They sound familiar because they've come to be widely accepted by the travel and technology industries, or they have been proven right over time. You heard them here first in any case. Here are just a few of the predictions, forecasts, and strategic assessments I've made over the years in print that gave you early warning of what was going to happen--if you were reading these pages. Often you would have had five or ten years to plan and make adjustments to your business or technology position.
You can also visit the Publications Library page and review the published material where this analysis is found. The contents of this page are displayed side-by-side with the sources.
- Proprietary operating systems were not the way and would be overtaken by
UNIX (1984)
- Projects for so-called "neutral" reservations systems were not
going anywhere then (1984) or hence (1998)
- The cost of replicating existing CRS functionality vastly exceeded the
trivial amounts neutral system backers projected (1994)
- ETDN initiatives were dead on arrival because customers didn't want them
(1991)
- Ticketless travel was the future of the industry (1985)
- Agencies that built their service profiles around ticket issuance could
not survive and desperately needed reengineering (1991)
- The long-term position of CRS technology in travel distribution should be
seriously questioned (1989)
- Travel technology offerings do nothing to boost productivity--a critical
strategic deficiency for agents and their customers (1991)
- Airline "fare simplification" schemes are short-term and will
fail within months (1993)
- The strategic technologies of major agencies are ill-conceived and
unsustainable (1993)
- PCs do not boost individual worker productivity (1993)
- Travel distribution will evolve, resulting in the displacement and
disintermediation of agencies unless they take immediate steps to redesign
their businesses (1994)
- The Internet is not the "great equalizer" of agency
competitiveness; most agents will be big-time losers on The Internet; only a
handful of major, well-funded entities will survive (1995)
- No electronic travel distributor understands their customer or knows the
first thing about what those customers will really buy (1998)
- Internet travel companies need real customers and real earnings before
they can be considered real businesses (1999)
- The Y2K catastrophes predicted for travel and society in general won't happen (1998)
- Online travel auctions won't succeed (1999)
- Without something to sell, techno-gadgets only cost you money (2000)
- Well-managed travel companies (agents and vendors) would recover quickly from September 11, 2001 (2001)
