The days of navigating with a paper map are far behind us. Hell, the days of navigating with MapQuest seem just as distant. With changes in technology come changes in the way we live. Travel is just an extension of your everyday life in a new location. Every time you update your iPhone, you’re giving yourself a new set of tools to navigate the world more easily.

At HotelsByDay, we’re hoping to be one of those tools to make your life just a little bit more convenient. Whether it’s a streamlined booking interface or a better-tailored day stay experience, technology is making travel better for all of us.

Let’s take a look at the extent to which technology influences travel:

Space Saving and Document Backup

The improvement in mobile data speed and coverage has revolutionized the way we think and go about traveling. We no longer need to schlep around the same tools and supplies. We can access thousands of songs on Spotify, SoundCloud or Pandora. We can flip through a limitless library eBooks, or play any game at our fingertips. Our phones have impeccable camera quality that save space and let us store photos to the cloud.

In addition to all your entertainment packed into a single device, mobile devices also let you back up all of your travel documentation in a central location. Your boarding passes, ticket confirmations, hotel reservations and other identification are all easily accessible on the go. There’s no more worrying about misplacing your tickets, because you can always pull them from your email if needed.

Aggregate Sites

We love technology for its recommendations probably as much as its convenience. Aggregate review sites like Yelp and Foursquare provide peer reviews, ideas and inside tips of the best places to eat, drink, shop or visit in cities across the world. So while you might not have visited a city in the past, you can always find information about where you should check out and what you should do. With crowdsourced reviews, you can trust the validity of the claims and plan your itinerary with confidence.

In addition to aggregated reviews, third party booking sites like HotelsByDay let you compare hotel day stay options and place your reservations directly. It’s the easy way to find the best deals on hotels at your destination. We also give users access to fast booking from their iOS or Android mobile device with the HotelsByDay app, making reservations more convenient than ever.

What the Future Holds

Technology has come a long way in the last 15 years making travel more affordable, convenient and curated. But what does the next 10-15 years hold? Global futurist and technology forecaster, Daniel Burrus gives us a pretty good idea in a piece he wrote on LinkedIn.

Burrus predicts the following:

    • Semantic Voice Search Technology more closely resembling that of an “ultra-intelligent electronic agent.”
    • These “Ultra-intelligent electronic agents” will be our travel pals. Someone to troubleshoot, consult, book, and navigate with.
    • Virtual Reality Technologies that allow people to experience chosen destinations before they arrive through seeing, hearing and smelling.
    • Airports will become a safer, less stressful and a more enjoyable part of the travel experience with fingerprint reading and facial recognition.
    • Space tourism (and not just Low Earth Orbit) will take off.
    • Social media travel will be more integrated with how we book and plan our travel.
      • Augmented adventure via Google Glass will add new layers of virtual reality and data applications into landscapes.
    • Man-made travel environments will increase around the world with impressive tools and concepts.

While we can’t promise any of the predictions about the future will come to fruition, we can promise that we’re helping to change the experience of travel through technology each and every day.

Book your next day stay with HotelsByDay!

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Yannis Moati

Founder at HotelsByDay
Yannis has a rich background of 15 years in travel, from guiding tours in Europe at a young age, to co-founding an exotic travel agency, and then directing a New York-based global tour operator company. Throughout his professional life, for both his clients and personal travels, Yannis had to always pull strings to get a more personalized hotel check-in or check-out times. Frustration turned to illumination, witnessing first-hand the important customer behavioral shifts of the ‘on-demand’ economy: something could be done in boosting hotel revenues by selling uncommitted inventory by day.