OP INION
F1999 rom the archive
Te early days of the internet and the dot-com bubble, plus rich and poor in San Francisco
90
OUR JULY 1999 ISSUE had a focus on the US, with features on Philadelphia, Detroit and San Francisco, advice on hiring a car in the US, news about Amtrak’s new East Coast trains, and recommendations for eating out in Atlanta, spending four hours in New York City and playing golf in Monterey, California. As the then-editor pointed out, the switching of capacity from poorly performing Asian airline routes to transatlantic had led to real price competition and affordable accommodation on arrival. As the main news piece detailed,
competition between British Airways and Virgin Atlantic was extending into bed length, with near fully-flat seats being introduced. The move to airline seats that become beds raised concerns from the commercial director of BTI UK Hogg Robinson, Mike Platt, who feared it would only lead to an increase in costs “because the most valuable commodity on a plane is space”. Would business class become “irrationally luxurious”? The answer turned out to be yes, but luckily (or unluckily) our expectations matched whatever the airlines could provide. BT
Would business class become “irrationally luxurious”?
JUNE 2 0 18 HIGHL IGHTS San Francisco Eleven people a week were becoming
millionaires in the city, but abject poverty was still apparent. The boom was fuelled by tech companies such as Hewlett Packard, Apple and Intel, plus the dot-com bubble creating “really hot” new companies with innovative services such as search engines Yahoo and Excite, and virtual auction firm Ebay.
Online
We showed a screen grab of the new(ish) website,
btonline.com. It offered the latest business travel news in a Teletext format.
Loyalty Marriott Rewards was targetting UK members, introducing points that could be
exchanged for, among other things, a year’s membership to English Heritage, and gift vouchers to Whitbread restaurants.
Adverts Abu Dhabi Airport Duty Free made clear
that tasteful women shopped for the finest things in life at the airport.
bus ine s s tr a v el ler .c om
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