For Travelers, How Smart is the Smartwatch?
Source: Stephanie Rosenbloom
Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, introduced the new Apple Watch on Tuesday. Credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Apple’s new smartwatch can track your heart rate, pay for your Chicken McNuggets and give you turn-by-turn directions by sending vibrations to your wrist. You can even buy one in 18-karat gold. The device, which will be available early next year, is the latest in slick, wearable technology, a growing category that includes Google Glass, Jawbone’s Up fitness tracker and Liquid Image’s goggle-cameras.
But are these innovations really game-changers for travelers?
On one hand it’s amusing to contemplate the promise of wearable technology, or wearables, when the travel industry is still trying to solve basic problems like how to board 300 people onto an airplane without the process devolving into a stampede. I’m reminded of the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” ― the pyramid that illustrates how rudimentary physiological requirements like food and shelter must be met before we can concern ourselves with less crucial desires. If there were such a pyramid for travel, boarding a plane with Jetsons-style alacrity would come before watches and glasses that alert us to the nearest Margaritaville.
On the other hand, wearables, particularly the Apple Watch, could eventually transform the way we travel. Given that sensors on the back of the device can track your pulse rate, perhaps it might also detect if you’re becoming unruly during a flight and follow up with a zap to your wrist and a stress-reduction video?
Fantasies aside, some technology and travel experts see real-world potential in wearables, even though many are most likely years away from being what we want them to be.
Take smartwatches, which are already available from brands including LG, Motorola and Sony. They’re good at pushing information and alerts from your calendar to your wrist, where it’s easily glanced. The wrinkle, said James L. McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, is that most smartwatches are clunky and impersonal. They cannot pinpoint where you are or what you want, so the information they provide is not game-changing. “A traveler needs that friend that’s sitting on their wrist that says, ‘I know you, I know what you like,’ ” he said. “That’s the kind of thing that Apple can do.”
A wearable should be a coach, Mr. McQuivey said a day before the Apple news conference in Cupertino, Calif., “someone who knows more about what you need than you do.”
Indeed, during the conference, Apple said that over time the watch’s Workout app “gets to know you the way a personal trainer would” and suggests goals based on your workout history. This ability to use your personal data and history to suggest things you might want is what could put Apple ahead of its competitors, Mr. McQuivey said. Who knows what kinds of personalized real-time recommendations the Apple Watch might be capable of making in the future? Airport restaurants you’re likely to enjoy? Museum exhibitions?
But let’s get to what will actually be available early next year when the Apple Watch comes to market. One of the biggest boons for travelers involves maps and GPS: Walk through a city and the watch can deliver different vibrations to your wrist to indicate whether you should turn left or right, so you don’t have to wander the streets peering at a tiny device (or be a good map-reader) to know which way to go. “It’s like having this invisible guide with you,” Kevin Lynch, vice president of technology for Apple, said during the news conference.
Another helpful travel component is the watch’s health and fitness features, particularly its ability to show how often you’ve taken a break from sitting. The watch senses when you stand up and logs that information. Sitting too long? The Apple Watch reminds you to get up ― welcome prodding for those who spend hours in cars or planes.
As you might expect, the watch will also have apps from leading travel brands such as American Airlines and Starwood, although it’s hard to get excited because versions of such apps are available on smartphones and tablets. There are a few twists: An app from Starwood, for instance, will allow you to unlock your room at any W Hotel in the world by waving your watch in front of the door. But frankly, opening my hotel room door with my watch was never on my wish list.
And of course some travelers will like that the Apple Watch has Apple Pay, a new mobile system that allows you to pay at the registers of places as varied as McDonald’s and Walt Disney World. Until the system is ubiquitous, I’ll be carrying my wallet. I’ll also be carrying my iPhone because, well, you must in order to use all the features of the Apple Watch ― and that’s a real drawback for travelers who aim to carry fewer, not more, devices.
So far wearables haven’t exactly taken off. And, for what they cost, they’re not always practical for the average traveler. Google Glass is $1,500, while the Apple Watch starts at $349 and you have to have an iPhone 5 or higher for it to work. Ditto for the Samsung Gear smartwatch, which is about $300 and requires that you own a Samsung phone or tablet.
Still, some analysts, including Mr. McQuivey, think Apple has the best shot at delivering on the promise of such technology in part because the company is well positioned to go beyond the smartwatch. It could eventually roll out a full-body network of devices; a system that allows travelers to access the same information in a variety of ways ― for example, in an ear, not unlike the way the artificially intelligent Samantha talks to Theodore through his ear bud in the movie “Her.” Indeed, Mr. McQuivey thinks Motorola’s new Hint earpiece, which has the same abilities as its Moto 360 smartwatch but relies on the user’s voice, is a “defensive move” against the sort of system Apple might offer one day.
“Nearly four in 10 travelers can see a benefit of using wearables when they are traveling,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group. To attract more of them, the devices should be easy to use: The typical American traveler is about 41 years old, not 21, according to Mr. Harteveldt. And if the wearable is a smartwatch, he said, it should look inconspicuous, if not beautiful. “It would have to be something that doesn’t make me look like an extra on the set of an alien movie,” he said.
Apple, unlike many competitors, tackled that concern, offering an array of watch faces and bands, including leather and stainless steel mesh. “It’s as much about personal technology as it is about style and taste,” Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, told the crowd at the news conference. Though for those of us with fashionable watches that merely tell time, the Apple Watch presents a problem. There’s only so much wrist real estate.
No matter what they look like, analysts think it will be years before wearables replace smartphones and tablets, if ever. “These will be supplemental devices for the consumer,” Mr. Harteveldt said.
In the race to the bionic future, it’s easy to forget that some of the best innovations transforming the way we travel today are not wearables.
For instance Global Entry, the program that expedites the United States customs process for citizens, is a game-changer, as is T.S.A. Precheck, which speeds its members through airport security. Add to the list the car services Uber and Lyft, and touchless toilets, sinks and waste bins on the 787 Dreamliner planes.
And let’s not forget the obvious wearable: clothing. Ralph Lauren’s new Polo Tech smart shirts gathered information about the heart rate and stress levels of United States Open ball boys. It’s often the less flashy improvements, though, that make travel a little easier. Patagonia makes quick-dry clothes with built-in sunscreen. And Scottevest designs travel clothes with pockets that let you wear everything you would typically stuff into a carry-on bag, from your glasses to your iPad.
Only time will tell if wearables become our second skins. “This is not going to be an overnight story,” Mr. Harteveldt said.
That’s what makes it exciting. And maybe a little scary. As Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of design, put it in a video during the news conference: “We’re now at a compelling beginning.”
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