5 Awesome Ways Wearables Transform Can Travel

April 6th, 2017

Technology is all around us. Whether it’s by ordering a pizza from your phone, taking a selfie with a drone phone case, or tracking your fitness with smart glasses, technological advancements continue to become part of our daily lives, whether we choose to use them or not. You may not agree with the price tag for some of the hottest pieces of tech out there, but we can all agree that in certain cases, technology makes our lives easier. When it comes to travel, wearables, which are one of the hottest technology trends out there, can definitely make your life easier. From checking in at the airport to navigating around an unknown city, read on to discover how wearables can transform and improve your travel experiences!

SmartWatch Boarding Pass

I don’t know about you guys, but one of the most stressful parts about traveling for me is the thought of losing my boarding pass. It happened to me once and I was lucky enough to hear my name over the loud system to get it back. Traveling is stressful enough, and none of us want to deal with trying to get a new boarding pass just hours before a flight. So instead of carrying a piece of paper around the airport, use your SmartWatch for your boarding passes! Android Wear already has a few airlines that have made tentative steps to getting boarding passes onto smartwatches. The Apple Watch also offers features such as flight status, countdown t departure, and at-destination weather for a myriad of airlines. Letting us just flash our watch, instead of taking out our phone to a piece of paper from our pockets, smartwatch boarding passes are just one of the ways that wearables are transforming travel.

smartwatch and travel

Photo Credit: Wareable

Ditch the Key, Open Your Hotel Room with Your Watch

Although this one is not that mainstream yet, using your watch to open your hotel room would really make me feel like I’m traveling in the future. Right now the only major hints we have that this may be coming is that Starwood Hotels is rolling out support for its Apple Watch app that lets guests open their hotel doors with the smartwatch. Disney actually is pioneering this technology. They have an all purpose MagicBand wearable that they give their guests at the Disney Resort. Among other things, these wearables are used as the room key! We’ve all had those keys that get deactivated because we held it too close to our phone, or have had to swipe 10 times before the door finally unlocks. Well this could change all that! Bye bye electric key!!

MagicBand wearable

Photo Credit: Disney

Invest in a Good Pair of Headphones

Having to watch a movie on those tiny airplane screens is bad enough, but it becomes intolerable when you also have to wear those airplane headphones that never seem to fit and always seem to produce muffled sound. So why not invest in a pair of headphones that will make you feel like you’re at the movie theaters! Wearables like the Avegant Glyph are the perfect headphones for long plane rides, as they are basically a personal cinema! Although they are a bit pricey, these headphones transform into your own personal movie theater. You can wear them like regular headphones to enjoy amazing sound, but even better you can slip them over your eyes when you’re ready to start a movie. Ditch the small screen, and enjoy your own private showing!

Avegant VR headphones

Photo Credit: Avegant

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A Few Additional Tips

Besides using your smartwatch for boarding your plane or opening your hotel room, technology now allows us to use these watches for directions. Light vibrations from your watch will change the way you navigate a city — a light nudge left or right will keep you on track.

wearables and the future of travel

Photo Credit: Wareable

Another important way that wearables can change travel is through safety, a critical aspect of air travel. A lot of wearables on the market today come with biometric tracking as a core feature, which can let the industry monitor potentially dangerous situations. In addition, think of wearables that can measure heart rates or other health factors. These could be used for pilots, air traffic controllers, train conductors, and bus drivers in order to increase passenger safety.

Lastly, smart clothing is a HUGE growing trend in the wearable world, and they definitely could transform travel. Imagine smart clothes that could warm up when you are feeling cold, or cool down when you are hot. Not only would this make a flight much more enjoyable, but you wouldn’t have to worry about packing extra layers into your carry on for the flight.

Wearables are not only growing in popularity, but they are also getting smarter. New and innovative ways to use wearables are being invented everyday, and they are becoming more and more common in our everyday life. There is no doubt that wearables are the future of travel.

Read more about wireless charging for wearables!