Speaking at the second UNWTO World Conference on Smart Destinations, IBM executive director and global industry leader, aviation, hospitality and travel related services Greg Land said travellers are increasingly demanding hassle-free trips.
In order to do this, he urged travel companies to start sharing customer data and make their experiences the best possible.
Land said: "We all have such great information on the travel market; my colleagues in the retail industry salivate at the amount of data we have and we are really not putting that to good use.
"Everyone feels it is power... and they won’t share it with anyone else but it is in the interests of the traveller to share it.
"It makes it more seamless and frictionless and technology like block chain is finally allowing that sharing of data."
Land added the sharing of data would also be commercially beneficial for operators and agents, as customers typically visit about 30 websites to research their holidays before coming close to booking them.
He said: "They pick a destination and research the activities they want to do. We’re missing out on a lot of information that can be garnered when they are first thinking or dreaming about that trip.
"We can do that now but we need to think about how we are managing it."
Land added that the smartphone is currently the most important tool in the booking process as virtually anyone thinking of a holiday will have one and use to to research their trip.
However, he said other aspects of online life, like block chain, are becoming increasingly important.
Land added: "The internet of things is going to be big with hotels, big with car hire companies and big throughout all travel companies and destination-management organisations as there are going to be so many connected travellers out there."
He also urged travel companies to start doing more with the data they have already collected as currently companies only use about 10% of their data.
However, he admitted doing so is increasingly problematic as 90% of all travel data was only collected in the past two years.
