Author Archive
Six weeks off and all I got was a lousy tee shirt….
by Tony
Yes, I’m back. But sorry, no tales of travel to far off and exotic destinations to share because I didn’t travel at all. That’s right. Not once in the past six weeks did I set foot in an airline terminal. And you know what, I didn’t miss it one bit.
In fact, I barely read about it either. Sure, I couldn’t help but hear about the woman who turned the tables on the TSA agent in Phoenix, or the FAA being shut down when the government didn’t appropriate the funds…but you know what, I didn’t miss them either.
What I really did over the last six weeks was to remove myself completely from work. No checking email. No returning phone calls. No keeping track of things work related. I didn’t even notice that Daly started a countdown to my return on this very blog. Except for a few minor exceptions, I stayed in a totally work-free zone. And in doing so it really allowed me to develop (and in many cases re-develop), an appreciation for things, some of which I’d been taking for granted, and others I had completely forgotten.
Now don’t worry, this is not going to be some mushy, philosophical post about how I got in touch with my inner self, but I am going to make an admission. I like to work and I like what I do. I might even go as far as to suggest that I missed working. And, trust me, I wasn’t totally sedentary over the six weeks. I spent a fair amount of time working (mostly on the three Ps…Painting, Power-Washing, Planting). But I missed being in the game and doing what I do, and I can attest that taking some time off really can re-charge your batteries.
As to the rediscovery part, I’ll share one that I think you might enjoy. I hadn’t picked up a golf club in a long time, and was never very good when I did play. But, over the last six weeks I played more golf than I have in the past five years. I didn’t get any better, mind you, and I’m not afraid to admit I shot a 123 at Bethpage Black (which for you non-golfers is one of the courses they play the US Open on). But, I thoroughly enjoyed playing to the point where I fully agree with whoever it was that said that there are only two things you don’t have to be very good at to enjoy — golf and the…um…hokey pokey. (I fully expect to get some creative responses on that last comment, it’s just a matter of who strikes first among our followers).
Back to the T-shirt, hopefully you can come by booth 413 at GBTA and check it out. It will be on display with a lot of other cool stuff we’ll be showing at the conference. And if you do, make sure to look me up. I’ll be the guy with the modest tan and the smile on his face, happy to be back at work (I can’t believe I just wrote that … ).
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GBTA registrants: Enter now to win a free iPhone!
Enter to Win The Dream App Contest
by Becky
Mike has given us plenty of reasons to attend GBTA, but in case you needed just one more, we have it!
I’ve been blogging and thinking a lot lately about what my dream travel app would do for my next vacation or business trip. I wouldn’t have to worry about checking-in for my flight, managing restaurant reservations if my flight was delayed; or needing to stay an extra night in my hotel. But enough about me, we’re wondering what YOUR dream travel app would do for you?
So today, ahead of the biggest travel convention of the year, Rearden Commerce is holding a sweepstakes on Twitter. We’re asking a question to all 6,000 people expected to flock to GBTA this weekend:
What are three things you wish one travel app offered?
Would your dream travel app recommend only non-stop flights with Wi-Fi and extra legroom? Would your ideal app automatically postpone your car service when your flight is delayed? Would it also change your dinner reservation and confirm a late arrival time at your hotel?
Whatever your dreams are, want to hear about it! All you have to do is Tweet your answer, including both the #GBT2011 and #dreamapp hash tags. Then follow @ReardenSmart and you’ll be entered to win1. One randomly selected dreamer will win an Apple iPhone! We’ll announce the winner on August 23.
There is a catch. You must be a registered attendee of GBTA to win. So stop by and say hello to the entire Carrying On team at the Rearden Commerce booth.
See you in the Mile High City!
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[1] NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. See Official Rules for complete details.
GBTA Preview
by Bev
Remember when I predicted we’d be hearing a lot more about the changing world of air travel search at GBTA? I wasn’t kidding. I am heading out to the conference on Sunday with the entire Carrying On crew, (and many others from Rearden Commerce), ready to talk with people about how companies can gain control and manage travel costs, while helping to improve employee productivity. I’m excited for GBTA, and look forward to the panels we’re participating in at the event. Outside of booth 413, here’s where you can find us:
I and the other members of the GBTA Technology Committee will be sharing our air search insights during the Travel Technology 101 panel on August 22. Our panel will look at core technology functions, and how they fit together to help travelers shop, book, pay, change reservations, and get reimbursed. It’s interesting stuff, and I’ll be joined by some very interesting people from Deltek, Inc, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Tokyo Electron.
Also on Monday, my colleague Mike Uomoto will participate in the panel Mobile Travel Apps: What Works Now, What’s Coming Next, which will look at what types of travel apps work well with corporate programs and how these apps can be leveraged for better travel management.
Tony D. will re-emerge at GBTA, where he will moderate a panel on August 23: Best End-to-End Strategy: Evolution or Revolution. He’s looking for some healthy debate among panelists from Concur, Data Basics, IBM and TRX.
And finally, for Tuesday, I’m truly excited to moderate the panel Travel Managers: Broader Influence, Higher Visibility. Here we’ll discuss career pathing for travel managers. Come get inspired as panelists talk about how they’ve expanded their roles, and get inspired to progress your career. I am especially excited to host Jocelyn Kung, CEO and Founder of The Kung Group who will lead us through her exclusive KOPI assessment which helps individuals measure their personal power and potential. For those attending this session, Ms. Kung will also make her online assessment tool available free of charge (this is very cool)!
I look forward to meeting and reconnecting with you all at GBTA this weekend! You can find me at booth 413. And stay tuned because soon we’ll be giving you yet another reason to come visit our booth this year…
Paper Maps and Travel Artifacts
by Gregg
When I started in the ground transportation business 20-something years ago, I would buy so many paper maps that I had a wholesale account with Hagstrom (Thompson if you’re on the west coast). The maps were segregated by county, so every driver had a briefcase dedicated to carrying their collection of maps. We were so dependent on paper maps — and which driver had which maps in his briefcase — that dispatch decisions were based upon which drivers had what maps. Can you imagine?
Ah, the memories. To get from point A to point B you would first look up the street names in an index, then get your page number, then your grid coordinates. Then, you’d anxiously try to find that street name in a sea of color on the page — usually while driving with Miss Daisy in the back seat. It was a lot like “Where’s Waldo,” and I often felt like someone was watching me in a monitor from a hidden camera, snickering in a darkened room, “Bet he’ll never find that street!” Well, we always found it, but it was rarely easy.
With the advent of high-quality low-priced GPS systems, no chauffeur worth his salt would be caught dead using a paper map today. GPS has changed the world so much so that now I will bravely go to a city that I have never before visited and will tightly schedule appointments, having confidence that my trusty GPS unit (I call her “Daisy”) will get me to them on time.
The technology that will be available in the near future will not only allow a chauffeur to navigate in geographic areas that are unfamiliar, but will also provide their dispatcher with real-time location information and their ETA to a customer’s pickup location. Once we are able to “push” that GPS data to a client’s desktop and smartphones, passengers will be able to see for themselves just how soon their car will arrive. GPS guidance will also lower fuel costs by suggesting the most efficient routes. Some industry experts are saying that they can save us as much as 20%.
I am actually testing some new hardware that can wirelessly send addresses to me in my car, provide directions while guiding me around traffic, and then show me a picture of my destination when I arrive. Take that, snickering guy in the dark room! I’ll get there without a problem.
What will we think of next? Stay tuned and I will try to keep you current on the technical innovations in ground transportation.
See you in Denver, and don’t forget Booth 413.
What to Pack for GBTA: Business cards, check. Hiking boots, check!
by Becky
No, I have not yet packed for GBTA. I’m not unpacked from the trip I’m currently on. (Hello from 36,000 feet PHL to LAX, where, now that the crap-tacular but irresistible movie Thor is over, I’m free to write blog posts in relative peace). And I haven’t yet packed or unpacked for this weekend’s flight, back to Des Moines for my 20-year high-school reunion. (If the cliques clash, it might end up quite like a modern-day version of Thor. Wish me luck.)
When all this is done, I will pack for GBTA, and I will get to Denver for a productive week on Sunday. A year ago Mike and Tony recommended packing everything from a white dinner jacket to a bowling ball. I have three more practical packing tips worth sharing. Along with your business cards, here are my “must-haves” for GBTA:
- Smart phone with a QR reader app installed. You know those little square bar codes that you can scan with your smart phone to go straight to a web site? They’re going to be everywhere this year, I suspect — T-s
hirts, business cards, booth carpets, signs. I like the free NeoReader for the iPhone and Google Goggles for Android phones. (Don’t forget your charger!)
- Invitation to the Virgin America party. I made it in to see INXS by a stroke of great last-minute luck last year. This year my invite’s coming early, right Richard? Yeah?
Hiking boots. Trust me on this one! Every year some girlfriends and I hike a 14 thousand-foot peak in the Colorado Rockies, to clear our heads, challenge our egos, and get a proper perspective on the puniness of things like crashing stock markets and airline content distribution woes. (Here’s my proof from last year’s climb.) How convenient to be able to close out GBTA on top of the world with close friends.
Mind you, I’m also packing a set of black Rearden Commerce-issued T-shirts to wear in our booth. We’re showcasing some of our most exciting new innovations, including personalized, curated air search results and some visions for the future of corporate travel on the iPad.
Stop by booth 413 at GBTA and say hello. Ask for 14’er advice. Scan our QR code. I and my fellow Carrying On Compadres look forward to seeing you there!
… Countdown to Tony’s return: 5 days …
Click here to join Carrying On Compadres, our LinkedIn group.
Apps Our Brains Can Handle
by Becky
The thing about emerging trends in travel technology these days is: they just… keep… coming! We are drinking from a fire hose, trying to follow all the new apps, widgets, web sites, devices, and formats that are being lobbed at us every day. I created this completely unscientific graph to prove it:
Now that I’m a regular Carrying On blogger, we can use this space to converse about some of these trends – the big nasty scary ones, the unassuming quiet ones, the sexy and alluring ones, the ones that confuse the heck out of everybody.
Here’s one to get us started. I had a great conversation with our VP of User Experience in the hallway last week about the relentless deluge of new smart phone and tablet apps. “It’s crazy,” he told me. “The current trajectory of apps development is not sustainable for the human mind. Our brains will explode.”
The solution he predicts is that technology will do what technology should do. Apps will become consolidated, become humanized, and put users – not the app store – at the center of the experience.
I take that to mean that I’ll have one app that anticipates what I want and need to do for a given area of my life, and then lets me do it, all in one place, helping me along the way. If I could pick any one consolidated app to ask for first, it might be a single consolidated app for managing my favorite possession – my Mini Cooper convertible: the maintenance history, the destinations I can store in my GPS, the satellite radio subscription renewals, the LoJack service if I need to report theft, the “Openometer” report showing how many hours I’ve had the top down.
Even better, I can image one app to manage my next vacation – the itinerary, the changes and cancellations, the check-in, the baggage claim tag, the payments, the car service, the loyalty points monitoring and redemption, the inviting of friends to join me for dinner, and the dreaming about where I’m going next. Brain-exploding? Not as much! (But I do feel a sudden rush of serotonin and dopamine. It’s a good feeling.)
If you could combine a bunch of apps into one consolidated set of functions, what would YOU want most? What “one app” would you like to be surrounded by?
… Countdown to Tony’s return: 12 days …
Click here to join Carrying On Compadres, our LinkedIn group.
Like this:
Ground Logistics for Major Events
by Gregg
Do you ever think about the complexity and cost that goes into the planning and execution of ground transportation for major events? Don’t worry if it isn’t something you’ve concerned yourself about; most people don’t give it a second thought.
But if you are attending an event, like the upcoming GBTA Convention, you expect your ground transportation to be convenient, seamless, timely and cost effective. Consider this: six thousand people are expected to attend GBTA this month. The average cost of a cab from Denver International Airport to the Colorado Convention Center is $75 — $450,000 total if each of those folks is traveling alone. (Yikes.) Find a way to coordinate the schedules and needs of those 6,000 people onto 120 buses and you’ve just saved yourselves $378,000. You can double that when you need to get those weary convention goers back to the airport.
This is what keeps me up at night — finding efficiencies and cost savings in ground transportation. On average, group ground transport comprises 1% of a company’s travel budget. It’s often a costly, labor-intensive afterthought. But for me, it’s as exciting as Gordon Ramsay turning a failing pizzeria into a thriving ristorante. I’m not like most people; I spend an inordinate amount of time pondering the processes involved in the planning, procurement and execution of ground in a multitude of venues. That’s why my associates call me “The Governor of Ground.”
So if you see me on one of the shuttle buses at GBTA (with working air conditioning, I hope) and you’re interested in the inner workings of ground automation, stop me and say hello. I will do some quick math to convince you of all the cold hard cash your company could be saving.
And if you miss me on the bus, come by the Rearden Commerce booth (413). We have great things planned for the show!
… Countdown to Tony’s return: 14 days …
Click here to join Carrying On Compadres, our LinkedIn group.
Me blog?
by Bev
Let me start by being honest. In the year-and-a-half that Tony and Mike have been Carrying On this conversation, I’ve avoided no less than 14 invitations to join. Why? Well, I try to make it a practice to stay out of the middle of almost anything that has to do with Tony and Mike – especially when it involves their TV viewing habits or — even worse — the Yankees. Like twins who grow up developing their own unique language, once you find yourself between these two, you quickly lose track of your rational thought processes. Yes, Carrying On is the right title for their regular banter.
But seriously, I’m excited to join Mike, Tony and my other new Carrying On commentators, Becky and Gregg, to provide perspective on our industry. I hope you find our thoughts relevant and thought provoking – and hopefully a bit fun too.
So, anything interesting going on in our industry this summer? Good grief, do you feel caught between the divorcing parents again? I recently hosted a GBTA webinar entitled The Changing World of Air Search where we had a chance to explore the competitive dynamics of our current air shopping experience. In that discussion we reviewed how competitive rivalry, supplier power, new market entrants and technology innovation are strong forces at play, as more compete to deliver content to the traveler. However, the emphasis of the webinar was on the Buyer Power and how important it is that you understand the competing dynamics, to know the impacts (costs and benefits) of the changing distribution models and to embrace the technology innovation that is resulting from this competitive environment. The buyer sits in a unique position if you actively participate and develop your program strategy based on your best scenario.
I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more on this topic at GBTA and every other industry event over the next few months – and that’s the good news. There are plenty of opinions and lots of great information that will help you remain informed.
I’ll look forward to catching up in Denver – stay cool and enjoy the final days of summer.
Best regards – Bev
… Countdown to Tony’s return: 15 days …
Click here to join Carrying On Compadres, our LinkedIn group.
Becky’s Friday Ruminations
by Becky
Wow. What a wonderful world we live in, where a simple Iowa girl from a humble Iowa family can relocate to San Francisco, get a job with an innovative ecommerce platform company, and ascend all the way to the lofty position of blogging for Carrying On with the likes of Tony D’Astolfo and Mike Daly! May my contributions here be an inspiration for young girls everywhere. Yes, little Suri, Shiloh, and Apple – you, too, could someday stand in these high heels!
In all seriousness, I am thrilled to have joined Rearden Nation, where the excitement and energy about travel innovation is so high. And I’m glad to be working in our industry at this time in history, where, if we’re open to it, we can every single day witness mind-blowing new ideas and perspectives as they’re being developed in front of our eyes. Scary some days, yes. But fun, too.
I look forward to writing (and more important, conversing) with you about the emerging trends that are transforming companies’ best roads to retain employees, reduce costs, control spend, keep travelers and data safe, and work more productively.
Since we’re just getting to know each other, I’ll keep it nice and light today. (Besides, the super-heroically artistic band OK Go just released their new experimental “interactive choreography HTML 5 video” on the Google Chrome browser this week, and I want to get back to watching it over and over and over.)
I’ll be back next week and thereafter with some thoughts on compelling ideas, emerging concepts and practical advice for what to be doing about the future today. I’ve got a book or two I’m excited to share, too. Join the conversation. Let’s think big together. Let’s celebrate the journey!
… Countdown to Tony’s return: 18 days …
Click here to join Carrying On Compadres, our LinkedIn group.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Free passes to a webinar that’s tastier than a box of chocolates.
The first 6 people to email us at reply@reardencommerce.com (by 8am PST on 2/15) will get a free pass to tomorrow’s webinar.
A practical guide for adding mobile to your travel program
Click here to join our webinar in conjunction with GBTA
February 15, 2011 (a post Valentine’s Day treat)
11am-12pm PST
You’ve read the stats – 75% of business travelers now carry smart phones. You’ve surveyed your travelers – they are starving for an exceptional mobile experience that makes their lives easier when on the road.
Now what?
- How do you identify the best mobile solution?
- How do you navigate the potential IT and Finance hurdles in order to gain internal approval and support?
- Most importantly, how do you ensure that your employees adopt the mobile solution you choose?
Do it right and you’ll enjoy increased adoption rates and reduced agency fees. Our panel of travel experts will guide you through the entire process from feature selection to rollout. Heed their advice and your travelers might be sending you chocolates next Valentine’s Day.
Click here to register for the webinar – http://www2.nbta.org/usa/ProfessionalDevelopment/Pages/Weheartmobile.aspx
Presented by:
Norman Rose
President
Travel Tech Consulting
Richard Clowes
Manager, Travel Operations
SAS
Steven Mandelbaum
Managing Director
The Advisory Board Company
Tony D’Astolfo
Senior Vice President, Travel Services
Rearden Commerce
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