Future of Travel

CARD SHARP How contactless payments are streamlining travel

ISLAND HOPPING Why Malta is becoming the next big business destination

UP IN THE AIR A new kind of airmail is on the horizon – but will Amazon’s new PrimeAir service be a hit?

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The future of travel

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The sky’s the limit for contactless payments

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ILLIONS OF Nationwide members are now enjoying the additional convenience that contactless technology has to offer. The use of contactless cards has leaped over the last 12 months, and now accounts for one in four of all card transactions for the Society. This time last year it was one in 20. This growth is perhaps unsurprising as millions of our members are embracing this quick, easy and convenient way to pay.

This growth is reflected across the range of payment methods Nationwide offers, as for our members, payments are more than just transactions. They are enabling millions of convenient everyday interactions, whether they’re supporting aspirations as members save with standing orders, helping them split the bill through Paym, or making instant secure payments with Apple and Android Pay. Last year was exciting in the payments space with the launch of Android Pay, the growing adoption of digital and mobile payments – not to mention Nationwide’s own achievment of making the highest ever contactless payment at 100,000 feet. The event presented unique challenges to our team, but it seemed a fitting celebration of this remarkable technology and our roll-out of contactless capabilities to our credit

“Contactless payments have leaped over the past 12 months, now accounting for one in four of all Nationwide card transactions” – Paul Horlock, Nationwide

cards. The number of contactless cards in circulation in the UK also broke 100 million for the first time last year, as over £2.8billion was spent in the UK in October using contactless cards – a growth of 200 per cent over the year.

Another interesting trend we saw, especially around Black Friday, was the dramatic uplift in online purchases, with e-commerce transactions jumping by more than 66 per cent when compared to an average day, and accounting for around half of all transactions on the day. Millions of our customers turned to online shopping throughout the year, and millions more use our mobile and internet banks to keep track of their spending.

In September, there were almost 31 million logins to our mobile banking app (up 43 per cent from the previous year), and more than 13 million to our internet bank (up 5 per cent from the previous year). For many of our customers, mobile banking is almost becoming a “rolling statement”, with digitally active customers logging into the app on an almost daily basis, on average more than 25 times during a month.

I think 2017 will also be an exciting period for payments, as we see the continued development of new technology, including new ways to authenticate payments with biometric technology and increasing use of digital and mobile payment services such

as Paym, as customers embrace the convenience of this technology. More traditional ways of paying will also be getting a makeover, with the introduction of the new £1 coin, which features cutting edge technology making it more resilient against counterfeiting, in March 2017.

For more detail on the payment methods offered by the society, see our Ways to Pay hub.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Paul Horlock is head of payments at Nationwide Building Society @AskNationwide www.nationwide.co.uk

PRINCE2: tailored for success

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HE WORLD’S most-practised method for project management is undergoing an update: reflecting and responding to changes in business practice over the past decade, the latest evolution of PRINCE2 will launch in Summer 2017.

It is now 21 years since PRINCE2 – which can trace its beginnings back to the 1980s – first set a new standard in project management. In 2017, hundreds of thousands of people use PRINCE2 every day, ensuring success with a method that has come to represent best practice.

In today’s environment, as boundaries blur and technology constantly ups the game, customers and stakeholders continually revise their expectations and there is ever-growing pressure to achieve more with less. Flexibility and agility are more than buzzwords – they have become imperatives.

But no matter how tight the budget or deadline, the core of successful project management – and the philosophy of PRINCE2 – remains the same: you need a clear picture of what you are trying to achieve, a consistent understanding of why it is worth achieving, and a well-gauged sensitivity to the risks involved. And because you need people to make the project happen, each member of the team must be ready to assume his or her designated role and responsibilities.

PRINCE2 has always been firmly rooted in these realities.

It creates a universal language for project management. The method is highly structured, but time and again it has given proof of its versatility, scalability and flexibility. Now, with this latest update, PRINCE2 will place a stronger-than-ever emphasis on tailoring its structure of themes and principles to different organisations and environments, and to projects of diverse nature and scale.

As Peter Hepworth, chief executive officer of AXELOS, the Westminster-based company that is the custodian of PRINCE2, says: “This update to PRINCE2 consolidates the knowledge, experience and best practice of a globally accredited community – people who really understand project management and how best to achieve results for customers and stakeholders. Its practical, authoritative, relevant guidance will enable anyone with a project to manage to get the best out of PRINCE2 – and to achieve success for themselves and their organisation, today and in the years to come.”

A PRINCE2 certification has long been a badge of honour for full-time project managers, but in today’s swiftly-evolving context it has become an increasingly desirable qualification for people from other specialist disciplines. In a recent survey of 2,400 professionals, 88 per cent of PRINCE2 practitioners said that the qualification had aided their career progression and 85 per cent said it was valuable in their current role.

Increasingly, each of us – even if we don’t have the words “project manager” in our job title – needs to break down our work into a series of well-defined projects. Those projects will stand a far greater chance of achieving the desired results on schedule and with optimum efficiency if we handle them intelligently and systematically. Now, more than ever, PRINCE2 will fit smoothly to the needs of your organisation, the nature and scope of your project, and your professional role. Updated for 2017 and the coming years, it provides the know-how to manage any project with success.

INDUSTRY VIEW

www.axelos.com/PRINCE2-2017

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Passengers are in the driving seat for a smarter travel experience Machine learning, mobile technology and augmented reality are set to finally boost customer airline experience into the smart era. Business Reporter speaks to the experts…

“There is a huge amount of financial and emotional investment [in travelling].

The investment we are making is designed to take the pain and angst out of that process as much as possible” – Scott Crawford, Expedia

MATT SMITH

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E BOOK holidays with the intention of relaxing, but organising a trip is often anything but. Choosing the right destination, booking your travel and getting from your front door to your hotel room can be a stressful experience – but new technologies such as machine learning and augmented reality could make choosing, booking and going on a trip a breeze.

According to Scott Crawford, vice president of product at Expedia, travel has so far missed out on the benefits of many of new innovations. But he says there will be “a lot of movement” in the industry over the next year or so as it embraces these latest advances, which will mean customers’ online bookings flow muc h more l i ke a nat u ra l conversation.

“What we find very interesting is if you think back over the last 20 years there have been huge advances in technology but the fundamental customer experience of booking travel online has not changed a great deal,” he explains. “The interface has remained reasonably constant…

We feel that in the next few years there will be some pretty fundamental shifts.”

The average user visits Expedia’s website 49 times before finally booking a flight, and it is no wonder given the sheer choice on offer. Even for a simple flight from Seattle to Atlanta on a set date, Crawford says there are 19 million combinations to choose from. So the challenge for the firm is to make it easier for customers to find and book a trip that is right for them.

Although he says travel matching is “a really, really complex problem to solve”, the site is already trialling new features including a Search Anything button that lets users enter keywords in regular language to find

suggestions. Advances in areas including machine learning are allowing Expedia to interpret customers’ requests increasingly accurately.

“The more you open that up to natural conversation, you get an exponential increase in the number of options that we could return or match to, and so… that’s where machine learning comes in,” Crawford says, adding that as a first step the firm has launched chat bots for Facebook, Alexa and Skype, with the latter also allowing customers to change or cancel flights.

At the moment, customers whose queries cannot be answered by the bots are referred to human agents, but to improve on these services and make it even easier for visitors to find and book a trip, he explains that Expedia looks at their emotional reactions and collects “a huge amount of data” to ensure that its services improve and grow easier to use.

“For us it really is a game of collecting as much information as possible,” Crawford says. “The more data we get, the more the algorithms can be refined and the more we can look for patterns… to look at how well we are matching customers to their experiences.”

To ensure a perfect match, in future holidaymakers may even be able to “try before they buy”, he explains, using virtual reality to get a feel for potential destinations before they book and giving those without the budget or

The airport experience can be made more pleasurable with smart tech, says Flio’s Andrew Watson; (below left) travel firms such as Expedia are looking at AI to enhance the customer bookings experience

means to travel a chance to “visit” more places.

“We definitely see a very interesting opportunity there,” Crawford says. “I think virtual reality will really make experiences a lot more accessible… and definitely virtual reality will play more of a part in that inspiration phase.”

But the improved travel experience does not end once you make your booking. The way we travel is also set to change, and part of this involves smoothing out one of the biggest pain points of any holiday or business trip: the airport.

“Airports are very focused on the layout,” says Andrew Watson, co-founder and head of global partnerships at airport app Flio.

“This is where I always have felt that airports have focused on how they manipulate the passenger experience, whereas it feels now it’s more the passengers that are dictating how that airport experience is.”

He says various technologies are fuelling this transformation, including mobile. Flio allows passengers to add their own hints and tips for airports around the world, improving future travellers’ experiences with handy information like where the best shops are.

“For me, it’s about personalising that experience,” Watson explains. “I think how that will

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change is through indoor mapping – what would be fantastic is there needs to be some sort of navigation element to that.”

By combining map information with data from beacon technology, he says, future airport apps could advise passengers on the most efficient routes through the airport, suggesting places to visit on the way based on their previous purchases.

For example, a coffee-drinking passenger would be given a chance to stop off at a coffee shop before they reach their gate, and may be given a special offer t hrough t heir smar t phone.

Ultimately, it is about making the airport experience less stressful and more efficient.

And the transformation will continue once you reach your destination. Crawford says augmented reality will present “a lot of very interesting opportunities for travel” – for example, pointing out the most efficient route to hotels, directing travellers to pre-booked taxis once they arrive at their destination airports or acting as a virtual tour guide in foreign cities.

“You could imagine the integration of those technologies to make that experience as seamless as possible,” Crawford says. This, he stresses, is the end goal: making sure that each new innovat ion solves a problem for travellers to make their trips more enjoyable.

“I think one of the things that is more unique about travel is that for the majority of people, it is a reasonably infrequent purchase,” he explains. “It is also a pretty expensive purchase…

And it is not like when you buy a book from Amazon, where if you do not like it you can send it back.

You don’t know you’ve got the right trip until you’re on it.

“There is a huge amount of financial and emotional investment in that, as well… All the investment we are making is designed to take the pain and angst out of that process as much as possible and help customers find the right experience for them.”

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A new kind of airmail on the horizon With Amazon’s trialling of its new Prime Air drone delivery service continuing apace, rapid delivery for its customers could soon be looking up… Matt Smith reports

13mins The length of time it took Amazon Prime Air’s first delivery to arrive after the order had been placed

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MAZON MADE its first successful automated drone delivery when it dropped off a TV streaming stick and a bag of popcorn in a Cambridge customer’s garden last month. Chief executive Jeff Bezos announced the news in a tweet showing a video of a drone delivering an Amazon box in 13 minutes and placing it on the shopper’s lawn.

The retailer’s new service, called Prime Air, could be indicative of the future of deliveries, with parcels moving quickly through the air and easing pressure on road transport systems.

It is currently only available to two customers who meet its requirements.

However, Amazon hopes to expand the system, which uses fully autonomous drones without human pilots, to cater to more online shopping customers in future.

In January, it was also granted a patent for a “collective unmanned aerial vehicle” made up of a series of smaller drones, which can transport “virtually any size, weight or quantity of items”. The convoy can also cover longer distances than individual delivery drones, which are limited to a flight time of around 30 minutes.

Another, earlier patent showed “airborne fulfilment centres” that hold goods at great heights over cities, allowing drones to collect parcels and deliver them to addresses below.

Amazon is one of several companies experimenting with the role drones could play in future, but while they have great potential to change the way deliveries are

Malta’s capital Valletta is becoming a popular business destination

Future drone legislation could be a challenge for Amazon Prime Air, but the economic potential is huge

made – and perhaps take some delivery vehicles off the roads as a consequence – they still have their limitations.

The Prime Air service, for example, is currently only available for customers with large gardens who live close to the company’s warehouse and who order items weighing less than 2.6 kilograms. Amazon’s drones are also unable to fly at night or in bad weather.

There is still plenty to be done from a regulatory standpoint too. While businesses like Amazon plan to use drones to improve their customer experience, recreational drone users have raised questions over privacy, security and safety by flying over

other people’s property, close to landmarks and stadiums or in an unsafe manner.

In 2015, a man was fined £1,800 after he flew his drone close to Premier League football matches, Parliament and Buckingham Palace. According to reports, police have received a 28-page guide on how to deal the potential misuse of drones by the public.

In December, the government launched a new consultation on drone safety, in which the Department for Transport suggested that drone registration becomes mandatory, that tougher penalties are introduced for drone operation near no-fly zones and that drones are made electronically identifiable

so that their owners can be more easily held to account.

“Drones have enormous economic potential and are already being used by emergency services, transport and energy providers and conservation groups to improve services, respond to incidents and save lives,” said aviation minister Lord Ahmad. “While the vast majority of drone users are law-abiding and have good intentions, some operators are not aware of the rules, or choose to break them, putting public safety, privacy and security at risk.

The government is taking a common sense approach to tackling this behaviour, ensuring the safe rollout of this technology.”

Malta emerging as a prime new destination for business conferences

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HEN CONSIDERING business travel, your first thoughts might be of New York, Tokyo or Abu Dhabi, but other destinations are emerging as prime venues for meetings and conferences.

Malta, the Mediterranean archipelago situated between Sicily and the north African coast, is one such place. The number of business tourists visiting its islands grew by 14 per cent to 98,000 in 2015, up from 86,000 in 2014 and 77,000 in 2013, demonstrating its growing standing and popularity with the business community.

As well as an abundance of bars, restaurants and coffee shops for meeting and entertaining

business contacts, Malta offers a range of conference venues, including the InterContinental Hotel, whose 6,000 square-metre meeting facilities can cater to up to 1,700 people.

There is also plenty to keep business travellers occupied outside of meetings and conferences, whether they choose to discover the country’s original capital, Mdina, take a cruise along the beautiful Dingli Cliffs, learn about the history of the current capital, Valletta, or explore the shops, bars and clubs in the lively heart of coastal town Saint Julian’s.

The island’s size – just 122 square miles – means that all its attractions are within easy reach, and the unspoiled second island of Gozo,

which is a hotspot for diving, abseiling, rock climbing and biking, is just a short ferry ride away from the north coast.

So with local cuisine to sample, cultural hotspots to visit and a variety of activities to partake in, there is more than enough to do outside of business hours.

While it might not be the first place to spring to mind for a meeting or conference, Malta’s modern facilities, warm climate and sheer variety mean it is a destination that is quickly growing in popularit y with business travellers. www.visitmalta.com