SITA (Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques), a specialist in air transport communication and IT solutions, recently presented a report looking at how passengers in the future will use online flight-booking engines.

“Web 2.0 technologies will transform airline Web sites into travel planning portals that go far beyond date and location. By making it faster, easier and more cost-effective to provide real-time content from diverse sources, Web 2.0 technologies meet travelers’ demands for greater information and personalization,” said Jim Peters, CTO, SITA.

“In the near future when a customer makes a booking, the airline Web site could extract the passenger’s preferences from [his] frequent flyer program, combine it with external content from travel Web sites so that hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions can be overlaid on a Google map and the traveler can then take a virtual sight-seeing tour and be linked in with friends’ travel plans.”

SITA also forecasts “that mobile devices are about to have the same impact on the passenger journey as the jet engine did 50 years ago” as the devices become the access point to online services. To read the full report, visit http://insideflyerus.wpengine.com/link/?1476