Policing 2007 Inflation
American Express Business Travel recently trotted out some dismaying numbers that make 2007 look like a Trip Through Inflationville, with coach fares and mid-range room rates up 3 percent to around 6 percent and upper-crust rooms jumping 4 percent to 8 percent. Blink when you see the astonishing 18% increase expected in room prices in New York, already outrageously expensive. And get ready for arm-twisting from corporate travel managers as they police what you spend on trips—“compliance to policy” and “tighter controls” are Amex’s code words for airlines and hotels where your employer has negotiated good deals. Which may really mean the price is right for your employer but the quality is—well—often just satisfactory for biz travelers.
A Green Pied Piper
These days the hotel business is all about hunting for niches to fill. At least Starwood Capital Group, headed by down-to-earth visionary Barry Sternlicht, makes the case with its latest project: a string of eco-friendly hotels.
Way back when (it seems that long ago) the boss man took some of the lead out of the humdrum hotel industry by launching the “W” hotels and uncovering a profitable chic boutique market. Now, with his signature bravado, Sternlicht is picking up on the green movement with a new chain of hotels—the first one in Seattle—that do more than urge you to use your towel over and over, if you can stand it. Called "I" - why not- the 1 Hotel and Residences will make their debut in the environmentally addicted northwest city in late 2008, followed by similar hotels in Scottsdale, Fort Lauderdale, California’s Mammoth Lakes ski area, and major business cities such as New York, L. A. and Washington.
If “1” develops according to the current blueprint, the hotels will have as many advisers as architects—beginning with the 36-year-old, non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council loaded with scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists. The design of each property will have to get an OK from the Washington-based U.S. Green Building Council whose LEED rating system (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a benchmark for restoring and building green properties.
The criteria for LEED approval (in green jargon): sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. Translated, the standards range from adding plants in hotel lobbies and reusing rainwater for gardening to laying down bamboo rather than hardwood floors and using solar energy and fewer fossil fuels.
Noting that “some hotel brands pay lip service to the environment,” Sternlicht bravely promises that his new venture will be “truly green.”
Liberated Aircraft Designs
“No one is going to put me in a straitjacket when it comes to flying where and when I want to go,” pretty well sums up the determined effort of today’s business flyer to put some adventure back into boring flights in jumbo jets. “It’s the new bill of flyer rights—hop aboard a fractionally owned jet, charter a flight, pilot your own air taxi to get around.” And so goes the zeal to bypass the major airlines, often perceived as stuffy and inflexible.
The new GenX of aircraft that has caught the flying public’s imagination is the miniature plane. Well, not quite that modest in size. But smaller is apparently beautiful—and the stumbling super-jumbo A380 should be regarded as a freak side show at the flying circus. (Virgin Atlantic, a key customer, has already deferred delivery of its order until 2013, after the A380 has “proven its innovative design over several years in commercial service,” as the airline says.) And by now, your average jumbo jet is a senior citizen—with stretch versions a form of assisted living. So yesterday, as the expression goes.
All of the new GenX steroid excitement about freewheeling design comes from me-first-ism, the hallmark of the new business traveler fed up with security lines and the prospect of taking four hours to fly 200 miles.
Think of the Concorde, retired not long ago and such a sleek flying cigar. We nearly cried at its demise. Now it may live on as a GenX aircraft with only 12 passengers compared to the Mach 2’s 100 or so. Read on.
Mini-supersonics: The hot SST news is that a lot is going on at Lockheed Martin’s famed Skunk Works in Silicon Valley. That’s where work on development of a supersonic private jet is progressing under the umbrella of a consortium called—in no-nonsense style—Supersonic Aerospace International with the first commercial model ready by 2011.
Its Quite Small Supersonic Transport, priced at $80 million, will hopefully fly transcon and intercontinental at speeds up to Mach 1.8. (SSTs have long had the reputation of having a limited range because of burning fuel at high speeds in relatively small planes.) Chicago to Paris will take 4.5 hours rather than 8.3; Seattle to Tokyo, less than five hours or about half the current time. The consortium claims its “no-boom” plane will be 100 times quieter than the Concorde.
Another contender in the supersonic market is Aerion Corp., an engineering group that has been promoting its Supersonic Business Jet for several years and seems to be going head-to-head with Lockheed’s project on a similar production and launch schedule. Its SBJ stats: 1.6 Mach, 4,000 nautical miles range, operational on 6,000-ft. runways, 51,000-ft. ceiling, four hours coast to coast at .99 Mach. It has an unusual straight-wing design and full-span flaps on a platform “that looks just like an F-104 Starfighter,” according to one onlooker at a trade show.
“The Concorde may have been relegated to museums, but the world has not slowed down,” Aerion Vice Chairman Brian Barents says. “The world’s major businesses and governments have a clear need for faster travel.”
Air Taxis: With almost as much sex appeal for plane aficionados, some six boutique and big-name manufacturers are on the cusp of showing what a so-called Very Light Jet should look and act like. The current lineup includes the Adam Aircraft A700, Cessna Mustang, Diamond D-Jet, Eclipse 500, Embraer Phenom and Hondajet.
Cessna and Brazil’s Embraer are of course familiar brands. The surprise contender is Honda, the super-quality car manufacturer, whose six-passenger Hondajet will travel at close to 500 mph with a range of about 1,500 miles, if the designing and engineering go as planned. “Aviation has been an important dream of Honda for more than four decades,” senior managing director Satoshi Toshida says by way of explaining what led the top automaker to venture into new and uncharted transport territory. It is partnering with Piper Aircraft Inc. to sell Hondajets and develop other products in the business-aviation market.
The VJI entrants, selling for between $1 million and $2.75 million, are targeted at business and other flyers turned on by the idea of having their own revenge against airport security lines. Some GenXers even look forward to ownership of an VLJ as one more notch in their belt or add-on during an early middle-age crisis.
Favorable Stats: Critics of the new toys wonder how the congested air-control system can handle VLJs buzzing about.
Even so, aviation consultant PMI Media estimates that there’s a market worth $2.5 billion for 1,500 VLJ planes ordered or for sale in the next five years. Really quite a tiny number compared to the hundreds of thousands of light planes in the national business and recreational inventory of general aviation.
But the market may be considerably larger—more like 2,800 VLJs—if we’re to believe the projection of air-taxi pioneer Eclipse Aviation. It alone expects to sell some 2,500 copies of its Eclipse 500 in the next few years. Among the earliest orders: three Eclipses bought by Dole Food Co. and its affiliate, Castle & Cooke.
The PMI analysis anticipates delivery of around 350 to 400 microjets (another term for the new breed) per year with North America soaking up some 85 percent of the production. Florida is one of the liveliest potential markets. According to PMI analyst Philip Butterworth-Hayes, “The VLJ-based air taxi concept will live or die,” depending on its success in that bellwether state.
No-No Nigeria
After all that upbeat aircraft news…
Put Nigeria, the world’s seventh largest oil producer, on your no-no list of business destinations you’d rather see on the Discovery channel than in person.
The recent 737 crash at Abuja, the capital, three minutes after takeoff not only killed the sultan of Sokoto, a heavily muslim state (about half of Nigerians are Muslims), but turned into a tipping point for trying to make scary air travel safer in Nigeria. President Obasanjo has built a record of fighting corruption and squelching Nigeria’s divisive tribal rivalries—all to Washington’s liking.
Enter the Chinese, bent on wooing Africa’s 53 nations with their rich natural resources traded for consumer goods from China. In an odd development the superpower, once known for its unsafe airlines, may end up helping Nigeria solve its severe airline problems. For openers, China Southern Airlines, considered the best domestic carrier, plans to launch service this month between Beijing and Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial and industrial center, via Dubai with flat-bed Business Class service aboard Airbus A330s.
But the string of Nigerian plane crashes over decades—and unfulfilled promises of Aviation Ministry reforms—aren’t exactly encouraging. In the past 40 years, at least 1000 people have died flying to, from and around the incurably corrupt West African country. The bribes include covering up poor aircraft and airport maintenance.
One of the popular mistakes with lethal results is to overshoot runways, particularly at Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos. But some airport improvements are on the way. For instance, there’s a new domestic terminal under construction a half mile from the international terminal, along with improved baggage carousels and much-needed air conditioning.
Not all the crashes have involved Chanchangi Airlines, Sosoliso Airlines, Bellview Airlines, Almiron Aviation and other Nigerian operators. (Virgin Nigeria Airways is now the nation’s flagship—and so far a fairly safe airline—replacing the defunct Nigeria Airways after investors reportedly looted it.) On July 6, 2005, an Air France A330 killed a slew of cows at Port Harcourt because no one had built a perimeter fence and herdsmen frequently abandoned cattle on the runway. Even Nigeria’s military establishment hasn’t escaped the crash curse: On September 26, 1992, a Nigerian Air Force C-130 Hercules flying from Lagos to Kaduna crashed at Ejigbo, killing 157 officers and soldiers.
Has a stray shaman jinxed the Third World country? As an excuse, Nigerians could cite similar aviation headaches that plague the itineraries of travelers on the trail of business opportunities in many underdeveloped—read unmanageable—countries.
Rags To Riches
Boston, now enjoying a new hotel boomlet, may have something in the wind that might set the Cabots, Lodges and other Brahmins to wondering: a 300-room luxury hotel (including 10 suites with river views) plopped down in the former Charles Street jail. The granite structure, opened in 1851 and scheduled for reopening as a hotel next year, will include the original 16-story tower and “vestiges” of jail cells in the lobby bar. Considering its historic role, the inn has an appropriate name—Liberty Hotel.
Despite Beantown’s reputation as a center of creativity, the hotel is not the first jail to provide solace for weary travelers. The Four Seasons Istanbul, considered one of the world’s best hotels, is set inside a former jail where many celebrated political opponents—some of them artists and authors—ended their days.
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