Fintech & development opportunities for travel & tourism

The worlds of fintech and travel are increasingly converging, which is undoubtedly one of the most significant changes in travel technology. The term fintech refers to the range of financial products and services provided through the most advanced IT technologies, and it is progressing at a rapid pace, helped by the uncertain pandemic situation of recent years.

Among the various services offered are risk-based products, which allow customers to lock in the price of hotels and flights, together with insurances that guarantee travel reimbursement. Demand for these types of products is therefore growing steadily: around 60% of users of the Hopper app, a free app that allows you to predict price changes for flights and hotels over time, have purchased at least one of these services.

Soon travel companies will be able to offer financial services to their customers. Through new banking technologies, airlines, hotels and agencies will be able to adopt loyalty programmes to encourage customers to use their financial services, i.e. virtual products that companies can incorporate into their services without having to become a regulated entity themselves. For example, travelers can pay a certain amount to lock the price of a flight or hotel reservation, in case the price rises, the traveler pays the locked price, while if it goes down, the traveler pays the new, cheaper price.
The opportunity to enable flexible BNPL (‘buy now, pay later‘) installment payments is also crucial at this time. According to a research by Phocuswire.com, 68% of travelers said that BNPL would encourage them to spend more than usual on travel, as it would give them the ability to make higher value purchases or add more ancillary services. 

In addition, more and more paytech innovations have appeared in recent years that can be exploited to facilitate the use of such technology. One example is tokenization, which allows merchants to encrypt and securely store customer payment information in their systems for future use. In fact, according to a study conducted by Lodging Technology in 2022, 68% of hoteliers want to increase the security of their stored data, and 58% of them have a primary goal of improving the privacy of their customers and employees.

At Twissen, we believe that tourism service providers should increasingly equip themselves with tech tools to move in this scenario by encouraging customers to use financial services embedded in their offerings.These solutions will simplify, digitize and automate the payment of travel, providing customers with greater flexibility and security, which are essential elements for restarting, especially business travel.

Twissen