As a holidaymaker, you’ve long been used to having to do everything yourself: whether it’s breakfast in a hotel, in a ski hut or at the street food truck next to the sight – no one brings the food to your table anymore. Either there is only a meal service or a buffet. So if you don’t help yourself, you’ll go hungry.
Before you can finally fill your stomach at the holiday destination, you have already performed a whole range of other services on yourself: Checking in your suitcase at the airport has been a matter for passengers for years. Those who are traveling by train are encouraged by the railway to check themselves in using an app. Once you have arrived at your destination, you can use a door code to access the hotel room you have paid for in advance by credit card. There is no one there who would explain the customs of the house or even help with the luggage.
When it comes to flying, this is often the case today: the base price only includes the transport of the passengers. Each additional service is either omitted or has to be paid for separately. So if you want to take luggage with you, be it a handbag, or would like to have a drink – the answer is always: But please, anytime, if you just quickly hold your credit card up to the reader here. And now the PIN, thanks!
The hotel industry will certainly follow suit soon: making the bed, changing the linen, calling a taxi, all of which each guest will do themselves in future. Obviously, there is no other way, given the lack of staff and the horrendous energy costs. But anyone who thinks that the limit of what is expected of holidaymakers has finally been reached is very wrong.
The tourist brings it
A project is being prepared in Vienna that is to be tested in the city from 2024: Coordinated via (yet!) an app, passengers should take packages with them on the tram and bring them to their destination. The initiators of the project praise themselves that this is environmentally friendly, and efficient too. Tourists, for example, would then be asked by a bot if they were buying their tram ticket with their smartphone: “Are you going to the central cemetery anyway? Can you perhaps take three packages with you to Braunhubergasse? Two for Molnars at number 15, one for Pichler in Number 22?”
Anyone who now thinks they can escape it shouldn’t be surprised if the hotel door code is blocked after visiting the graves of honor for Hans Moser, Udo Jürgens and Joe Zawinul. In addition to digital data, service is the currency that holidaymakers will use to pay their bills in the future. Surely you will be able to hoard an extra croissant for breakfast through a bonus points program by diligently delivering packages.
In addition, tourists are incredibly keen on authentic “meet the locals” offers anyway. Where better to fulfill that urge to connect with the locals than with parcel delivery in neighborhoods you’d never otherwise set foot in?