FUTURE TENSE
While many trends are predictable, what about those disruptive technologies and applications that few can see coming?
WHEN IT COMES TO PREDICTING FUTURE TRENDS, the travel industry works harder than most. Ask a travel buyer what’s going to be hot in the future and they already know, or think they do. Why? Because they can look at the supply side. Hotels and airports take a long time to build, and nations and economies move in large super-cycles. And if these new capacities are to be filled, someone had better know who might be filling them (assuming war, terrorism or economic upheaval doesn’t mess it all up first).
But what about the technology we’ll be using in the next decade? Well we already know a lot about that, too – mobile platforms will become more pervasive and we’ll expect faster, better, richer content. There’s a payment revolu- tion going on at the moment so expect virtual and electronic payment solutions. Predictive pricing has reached new
56 BBT JULY/AUGUST 2016
heights, as has traveller tracking and notification. However, what can’t be predicted are those disruptive technologies and ap- plications that few can see coming. These are innovations that essentially displace conventional and established technol- ogy, rendering them obsolete. They can certainly spawn opportunities for new products, new markets, and even new ways of conducting business. Who would have thought that ride- sharing services like Uber or Lyft would gain traction or the shared economy epitomised by Airbnb would be used by so many executive travellers? “The great- est challenge is coping with the speed of change,” says Antoine Boatwright, chief technology officer at Hillgate Travel. A business traveller from Niger today has in the palm of their hand the same knowledge and information that only the president of the United States did 20
years ago. Our computing power is still doubling every two years – as explained through Moore’s Law – and prices con- tinue to drop. Peter Diamandis, co-founder of the Singularity University and author of a best-selling book called Abundance, says: “It means computers are getting twice as good for the same amount of dollars every two years, and this law has held for 50 years. Technology today is taking what used to be scarce and making it abundant, over and over again. It’s made knowledge and information abundant, as well as demonetising and democratis- ing it around the world.” This certainly has and will continue to impact travel buyers worldwide. The accelerating effect of exponential change in technology explains why we had bulky desktop computers for decades before rapidly switching to smartphones. These same hand-held devices we review
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
