HOTLIST 2018
SPACEX MANY PEOPLE HAVE LAUGHED AT ELON MUSK’S proposal to use rockets in commercial travel here on Earth, but no one can deny the appeal of travelling anywhere in the world in under an hour. SpaceX’s idea for the BFR (short for ‘Big F***ing Rocket’) could materialise by 2024 –
perhaps an ambitious target, but we have to remember that experts didn’t believe Musk could ever land a rocket after launch, yet his team had done so 42 times as of 30 October 2017. Musk and SpaceX also have the chance to change the way we think about space travel, claiming he’ll also use the BFR to launch a manned mission to Mars in 2024. If the technology is a success, we could see flights from New York to London in 29 minutes for about the same as full-fare economy on a traditional aircraft, according to Musk. It’ll certainly be interesting to watch as SpaceX continues to innovate travel technology.
VIRGIN HYPERLOOP ONE ANOTHER ONE TO WATCH FOR SPEEDY TRAVEL, Virgin Group’s investment in Hyperloop One could be the key to the success of the high-speed, tube-based transport. The buzz about the project picked up as soon as Virgin announced its involvement, with the public showing renewed interest in this seemingly impossible technology. Sir Richard Branson himself was on site when the Hyperloop development team
completed its first full-scale systems test in Las Vegas. If the engineers can figure out the problem of excessive g-force on acceleration, the system has the potential to allow people to travel from London to Edinburgh in 50 minutes, according to Branson. The biggest question here at BBT is one of price – how much will tickets have to cost to pay to keep the technology running, and will it be worth the convenience?
MARTA RODRIGUEZ MARTINEZ, TRAVEL MANAGER, COMPLIANCE AND ANALYTICS, MICROSOFT WE SAW RODRIGUEZ MARTINEZ deliver a compelling plenary session with Eric Bailey, global travel and venue group lead at Microsoft, on how they have worked together to change the way Microsoft deals with traveller data. Rodriguez Martinez, who trained as an industrial engineer, exuded a real passion for ‘turning data back in to travellers’ so that managers aren’t just looking at the end user as a set of numbers. Rodriguez Martinez is heading up this effort, using Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning
Studio and its Power BI to analyse traveller behaviour. She says the information she gets helps her get out the right kind of messages to influence how the company’s travellers book. Her work at Microsoft might be the key to paving the way for a more personalised business travel journey. This, in turn, aids Bailey’s overall vision of predictive booking.
GATWICK AIRPORT GATWICK HASN’T DONE ANYTHING revolutionary this year, but it has managed to retain a sliver of the spotlight on the UK’s aviation strategy despite a near guarantee that Heathrow will be getting its third runway. Traffic at the airport continues to build thanks to increased capacity on multiple routes
and the addition of new ones. The hub has successfully promoted itself as a long-haul airport, with China Airlines choosing it as its base for services to Taipei, Norwegian’s new routes to Singapore, Seattle and Denver, and Cathay Pacific looking to increase capacity there. Gatwick has repeated time and again this year that it is still willing to offer a viable, privately funded second runway should the UK government decide to seek other methods of improving the country’s aviation infrastructure. It’s safe to say attention will still be on the airport after a final decision on Heathrow’s expansion is announced early this year.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM BBT January/February 2018 81
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