


 CEO Craig Kreeger, the airline’s PR team and a posse of journalists on board the inaugural flight to Seattle, a route which it took over from JV partner Delta. It was quite a flight – the thirsty hacks kept top cocktail mixologist Giles Looker busy at the Upper Class bar, while R&B singer Raye and her guitarist gave a live performance at 39,000ft. We were greeted at Seattle Tacoma airport by founder Richard Branson, who pointed out the new service in the larger Dreamliner B787-9 adds 40,000 seats a year to the route. Branson praised the city’s “hip, entrepreneurial spirit” – but slammed Seattle-based carrier Alaska Airlines for its plans to drop the Virgin America brand it had recently bought for US$2.6 billion. Shortly after the Virgin inaugural in


March, low-cost rival Norwegian announced a four-times weekly service from Gatwick,


 


starting this September. Dominic Tucker, UK&I head of sales at Norwegian, says the airline is seeing strong forward bookings in its Premium cabin – higher than on more leisure-oriented routes. So while it’s hard to track MICE traffic to the US, the figures suggest “Seattle is fast becoming a key business route,” he says. In August, Sea-Tac airport started construction on a new 42,000sqm international arrivals facility. Scheduled to open in late 2019, it will increase passenger capacity to 2,600 per hour, doubling the number of gates for widebody aircraft and passport check kiosks. Patti Denny, international tourism development manager for the government agency Port of Seattle, says the destination has 70,000 new seats on flights coming online this year. And this growth is reflected in the hotel pipeline, she says, with 3,000 more hotel beds in 2017, “with new hotels driving the market”.


 “Seattle is regularly voted one of the USA’s top cities to live in,” says Denny, citing its liberal, relaxed lifestyle and “fabulous urban life with the wilderness literally on the doorstep” that is proving a draw for some of America’s top corporations. “Facebook is putting its HQ in Seattle and moving 20,000 staff there. It’s also the HQ for Costco, Boeing, Starbucks… Amazon is based in Seattle and is building an amazing new HQ downtown,” she says, referring to the spectacular glass ‘spheres’ that the online retail giant is building, which are likely to become an iconic addition to the cityscape. These will house a verdant botanical paradise for Amazon employees, complete with 400 plant species, a river, waterfalls and ‘tree-house meeting rooms’. The spheres are due to open in 2018, but in the meantime, May saw the first Amazon Fresh Pick-up supermarket service open in Seattle, while it continues to internally test





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  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158