Among the best in the skies

Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, will offer passengers one of the world’s most comprehensive in-flight entertainment systems when it launches its new Panasonic eX2 system next month.

The new in-flight entertainment incorporates a range of up-to-the-minute features including:

• An iPod connector in every seat on the aircraft, for playing and recharging iPods, with an additional RCA connection in first and business class making it possible to connect other portable entertainment devices (MP3’s, DVD players etc) to the IFE system
• An easy-to-use interactive interface in Arabic and English;
• A specially designed ‘Just for Kids’ interface for children under 12, featuring a sub-set of all the entertainment options that would appeal to a younger audience.

The system has been fitted on the first of five new Airbus A330-300 in December 2009. The Panasonic eX2 system will also be available on Etihad’s new fleet of Boeing B777 aircraft scheduled for delivery from 2011.

James Hogan, Etihad Airways’ chief executive, said: “As a long haul premium carrier – and the world’s leading airline – whatever we offer our passengers has to be the best in class.”

Additional features available with the new Panasonic eX2 system include:

• 23″ personal wide screen TV monitors in first class; 15.4″ wide screens in the new business class offering and 10.6″ wide screen monitor in each economy class.
• Over 600 hours of entertainment, including a selection of 85 movies, 114 popular TV shows and a CD library of over 450 albums.
• A premium handset in first and business class providing short-cut keys to the various IFE options. An LED display provides information about the media currently playing as well as an update on the time to and time at destination.
• Picture-in-picture feature.
• Keyword search functionality.
• An option for first class for passengers to use Etihad Room Service by placing a telephone call to the crew from the comfort of their suite.
• A new “Do Not Disturb” feature in business class that can be activated via the E-Box IFE system and posts a message outside the suite.
• A games portal offering 60 games, including a selection of 3-D games. Players can create their own profiles and avatars, and invite other passengers to join in multi-player games. The portal displays the five most played games on each aircraft, and also provides articles and news on games.
• A “My Videos” feature where favorite movies or TV titles can be added to a play list to make the selection process easier.
• “My Audio” enables passengers to create a jukebox by selecting and storing CDs or their favorite tracks.
• “Magazine Rack” features interesting articles and travel tips on a range of popular destinations.

Passengers will also be able to use the system to access a range of services and information, including a variety of interactive maps, and downward and forward facing cameras for viewing the passing landscape or the view from the front of the aircraft.

In-seat telephones in all classes allow calls to be made from every seat to anywhere in the world at a charge of US$6 per minute using a valid credit card – or to other seats on the aircraft.

Noise cancelling headsets are available in all travel classes. Passengers can provide feedback on Etihad’s services by completing a survey via the IFE system. On flights to Abu Dhabi, information on connecting flights and arrival information will also be accessible.

Diverse and dynamic

San Francisco’s geography makes it one of the United States’ most unique cities. The city lies between the ocean, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the redwood forests and the California desert. Sitting atop the San Andreas Fault, San Francisco has been shaped by earthquakes – in particular the legendary 1906 quake and subsequent fires, which destroyed 80 percent of its structures.

San Francisco has more than 50 hills within city limits and some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, and Russian Hill.

San Francisco is a bustling city rich in ethnic diversity, with an eclectic bohemian subculture and a myriad of languages, customs, shops and restaurants packed into its compact 49 square miles.

Getting to and from the airport:
San Francisco International airport (SFO) is located 15 miles south of downtown. The best way to get downtown is via BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), which operates a direct rapid rail service. To get from SFO to Embarcadero (financial district), for example, will cost around US$8.10. The BART Station can be found on the departures/ticketing level of the International Terminal.

Taxis are also available and depart from designated taxi zones located at the roadway center islands, on the arrivals/baggage claim level of all terminals. Approximate taxi fare to downtown is US$40.

Getting around San Francisco:
The best way to navigate San Francisco is via the city’s public transportation system Muni, which operates nearly 100 bus lines, the streetcar system and the city’s cable cars. Tickets cost US$2.00 and free transfer tickets are available on most Muni lines, which can be used for two connecting trips within 90 minutes (this excludes BART and the cable car).

If you’re up for a hilly challenge, why not cycle? San Francisco is bicycle friendly and many residents do use their bikes as their primary means of transport.

The Embarcadero, Marina Green, and Golden Gate Park are popular cycling areas and many companies rent bikes, such as Blazing Saddles and Bike and Roll.

Taxis can be flagged along downtown streets or booked over the phone. Credit cards are generally accepted, but double-check before getting into the cab. Tipping is customary and drivers expect about 10 to 15 percent.

What to do:
Native San Franciscan Joyce Cohen, director of account management & operations for BCD Travel in the U.S. recommends a visit to the following sites, some of which won’t cost you a dime!

No trip to San Francisco would be complete without a visit to the city’s landmark – the Golden Gate Bridge. This suspension bridge spans the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean, and stretches 1.7 miles long. You can cross the bridge via car, on foot or bicycle and take in the magnificent scenery.

In the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park you will find the de Young Museum. The landmark art museum showcases priceless collections of American art from the 17th through the 20th centuries, and art of the native Americas, Africa, and the Pacific.  Adult entrance fees are US$10, but it’s worth noting that the first Tuesday of every month is free.

Head down to the piers and sidewalks of Fisherman’s Wharf where you can glimpse the sunbathing resident sea lions crowded onto pontoons. You will also find plenty of bay-view restaurants and souvenir shops nearby. Take a two-hour “duck tour” onboard a restored World War II landing craft for an excursion of the city by land and sea, operated by Bay Quackers. Tickets cost about US$35 per person. San Francisco’s Coit Tower is a 210-foot high Art Deco tower on Telegraph Hill.  The tower contains 19 painted murals, most of which are open to the public at no charge.

The viewing platform at the top of the tower (approx. US$3.75 entrance fee) offers sweeping views of San Francisco Bay, Fisherman’s Wharf, Alcatraz Island, and other area attractions.

Visit the California Academy of Science – complete with an aquarium, a planetarium, a natural history museum, and a 4-story rainforest all under one roof. It’s an architectural achievement with hundreds of unique exhibits and nearly 40,000 live animals. General admission adult tickets cost US$29.95.

Where to eat:
With generations of immigrants from Asia and Europe settling in San Francisco, dining out is one of the city’s great pleasures. You can enjoy some great classic Cantonese in San Francisco’s Chinatown, which was established in the 1850’s.  Head to North Beach and you’ll reach the city’s Italian district. If its sushi you’re after, then visit Nihonmachi where you will find a small but vibrant Japanese community – even the local McDonald’s has a slightly Japanese feel.

Here are some of Joyce’s top picks for dining on a budget:

Taylors Refresher
Address: Ferry Building Marketplace, 1 Ferry Building, Space #6
Tel: 866 328-3663
Web: www.taylorsrefresher.com

For a cheap, cheerful and casual bite, head to Taylors Refresher. The “Eat” giant neon sign over the ordering counter gets right to the point of what Taylor’s Refresher is all about. Grab your fill of burgers, fish and chips, sandwiches, tacos and much more.

Yank Sing
Address: 101 Spear Street or 49 Stevenson Street
Tel: 415 781 1111 / 415 541 4949
Web: www.yanksing.com

This restaurant is located in the financial district and specializes in traditional and contemporary Dim Sum, offering over 100 different varieties. Unlike most restaurants, Yank Sing has no official menu. Instead food servers carry freshly cooked dim sum, which you can request as they pass by. Open to the public during lunch hours only, it’s a great place to pop in for a quick business lunch.

Pacific Catch
Address: 2027 Chestnut Street
Phone: 415.440.1950
Web: www.pacificcatch.com

Pacific Catch offers great fish and seafood dishes using local Californian ingredients, which are infused with flavors from Asia, Latin America and Hawaii. The reasonably priced menu includes dishes such as fish and sweet potato fries, grilled sandwiches, Island tacos, and Japanese rice bowls. Sit back, relax and watch the world go by.

Where to shop:
San Francisco is a haven for shopaholics, with numerous shopping centers, districts and malls. Although shopping in San Francisco can be an expensive venture, savvy shoppers will find possibilities for every budget.

Union Square is a popular shopping haunt where you can find stores such as Macy’s, Saks, Neiman Marcus, as well as designer boutiques. Street performers can keep you entertained as well as a visit to the nearby Theatres. If it’s urban sophistication or funky clothing you’re after, then head to Haight Street. The streets are dotted with Victorian houses, anarchist bookstores and piercing salons, and some shops still retain an air of the 60’s hippie counter culture.  Another great place for unconventional items is the Mission district. Here you can find offbeat boutiques and funky ethnic clothing.

Fancy something with an Asian twist? Then walk through the red dragon gates and enter the bustling Chinatown.  Complete with ornate lampposts and pagoda roofs, Chinatown offers everything from scented teas to vivid silks and statues of Buddha to mahogany furniture.

Top tips

For many, the new year is all about new resolutions – and for those tasked with managing their organizations’ travel programs, boosting program efficiency may be high on the list of to do’s. BCD Travel and Advito bring you some suggestions getting your program fighting fit for the year ahead.

Continue supplier negotiations
The negotiating outlook for both air and hotels will remain excellent for corporate clients, if not quite as outstanding as in 2009. There will be impressive discounts for customers who genuinely deliver business to their airline suppliers. On the hotels front some hotel groups may urge you to maintain 2009 rates into 2010 – even so, take the trouble to negotiate. You will improve on your existing rates, even if you renegotiated several times in 2009.  Buying power can also be improved by consolidating with fewer properties in each city. In short, make deals now before the negotiating environment weakens.

Another point to remember when negotiating new agreements is merchant fees, which are charged by some airlines for credit card payments. Try to include clauses in your new airline contracts even if those airlines have not yet started with that practice. If your preferred airline plans to introduce a merchant fee, attempt to negotiate back the increase in preferred airline agreements.

Balance airline joint ventures
If proposed transatlantic airline joint ventures receive regulatory clearance this year, competition is likely to be reduced and therefore a potential area of concern for corporate buyers. Make sure you keep a balance between airline joint ventures and are not over-exposed with any one of them.

Create trip models An overwhelming majority of trips are between a small number of city pairs. On that basis, it makes sense to create a trip model - the creation of policy and booking templates for a company’s most frequent journeys. Trip models can specify not only the preferred means of travel but where to stay, what ground transfers to use and possibly additional details such as where to eat. The creation of trip models will require a small investment in time, but can reduce complexity and lead to impressive gains in policy control.

Other benefits of trip modeling include increased budgetary control, improved data and technology, and greater traveler security. As trip models become more popular demand for technology products and services that facilitate or even enforce trip models will increase.

Consider travel program consolidation
Consider the benefits of consolidating your travel program on a regional or global level.  Benefits include savings of up to 25 percent on total travel spend, improved traveler security and safety, a more open and transparent organization and a more simplified and streamlined a travel program overall. If you want more details on travel program consolidation, then click here to download our white paper One size fits all? Consolidating your travel program.

Introduce social networking
Anecdotally, the impression is that only a limited number of travel managers are pioneering social networking for their travel programs, but interest and expectations are growing. This is particularly the case within organizations which have already introduced enterprise networks such as CubeTree.  Social networks are proving very useful for travelers to share experiences and information with other travelers and with travel managers.  This form of networking has become an established way of life for many people, especially the under-40s and will be impossible to ignore this year. If corporations do not integrate a medium for travelers to articulate their business travel experiences, then they will simply do it through external networks, thus wasting valuable intelligence and possibly causing resentment as well. Now is the time to start to understand social media and research the likely level of demand among
travelers.

Review the mobile landscape Employees are using mobile applications for travel purposes today, whether their travel department likes it or not. It’s time for corporations to get actively involved in this area, especially if your company has a youthful workforce that is increasingly accustomed to using technology to manage itself.  2010 will see major growth in mobile applications, starting with concierge-type services and help for travelers whose itineraries are disrupted.  However, this is just the beginning and it will be several years before anything resembling a complete end-to-end application emerges, if at all.

Find out how your travelers are using their mobile devices to enable their corporate travel experience – they are the best indicator as to what the situation might look like in a few years. It would be advisable to let the market mature a bit – a flock of new innovators and a relatively young area of the business means that the true winners are now just emerging.

Measuring the effectiveness of corporate travel 
The current recession and increasing concerns over climate change have led to a profound reassessment of corporate travel. Companies are beginning to consider travel as a precious resource which must be used prudently, not indiscriminately. The natural consequence of this change in thinking is that companies want to ensure their travel is for a good reason and in line with corporate objectives.

Businesses have introduced pre-trip approval systems and made video-conferencing alternatives available to ensure travelers consider twice whether a journey is truly worthwhile.  Taking more time to evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of a trip before booking it makes common sense.

Companies will become more eager to benchmark their strategic key performance indicators (KPIs).  There will also be more activity from trade associations and companies in the corporate travel market to establish standard industry metrics. The requirement from corporate clients for timely and easily accessible data from multiple sources will grow. Building a data warehouse that can provide travel managers with genuine business intelligence requires investment, but costs are falling, especially for solutions hosted by third parties.

Trip leaders

Global business travel is tipped to recover gently this year, but some markets are expected to grow much faster, even in the continuing difficult economic climate. We profile four of the fast-track destinations for 2010.

2010 will undoubtedly be another tough year for corporate travel – but not everywhere. Although businesses based in developed nations are only expected to increase their trip numbers by small percentages (with growth accelerating in the second half of 2010), it is likely to be a different story in many emerging markets.

For the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), for example, and countries involved in gas and oil production, travel is likely to bounce back much faster, according to Paul Tracy, BCD Travel’s vice president, partner network – EMEA. In these markets, significant long-term growth potential is helping them shrug off the recession much faster. It is also opening up new business travel routes as trading networks in the global economy evolve.

“The percentage of the world’s top 500 companies which are from outside developed markets has grown rapidly over the last three years,” says Tracy. “It has been the case for a while that Western companies are traveling to those countries not only to source materials and create production facilities but also to sell to them as consumers in their own right. However, we are now seeing a new type of traffic flow, which is a big increase in travel between emerging markets. BRIC-based businesses are flying all over the world, and we are also seeing a lot of travel from the Gulf to Africa.”

Among the EMEA markets where above-average growth is expected for travel in 2010 are the following:

Azerbaijan

Economy
Azerbaijan has huge oil and gas reserves. Revenues from an oil pipeline from Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan are expected to double the country’s gross domestic product between 2006 and this year. Trade with former Soviet Union countries is declining in importance at the same time that trade with Turkey and the European Union is accelerating.

Business travel
The oil sector plays a dominant role in airline schedules and ticketing requirements, e.g., marine and rig fares. Bureaucracy, corruption and a lack of infrastructure make it a difficult market in which to operate.:

Poland

 
Economy
Rising private consumption, increased corporate investment and additional EU funding make Poland one of the most successful transition economies among former Communist eastern European states. In spite of the turbulent global conditions affecting its key export markets, the country still managed to record GDP growth of 1.5 percent for 2009.

Business travel
Travel management conditions are very similar to the rest of Europe. Airline commission is zero or minimal and low-cost carriers have a very high market share. Perhaps the main difference is local resistance to using credit cards.:

Qatar

Economy
Expanding production of natural gas and oil has led to Qatar’s economic boom continuing even as some other Gulf states have faltered. Oil and gas account for more than 60 percent of GDP, with proven reserves of natural gas the third-largest in the world. GDP per capita is the world’s highest.

Business
Qatar Airways has developed rapidly as a powerful hub airline for EMEA and Asia. Airline commission has disappeared and the market has become accustomed to service fees and transaction pricing.:

South Africa

Economy
Rising commodity prices have fuelled robust growth since 2004, thanks to South Africa’s abundance of gold, diamonds and other natural resources.

Business travel
This year’s story will be mainly about leisure rather than corporate travel. Visiting South Africa for business could prove problematic during June and July because of the FIFA World Cup, with accommodation shortages especially acute in smaller host cities. Security should always be taken into consideration, such as pre-booking reliable airport transfers.

Sources for country facts: BBC, The World Factbook