6 Travel Innovations We've Covered: Did They Live Up to the Promise?

25.08.2023 - 13:58 / skift.com / Rashaad Jorden

Skift has covered throughout the years dozens of innovations poised to fundamentally alter travel — several of which we featured in a newsletter regularly published in 2017 and 2018 named the Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report.

Although the report primarily focused on business travel’s changing landscape as well as its future, it included trends and tech advances affecting the travel industry as whole — including airlines, hotels and online travel agencies.

So have those innovations truly been groundbreaking? We take a look at six of them we showcased in the report and examine through our coverage how they’ve impacted the travel industry.

Skift repeatedly addressed the impact of virtual reality would have in the travel industry in the Innovation Report, noting that the technology had finally gone mainstream in 2017. The use of virtual reality was already prevalent in the events industry. Meet L.A., part of the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board, had launched the Virtual Discovery L.A. in 2016, which enabled conference planners to explore event venues throughout the city in virtual reality.

However, virtual reality’s expected boom had been slowed by factors such as costly headsets and lack of content. Even Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, found that many of its employees didn’t have virtual reality headsets, making them reluctant to use its Horizon Workrooms app that allows users represented by avatars to gather around a conference table.

But some travel companies have increased their investment in virtual reality coming out of the pandemic, including KLM. The flag carrier of the Netherlands began pilot training in November 2020 using virtual reality platforms it built in-house. Meanwhile, New Orleans utilized virtual reality to film an ad from its latest campaign, which Walter Leger III, president and CEO of New Orleans & Company, was part of its strategy to showcase the innovation taking place in the city.

Skift touched on the increased use of biometrics at airports in September 2017, which business travelers believed could help speed up lines at airports despite concerns about the security of information and its potential use.

Although those issues haven’t died down, biometrics are poised to become even more prominent at airports, with the pandemic helping drive interest in technology that would reduce touchpoints for travelers. Travel tech firm Pangiam bought biometric facial recognition system VeriScan with the belief the platform could reshape travel coming out of the pandemic. Meanwhile, Star Alliance, the world’s largest airline alliance, is calling on half of its 26 members to use biometrics technology by 2025.

Skift listed the use of airport biometrics as a