CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics trade show, completely overtook Las Vegas, Nevada, last week, showing the world new and inspiring gadgets and technologies that will enhance and shape our lives in the near future.

The event also heralded the arrival of the travel revolution. As travellers get more tech-savvy on the road, the fight for consumer engagement among companies has increased. Multiple announcements showcased latest technologies, significantly impacting the world of travel.

Here are the top emerging consumer tech trends from this year’s CES that will likely impact the travel industry-

#1. Hyperloop – The Hyperloop technology hurtled closer to reality at CES 2018 with Virgin Hyperloop One demonstrating the first-ever hyperloop trip planning app for passengers and showcasing its first-generation hyperloop pod. Built in partnership with mapping and navigation company Here Technologies, the app will allow people to schedule hyperloop trips from city to city and door to door. While Hyperloop trains aren’t running yet, the company plans to release the app in 2018, so the transport system might arrive here soon than expected.

Image source: CNET

#2. Faster 5G mobile bandwidth – Travel apps and companies are all set to provide more personalized services to travellers as the 5G technology rolls out over the next few years. Travellers at large will no longer be constrained by data they can send or receive, making it easier for them to leverage the benefits of technology powered by Augmented Reality and other services. Travel companies could use AR to track movements, give directions and suggest things to do in the area, making travel easier.

#3. Enhanced on-the-go charging – Wireless charging pads were all over CES 2018, thanks to the launch of the new iPhones. Tons of companies released new products in a wide variety of form, factors and styles, specifically Qi wireless chargers, the popular industry standard that’s used by major smartphone companies. Better charging solutions are crucial for travellers, especially when trying to stay connected during delays. Travellers now have a wider selection of styles to choose from. Moreover, competition in the market might mean a race to develop even faster charging.

Image source: The Verge

#4. Voice-assisted smart gadgets – Some of the most popular gadgets over the entire event were smart speakers with digital assistants. Apple is coming out with its own speaker this year; Microsoft and Samsung have partnered on another. Many online travel agencies will start exploring voice search capability for travel booking. As more devices gain voice-control capability, brands will be able to sell travel products through these channels.

#5. The rise of drones – Drones continue to remain popular with travellers, especially travel photographers and the CES 2018 saw a host of flying machines. While some were brand new, some were upgraded from their previous versions.

Image source: Videomaker.com

From the AirSelfie that is controlled by a phone app to go up into the air and take selfies, to the new Typhoon H Plus for those interested in serious drone photography and videography; drone fans will have much to cheer about this year.

The post Top tech trends from CES 2018 that will disrupt the travel industry appeared first on TravHQ.

The internet is going crazy over this one tweet and Instagram post by legendary Elon Musk! The tweet showcases the Hyperloop pod run by team WARR, from Tech Univ Munich who have won the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition.

The concept of Hyperloop was first envisaged by Elon Musk in 2013 in the form of high speed capsules that travel at the speed of the sound. Musk believes that Hyperloop will be the fifth mode of transport after planes, trains, cars and boats connecting cities that are ideally less than 1500km apart. When it becomes a reality, Hyperloop would replace the conventional railway system. with its medium-vacuum environment offered by the tube.

Hyperloop pod run by team WARR pic.twitter.com/ntaMsoxkZE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2017

The competition which was organized between 25-27 August in LA focussed on the highest speed possible in the 1.2 km SpaceX tube. The WARR pod won the prize with a top speed of 324km/hour. If they do travel at the speed of sounds,  Hyperloop pods could make your journey from Munich to Berlin inside 30 minutes.

The WARR Hyperloop team at the SpaceX competition

The WARR Hyperloop team of 30 students from the Technical University of Munich

Another player Hyperloop One has a distance to time saved calculator which shows that if you had to travel from Delhi to Agar you could actually reach in just 16 minutes.

Also read: Hyperloop Alpha white-paper, written in 2012

While you might still be drooling over the video of hyperloop pod run, we would leave you with this quote by Musk at the event:  “The reason I love these things is that it makes me excited to wake up in the world”. “There are a lot of problems in the world and if we don’t have things that inspire us, what’s the point of living?”

Also read: With its recent success, where is Hyperloop One headed now?

The post The Hyperloop pod is a sign of the future of travel appeared first on TravHQ.

India runs on rails. Employing over 1.3 million employees and generating over 100 billion in net income, the Indian Railways is often termed the lifeline of the country. However, it is slow, often unreliable and is plagued with many other problems. The government is constantly trying to change things one at a time and has been looking at the option of higher speeds on popular routes. The two major companies working on Hyperloop, Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, are looking at this as an opportunity to set their camps in India.

Recently Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced that it is in talks with five Indian states to build a high speed network. It was also revealed that the company will raise USD 100 million to invest in the country and has already got local partners onboard. HTT Chairman Bibop Gresta shared that HTT will be ready to host passengers within 36-38 months after land and other permissions are taken care of.

But HTT isn’t the only one pulling strings and making moves here. The Hyperloop One Global Challenge invited teams from all over to send their proposals for using the technology in their region. As a part of the challenge, Hyperloop One hosted a showcase event in New Delhi yesterday. The event was attended by Minister of Railways and Hyperloop One shared its vision of how adopting the technology could be an important step forward for the country.

There is no denying that something like Hyperloop could do wonders for a country like India and both the companies see massive opportunity here. Clearly they are trying to do everything they can to get the attention of government and gather support from the masses. While HTT Chairman Gresta claimed that they are the only company the officials are talking to right now, Hyperloop One invited rail minister to their event to show what they are planning (and highlight that they are the only company building a ‘functional’ system right now). Things will only get intense as both the companies move forward with their developments. We hope this drives the final project even closer for us to experience.

The post Hyperloop companies are racing to set camp in India appeared first on TravHQ.

Elon Musk, the visionary CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, put the best engineering minds to the challenge of building prototypes to demonstrate feasibility of Hyperloop concept. With Hyperloop, SpaceX is looking to give momentum to ground transportation and another participating team in the Hyperloop competition seems to have made good progress towards the goal.

The Waterloop team from University of Waterloo demonstrated a functional pneumatic levitation system on a test track. This of course is far from the real thing as it was a scaled down test. Yet it is an indication that the team is heading in the right direction and making progress.

MT @uwaterloo: @waterloo_hyper team shows functional pneumatic hyperloop levitation system! #WaterloopLevitates pic.twitter.com/KBiGcpjgDQ

— Waterloo Engineering (@WaterlooENG) November 2, 2016

The Waterloop team is among the teams preparing to compete in the Hyperloop pod competition scheduled to be held from January 27 to 29, 2017. The competition will take place on a test track constructed by SpaceX adjacent to their headquarters in Hawthorne, California. According to SpaceX, the knowledge gained here will be open sourced. The company is also moving forward with the next instalment of the competition focussed strictly on achieving the highest speeds possible.

Waterloop, in order to gain funds for development, is crowdsourcing through Kickstarter. If you would like to contribute towards the same, you can head to their Kickstarter campaign.

The post Want insanely fast travel? This is the Kickstarter project to back appeared first on TravHQ.

One of the most anticipated tech event globally, Google I/O, concluded recently with many new interesting announcements for the travel tech ecosystem. On the other side, we are gearing up to host a serious of Startup Knockdown+ events to give more power to travel startups. There was a lot more happening over the month that made for interesting discussions. Just in case you missed them over the month, here are the top stories from May.

1- Facebook brings new ad options for travel brands

A large number of travel brands rely on Facebook for advertising their products and Facebook identifies that. To improve the experience for their audience and give them more control, Facebook recently introduced new Dynamic Ads for Travel to display better tailored ads to people interested in travelling. The social network has also introduced the Dynamic Ad option for Instagram.

Full story

2- Startup Knockdown is coming back with lot more for innovators in travel

We are bringing Travel Startup Knockdown+ in association with TTF to offer the innovators in travel industry a platform to showcase their get in the spotlight. The events will be hosted in four cities with different partners who will be brining lot more opportunities to the table. The registrations for Kolkata event are open with names like Amadeus, NASSCOM, Calcutta Angels Network, Agnitio and many others willing to take the promising ones to next level. You can register at startupknockdown.travhq.com.

Full story

3- Simon Akeroyd shares what Amadeus has learned working with startups in Amadeus Next

Amadeus introduced Amadeus Next last year to nurture a community of travel tech startups in APAC. Amadeus Next has been operating like a startup itself and according to Simon, VP, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Amadeus Asia Pacific, this has brought in many new learnings for Amadeus. We spoke with him to know more.

Full story

4- Go-Jek associates with Indonesia’s largest local transportation company

Go-Jek, Uber’s local rival in Indonesia, is associating with Blue Bird, country’s largest taxi and transportation company. Go-Jek will allow Blue Bird to move ahead on the technology curve while gaining access to a large fleet of cars to offer through its platform. This announcement came only a few weeks after Blue Bird was in news for strongly opposing the operation of other major cab hailing companies in the market, Uber and Grab.

Full story

5- Hyperloop One successfully conducts first test in Nevada

An idea that was being termed radical not long back saw the light of day in form of this first prototype. Hyperloop One is still far from what it has to be but the recently concluded test shows that ground transportation might indeed become fast, very fast in future. It is being termed as ‘Concorde of ground transportation’ and claims to bring down the cost of a 400 mile journey to USD 20.

Full story

6- Google I/O brings daydreaming and chatty bots

Google I/O 2016 was sure to have a lot for anyone who loves technology. This year, Google announced improved Android Pay, more options in Android Auto along with the ability to use on phone, a new VR ecosystem called Daydream, a new chatting app called Allo along with a smart assistant accessible through it and Instant Apps for Android devices.

Full story

7- Alex Lopoukhine shares how Viator cracked the activity code

Tours and activities aren’t easy to distribute and only few players in the market seem to have cracked the code. Viator is one big name that is strong in the activity space. We had a chat with Alex Lopoukhine, Director, Business Development at Viator to know the key.

Full story

8- Should travel brands start exploring the chat bots immediately?

Chat bots are certainly being seen as the next big thing in travel industry and as AI technologies improve, they will offer more features. However the big question is should travel brands, especially the young ones with limited resources, start exploring the possibilities immediately? The guest story tries to answer that along with some more possibilities that can be explored.

Full story

9- Skyscanner brought in a chat bot and we took it for a spin

While we were weighing down the pros and cons, Skyscanner went ahead and decided to try what they can do with bots, now that Facebook has opened up Messenger to third party developers. We tried out the bot to see what it offers and what it doesn’t.

Full story

10- SITA and ShoCard plan to change authentication process at airports

SITA and ShoCard are working on a prototype based on Blockchain technology to eliminate the need of producing physical identification documents at every security checkpoint. The identity would be stored on a bitcoin blockchain and a token generated by the passenger would allowed for validation of ID against the validation data stored on the database.

Full story

For weekly updates on our stories, you can sign up for our newsletter below

The post May 2016 round-up: Faster transportation and smarter airports appeared first on TravHQ.