David J. Danto
Principal
Consultant, Collaboration/ AV / Multimedia / Video / UC
Dimension Data
Director of
Emerging Technology
Interactive
Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance
eMail:
David.Danto@DimensionData.com 
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Technology Industry News: @NJDavidD
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The New Business Traveler
It’s Sunday morning here at the Hampton Inn. When I
first woke-up I wasn’t really sure what city I was in – just about all the
Hampton Inn’s look alike. Don’t get me
wrong, I like Hamptons and truly appreciate the consistent level of quality as
I travel – no frills and all. It is
comforting to know that if I need to be somewhere where they have a Hampton I
have a great chance of staying in a clean, functioning, and relatively
inexpensive property – and one that offers a satisfaction guarantee. Yes, there are higher-end choices I could
make, and yes I’m ultimately spending my employer’s money and not my own, but I
just don’t think it’s right to spend more at a fancier
property (where the amenities like internet and breakfast might not be free)
even when I’m being reimbursed. The less
my employer has to spend on travel, the better their bottom line will be at the
end of the year and the more they’ll have available for more important things –
like my compensation.
Whether it’s someone like me who works for a great firm that cares about
its people - or someone self-employed or with a small business – welcome to the
era of the New Business Traveler.
The reason it is Sunday morning here at the Hampton Inn in Detroit is
because if I were at my house it’d cost about another grand. Had I flown out here on Sunday for a Monday
morning meeting I’d have had to pay a fare of about $1,500 US. By flying out on Saturday I paid a fare of
about $300. (Those are both for about an
hour on a tiny, cramped, awful Regional Jet by the way.) The Hampton was under a hundred bucks for the
extra night. Mind you I can’t do that
all the time – I may have family commitments or other reasons not to kill a
Sunday blogging at a hotel, but when faced with the choice of saving that
thousand or spending it I chose saving.
Choices like this are being made by the New Business Traveler every day.
It was Gordon
Bethune, the former CEO of Continental Airlines (a crass, lying, loudmouth who
unfortunately and justifiably looks like a saint and a genius compared to the
current clueless management at the now merged United Airlines) who
said "If you have to be in San Francisco for a presentation tomorrow,
you are going. If I say it's $1,200 or it's $800, you
are still going." While that may
have been true at some point, it is not true for the New Business
Traveler. Now there are choices.
· One choice
is to fly over a Saturday night. It’s
not always possible, but when it is - even with the added expenses - the
savings can be significant as above.
· Another
choice is to fly nearby. My meeting last
week was in Richmond, Virginia. Fares
from EWR to RIC were in that over a thousand range again (and again for less
than an hour on an RJ.) But fares to
Washington, DC were about $300. So a
colleague and I flew into DCA and chose to rent a car and drive the additional
two hours. A pain in the neck – for
sure, but the money stayed in my / my firm’s pocket.
· And
videoconferencing has become a choice that is more and more viable. Even if the person / firm you are planning
to visit does not have a well-established videoconference room and/or has an
unknown environment there are still a number of great options available that
let you use a high-quality system and lets them use a computer or tablet to
attend. This technology – which had been
buggy or complicated for a long time – is now extremely reliable and easy to
use. In fact, while I’m here in Detroit
and when my initial meeting is over I’m going to videoconference to another
client in Upstate NY before I fly home.
The airline industry has been completely blind to these New Business
Travelers. In more words of Mr. Bethune,
this time he correctly
called airlines “a stupid industry led by stupid people" and pointed
out that “you can make an airline so cheap nobody will fly it.” The devaluation of the customer experience in
travel – at a time when most industries have come to the realization that the
customer experience is the single most important factor in their livelihoods –
is just more proof that the airlines’ old business model is well past its
prime. Why it costs me ~$1,500 to fly an
hour on a regional jet but costs me ~$300 to fly coast to coast in a mainline
jet is more due to arcane and unrealistic fare policies than anything
else. The silliness inherent in this
legacy airline pricing system was best described by the Al Hess satirical piece
“If
Airlines Sold Paint.”
It is the height of irony that the exact customer the airlines are
seeking out – the experienced and frequent business traveler – are exactly the
ones that are being pushed away by their customer unfriendly policies. Only inexperienced leisure travelers who
shop-around based on price and nothing else will tolerate smaller seats,
cheaper/non-existent meals, excessive delays due to cheaper outsourced
maintenance, reduced elite benefits, recalculation of mileage earning, and the
continual bait-and-switch of so called airline loyalty programs. Travel columnist Christopher Elliot pointed
out this trend succinctly in his recent
column, explaining that American business and leisure travelers are
“jettisoning blind brand allegiance in favor of a more pragmatic view.” We are at the height of modern technology and
knowledge yet our flying experiences are at the worst point in our history -
controlled as they are by a very small number of firms and their generally
way-overpaid executives.
All of this makes me think how it will only take one firm to do to the
airline industry what digital music did record stores. When was the last time you were in an HMV,
Virgin Music or Tower Records? Many
successful, huge anchors of this industry closed
because something better came along and their model became outdated. We need one new player - not to create a
better airline - but create a different model for air travel that renders the
current legacy carriers outdated. What
we need is a Hampton Inn for the air.
Reasonable prices for reasonable service, no upcharges, a satisfaction
guarantee, management that respects their employees and encourages them to be
“at their best” and a realization that the only way their business will be
successful is if customers like it and come back. Yes, Hilton (Hampton Inn’s parent) has devalued
its loyalty program too, but they haven’t done it while lowering their
quality of service - a one-two punch that the airlines haven’t realized will
lead to their death.
The New Business Traveler is here to stay. It is only a matter of time before someone
comes along with a business model that caters to them and puts the legacy
airline carriers out of business.
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This
article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own,
personal opinions. David has over three decades of experience providing problem
solving leadership and innovation in media and unified communications
technologies for various firms in the corporate, broadcasting and academic
worlds including AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU, Lehman
Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. He now works with Dimension Data as their Principal
Consultant for the collaboration, multimedia, video and AV disciplines. He is
also the IMCCA’s Director of
Emerging Technology. David can be reached at David.Danto@Dimensiondata.com
or DDanto@imcca.org and his full bio and other
blogs and articles can be seen at Danto.info. Please reach-out to David if
you would like to discuss how he can help your organization solve problems,
develop a future-proof collaboration strategy for internal use, or if you would
like his help developing solid, user-focused go-to-market strategies for your
collaboration product or service.
All images and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.