There is little doubt that the concept of dynamic packaging has pretty much given the traditional players in the travel industry a new lease of life.
Indeed, about a year or so ago, hardly a day went by without another travel company appearing in the trade press in order to gush about its latest “dynamic packaging solution”.
But while it is good to applaud the efforts of the industry to build systems that enable holidaymakers to effectively create their own holidays, using separate flight and hotel components, the consumer should also be given some credit.
Anyone who thinks the various people in the industry were sitting around one day, kicking their heels, and the dynamic packaging revolution was suddenly born, is very mistaken.
Consumers were already looking for a ways to tailor-make their holidays, first with city breaks and, eventually, with Mediterranean holidays, utilising the low-cost carriers and Channel Tunnel.
So while many travel companies will claim they were the first to offer dynamic packaging, it is worth remembering that they were, in reality, just responding to consumer demand.
In fact the same is happening again, right now. Consumers are demanding more – innovation, flexibility, choice, 24-hour coverage, unbiased opinions, etc – from their travel providers.
The industry got it right with dynamic packaging, but to ignore consumers this time would be a pretty dangerous mistake to make.