The 2021 Digital Transformation Report

The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 was a digital wake-up call for the travel and hospitality industry, placing new demands on companies across the sector and creating an urgent need for solutions to address them.

Travelers demanded more online shopping options, digital communications, and contactless solutions, forcing companies to adapt how they served customers. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, organizations had to design new ways of working as employees shifted to remote work using new digital collaboration tools to stay productive. On top of all this, organizations across the industry dealt with new challenges to their business models, including unanticipated changes in consumer demand, new distribution strategies, and rapid experimentation with new products and services.

But regardless of the challenges facing travel and hospitality brands over the past year, a clear mandate is now emerging: Organizations across the industry are embracing digital transformation, a philosophy that promotes digital-first business practices, toolsets, analytics, and ways of working in order to weather changes caused by the pandemic and ensure their long-term success.

What percentage of the sector has embraced this new digital-first philosophy? Which areas of their business will leaders prioritize as they ramp up their digital transformation efforts? And how will they prioritize investment in software, technology, and talent to support these efforts?

To answer these questions and gain a clearer picture on the ground, Skift and Amazon Web Services (AWS) collaborated in summer 2021 on a global research study of global travel leaders to produce the 2021 Digital Transformation Report.

Building on the insights from a survey of over a thousand travel industry leaders across a diverse range of sectors in North America, Europe, Asia- Pacific, and Latin America, the report shines a light on a rapidly digitizing industry in flux: offering an important guide to the travel and hospitality industry as it embraces emerging digital realities and opportunities, and navigates the challenges throughout the decade ahead and beyond.

In this report:

• The results of a survey on digital transformation distributed to over 1,000 travel industry executives who oversee technology decisions at their organizations.
  
• Insights on how executives in the travel and hospitality industry perceive digital transformation as an overall business objective.
  
• How industry executives plan to make use of company and customer data to support their decision making.
  
• The kinds of systems and technology travel companies are investing in to satisfy digital-first consumers.
  
• Where the industry's major tech investments are going, particularly as it relates to emerging innovations such as cloud computing.
  
• How the industry's talent, training, and team structures will support digital-first strategies.