Unbundling travel with Spotnana, enabling innovation with multiple startups - TravelTopia speaker, Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador
It's the final countdown before a large part of the corporate travel industry head to Atlanta for next week's GBTA Convention - which no doubt will be full of exciting announcements, new product launches, fascinating presentations, educational sessions, countless product demos, non-stop business meetings and endless networking Despite all the progress since Covid in terms of new business models, updated technology solutions and streamlined operations it is fascinating to see how little it still takes to shake the industry - imagine if the CrowdStrike outage had happened Sunday or Monday in stead of today - the impact of the overall value of the GBTA convention would have been significantly reduced as a large part of the attendees would have been stuck in airports around the world This unexpected disruption is a great opening for a broader discussion around "how resilient the travel industry is" - and not just in terms of data and system security !!! We have now overtaken the famous 2019 travel volume in almost all possible measurements so on one hand things are great - but what is the next possible major crisis to hit the industry at scale and how well prepared are we to react to it ? There are many possible candidates for this title - the obvious ones are "sustainability and climate change", "shortage of staff", "over-tourism", "airport capacity" and "GenAI" to name a few - but what about the next group of potential problems Topics like "lack of new pilots", "outdated air traffic systems", shortage of new planes", "changing passenger demographics", "outdated TMC and OTA tech", "self sovereign / digital identity", "digital currency payments" and "multi-modal search requirements" are all hovering in the background, and each of these has the potential to cause significant disruption over a period of time This is not a "doomsday post" but rather a positive reflection of how many opportunities the travel industry still represent for smart startups focusing on solving these problems, so the future is bright for all the solution and service providers in this space today and tomorrow As we all land in Atlanta the comings days, what will be your primary areas of focus - the total number of convention attendees is impressive, and there are many more people going to "lobby crash" and meet outside the expo area so it will be fascinating to look in the rear mirror a week from now and reflect on the hot and cold topics and conversations Have a fantastic Atlanta experience, and hopefully we will have a chance to meet for a few minutes and have a chat - my own calendar is already overloaded and I know that is a common problem, so personally I would love to have a digital twin representing me so I could have twice as many conversations 😁 but meanwhile you can find me around the Spotnana booth along with all the other #spotters ready to talk about the potential benefits of our open #cloudnative #travelasaservice platform https://lnkd.in/emHEaHDK
Would have loved to be there, as usual JT, you have thought of a lot of the issues which we have to consider in the future of travel business. 😊...
Wow - lots to consider here Johnny Thorsen ! Thank you for your insightful vision. Looking forward to a fantastic GBTA Convention Direct Travel TROOP Center (getcenter.com) Spotnana
See you soon
Coffee and a croissant (maybe peach cobbler is more appropriate). On me! See you soon Johnny!
Global Procurement Service Leader (Travel) @ Cisco | Cross-functional Team Leadership, RFP
3moAs always Johnny Thorsen great insights and I was one of those travellers caught up Friday and it was caos although in a small Greek airport , I think we all have to take our hats off to the many airline and airport staff that got abuse when it was not themselves that caused the outage, it made me cringe to see people scream and abused these staff who are like us with families, 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼After a 3 hour delay we were on our plane and home, Am looking to pop by and say hi, I know you will be very busy but for someone I have known for +20years and have the utmost respect it is a must. #travelservice #people #benice