Last month, Business Travel Executive celebrated 25 years of publication. Then with scarcely a backward glance, we jumped on an airplane and headed to Los Angeles for the annual Global Business Travel Association convention.
It was like a plunge in an unheated Beverly Hills swimming pool.
The wake-up calls were abundant and clear: Business travel in the next quarter century – or even the next quarter – will look nothing like the past. Technology, cloud services and particularly mobility were the keystones of virtually everyone’s offerings. And the entire event was awash with so many announcements of new products, new partnerships and increased investments that it was almost impossible to keep track of it all.
The convention saw appearances by the usual array of business travel leaders – all three CEOs of the remaining US network air carriers, United, Delta and now American, graced center stage, along with TSA’s administrator, John Pistole, and other industry heavyweights.
However in a week when so much of the news coming out of the Los Angeles Convention Center surrounded what’s happening in the world of travel technology, it’s worth noting who else topped the speakers’ line-up. In addition to the expected Hollywood glitterati (it was LA, after all), the headliners this year included technology stars such as Biz Stone, the co-founder and co-inventor of Twitter, and David Pavelko, director of travel partnerships for Google.
Now it’s not as if past events like this have never included high-profile guests from the digital world – indeed, they show up with almost clockwork regularity at practically every major travel industry event anywhere. What was more intriguing to me is the celebrity status that these tech stars and others like them increasingly command.
Why? I think it’s because they speak fluent vision.
Vision is the new lingua franca of the 21st century, and that’s what these technology leaders offer up in abundance. Because change is occurring at such breakneck speed, we’re more than ready to get inside the heads of those who can give us a realistic peek around the next corner. We’re not so interested in the how of technology as the what – what it means for our companies and our travelers, for our industry and our world.
The takeaway is that today’s trends won’t be trends for long. They’re going to be reality almost before we have a chance to flip the page on the calendar (assuming you’re still using a calendar with pages). And tomorrow’s trends are hardly making it to the radar screen today; we could miss them altogether unless we pay close attention to those whose second language is vision.
At BTE, we think of that as our calling – to stay constantly on the lookout for the next new something that changes everything in the managed travel landscape.
This month in our cover story, we take a look at the technology business travelers are demanding in their hotel amenities (All the Comforts, page 20). The rise of China as a world economic power is casting a new vision for business travelers all over the globe (The China Challenge, page 12). And as Phat Data continues to challenge our perspectives on real wisdom, we go in search of data’s surprising star (Unsung Hero, page 16).
So as BTE takes the plunge into the next 25 years, we invite you to come along for the ride, seeking the vision for business travel in a constantly changing world.