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more comfortable working and resolving everything digitally,” explains Antoine Boatwright, chief information officer at Hillgate Travel (see Q&A, p78).


LIKE ASTRONAUTS INTO THE VOID It’s an interesting theory that corporate travellers are almost like astronauts sent off into the void having little contact with mission control, supported by a travel programme and armed to the hilt with tech including check-in numbers, q-codes, electronic receipts and verifiers. “No news is good news as far as I am con- cerned,” says Kurston Hannaford-Janes, a travel manager for TV production company Two Four. She organises television shoots in various locations in the UK and overseas. She and her team rarely hear from their staff when they’re on the road unless something goes wrong with the travel plan. “If shoots are overseas, however, there is a duty-of-care for us to call them once a


BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM


“We could coin a new phrase in the not too distant future – contactless travel. This may soon be the new normal”


day. If there is an issue with the itinerary, I email first, text second and only call last of all if I get no response,” she says. “I try not to disturb them on a very busy shoot. Automation is also everywhere. Increas- ingly we see it with hotels and apartment check-ins; there is less human interaction while away for our crews.” So, the question this raises is: have we reached a tipping point where the age of total trip automation is now upon us? If so, it has huge implications for managed travel. In other walks of life, technology has gradually displaced humans, from self-service supermarket tills and auto- mated check-in at airports to contactless payments across the UK. We could coin a


new phrase in the not too distant future – contactless travel. This may soon be the new normal. “Things that seemed impossible to


automate in the past will soon have com- puters and machines replacing those jobs as well,” explains Thomas Frey, executive director and senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute in the US. “Automation is no longer the domain


of the elite few, and the quicker we can make that transition to all sectors of the economy, the quicker everyone can par- ticipate. As we think about the growing number of machines in our lives, we need to consider how our relationship with them will morph and change.”


BBT March/April 2018 75


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