorithms that process a plethora of implicit and explicit data about booking availability, destination preferences, spending habits and scheduling needs. Without asking a single question, these planning engines will rely instead on available information and the digital activities and behaviors of individuals, organizations and intelligent devices across the travel and hospitality ecosystem. In this way, hotels, airlines and travel intermediaries will join the many other industries in which innovators (i.e., Amazon, Google, Pandora) are harnessing consumers’ digital footprints — what we call a Code Halo™ — to disrupt and reshape how business is done. Code Halos form not only around people; they also surround organizations and devices. In the context of today’s consumers, many if not most have vibrant online lives, sharing their digital information with travel agencies, social media Web sites, search engines, banks, healthcare players, online communities, e-commerce sites and more. These Code Halos also form around companies (where travelers work), hotels (where travelers stay) and travel intermediaries (where they often book trips) — and beyond.
Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 3 
When Code Halos “collide,” they create insights, or “meaning.” For instance, the brand and type of a hotel or destination can connect to form a destination Code Halo, which reveals the place and the kind of travelers it attracts. (For more on Code Halos, please see our white paper, “Code Rules: A Playbook for Managing at the Crossroads,” or our recently published book, Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations Are Changing the Rules of Business.) 
The biggest challenges are the data privacy concerns and regulatory changes that are bound to emerge in the evolving travel industry landscape, which is poised to reach $10.5 trillion in GDP by 2023.1 But companies that ignore the vital signs exhibited by the early adopters of Code Halo thinking, such as the ability to predict customer preferences and expectations, may find it hard to survive the travel industry’s ongoing transformation. The first glimmers of disruption may be sporadic, but as the new business models attract increased customer acceptance, the industry will gradually be defined by seamlessly integrated travel planning engines. 
This white paper offers insights into the drivers of change that are transforming the travel industry and how travel providers can harness Code Halos to lead the way toward a more fruitful future for all.
4 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 
Trip Planning: Today — and Tomorrow 
Prior to the late ‘90s, before Google launched its search engine, it would have been 
impossible to conceive how such a capability would become an everyday verb in 
the current vernacular. Similarly, it’s difficult now to imagine how and where an 
intelligent travel planning system would fit into today’s always-on, comparative 
search engine world. Today’s travelers must seek options from a range of channels, 
designed for use by a multiplicity of devices to make well-informed decisions at 
every stage of the trip planning journey. 
Consider that planning a trip involves four activities: Determining the travel 
timeframe (when), deciding on the destination (where), figuring out how much 
you’ll spend (budget) and making reservations (booking). Although technology has 
automated some of these steps and dramatically improved the ease of information 
access, much of the process is still done manually, and there is no single entity that 
coordinates all four activities. As a result, travel planning is still a time-consuming 
process, even for a short trip; in our anecdotal survey of our employees,2 more than 
80% of travelers spend one to two weeks planning a simple three-day trip. 
Let’s consider the four stages of travel planning in terms of the technology available 
now vs. how the process could be improved through the use of Code Halos and 
commonly used technologies that are radically changing how we live and work, 
including social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, or the SMAC StackTM. 
Step 1: When 
• Determine timing: Travelers first need to determine the optimal departure and 
return dates that work best for everyone in their group, based on budget, deals 
available and individual schedules. 
• Technology currently used: Although schedule information is often digitally ac-cessible, there is still much manual labor involved with accessing various calen-dars, identifying holidays and determining who in the travel party can get time- 
off, when. 
• A possible approach, using Code Halo thinking and SMAC technologies: This 
step could be automated via a schedule-aggregating capability that consolidates 
everyone’s calendars, availability and holidays into a single view. 
Step 2: Budget 
• Determining cost: Based on available funds and credit lines, travelers determine 
their travel budget. 
• Technology currently used: Technology has made it much easier to access in-formation on various bank and credit card accounts, as well as determine future 
payables and receivables; however, gathering all this information is still labor- 
intensive when deciding on the travel budget. 
• A possible approach, using Code Halo thinking and SMAC technologies: This 
step could be automated via a budget management capability that automati-cally analyzes account statements, spending patterns and cash flow to develop 
a budget. 
Step 3: Where 
• Determining location: When travelers want to try a new destination, it can be 
daunting to identify a location that meets the expectations and interests of ev-eryone in the travel group.
• Technology currently used: Thanks to the Web and social networking, ample in-formation is available on nearly any destination in the world, along with opinions, 
photos, video tours and reviews. Travelers can ask for recommendations from 
friends on social sites, or select a place based on online promotions and offers. 
But the data deluge is a two-edged sword: It’s easy to spend hours reviewing all 
the information available and still not reach a conclusion. 
• A possible approach, using Code Halo thinking and SMAC technologies: This 
step could be automated through a capability that dynamically packages promo-tions 
based on group preferences. 
Booking 
• Researching and making reservations: Finally, travelers need to identify the 
best-price supplier and book reservations, whether online or through an agent. 
• Technology currently used: There is a plethora of Web sites and travel agents 
through which travelers can book their trip with a few mouse clicks, but they still 
need to manually analyze the options and optimize the when, where, budget and 
mode of travel. 
• A possible approach, using Code Halo thinking and SMAC technologies: This 
step could be automated through an intelligent planning engine that optimizes 
booking options based on the previously mentioned capabilities: schedule aggre-gation, 
dynamic packaging and budget management. 
Factors Driving ChangeSuch an intelligent planning engine clearly does not exist today; however, its origins 
are already in the works, and a key driver is current consumer use of technology. 
Consumers are quickly adopting new technologies across the SMAC Stack, as they 
are made available from travel and hospitality providers, including mobile check-in, 
electronic boarding passes and prepaid e-cards. Consider that roughly 70% of 
business travelers use mobile apps and software to stay connected,3 and both 
leisure and business travelers increasingly use smartphones in the travel planning 
and pre-arrival process. 
According to our annual travel study,4 more than 45% of travelers rely on social 
media to explore deals and seek advice from their friends and family for travel. 
Approximately 33% use social to share their travel plan or booking information 
within their network. Mobile devices themselves are increasing exponentially in 
processing power,5 all of which contributes to 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created 
every day by users throughout the world.6 
As users grow more technologically savvy and engage in increasingly personalized 
and customized experiences by business innovators that have adopted Code Halo 
thinking, traditional approaches to getting and keeping customers are becoming 
stale. According to the 2013 Colloquy Loyalty Census,7 customer loyalty programs 
are losing their sheen, and active memberships are on the decline. As customers 
seek value beyond mere accumulated loyalty points and miles, hotels and airlines 
Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 5 
While they are far from delivering the intelligent travel planning capabilities that we’ve described, travel companies have made great strides in recent years with big data and analytics techniques.
6 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 
are compelled to better understand travelers’ activities and behaviors by analyzing 
their digital footprints. For example, by harnessing customer Code Halos, travel 
and hospitality companies can more accurately estimate future demand, provide 
better and more targeted promotions and deliver highly personalized experiences 
to travelers (see sidebar). 
While they are far from delivering the intelligent travel planning capabilities that 
we’ve described, travel companies have made great strides in recent years with big 
data and analytics techniques. For example, one of our airline clients upgraded its 
frequent flyer program to incentivize elite-level frequent fliers (who account for a 
major share of revenues compared with normal passengers) by awarding flyer miles 
based on ticket cost rather than miles traveled.8 The ability to make such customer- 
centric decisions hinges on attaining a 360-degree view of travelers and getting to 
know their preferences, likes, dislikes, expectations, etc. using big data analytics. Other examples are British Airways’ “Know Me” program, which uses big data 
analytics to better understand customer preferences and provide personalized 
services,9 and Virgin Atlantic’s customized offerings based on Apple’s iBeacon 
technology that informs airport passengers of discounts in the vicinity and provides 
automatic boarding updates.10 
Quick Take 
Developing a customer-focused Code Halo for the 
in-flight experience is a no-brainer for airlines. A 
“social cabin” solution would allow travelers to share 
information on their entertainment, food and travel 
preferences. With such information, the airline could 
(for a modest fee) turn what can sometimes feel like 
a five-hour hostage siege into a highly personalized 
entertainment and culinary experience. Such a solution would transform an airline’s role from 
being a mere carrier to an orchestrator of an integrated 
end-to-end experience. A “social cabin” would allow 
an airline to turn an often negative experience into a 
positive one full of connection and enjoyment. 
What else could airlines investigate, beyond what goes 
on aboard the aircraft? Imagine an experience that 
extends to the whole travel process — before, during 
and after a trip. The airline could use a Code Halo 
philosophy to provide value from the moment you book 
a trip to the time you arrive home. It could reinvent the 
booking process, link more effectively to hotels, and 
integrate with financial institutions and others to help 
manage other aspects of a trip, such as securing trans-portation or booking events or locating resources. Rather than focusing only on the flight, it could expand 
its offering to cover the entire experience of moving 
from point A to point B — in the most beautiful way 
possible. 
Adapted from our book, “Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations Are 
Changing the Rules of Business,” John Wiley, 2014. 
How Code Halo Thinking Transforms Travel Planning
Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 7 
Such advancements are aided by today’s heightened computing power, which 
will only grow better, faster and more ubiquitous in the near future. According to 
McKinsey, companies that use big data analytics effectively exhibit productivity and 
profitability rates that are 5% to 6% higher than those of their peers.11 Little doubt, 
then, that travel providers will adopt big data analytics at an increasingly fast pace, 
resulting in a more streamlined and intuitive planning experience for travelers. 
Envisioning an Intelligent Planning Engine for 
Tailored Trips 
With the growth in big data analytics and a customer-centric focus, it’s a natural 
step for travel providers to adopt the principles of Code Halo thinking. This shift will 
ultimately transport the travel industry to a new commercial era in which value is 
derived more from information than from physical assets (see sidebar, next page). 
At that point, the capabilities will be in place for intelligent planning engines to 
harness the Code Halos of individuals and organizations to automatically compile 
trip plans that are optimized for the traveler’s schedule, budget and destination 
needs and preferences, as well as reservation availability. 
The Code Halos used by the planning engine would incorporate three types of infor-mation: 
primary, explicit and implicit (see Figure 1). 
Primary data: Basic information that is readily accessible. 
• Places and locations: When the information pertaining to all destinations is 
categorized in a standard way, with an adequate volume of guest rankings, the 
planning engine can systematically determine the best places and locations for 
the traveler. 
Implicit Data 
Social Activity 
Digital Tracks 
Places and 
Locations 
Suppliers and 
Availability 
Schedule 
Aggregator 
Budget and 
Financials 
Primary Data 
Planning Engine 
Optimal Personalized 
Recommendations 
Past Expenses 
Preferences 
Explicit Data 
Figure 1 
Enriching Code Halos with Data
Quick Take 
When popular group-sharing Web sites offer deals, it is difficult 
to predict how many customers might be interested and, thus, 
how many offers the promotion will yield. But if we think 
through the prism of Code Halo thinking, a dynamic package 
can be formed by reversing the model. In the Code Halo world, 
we call this a business process “melt.”12 
For example, suppliers and travel intermediaries could collate 
implicit and explicit preferences of travelers to analyze how 
many people in the New York area are interested in a trip to 
Hawaii. They could then negotiate airline and hotel prices with 
suppliers for this group to develop a New York-to-Hawaii trip 
package for these selected travelers. By synchronizing the 
demand and availability equation, the engine could match the 
group with interested suppliers and build a dynamic package, 
customized to their needs. 
A Code Halo principle that is critical to the success of an intel-ligent planning engine is what we call the “give-to-get” model.13 
While most of the data needed for intelligent trip planning 
already exists in digital form, consumers are increasingly 
savvy about the worth of their personal information. They are 
unwilling to give it away if they don’t trust how the data will be 
used and protected and without the promise of something in 
return. In our informal employee survey, 91% of respondents 
said they would provide online feedback for eight out of 10 trips 
they took if they felt there was a reward associated with such 
feedback. This compares with the 82% of respondents who 
currently provide online feedback for just three out of 10 trips. 
In many cases, the prospect of time or cost savings, targeted 
deals and customized experiences is enough of a lure to 
encourage the sharing of personal information. In this case, 
travelers would provide access to their Code Halos in exchange 
for custom recommendations based on the analysis of their 
data. And while travelers should not need to pay for trip rec-ommendations 
(as these are what they “get” for “giving” their 
personal information), it may be fair to charge usage fees for 
actual bookings or require an upgrade to a premium account 
for advanced features, such as altering recommendations or 
planning for more than four people. 
The bottom line is that giving information needs to be worth 
the reward value. The underlying assumption here is that the 
dynamic trip package is unique and not available anywhere else 
(see Figure 2). 
The Reverse “Groupon” Model 
The Give-to-Get Principle 8 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014
• Suppliers and availability: The planning engine would use dynamic packaging, 
in which offers and packages can be analyzed in real time, based on supply data 
and the estimated number of guests who would be interested. 
• Schedule aggregator: The engine would synch the schedules of the travel 
group and plug in the information related to holidays, vacations and time off. 
The system could determine the optimal time for vacation, once all the timing 
constraints are shared. 
• Budget and financials: Vacation planning budgets are not always made on a 
purely rational or logical basis; emotional factors can also be involved. An intel-ligent planning engine, however, would establish spending boundaries based on 
funds data and credit availability. 
Explicit data: Factual information pertaining to an individual or group that is 
explicitly expressed. 
• Preferences: Most groups and individuals have a fair idea of what they don’t 
want; if they supply the planning engine with these preferences, it can use this 
information to eliminate the obvious. 
• Past expenses: In today’s digital age, every activity has a digital track. Expen-ditures from previous vacation expenses, such as hotel, travel, food, amenities, 
etc., can offer valuable input for the planning engine to determine the budget for 
various activities. 
Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 9 
Trip Planning App 
The following depicts an optimized travel plan that an intelligent planning 
engine might suggest for a group traveling together, including schedule, 
destination, cost and comments from social networks. If the traveler agrees 
to the plan, he or she can click to book the trip. 
Figure 2 
Oct 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 
2014 
Me 
Zach (Son) 
Cassie (Wife) 
 
Hotel: Deep Blue Resorts 
Room: Suite with Den 
Flight: Sky Airways 
Estimated Cost: $999 pp 
Enjoy the new underwater hotel! 
While you admire the modern 
architecture, your son Zack can 
explore the undersea games, and 
your wife Cassie can enjoy half-off 
the full-service Ayurvedic skin spa. 
Home Trips 
Turks and Caicos 
Italy 
Los Angeles 
Reservations 
The best time to go is the 
third week of next month, as your 
calendar is relatively free. Zack’s 
summer camp will be over, and 
Cassie’s company gives 
employees time off for the 
Columbus Day holiday. 
Last week, your cousin Tom and 
family stayed here and rated it with 
four stars. This week, your college 
roommate Sandy will be there for 
three nights. Both Cassie and Zack 
“liked” this and are waiting for you 
to authorize the booking*. 
*Offer will expire in 2 days 3 hours
10 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 
Implicit data: Preferences and interests derived from implied information. 
• Social activity: Social platforms generate a plethora of data expressed as likes, 
tweets, posts, etc. that can be analyzed to gauge an individual’s inclinations and 
preferences. In trip planning, the biggest influencers are recent trips by friends, 
colleagues and relatives. The planning engine can analyze this social activity to 
optimize recommendations. 
• Digital tracks: Browsing history, links clicked, ads viewed and articles read or 
shared form another set of data that can be leveraged by the planning engine to 
gain meaningful insight into a traveler’s preferences and interests. 
Timeline of Transformation 
The transformation of the travel industry will at first be marked by sporadic change, 
but gradually, as the digital ecosystem matures, the environment will be ripe for the 
development and widespread use of intelligent trip planning (see Figure 3). Already, 
many of our hospitality clients are mining the social media data they collect to track 
travelers’ implicit preferences, which is helping them build new systems to generate 
offers to individuals based on their explicit historical data. 
Meanwhile, with increased digitization, travelers will quickly adopt intelligent travel 
planning capabilities and shun the old ways of manually compiling a travel plan. 
After all, by 2016, 79% of the U.S. population will own a smartphone,14 and by 2017, 
almost half of the world’s population will use the Internet.15 Digital data available 
Ionization Spark Enrichment Crossroads 
Company A 
Focused on 
Assets 
Company B 
Winning the 
New Code Rush 
Company A 
The Extinction 
Event 
Company B 
Focused on 
Code Halos 
Something’s 
changed and you 
can feel it. 
Organizations need 
to gather data and 
intelligence. 
Look at places where 
data collisions occur, 
where halos collide, 
opportunities exist to 
reengineer your 
business around 
the customer 
experience. 
With these collisions, 
you can get smart, 
and begin to exploit 
the opportunities of 
halo collisions. This is 
where you set the 
course for the 
business — win or lose. 
The turning point 
where smart 
companies 
accelerate growth 
and poor companies 
head towards an 
extinction event. 
Market Capitalization 
Time 
After the Crossroads 
Figure 3 
Travel Planning at the Crossroads — Circa 2020 
2013-14 
Emergence of social 
sharing, digitization 
of personas and 
ever-rising customer 
expectations. 
2014-15 
New technology to 
store and analyze 
big data. Improved 
user data security. 
2015-18 
New models and 
processes based 
on enhanced 
information and 
analytics. 
2017-19 
New models reach 
critical mass, and 
industry leadership 
shifts. 
2020 
Commercial acceptance 
of new models leads to 
extinction of old ways.
for big data analytics will increase four times to 40 zetabytes by 2020,16 and if 
computing power continues to increase as predicted, processing those zetabytes 
of data will be achieved in seconds.17 
Building such a planning engine will likely be a costly undertaking, and integrat-ing 
it with all required suppliers will be even more challenging. But according to 
industry revenue statistics, travelers might bankroll the planning engine. According 
to a report from the World Travel  Tourism Council, travel and tourism is one of the 
largest and fastest growing industries in the world. In 2012, the industry contribut-ed 
$2.1 trillion in GDP and is expected to reach roughly $10.5 trillion of GDP by 2023. 
Moving Forward 
The travel planning industry is commoditized, with numerous players relying on 
lower prices and discounts to achieve customer loyalty. It’s crucial for traditional 
companies to divert swiftly from existing business models and prepare for the new 
Code Halo-based paradigm. A few players, such as Flextrip, Gogobot, Tripit and Stay.com, have already begun the transition by focusing on the social aspects of 
trip planning and incorporating these insights into their offerings. 
The time is now for the travel industry to identify the sparks of change and begin 
planning for how to compete on code and distill meaning from Code Halos. Here 
are a few steps that travel and hospitality companies can take immediately to begin 
their transformation: 
• Build a strong “product/places halo:” Form alliances to develop and maintain 
a standardized catalog of various places and locations in different regions and 
geographies. An intelligent planning engine will heavily rely on such a database 
of places, with authentic listings of “things to do,” along with genuine traveler 
ratings. 
• Build a “traveler halo:” Develop innovative ways to assimilate the traveler infor-mation 
from social media networks, digital footprints and different travel entities 
to build a complete traveler halo. Such profiling will be of immense help to the 
planning engine for sorting implicit traveler preferences. 
• Build capabilities for Code Halo interfaces: Different entities should build new 
interfaces through which they can collaborate. For instance, itemized details of 
hotel expenses should be shared with financial institutions; the exchange of such 
information will give the planning engine important insights for determining the 
budget for the next trip. 
• Build an ecosystem of sharing Code Halos: Seemingly unrelated organizations 
should develop digital channels to expose information upon authorized request. 
For example, travel agencies cannot currently integrate travelers’ available vaca-tion 
days. The sharing of individual calendars and schedules can help the plan-ning 
engine optimize the best time for a group to travel. 
Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 11
12 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 
Footnotes 
1 “Economic Impact of Travel  Tourism 2013 Annual Update,” World Travel  Tourism Council, www.wttc.org/site_media/uploads/downloads/Economic_Impact_of_TT_2013_Annual_Update_-_ Summary.pdf. 
2 Our Travel and Hospitality Practice conducted a focus group survey of 90 employees in October 2013. 
3 “Mobile Hits the Mainstream: Leisure and Business Traveler Trends,” PhoCusWright, January 2012, www.phocuswright.com/products/4100. 
4 Cognizant conducts an annual travelers’ survey to analyze the latest trends in travel and hospital-ity. Our most recent was done in Q2 2013 and included 2,600 respondents (both business and leisure travelers) from the U.S., UK, Germany, China and Australia. 5 Brad Chacos, “Why Moores’ Law, not Mobility, Is Killing the PC,” PCWorld, March 5, 2013, www.pcworld.com/article/2030005/why-moores-law-not-mobility-is-killing-the-pc.html. 
6 Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig, Ben Pring, “Code Rules: A Playbook for Managing at the Crossroads,” Cognizant Technology Solutions, June 2013, www.cognizant.com/Futureofwork/Documents/code-rules. 
pdf. 
7 “Bulking Up: The 2013 Colloquy Loyalty Census,” Colloquy Talk, June 2013, www.colloquy.com/files/2013-COLLOQUY-Census-Talk-White-Paper.pdf. 
8 “Delta Introduces 2015 Skymiles Program with New Mileage Earning Structure and More Redemption Options,” Delta, Feb. 26, 2014, http://news.delta.com/index.php?s=43item=2278. 
9 “Big Data at British Airways,” CIO2CIO Middle East, Jan. 12, 2014, www.cio2cio.me/big-data-at-british-airways.html. 
10 “Virgin Atlantic Introduces Google Glass in Innovation Drive to Fuel the Future of Air Travel,” Virgin Atlantic, Feb. 11, 2014, www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en/footer/media-centre/press-releases/google- 
glass.html. 
11 Jonathan Gordon, “Big Data, Analytics and the Future of Marketing and Sales,” Forbes, July 22, 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/mckinsey/2013/07/22/big-data-analytics-and-the-future-of-marketing-sales/. 
12 Malcolm Frank, “Don’t Get SMACked: How Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud Technologies Are Reshaping the Enterprise,” Cognizant Technology Solutions, November 2012, www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/dont-get-smacked.pdf. 
13 For more on the give-to-get model, see Chapter 9 of our book, Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations Are Changing the Rules of Business, Wiley, April 2014. 14 “Smartphones Continue to Gain Share as U.S. Mobile Usage Plateaus,” eMarketer, April 9, 2012, www.emarketer.com/Article/Smartphones-Continue-Gain-Share-US-Mobile-Usage-Plateaus/1008958. 
15 “India to Have 348 Million Internet Users by 2017: Cisco,” The Economic Times, June 4, 2013, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-04/news/39740674_1_traffic-internet-access- 
indian-mobile-data. 
16 “The Digital Universe in 2020,” IDC, December 2012, http://idcdocserv.com/1414. 
17 “Economic Impact of Travel  Tourism 2013 Annual Update,” World Travel  Tourism Council, www.wttc.org/site_media/uploads/downloads/Economic_Impact_of_TT_2013_Annual_Update_-_ Summary.pdf.
Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 13 
About the Authors 
Nitin Virmani is a Senior Consultant with Cognizant Business Consulting’s Travel 
 Hospitality Practice. He received an M.B.A. from IBS Hyderabad and has nine 
years of diverse experience in business process consulting and execution of large 
IT projects. He can be reached at Nitin.Virmani@cognizant.com | Linkedin: www. 
linkedin.com/pub/nitin-virmani-pmp-flmi/3/755/380 | Twitter: @nitmani07. 
Sandeep Andugula is a Consultant with Cognizant Business Consulting’s Travel 
 Hospitality Practice. An M.B.A. graduate from IIM Bangalore, his expertise 
includes sales and marketing, with a focus on airlines reservation, revenue man-agement, loyalty, social media and mobility. Sandeep can be reached at Sandeep. 
Andugula@cognizant.com | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sandeepandugula | 
Twitter: twitter.com/sandeeptweets. 
Jay S. Rein is Practice Leader, Travel  Hospitality, Cognizant Business Consulting. 
He can be reached at Jay.Rein@cognizant.com. 
Acknowledgments 
The authors would like to thank Samrat Sen, a Director who leads Cognizant 
Business Consulting’s Travel  Hospitality Practice, for his contributions to this 
white paper.
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electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission from Cognizant. The information contained herein is subject to 
change without notice. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. 
About Cognizant 
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of informa-tion 
technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the world’s leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jer-sey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embod-ies the future of work. With over 75 development and delivery centers worldwide and approximately 178,600 employees as of March 31, 2014, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the SP 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com 
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Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity

  • 1. Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity By harnessing Code Halo thinking, travel and hospitality companies can transform their business models by offering an automated and customized trip planning experience, ushering in a new era for the travel industry.
  • 2. 2 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 Executive Summary Travel planning has changed radically in the last decade, thanks to the Web and social media. However, the research, scheduling, budgeting and booking processes, even for a simple three-day trip, are still labor- intensive and time-consuming. But by 2020 — if the current pace of consumer digital activity and technology advancements continues — travelers can expect a much more streamlined and personalized approach to how they plan vacations and trips. By that year, the capabilities will be in place for intelligent engines to automatically develop customized trip plans by aggregating far-flung pieces of data that travelers either provide outright or can be collected through their digital activities. This automated personalization capability will be driven by intelligent algorithms that process a plethora of implicit and explicit data about booking availability, destination preferences, spending habits and scheduling needs. Without asking a single question, these planning engines will rely instead on available information and the digital activities and behaviors of individuals, organizations and intelligent devices across the travel and hospitality ecosystem. In this way, hotels, airlines and travel intermediaries will join the many other industries in which innovators (i.e., Amazon, Google, Pandora) are harnessing consumers’ digital footprints — what we call a Code Halo™ — to disrupt and reshape how business is done. Code Halos form not only around people; they also surround organizations and devices. In the context of today’s consumers, many if not most have vibrant online lives, sharing their digital information with travel agencies, social media Web sites, search engines, banks, healthcare players, online communities, e-commerce sites and more. These Code Halos also form around companies (where travelers work), hotels (where travelers stay) and travel intermediaries (where they often book trips) — and beyond.
  • 3. Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 3 When Code Halos “collide,” they create insights, or “meaning.” For instance, the brand and type of a hotel or destination can connect to form a destination Code Halo, which reveals the place and the kind of travelers it attracts. (For more on Code Halos, please see our white paper, “Code Rules: A Playbook for Managing at the Crossroads,” or our recently published book, Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations Are Changing the Rules of Business.) The biggest challenges are the data privacy concerns and regulatory changes that are bound to emerge in the evolving travel industry landscape, which is poised to reach $10.5 trillion in GDP by 2023.1 But companies that ignore the vital signs exhibited by the early adopters of Code Halo thinking, such as the ability to predict customer preferences and expectations, may find it hard to survive the travel industry’s ongoing transformation. The first glimmers of disruption may be sporadic, but as the new business models attract increased customer acceptance, the industry will gradually be defined by seamlessly integrated travel planning engines. This white paper offers insights into the drivers of change that are transforming the travel industry and how travel providers can harness Code Halos to lead the way toward a more fruitful future for all.
  • 4. 4 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 Trip Planning: Today — and Tomorrow Prior to the late ‘90s, before Google launched its search engine, it would have been impossible to conceive how such a capability would become an everyday verb in the current vernacular. Similarly, it’s difficult now to imagine how and where an intelligent travel planning system would fit into today’s always-on, comparative search engine world. Today’s travelers must seek options from a range of channels, designed for use by a multiplicity of devices to make well-informed decisions at every stage of the trip planning journey. Consider that planning a trip involves four activities: Determining the travel timeframe (when), deciding on the destination (where), figuring out how much you’ll spend (budget) and making reservations (booking). Although technology has automated some of these steps and dramatically improved the ease of information access, much of the process is still done manually, and there is no single entity that coordinates all four activities. As a result, travel planning is still a time-consuming process, even for a short trip; in our anecdotal survey of our employees,2 more than 80% of travelers spend one to two weeks planning a simple three-day trip. Let’s consider the four stages of travel planning in terms of the technology available now vs. how the process could be improved through the use of Code Halos and commonly used technologies that are radically changing how we live and work, including social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, or the SMAC StackTM. Step 1: When • Determine timing: Travelers first need to determine the optimal departure and return dates that work best for everyone in their group, based on budget, deals available and individual schedules. • Technology currently used: Although schedule information is often digitally ac-cessible, there is still much manual labor involved with accessing various calen-dars, identifying holidays and determining who in the travel party can get time- off, when. • A possible approach, using Code Halo thinking and SMAC technologies: This step could be automated via a schedule-aggregating capability that consolidates everyone’s calendars, availability and holidays into a single view. Step 2: Budget • Determining cost: Based on available funds and credit lines, travelers determine their travel budget. • Technology currently used: Technology has made it much easier to access in-formation on various bank and credit card accounts, as well as determine future payables and receivables; however, gathering all this information is still labor- intensive when deciding on the travel budget. • A possible approach, using Code Halo thinking and SMAC technologies: This step could be automated via a budget management capability that automati-cally analyzes account statements, spending patterns and cash flow to develop a budget. Step 3: Where • Determining location: When travelers want to try a new destination, it can be daunting to identify a location that meets the expectations and interests of ev-eryone in the travel group.
  • 5. • Technology currently used: Thanks to the Web and social networking, ample in-formation is available on nearly any destination in the world, along with opinions, photos, video tours and reviews. Travelers can ask for recommendations from friends on social sites, or select a place based on online promotions and offers. But the data deluge is a two-edged sword: It’s easy to spend hours reviewing all the information available and still not reach a conclusion. • A possible approach, using Code Halo thinking and SMAC technologies: This step could be automated through a capability that dynamically packages promo-tions based on group preferences. Booking • Researching and making reservations: Finally, travelers need to identify the best-price supplier and book reservations, whether online or through an agent. • Technology currently used: There is a plethora of Web sites and travel agents through which travelers can book their trip with a few mouse clicks, but they still need to manually analyze the options and optimize the when, where, budget and mode of travel. • A possible approach, using Code Halo thinking and SMAC technologies: This step could be automated through an intelligent planning engine that optimizes booking options based on the previously mentioned capabilities: schedule aggre-gation, dynamic packaging and budget management. Factors Driving ChangeSuch an intelligent planning engine clearly does not exist today; however, its origins are already in the works, and a key driver is current consumer use of technology. Consumers are quickly adopting new technologies across the SMAC Stack, as they are made available from travel and hospitality providers, including mobile check-in, electronic boarding passes and prepaid e-cards. Consider that roughly 70% of business travelers use mobile apps and software to stay connected,3 and both leisure and business travelers increasingly use smartphones in the travel planning and pre-arrival process. According to our annual travel study,4 more than 45% of travelers rely on social media to explore deals and seek advice from their friends and family for travel. Approximately 33% use social to share their travel plan or booking information within their network. Mobile devices themselves are increasing exponentially in processing power,5 all of which contributes to 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day by users throughout the world.6 As users grow more technologically savvy and engage in increasingly personalized and customized experiences by business innovators that have adopted Code Halo thinking, traditional approaches to getting and keeping customers are becoming stale. According to the 2013 Colloquy Loyalty Census,7 customer loyalty programs are losing their sheen, and active memberships are on the decline. As customers seek value beyond mere accumulated loyalty points and miles, hotels and airlines Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 5 While they are far from delivering the intelligent travel planning capabilities that we’ve described, travel companies have made great strides in recent years with big data and analytics techniques.
  • 6. 6 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 are compelled to better understand travelers’ activities and behaviors by analyzing their digital footprints. For example, by harnessing customer Code Halos, travel and hospitality companies can more accurately estimate future demand, provide better and more targeted promotions and deliver highly personalized experiences to travelers (see sidebar). While they are far from delivering the intelligent travel planning capabilities that we’ve described, travel companies have made great strides in recent years with big data and analytics techniques. For example, one of our airline clients upgraded its frequent flyer program to incentivize elite-level frequent fliers (who account for a major share of revenues compared with normal passengers) by awarding flyer miles based on ticket cost rather than miles traveled.8 The ability to make such customer- centric decisions hinges on attaining a 360-degree view of travelers and getting to know their preferences, likes, dislikes, expectations, etc. using big data analytics. Other examples are British Airways’ “Know Me” program, which uses big data analytics to better understand customer preferences and provide personalized services,9 and Virgin Atlantic’s customized offerings based on Apple’s iBeacon technology that informs airport passengers of discounts in the vicinity and provides automatic boarding updates.10 Quick Take Developing a customer-focused Code Halo for the in-flight experience is a no-brainer for airlines. A “social cabin” solution would allow travelers to share information on their entertainment, food and travel preferences. With such information, the airline could (for a modest fee) turn what can sometimes feel like a five-hour hostage siege into a highly personalized entertainment and culinary experience. Such a solution would transform an airline’s role from being a mere carrier to an orchestrator of an integrated end-to-end experience. A “social cabin” would allow an airline to turn an often negative experience into a positive one full of connection and enjoyment. What else could airlines investigate, beyond what goes on aboard the aircraft? Imagine an experience that extends to the whole travel process — before, during and after a trip. The airline could use a Code Halo philosophy to provide value from the moment you book a trip to the time you arrive home. It could reinvent the booking process, link more effectively to hotels, and integrate with financial institutions and others to help manage other aspects of a trip, such as securing trans-portation or booking events or locating resources. Rather than focusing only on the flight, it could expand its offering to cover the entire experience of moving from point A to point B — in the most beautiful way possible. Adapted from our book, “Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations Are Changing the Rules of Business,” John Wiley, 2014. How Code Halo Thinking Transforms Travel Planning
  • 7. Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 7 Such advancements are aided by today’s heightened computing power, which will only grow better, faster and more ubiquitous in the near future. According to McKinsey, companies that use big data analytics effectively exhibit productivity and profitability rates that are 5% to 6% higher than those of their peers.11 Little doubt, then, that travel providers will adopt big data analytics at an increasingly fast pace, resulting in a more streamlined and intuitive planning experience for travelers. Envisioning an Intelligent Planning Engine for Tailored Trips With the growth in big data analytics and a customer-centric focus, it’s a natural step for travel providers to adopt the principles of Code Halo thinking. This shift will ultimately transport the travel industry to a new commercial era in which value is derived more from information than from physical assets (see sidebar, next page). At that point, the capabilities will be in place for intelligent planning engines to harness the Code Halos of individuals and organizations to automatically compile trip plans that are optimized for the traveler’s schedule, budget and destination needs and preferences, as well as reservation availability. The Code Halos used by the planning engine would incorporate three types of infor-mation: primary, explicit and implicit (see Figure 1). Primary data: Basic information that is readily accessible. • Places and locations: When the information pertaining to all destinations is categorized in a standard way, with an adequate volume of guest rankings, the planning engine can systematically determine the best places and locations for the traveler. Implicit Data Social Activity Digital Tracks Places and Locations Suppliers and Availability Schedule Aggregator Budget and Financials Primary Data Planning Engine Optimal Personalized Recommendations Past Expenses Preferences Explicit Data Figure 1 Enriching Code Halos with Data
  • 8. Quick Take When popular group-sharing Web sites offer deals, it is difficult to predict how many customers might be interested and, thus, how many offers the promotion will yield. But if we think through the prism of Code Halo thinking, a dynamic package can be formed by reversing the model. In the Code Halo world, we call this a business process “melt.”12 For example, suppliers and travel intermediaries could collate implicit and explicit preferences of travelers to analyze how many people in the New York area are interested in a trip to Hawaii. They could then negotiate airline and hotel prices with suppliers for this group to develop a New York-to-Hawaii trip package for these selected travelers. By synchronizing the demand and availability equation, the engine could match the group with interested suppliers and build a dynamic package, customized to their needs. A Code Halo principle that is critical to the success of an intel-ligent planning engine is what we call the “give-to-get” model.13 While most of the data needed for intelligent trip planning already exists in digital form, consumers are increasingly savvy about the worth of their personal information. They are unwilling to give it away if they don’t trust how the data will be used and protected and without the promise of something in return. In our informal employee survey, 91% of respondents said they would provide online feedback for eight out of 10 trips they took if they felt there was a reward associated with such feedback. This compares with the 82% of respondents who currently provide online feedback for just three out of 10 trips. In many cases, the prospect of time or cost savings, targeted deals and customized experiences is enough of a lure to encourage the sharing of personal information. In this case, travelers would provide access to their Code Halos in exchange for custom recommendations based on the analysis of their data. And while travelers should not need to pay for trip rec-ommendations (as these are what they “get” for “giving” their personal information), it may be fair to charge usage fees for actual bookings or require an upgrade to a premium account for advanced features, such as altering recommendations or planning for more than four people. The bottom line is that giving information needs to be worth the reward value. The underlying assumption here is that the dynamic trip package is unique and not available anywhere else (see Figure 2). The Reverse “Groupon” Model The Give-to-Get Principle 8 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014
  • 9. • Suppliers and availability: The planning engine would use dynamic packaging, in which offers and packages can be analyzed in real time, based on supply data and the estimated number of guests who would be interested. • Schedule aggregator: The engine would synch the schedules of the travel group and plug in the information related to holidays, vacations and time off. The system could determine the optimal time for vacation, once all the timing constraints are shared. • Budget and financials: Vacation planning budgets are not always made on a purely rational or logical basis; emotional factors can also be involved. An intel-ligent planning engine, however, would establish spending boundaries based on funds data and credit availability. Explicit data: Factual information pertaining to an individual or group that is explicitly expressed. • Preferences: Most groups and individuals have a fair idea of what they don’t want; if they supply the planning engine with these preferences, it can use this information to eliminate the obvious. • Past expenses: In today’s digital age, every activity has a digital track. Expen-ditures from previous vacation expenses, such as hotel, travel, food, amenities, etc., can offer valuable input for the planning engine to determine the budget for various activities. Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 9 Trip Planning App The following depicts an optimized travel plan that an intelligent planning engine might suggest for a group traveling together, including schedule, destination, cost and comments from social networks. If the traveler agrees to the plan, he or she can click to book the trip. Figure 2 Oct 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 2014 Me Zach (Son) Cassie (Wife) Hotel: Deep Blue Resorts Room: Suite with Den Flight: Sky Airways Estimated Cost: $999 pp Enjoy the new underwater hotel! While you admire the modern architecture, your son Zack can explore the undersea games, and your wife Cassie can enjoy half-off the full-service Ayurvedic skin spa. Home Trips Turks and Caicos Italy Los Angeles Reservations The best time to go is the third week of next month, as your calendar is relatively free. Zack’s summer camp will be over, and Cassie’s company gives employees time off for the Columbus Day holiday. Last week, your cousin Tom and family stayed here and rated it with four stars. This week, your college roommate Sandy will be there for three nights. Both Cassie and Zack “liked” this and are waiting for you to authorize the booking*. *Offer will expire in 2 days 3 hours
  • 10. 10 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 Implicit data: Preferences and interests derived from implied information. • Social activity: Social platforms generate a plethora of data expressed as likes, tweets, posts, etc. that can be analyzed to gauge an individual’s inclinations and preferences. In trip planning, the biggest influencers are recent trips by friends, colleagues and relatives. The planning engine can analyze this social activity to optimize recommendations. • Digital tracks: Browsing history, links clicked, ads viewed and articles read or shared form another set of data that can be leveraged by the planning engine to gain meaningful insight into a traveler’s preferences and interests. Timeline of Transformation The transformation of the travel industry will at first be marked by sporadic change, but gradually, as the digital ecosystem matures, the environment will be ripe for the development and widespread use of intelligent trip planning (see Figure 3). Already, many of our hospitality clients are mining the social media data they collect to track travelers’ implicit preferences, which is helping them build new systems to generate offers to individuals based on their explicit historical data. Meanwhile, with increased digitization, travelers will quickly adopt intelligent travel planning capabilities and shun the old ways of manually compiling a travel plan. After all, by 2016, 79% of the U.S. population will own a smartphone,14 and by 2017, almost half of the world’s population will use the Internet.15 Digital data available Ionization Spark Enrichment Crossroads Company A Focused on Assets Company B Winning the New Code Rush Company A The Extinction Event Company B Focused on Code Halos Something’s changed and you can feel it. Organizations need to gather data and intelligence. Look at places where data collisions occur, where halos collide, opportunities exist to reengineer your business around the customer experience. With these collisions, you can get smart, and begin to exploit the opportunities of halo collisions. This is where you set the course for the business — win or lose. The turning point where smart companies accelerate growth and poor companies head towards an extinction event. Market Capitalization Time After the Crossroads Figure 3 Travel Planning at the Crossroads — Circa 2020 2013-14 Emergence of social sharing, digitization of personas and ever-rising customer expectations. 2014-15 New technology to store and analyze big data. Improved user data security. 2015-18 New models and processes based on enhanced information and analytics. 2017-19 New models reach critical mass, and industry leadership shifts. 2020 Commercial acceptance of new models leads to extinction of old ways.
  • 11. for big data analytics will increase four times to 40 zetabytes by 2020,16 and if computing power continues to increase as predicted, processing those zetabytes of data will be achieved in seconds.17 Building such a planning engine will likely be a costly undertaking, and integrat-ing it with all required suppliers will be even more challenging. But according to industry revenue statistics, travelers might bankroll the planning engine. According to a report from the World Travel Tourism Council, travel and tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world. In 2012, the industry contribut-ed $2.1 trillion in GDP and is expected to reach roughly $10.5 trillion of GDP by 2023. Moving Forward The travel planning industry is commoditized, with numerous players relying on lower prices and discounts to achieve customer loyalty. It’s crucial for traditional companies to divert swiftly from existing business models and prepare for the new Code Halo-based paradigm. A few players, such as Flextrip, Gogobot, Tripit and Stay.com, have already begun the transition by focusing on the social aspects of trip planning and incorporating these insights into their offerings. The time is now for the travel industry to identify the sparks of change and begin planning for how to compete on code and distill meaning from Code Halos. Here are a few steps that travel and hospitality companies can take immediately to begin their transformation: • Build a strong “product/places halo:” Form alliances to develop and maintain a standardized catalog of various places and locations in different regions and geographies. An intelligent planning engine will heavily rely on such a database of places, with authentic listings of “things to do,” along with genuine traveler ratings. • Build a “traveler halo:” Develop innovative ways to assimilate the traveler infor-mation from social media networks, digital footprints and different travel entities to build a complete traveler halo. Such profiling will be of immense help to the planning engine for sorting implicit traveler preferences. • Build capabilities for Code Halo interfaces: Different entities should build new interfaces through which they can collaborate. For instance, itemized details of hotel expenses should be shared with financial institutions; the exchange of such information will give the planning engine important insights for determining the budget for the next trip. • Build an ecosystem of sharing Code Halos: Seemingly unrelated organizations should develop digital channels to expose information upon authorized request. For example, travel agencies cannot currently integrate travelers’ available vaca-tion days. The sharing of individual calendars and schedules can help the plan-ning engine optimize the best time for a group to travel. Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 11
  • 12. 12 KEEP CHALLENGING August 2014 Footnotes 1 “Economic Impact of Travel Tourism 2013 Annual Update,” World Travel Tourism Council, www.wttc.org/site_media/uploads/downloads/Economic_Impact_of_TT_2013_Annual_Update_-_ Summary.pdf. 2 Our Travel and Hospitality Practice conducted a focus group survey of 90 employees in October 2013. 3 “Mobile Hits the Mainstream: Leisure and Business Traveler Trends,” PhoCusWright, January 2012, www.phocuswright.com/products/4100. 4 Cognizant conducts an annual travelers’ survey to analyze the latest trends in travel and hospital-ity. Our most recent was done in Q2 2013 and included 2,600 respondents (both business and leisure travelers) from the U.S., UK, Germany, China and Australia. 5 Brad Chacos, “Why Moores’ Law, not Mobility, Is Killing the PC,” PCWorld, March 5, 2013, www.pcworld.com/article/2030005/why-moores-law-not-mobility-is-killing-the-pc.html. 6 Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig, Ben Pring, “Code Rules: A Playbook for Managing at the Crossroads,” Cognizant Technology Solutions, June 2013, www.cognizant.com/Futureofwork/Documents/code-rules. pdf. 7 “Bulking Up: The 2013 Colloquy Loyalty Census,” Colloquy Talk, June 2013, www.colloquy.com/files/2013-COLLOQUY-Census-Talk-White-Paper.pdf. 8 “Delta Introduces 2015 Skymiles Program with New Mileage Earning Structure and More Redemption Options,” Delta, Feb. 26, 2014, http://news.delta.com/index.php?s=43item=2278. 9 “Big Data at British Airways,” CIO2CIO Middle East, Jan. 12, 2014, www.cio2cio.me/big-data-at-british-airways.html. 10 “Virgin Atlantic Introduces Google Glass in Innovation Drive to Fuel the Future of Air Travel,” Virgin Atlantic, Feb. 11, 2014, www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en/footer/media-centre/press-releases/google- glass.html. 11 Jonathan Gordon, “Big Data, Analytics and the Future of Marketing and Sales,” Forbes, July 22, 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/mckinsey/2013/07/22/big-data-analytics-and-the-future-of-marketing-sales/. 12 Malcolm Frank, “Don’t Get SMACked: How Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud Technologies Are Reshaping the Enterprise,” Cognizant Technology Solutions, November 2012, www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/dont-get-smacked.pdf. 13 For more on the give-to-get model, see Chapter 9 of our book, Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations Are Changing the Rules of Business, Wiley, April 2014. 14 “Smartphones Continue to Gain Share as U.S. Mobile Usage Plateaus,” eMarketer, April 9, 2012, www.emarketer.com/Article/Smartphones-Continue-Gain-Share-US-Mobile-Usage-Plateaus/1008958. 15 “India to Have 348 Million Internet Users by 2017: Cisco,” The Economic Times, June 4, 2013, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-04/news/39740674_1_traffic-internet-access- indian-mobile-data. 16 “The Digital Universe in 2020,” IDC, December 2012, http://idcdocserv.com/1414. 17 “Economic Impact of Travel Tourism 2013 Annual Update,” World Travel Tourism Council, www.wttc.org/site_media/uploads/downloads/Economic_Impact_of_TT_2013_Annual_Update_-_ Summary.pdf.
  • 13. Travel Planning 2020: The Journey Toward Market Prosperity 13 About the Authors Nitin Virmani is a Senior Consultant with Cognizant Business Consulting’s Travel Hospitality Practice. He received an M.B.A. from IBS Hyderabad and has nine years of diverse experience in business process consulting and execution of large IT projects. He can be reached at Nitin.Virmani@cognizant.com | Linkedin: www. linkedin.com/pub/nitin-virmani-pmp-flmi/3/755/380 | Twitter: @nitmani07. Sandeep Andugula is a Consultant with Cognizant Business Consulting’s Travel Hospitality Practice. An M.B.A. graduate from IIM Bangalore, his expertise includes sales and marketing, with a focus on airlines reservation, revenue man-agement, loyalty, social media and mobility. Sandeep can be reached at Sandeep. Andugula@cognizant.com | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sandeepandugula | Twitter: twitter.com/sandeeptweets. Jay S. Rein is Practice Leader, Travel Hospitality, Cognizant Business Consulting. He can be reached at Jay.Rein@cognizant.com. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Samrat Sen, a Director who leads Cognizant Business Consulting’s Travel Hospitality Practice, for his contributions to this white paper.
  • 14. World Headquarters 500 Frank W. Burr Blvd. Teaneck, NJ 07666 USA Phone: +1 201 801 0233 Fax: +1 201 801 0243 Toll Free: +1 888 937 3277 inquiry@cognizant.com European Headquarters 1 Kingdom Street Paddington Central London W2 6BD Phone: +44 (0) 207 297 7600 Fax: +44 (0) 207 121 0102 infouk@cognizant.com India Operations Headquarters #5/535, Old Mahabalipuram RoadOkkiyam Pettai, Thoraipakkam Chennai, 600 096 India Phone: +91 (0) 44 4209 6000 Fax: +91 (0) 44 4209 6060 inquiryindia@cognizant.com © Copyright 2014, Cognizant. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission from Cognizant. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. About Cognizant Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of informa-tion technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the world’s leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jer-sey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embod-ies the future of work. With over 75 development and delivery centers worldwide and approximately 178,600 employees as of March 31, 2014, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the SP 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.