This prediction was made in 1991, at the dawn of the World Wide Web. In the 25 years since then, travel companies have been at the forefront of innovation and many of the painful and time-consuming tasks associated with travelling have been consigned to the dustbin of history.
I reached a personal milestone last week, when I was able to buy a flight, hail an Uber to the airport, scan my own case at the bag drop and board the plane using my phone. Not once did I see a bit of paper or have to speak with an actual human. Now that is progress. In fact when Contiki announced a range of Virtual Reality holidays last week (“wear a VR headset and experience the exhilaration of travel from the comfort of your own home”), I’ll admit, it took a second glance and a look at the calendar to confirm it was an April Fool.
In a world where everything from your boarding pass to your council tax can be completed online, the CAA’s antiquated paper application forms have often seemed like a prehistoric throwback. At long last, the CAA plans to introduce a snazzy new online application system later this year. It’s been a long time in the making and the new system will hopefully reduce the bureaucratic burden on travel companies.
To illustrate how badly the upgrade was needed, consider what happens currently at a typical Atol renewal. Paper application packs (comprising around five assorted application forms, addendums, checklists and returns) are posted (in an envelope, remember them?) to around 1,000 Atol holders. Each applicant has to complete the
application forms (using a pen, remember them?) and post them back to the CAA.
Each one of those 5,000 paper forms has to be checked by someone at the CAA and typed back into its creaking database. This cycle is repeated twice a year, and has remained largely unchanged since 1973.
Technology upgrades don’t come cheap, and spending travel industry money always needs to be justified, but that’s easy enough when you consider the sheer volume of resources tied up with paper shuffling. The upgrade will soon pay for itself when these resources are allocated to more rewarding pursuits, such as spotting the next tour operator heading for failure or helping to take down the fraudsters who swindled £11.5 million out of British holidaymakers last year, according to a recent report from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.
Of course the best technology- driven companies remember to combine the slick online experience with superb offline customer service for those rare occasions when it all goes belly-up. Fingers crossed that the CAA delivers the slick technology but doesn’t forget about the second bit.
