The Shape of Things to Come
From reactive hotel rooms to jungle elephant rides, travel trends on the horizon
From reactive hotel rooms to facial recognition, here’s a look at business travel trends on the horizon
Experiential Rewards
Hotel loyalty is moving away from rewards in the form of room upgrades and free stays to money-can’t-buy experiences and hyper-personal gifts. Small Luxury Hotels of the World, for example, redesigned its loyalty scheme in September, renaming it Invited and introducing preferential treatment to elite members such as birthday gifts and invitation-only events.
Intercontinental Hotels Group, meanwhile, has joined forces with Opentable and Grubhub to allow guests to earn and redeem points on meals in restaurants. Global Hotel Alliance’s Discovery program offers“local experience”rewards for Platinum and Black members, such as seabob snorkeling in the Maldives or scenic cycle rides around Bali. The scheme also applies to Kempinski hotels. The hotel group says: “Whether it’s a rare elephant ride in the jungle, a private tour of a Geneva watch factory usually closed to the public, a traditional Adumu dance with Maasai warriors in Kenya, or a tour of Malta’s presidential palace and gardens, these experiences present the best of local gastronomy, culture and craftsmanship.”
Facial Recognition
The iPhone X isn’t the only entity using facial recognition as a means of identification and added security. Airports and airlines are increasingly integrating the technology into their biometric boarding and immigration systems to help reduce lines, paperwork and the required staffing levels on checkpoints. While you may be anxious that this undermines your privacy, there is no way to turn the tide, so you may as well accept the benefits of a less stressful journey through the terminal as recompense.
Last summer, Delta Air Lines introduced its first biometric bag-drop stations at Minneapolis-St Paul International airport, requiring a facial scan at the self-service points to verify the passport holder. Dubai airport, in partnership with Emirates, is going further by creating camera-lined facial recognition tunnels that you walk through without pausing to stare at a screen. The first tunnels should be in place at Dubai’s Terminal 3 by the end of summer 2018.
Meanwhile, British Airways is the first airline to use self-service biometric boarding gates on international flights out of the US, starting with Los Angeles International. BA has been using biometric gates at London’s Heathrow Terminal 5 for domestic flights since March 2017. Amsterdam Schiphol airport and KLM are working on a similar initiative, as is JetBlue, which has replaced boarding passes with facial scanning at Boston Logan airport.
British Airways says its new technology, created by Vision-Box,“will create a smoother journey for customers, as they will no longer need to present their passport or boarding pass at the gate – only at check in and security. Instead travelers can simply look into a camera prior to boarding, wait for their biometric data to be verified, and then walk onto the aircraft.”
In the US, Customs and Border Protection is testing its Biometric Exit US in a handful of airports (such as Chicago O’Hare and Las Vegas McCarran), but there are plans to install it at every airport in the country within three years. The endeavor is being pushed forward by President Trump, who wants to use facial recognition to track visa holders as they leave the country (or not).
Unpredictable Mother Nature
Business travelers need to prepare for flight delays and cancellations by having appropriate insurance, up-to-date dutyof-care policies and watertight back-up plans ahead of disruptive weather conditions sweeping the planet. Many experts are putting this down to global warming (the last three years have been the hottest recorded), and 2018 is expected to be just as bad, if not worse.
Last year, Hurricane Harvey caused deadly flooding in Houston, leaving 80 people dead and, along with Irma and Maria, wreaking destruction on many Caribbean islands. Altogether the storms
reveals,”LED lighting and larger overhead bins for luggage. It comes in four variants – the MAX 7, 8 , 9 and 10 – installed with 172 to 230 seats. Last year, Norwegian, Southwest Airlines, Air Canada, Silk Air and Westjet all received their first 737 MAXs. In November, it was announced that Flydubai had placed a monster $27 billion order for 225 of the planes.
This is part of a wider trend for airlines buying smaller aircraft, instead of larger planes with far greater operating costs. Even though fuel is currently cheap, carriers such as Qantas and Air France have canceled orders for the A380 superjumbo, and there are rumors that Emirates is going to ditch its A380 program.
Airbnb Hotels
Given Airbnb’s ambitions to become a one-stop shop for travel – from home rental to experiences and possibly even flights – it makes sense that the company is partnering with property developers to build its own branded accommodation. In Florida, Airbnb is working with Newgard Property Group to open a 300-unit apartment tower for early 2018 (called Niido Powered by Airbnb) in Kissimee, near Orlando.
Tenants will be able to rent apartments on Airbnb for up to 180 days a year, and there will be hotel-style support in the form of cleaning and linen services, keyless entry systems, in-room safes and concierges. According to the Financial Times, Airbnb plans to unveil another five such projects over the next two years. There are also rumors that Airbnb will launch a“Lux”portal aggregating high-end private residences this year, allowing it to compete with One Fine Stay (now part of Accorhotels).
Airport Gyms
Instead of sitting in the airport lounge eating plates full of free food and drinking wine, many of us would feel better at the end of our journey if we’d done a workout instead. Last autumn, Lennart Meri Tallinn airport in Estonia became the first in Europe to install a pop-up gym within its terminal near gate 6 (complete with runway views). Operated by My Fitness, the light, expansive gym has high ceilings, with Technogym weight machines, an elliptical trainer, a rowing machine, exercise bike, treadmill and staircase trainer. The only problem is there are no showers.
Roam Fitness is also taking gyms for jet setters seriously, having opened its first in Baltimore airport last year. The 1,200-square-foot facility has cardio equipment, free weights, medicine balls, TRX suspension straps and space for stretching. Mercifully, there are four private bathrooms with showers.You can also buy healthy snacks and drinks on-site, and even rent Lululemon fitness clothing if you haven’t packed any of your own. Roam Fitness says it plans to open three more US locations this year and, within five years, hopes to have 20 locations including some overseas.
Reactive Rooms
Marriott International has partnered with Samsung and Legrand (a specialist in electrical and digital building infrastructures) to create a prototype Internet of Things (IoT) hotel room, which it hopes to introduce to its properties one day. Marriott believes in a sci-fi future where mirrors talk and your shower recognizes you when you enter. Its IoT Guestroom Lab allows users to ask a virtual assistant for a wake-up call, to start a yoga routine on a full-length mirror, or set the shower to the temperature stored in their customer profile.
The Irvine Marriott in California has been experimenting with a smart shower door, whereby people can draw or write down ideas in the steam on the glass, and then have them beamed to an iPad. A select number of Marriott’s Aloft hotels already have voice-activated rooms.
Affordable Luxury
Good news for budget-conscious business travelers is the continued growth of affordable luxury in both hotels and airlines. For example Dutch chain Citizen M offers just one category of compact room and no in-room dining, swimming pools or gyms. Instead, guests benefit from generous amounts of communal space for working and eating, and a hip canteen open 24 hours. The emphasis is on creating a trendy but homey environment. A night at the new Citizen M La Défense in Paris costs starts at € 80 ($98) a night, and the chain plans to expand across North America and Asia over the coming years.
The new Moxy Times Square (from Marriott) is another example of a hotel chain that has chosen to invest in imaginative interior design, lively social spaces and superb dining at unusually low rates (beginning at $124 a night) by eliminating extraneous facilities and levels of service.
Affordable luxury is coming to airlines too. The Lufthansa Group’s budget subsidiary Eurowings has announced it will be installing a business class cabin – with fully flat beds – on board its long-haul wide-body aircraft departing Dusseldorf from the end of April 2018. Oliver Wagner, the airline’s CEO, says:“That’s not a contradiction for Eurowings. We see strong demand for another top product on routes with high business travel, for example from Dusseldorf to NewYork, Miami and Fort Myers.”And, he adds,“We’ll be entering the Bizclass race with our usual budgetpriced tickets.” BT