Smart spending, the green agenda and advances in technology – Jenny Southan reports on future travel trends
As the economic crisis ends, we can all start looking to the future again rather than focusing on getting through the present. But what does that future look like, and how can we expect our travelling lives to change in the coming years? Here is a look at what the airlines, hotels and technology providers are doing to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of business travellers.
VALUE IN, LUXURY OUT
The recession may be behind us but the techniques we have had to employ to survive are here to stay. Mark Douglas, UK head of sales for American Express Business Travel, says: “Companies will continue to take a critical look at why people are travelling and seek return on investment from that expenditure. They will want their money to work much harder – so while they may go back to the levels of spend they had before, they may be looking for people to do more travel for that amount.”
Jason Long, head of global commercials for corporations at Amadeus IT Group, agrees. “We don’t think businesses will be willing to fork out on first class fares or five-star hotels anymore, but they will be willing to spend on cheaper travel. As a result, we will see the industry try to reposition its services to appeal to the more cost-conscious traveller. For example, premium economy may be the class that takes off.”
It is widely believed that there will be 50 per cent more people travelling in ten years’ time – taking air passenger numbers to more than three billion a year. To accommodate this, Stewart Harvey, client management director for the executive board of travel management company HRG, foresees “continued ‘in-flight minimalism’ on short-haul services”. He says: “We will see larger aircraft with more seats in economy, but also an increasing gulf between what the economy offering is on intercontinental flights and the first and business class offering, which will continue to get more sophisticated and luxurious.”
Harvey has noticed an upturn in the booking of charter flights. He believes this is set to continue as, for a minority of top business travellers, time is more important than money, and there will be less of a stigma attached to making these kinds of bookings now the financial crisis is over. “Senior executives who are time-poor will want to go to a small airport and take a private jet because larger airports are becoming so busy,” he says.
GREEN AS STANDARD
The battle to limit our impact on the environment is ongoing but hotels are finally taking responsibility, mainly owing to pressure from those people booking the stays. A spokesperson for Starwood Hotels and Resorts says: “Corporate clients are increasingly requesting information on our green practices and policies as a condition of them doing business with us.” As a result, more hotel groups are going to be using energy-efficient lighting, water-conserving fixtures, recycling bins and green housekeeping practices as standard, updating existing properties to make them greener, and even constructing hotels to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.
A spokesperson for serviced apartment provider Go Native, which has developed an online eco-rating system to allow customers to search for greener properties, says: “Our apartments have all undertaken a review to ensure the company’s impact on the environment is measured and reduced. Future acquisitions are focused on apartments that have been developed to operate at the highest levels of efficiency and constructed with a minimal impact on the environment.” (For more on what hotels are doing, see “Sustainable stays”.)
Airlines have already started investing in ways to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, so we are likely to see more carriers experimenting with biofuel-powered flights and reducing the weight on board to lower fuel burn. (See “Green sky thinking”.)
Car rental companies will be introducing green hybrid vehicles and electric cars – Hertz, for example, recently announced it is partnering with Nissan to bring electric cars to the US and Europe by early next year (see “Green drive”, page 40). Andy Lewis, head of marketing and e-commerce in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Budget Rent-a-Car, says: “Over the next ten years the market will change dramatically. Car-sharing clubs and hourly rental are things we will also see growing.”
TRAINS A LA MODE
There has been a growing emphasis on the merits of travelling by train, with the ability to purchase cheap advance fares and now talk of building a high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham. This is revolutionising the way we think about arranging short trips.
Long of Amadeus IT Group says: “The importance of high-speed rail, which in many cases has replaced short-haul business flights, cannot be ignored. The hugely popular high-speed Madrid to Barcelona line has dramatically affected bookings for flights on that route.” He adds: “Some of the advantages of rail for the business traveller are too compelling to miss, such as onboard wifi and a route that takes you from one city centre to another.”
Adrian Watts, director of sales and distribution for online booking engine thetrainline.com, has seen a 17 per cent increase in bookings in the past year. He expects business travel by rail to keep growing, as well as pre-purchasing online, where average prices have gone down 12 per cent in the same period. But it is technology that is going to transform the way we book, he says.
“Our vision is that a traveller who is 100 yards from the station will be able to book a ticket on their phone, go through a barrier that can read the ticket, get on board and then buy a coffee or a sandwich, all using their mobile,” Watts says. “This will be part of the societal change away from cash and towards convenience, which will have a marked impact in the next five years.
“In fact, it has already started. For the commuter, the old paper ticket will be gone, replaced by a smart card, and train operators will start dynamically pricing season tickets so if customers are travelling off-peak then that will be reflected in the price.” (See In Focus.)
TECHNOLOGY TO EMPOWER
Web-enabled mobile devices are fast becoming the most important piece of equipment a business traveller can have. Long says: “We have seen an increase in demand for a richer set of services, particularly via mobile phones, which becomes imperative when up-to-the-minute flight information and advice in emergencies is called for. The technology has now come of age sufficiently to know whether a passenger has checked in, for example, but not boarded a flight.”
Harvey of HRG says that being able to access information as and when we need it is high on our list of priorities. “Business travellers are demanding more information through their mobile devices. Take the volcanic ash cloud phenomenon, when 93,000 flights were cancelled in six days. People wanted to source information and data themselves from wherever they were,” he says.
According to research gathered in the biannual Unisys Security Index, of the 80 per cent of Americans who said they own cell phones or handheld devices, 38 per cent said they would feel safe using them to purchase cinema, sport or theatre tickets. And in the UK, 76 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds said they would feel secure using their mobile devices as airline boarding passes.
Mark Cohn, vice-president of enterprise security for IT company Unisys, says: “The majority of mobile-device users worldwide feel safe using them for financial, travel or purchasing-related applications. In addition, comfort levels are higher among younger adults, suggesting that acceptance of these mobile applications will grow in the future.” He adds: “This data illustrates that personal technologies such as smartphones can empower new business models because consumers appear confident that they will be able to trust the level of security implemented by their service providers.”
Long at Amadeus thinks individuals will continue to take matters into their own hands when it comes to booking flights and hotels, thanks to improved technology. “Over the next couple of years we will see the convergence of several different pieces of technology that will allow business travellers to search for flights through their phone, and automatically book them within their company’s policy and update their expenses. This will mean they can easily adapt their plans and schedules on the move without having to worry about overspending.”
Smartphones such as iPhones and Blackberries aren’t only good for making reservations and checking emails – more flyers are likely to be using them instead of onboard in-flight entertainment because they are getting cheaper and the range of downloadable music, audio books, podcasts, apps and movies is wider. They are also starting to combine high-quality media players with OLED displays that don’t suffer from picture blur and have improved sound quality.
So what about the transport providers themselves? Passengers will now be on the look-out for airlines that offer onboard wifi, following the launch of Oman Air’s service (see Tried and Tested). Meanwhile, developments in aircraft design will mean greater frequency of flights and more point-to-point travel. Mike Bair, vice-president of advanced 737 product development for Boeing, explains why the Dreamliner is a good example: “With the B787 we have been able to bring in a technology suite that allows the plane to do all of the missions that a B777, B747, A380 or A340 could do, but in an aircraft that is half to 30 per cent the size. It will be a lot more accommodating to the travel patterns that people want to fly.”
This is because it has fewer seats to fill so can run more regularly, and has the range to connect city pairs that in the past only bigger aircraft could fly to non-stop.
When it comes to chauffeur-drive services, we can still expect to be sitting in Mercedes and BMWs but with the addition of technological innovations – again thanks to the smartphone – that will enhance their efficiency. Darren Tilley, founder and managing director of Driven Worldwide, says: “As the technology matures and more functionality becomes integrated within Blackberries and iPhones, you can start doing some very clever things such as tracking a vehicle wherever it is in the world, and using dynamic route updating so a client can log on and view where they are going.
“With ‘geo-zone gates’, if the vehicle hasn’t reached an area in a certain time frame it can send an alert to say it is running late. These are things we will be looking at in the next 12 to 24 months.”
VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION
If you haven’t already got a Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter account then you had better get on the case because social networking will continue to flourish. With a wide variety of sites out there to choose from – be it biznik.com, cmypitch.com, ecademy.com, fastpitchnetworking.com, perfectbusiness.com, startupnation.com, upspring.com, xing.com or ziggs.com – there is no excuse not to find something that works for you.
Everyone knows face-to-face communication is never going to be usurped but technological innovations mean more business is going to be conducted through video-conferencing, in cyberspace or virtual reality, whether we like it or not. Mark Dixon, chief executive of serviced office and meeting room provider Regus, says: “Virtual offices enable the booming population of start-ups and SMEs to compete with established corporates for global presence without the associated costs of the physical property. Regus has 60,000 Virtual Office customers around the world, with 8,000 in the UK, and we expect this figure to increase significantly.”
Paul Bradley, business manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at HP Halo, the technology giant’s video-conferencing arm, says: “High-end video-conferencing and telepresence will spread and prices will go down as usage moves to include the ability to bring true high-definition quality to desktops and laptops. With that move under way now, more people will be able to join meetings from any device, no matter where they are. The other factor that will likely help to drive down costs is the move of vendors such as HP to make their systems open to inter-operate with those of other vendors.”
Nevertheless, Harvey at HRG believes it will take two to three years for video-conferencing to really boom because it is still too expensive. “It’s catching on slowly but the problem is that the most effective, impressive technology is at the Rolls-Royce end of the spectrum and is priced out of the realm of most corporates’ budgets,” he says.
If video-conferencing unnerves you then you had better brace yourself for the arrival of virtual-reality trade fairs and events. Thanks to the innovations heralded by 3D virtual community Second Life (secondlife.com), a number of spin-offs are vying for attention. Websites such as unisfair.com and on24.com, which has users including Cisco, Credit Suisse, GE Healthcare, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Motorola and Samsung, offer you the ability to attend or host product launches, road shows, training sessions and marketing events without leaving your office, and may soon be being used by your competitors.
What do you think are the travel trends of tomorrow? Have your say at businesstraveller.com/discussion
