Aaargh!

The first time I visited Bali in the early 1980s, I was struck by many things that still bring me back today. The smiles, the easy going nature of the Balinese, the greenery (hard to imagine Kuta as green now), the food and the solitude.

Other things I remember, have evolved differently (not always for the better), like mass tourism, explosion of resorts and the entrepreneurs of the copy world.

I was amazed at the first cassette store I entered in those days. For those born after Apple, cassettes were a technological marvel of transporting music via plastic cases with magnetic tape and were almost the death of the vinyl record but that’s another story. I was gob smacked by the prices and couldn’t resist loading up on music that had been outside my budget and even my tastes. $1 for a product that at the time was costing me $29 at home, overrode all emotions of proprietary license and intellectual property.

This hunger for the copy bargain, spread throughout Asia quickly and I spent many a year being a fashion folly in copied Polo and Lacoste shirts, while casually pushing up my shirt sleeve to reveal the latest Rolex or was that Rolecs ? The Gucchi bags, the Louise Vouton luggage and the Hughgo Boss shirts with their mangled English still attract the crowds today.

We’ve all seen the ads for pirated products and what it does to the supply chain and the producers. Yet the copy stores flourish and expand like mushrooms (something else I remember from Bali, no I don’t) with no outrage from the average tourist. It’s hard to come at the gripes of multinational record and movie companies, who have more money than God but want you to continue to buy the overpriced CD or DVD.

I don’t know any pirates personally, unless you count the occasional mate who copies a song or brings home a copied DVD for Saturday night pizzas? And it’s not only tourists that have taken to the pirate mind, 95% of all music downloaded globally last year, wasn’t paid for.

So what is it that allows our normally ethical and moral understanding to override all the notices?

The reasoning behind the piracy thinking from a tourist’s viewpoint, is we haven’t taken something you own but rather reproduced something you own. So the thinking is you have not suffered a direct loss, just a lesser gain. It’s a fine line but one that obviously works around the moral high ground we normally inhabit.

Also it’s hard to bypass a bargain on holidays.

So is $2.5 billion enough for Avatar and are we going to see a pirated copy in everyone’s home? Or will we have to wait for the pirated 3D glasses?

Is that a parrot on your shoulder?

Ring. Ring.

Time was, the only technological connection was a phone, not pulled from your pocket but attached to the wall. Don’t even get me started on the whole world having the same ring tone.

Even in the Dark Ages the trick to stay connected (assuming you could write and moved outside your village) was to have a little black book (LBB) with contacts. See it’s older than you think and not just about the girlfriends. Segue to the 20th Century and these were contacts you guarded with your life and occasionally attacked with whiteout when someone fell off your radar. In today’s technology, the more contacts you have, the more connected you are and the more important you become as a networker.

Metcalf’s Law stated that the value of the network increases with the number of nodes (beats me) on the network. Okay, so Bob Metcalf invented the Ethernet, which enabled computers to be wired together to become a network. A pre Apple example would be the fax. A single fax is useless, so the more faxes the more effective the network.

So the more people I have on my network the more valuable it is along with the greater productivity I gain via increased communication savings. No, Uncle Bob doesn’t count unless he can get you a foot in the door.

We used to fly to stay connected but now we surf.

What does this mean to the travel industry? Does the average (?) travel agent realise the urgency in finding new avenues of connection and communication? The airlines and online players certainly do and they’ll take as many clients off the agents as they can, via aggregated booking tools, social commerce sites, frequent flyer initiatives and any new net solutions they can find.

The agency network needs to realise it is selling, no matter how you do it, by phone, face to face, email or on the net. You cannot hope to increase your face to face interactions with only a finite number of hours in the day. That LBB needs to be transferable to all avenues so that agents retain their relevance while increasing their connections in the face of stiff opposition.

Don’t be Rolling Stone Magazine. They should have realised the change coming and become MTV, and yet they didn’t.

Find new relevance in new channels to reconnect and nurture those connections and don’t be afraid to communicate your views. It would be unusual, not to find everyone of importance, to your business, on the net.

Hey I just found Kevin Bacon on Linked In, talk about six degrees.

Now about that global ring?

"Get into that kitchen"...…

International Women’s Day (8 March) passed by relatively quietly for me. I was at work and there didn’t seem to be any more commotion than usual. Verbal Olympics aside, the office seemed the same. Working in the Travel and Tourism industry it is easy to notice the gender imbalance, where women are in the majority.

So why didn’t I notice anything? Head in the sand and stuck up other places, was not the answer I was looking for.

It’s a day to recognise the achievements of women in all areas of endeavour, as I say to my wife, for her, everyday is Valentine’s Day. Women in my industry have forged an identity and I know how strong they are because I work with them every day. Do they need this day for validation on a single day or has the day become passé? Does it get lost with too many other International Days?

International stay away from work day? International let’s have a really long lunch day? Or one of my all time favourites, International lay on the lounge with the remote day.

Satire aside (I hope that’s satire), women need recognition every day, the same as everyone else. To generalise, we don’t often go out of our way to show people recognition or praise them for their work or their accomplishments. Why do we need specific days for nurses and anyone else who hasn’t had a pat on the back, because we don't remember to show them recognition? Shame on us.

There are hundreds of recognised world days (http://bit.ly/2ITxT5a) including Music Day, Population Day, Asteroid Day and Migratory Bird Day, I kid you not. If I wasn’t overwhelmed before, I am now. Let's get rid of some of the more inane days and use the rest for raising the profile of as may people as need recognition.

If we can just get past ourselves, our egos and the importance of our own lives, I’m sure recognition for others, especially women would come much easier. The need for specific days would fall away and people would know if you respected them and their work.

The women I respect in the travel industry for their accomplishments know who they are. As far as I’m concerned, every day is International Women’s Day for them.

Hopefully we've come a long way from the song......"and rattle those pots and pans".

Unions.

I grew up in a union town with an employer giving 25,000 people work. I went to a unionised school with teachers willing to fight the system to try and break it. I even joined a union at 15 packing groceries after school. This is starting to sound like a John Cougar Mellencamp song. It was the done thing and no one questioned it.

I haven’t been in a union since. Not because they don’t work, just because they don’t suit everyone, especially in today’s workforce built around common objectives. How have management and unions skidded over that point? Are they always diametrically opposed?

I’m constantly reading about the airline unions at odds with their management over work and pay conditions. From Flying Kangaroos to The World’s Favourite Airline to the US airline responsible for the invention (or is that initiative) of frequent flyer, there seems to be constant pressure from both sides wanting the other to give in on all grounds that matter. John should definitely write a song about that.

Whatever happened to the middle ground? Seems no one plays in that area anymore. Unless you are the new breed of companies that treasure their workforce and still manage to get the best for your company.

Why are people breaking their necks to work at places like Google, NetApp and ETM (http://bit.ly/WrWaq)?

Seems they have it worked out. Yet what does that mean? It means understanding your people, it means working with your people on a common goal and most importantly it means respecting your people. Interestingly enough, there are only 4 travel related companies listed in the 50 Great Places to Work List. So good on you ETM, Tramada, Air New Zealand and Peregrine Adventures for treasuring your staff.

I think in the airline game, both sides have lost respect for each other and it will take a mighty effort to see, let alone find a middle ground. Who cares if that middle ground is only the fact, you both barrack for the same footy team. Start somewhere.

I wait with bated breath for BA to resolve their long running dispute with their flight attendants but fear it will only be a short term resolution.

I never hear this stuff from Richard Branson. Okay last reference to him, maybe.

So who do you work for?

Rumours.

Planes used to be intrinsic in the spread of rumours. In the days before Apple (DBA) it was necessary to have fast communication for rumours to spread. What quicker way than a transcontinental (remember how jet setting that sounded) flight for Chinese Whispers to spread.

The entertainment industry was always the best example and relied on rumours for business, for marketing and for the spread of general knowledge. Who hasn’t heard that so and so was gay before they came out of the closet? Who didn’t suspect the myriad of affaires before they got to the tabloids?

Entertainment industry aside, the Travel industry comes in a close second when it comes to working the rumour mill. Guess we had the planes all along, so the advantage was always going to be ours. Rumours unite and excite. They can often bring together disparate groups wanting the same result from a speck of truth, turning into a giant rumour.

Nowadays rumours travel instantaneous, via 140 characters or emailed mobile phone photos and planes are no longer required. With our thirst for instant gratification, we now embrace new technologies to turn those Chinese Whispers into cyclones.

New CEOs at rival airlines, consolidations, tour company collapses, takeovers, mergers and acquisitions occupy our phones, emails and news wires. From week to week they morph and reappear in different guises to titillate and excite us about new beginnings and endings. How many eventuate is hard to figure, as rumours divide and fragment according to the teller and it’s very hard to work out if it was one rumour in the beginning or ten.

Where they start and where they end is uncertain but they occupy an inordinate amount of our time.

How many travel groups will survive the current landscape? Doing the rounds now.

How many Arab carriers can occupy the same space before consolidation? What does Abu Dhabi have in mind?

How many is too many, when it comes to the number of travel agents in Australia? Always a perennial dinner discussion.

What are the airlines planning in regard to B2C technology and cutting out the agency network? Scary rumours are the worst.

How many more internet competitors will pop up before they reach a plateau of consumer apathy? Are we there yet?

All legitimate questions that will be answered with rumours long before they are settled in the boardrooms of power.

Rumour has it I won the lotto. Too farfetched? True, but the call from Richard Branson asking for my advice on running his empire is due any day now.

Comfy.

I’m comfortable on my lounge. I’m the same way on the floor in front of my TV. I’m even comfortable sitting at my work desk.

I’m not comfortable squeezed into a domestic low cost carrier economy seat. Call me precious. Call me soft and call me a snob. Just don’t subject my less than flexible limbs to the pretzel intricacies required for such flying.

Having recently flown (not of my own volition) on the carrier known for a colour that doesn’t rhythm with anything, I’m here to tell you a chiropractor should be costed into the ticket price. How you would extricate yourself in an emergency is beyond me. Even if I was prepared to pay for a technologically infused and heated pizette, I couldn’t physically fit it into my body. Monty Python jokes aside, I’d likely burst as I tried to squeeze the food into my mouth because there was no more room for anything. Big breathes were a challenge.

I see a bright future for specific size passenger jets.

Talljet. Thinjet. I’m on a diet from nextweekjet. The list goes on and any other ideas, Richard Branson, will have to pay me for. They all point to a niche market and isn’t that what the airlines are looking for?

The airlines need to start thinking about differentiating themselves via the above. United Airlines Thinjet will get you there in style in the ultra comfortable thin seats that guarantee you an armrest. What about the fittest of the fit flying on Fitness Firstjet ? Or a Weight Watchersjet? Or a footballersjet that could be hosed out after each flight. There could even be tripledeckerjets for vertically challenged passengers. Think about that height bar at Disneyland at the start of many rides. As long as you fit under this bar, you can fly on this plane. Three levels on the A380 is certainly not out of the question.

Specific information would need to be supplied and carried on your frequent flyer card. At the airport you would need to fit through a frame similar to what they have now for your carry on luggage to make sure you are boarding the right plane.

My only concern surrounds the management of a “my diet starts nextweekjet” being delayed and passengers having to join a Thinjet.

Hiccups.

The true test of service delivery often ends up in the recovery. It’s hard to distinguish many companies via their service and the airline industry is a prime example. We have grown accustomed to long waits, unscheduled changes, delayed flights and harried staff who only have meal vouchers and alcohol as their weapons of disarmament.

I’m sitting in a lounge in Hobart with a flight permanently delayed ( isn’t that a cancelled flight ? ) watching road warriors load up on free booze and wondering if they will get home on time or at all. The clink of glasses is mixed with the tapping of technology as many try to find a way around the situation. It’s a hazard of the road that situations occur to test your stamina and mettle after a hard day.

The food runs out first, as the lines lengthen around the fridge. It’s much easier to buy a couple more cases of beer than to find fresh food at an airport late in the day. Some relax or resign themselves to the wait while others work the phones frenetically and raise their stress levels to where even alcohol can’t mask their disdain for the airline. An airline they will no doubt fly on again next week. It’s a rollercoaster brought on by a total lack of control.

So there it is, they don’t really mind the booze and the extra attention suddenly paid by the ground staff, it’s about not being in control. Ceding your control to a party you need to do business but someone they would just as easily disregard if they weren’t required.

Maybe they need to think more clearly and count the few incursions into their controlled world as being part of doing business because 95% of the time it all runs smoothly.

I’d bet on that if I was a gambler but then I’ve just been allocated a rare seat out of here!

Hi mate.

The recent announcement from Virgin Blue regarding their new CEO, got me thinking about friends and colleagues.

I always find it interesting when friends and colleagues go separate ways and end up on opposition teams. It was always a challenge playing against mates as a youngster, looking across the field and seeing someone you’ll ride home with. Mostly everything was left on the field and you rode your bikes home together via the milkshake shop.

Things change dramatically when you grow up and you have KPIs, SLAs and huge expectations from your new employer that may have drastic ramifications on your old relationships.

We’ve all changed teams at one time or another and I know from personal experience that old relationships can suffer, but do they need to?

Why were you friends and colleagues to begin with? Surely trust and credibility were high on the agenda. So how does that disappear when you leave?

The effort required to keep those chains of friendship intact can sometimes be too great and it’s often easier to just side with others on your team against past connections. This can certainly lead to extra motivation for those that leave.

It will be interesting to see what the domestic landscape looks like in 6 months with both major carriers being led by colleagues with a past connection to just one of those carriers.

Can business be done without the loss of past relationships? I’d like to think so but have grave reservations, based on past experience.

Who's left?

Recently I had the privilege of having a chat with David Levin a 75 year old dynamo, who just happens to own his own hotels ( Capital and Levin in London ) along with a vineyard in the Loire Valley, while travelling around the globe espousing about the finer things in life.

His take on diverse subjects, such as chefs not touching their food and just preparing a great dinner to having the Queen use his digs made for an enjoyable take on what is missing in a lot of travel, the romance of forgotten times.

David started from the ground up, literally, building his hotel along the lines of superior service, something that was being demolished by many of the chain hotels proliferating in London. He was always out of kilter with the established thinking of packing them in and feeding them quickly. So much so, he had to plant his own trees, in the street where he was building, as no one thought it a good idea to build in the then unfashionable Knightsbridge. Time of course has proven them all wrong and the Capital and Levin continue to provide only the best.

The vineyard in France was an extension of that thinking, to provide the best available and have control of it at all times. His Michelin starred restaurant has been a trampoline for up and coming chefs including such luminaries as Gary Rhodes. David makes a point of meeting his guests whenever he is in the hotel as his only times away, tend to be as an advocate of the slow food movement and building relationships with future guests.

So why is David so important now?

Look around.

We go at the speed of light to fit in the maximum exposure to everything and everyone in a short time and need to rely on our digital technology to sometimes remember where we were. That’s not right.

Next time you are in London, call in on David Levin and let him take care of you in a manner lost to many. Be brave and slow done for just a little while and let him take you to a time when guests really mattered.

The little things.

(With respect to Seth Godin and the Free Prize).

What do you remember when you travel?

Is it the technology? How does that canister stay in the sky so long?

Is it the destination? Did we say Melbourne Florida or Melbourne Australia?

Is it the people you meet? Honey who was that guy at the bar?

Do you studiously record your time via digital technology or do you close your eyes and remember?

The littlest of things that in the end, stay the longest, often cost the least.

I remember the first time I entered a great European patisserie. The smell of freshly baked bread can transport me back immediately.

The first time I stood still with my eyes closed in Times Square to feel the pulse of a real city. The tropical heat and the aromas coming from a hawker’s stand, the first time I visited Thailand. The spiritual feeling felt deep in a valley on Maui or on the high desert in Santa Fe. Walking down a street and recognising it from one of my favourite movies. Seeing the joy on little kids faces peeking at Christmas windows with snow flurries all around. The surprise upgrade and even the heavenly bed at a Westin hotel. Enjoying the look on the faces of your family, as you arrive through customs from a long overseas trip.

They can all add up to a lifetime.

Travel has always been more than the standard 2 or 4 weeks holiday.

If I added up all the little things I remember, I have only one wish, that they remain intact forever.

Memory is perfume for the soul.