Attending the Skift Global Forum in New York this year was a powerful reminder of how fast the travel world is moving. The room was packed with leaders from global airlines, hotel chains, and tech platforms, all eager to map out the next decade of the customer journey. Everywhere you looked, the conversation centered on intelligent software: agentic AI, hyper-personalized recommendation engines, and friction-free booking apps designed to automate every touchpoint of a trip.
It is an exciting vision for the future, but as I prepared to join Dan Marcec on stage, one fundamental question kept coming back to me: What happens to all these smart apps when a traveller simply can’t get online?
We spend endless hours designing seamless digital interfaces, but we often forget the basic foundation that makes them function. On stage, I wanted to bring the high-level debate about AI and super-apps back to the everyday reality of the modern traveller. What follows are the core insights from that discussion on why keeping travellers connected isn’t just an extra feature, it’s the fundamental baseline for customer trust.
The on-stage reality check in New York
To test this reality on stage, I opened our chat with a simple question for the audience: How many of you have felt that sudden wave of panic when your phone loses network access while navigating an international trip?
Hands raised right across the auditorium.
It was a telling moment. It exposed a clear gap in how we build travel technology: we create amazing digital tools, but we treat basic mobile access like an afterthought.
Today, smartphones are the absolute control center for any traveller - holding digital boarding passes, IDs, transit maps, ride-hailing tools, and payment methods. When a traveller loses connection at an airport terminal or in the middle of an unfamiliar city, it’s not just a minor annoyance. The entire digital travel experience breaks down instantly.
Staying online is a basic travel need
Years ago, travellers accepted clunky interfaces, paper maps, and offline issues as an inevitable part of the journey. Today, consumer expectations have changed radically. People operate with zero tolerance for friction. We get instant, on-demand service in every other aspect of our daily lives, and we expect that same continuity when we cross international borders.
Staying online has moved to the absolute foundation of what travellers need. It is no longer a luxury or a side task that travellers should have to figure out after they land. It has become a basic travel necessity, just like having clean running water or electricity in a hotel room.
A guest does not compliment a hotel just because the taps work, but if there is no water, nothing else about the stay matters. The same applies to mobile network access. When a connection fails, travellers don’t stop to ask if it was a problem with the airport Wi-Fi, a local telecom network, or an airline app. All they know is that their trip was disrupted, and the brand promise failed.
Why apps need built-in network access
Throughout the forum, we heard major industry players - from Uber and Booking.com to Expedia - discuss their ambitions to expand deeper into the traveller’s loop. Everyone wants to own more of the journey, offering everything from flights and rides to experiences and hotels in a single app.
However, there is a simple operational reality: no single brand owns the entire journey from start to finish.
Companies invest millions of dollars building native apps, automated chatbots, and digital concierge services. Yet, those assets become completely useless the exact moment a traveller’s phone drops offline. Forcing international travellers to rely on insecure public Wi-Fi networks or hunt for physical SIM cards breaks the digital relationship right when they need help the most.
To solve this, the travel industry needs a mindset shift. Keeping travellers online shouldn’t be treated as a separate, transactional add-on. It should be built directly into travel platforms using simple software integrations (like APIs and SDKs). By making mobile access seamless and automatic in the background, travel brands protect their technology investments and ensure their apps actually work throughout the entire trip.
From eSIM seller to travel companion: The ‘Always On’ competitive edge
Our time at Skift reinforced a big shift for us at Holafly: we are not just here to sell mobile data packages. We are evolving from an eSIM provider into a true travel companion, a partner focused on giving people real peace of mind (tranquilidad).
In a crowded market where others race to offer aggressive pricing or one-off data deals, we chose to solve the actual root problem. This is why we built our proprietary ‘Always On’ safety net, an industry-first feature that truly sets Holafly apart in the market.
While standard eSIM products simply stop working the moment high-speed data expires, ‘Always On’ guarantees an unbroken connection. Even when a primary data plan runs out, critical applications like messaging, maps, and emergency contacts stay active.
For travel partners integrating Holafly via API or SDK, this provides an unprecedented competitive edge: it ensures your app never goes dark in a customer’s moment of need, locking in brand loyalty and operational reliability that traditional data vendors simply cannot offer.
As travel becomes more automated, the real key to customer loyalty won’t just be how flashy an app looks. It will be whether it stays reliable when things go wrong. The biggest competitive advantage in travel tech isn’t just building better software, it’s partnering to build an unbroken safety net so travelers stay online to use it.
