James Hogan is CEO of Etihad. But his previous experience in ground transport (Hertz) and hotels (Forte) contributes to his ability to have real perspective and vision when he looks at travel businesses.
This week Hogan addressed the Global Aerospace Summit in Abu Dhabi and evaluated what new, successful businesses had in common and what it meant for travel companies.
Hogan pointed out that Uber owned no cars, that Alibaba owned no stock, that Facebook created no content and that Airbnb owned no properties. Big successful businesses are evolving from ones that own the means of producing their wealth to ones that are creating wealth from owning efficient and attractive means of distributing others' goods and services of value.
In the hotel world fewer and fewer chains own properties and instead work on a management contract basis for owners.
Ownership is becoming more difficult because banks are less able and willing to finance debt than they once were.
For airlines, according to Hogan, this means that owning the aircraft itself is becoming less important and codeshares and commercial agreements will become more so. Etihad itself is likely to lower the ratio of owned to leased aircraft.
Alibaba, Facebook, Uber and Airbnb are all popular because their distribution is slick enough to be efficient and extensive enough to be dominant.
And so we go back to Hogan's point about the importance of codeshares and commercial agreements. The more commercial agreements that an airline can drive, the more it will have extensive content to look like the universal one-stop shop supplier and look attractive to buyers with multinational and global programmes.
But for buyers this might mean that their due diligence procedures will need a review. What liability will potentially be with distributors and which will be with owners or actual service providers?
In last week's Business Travel iQ webinar on distribution Nestlé travel manager Karolien Priem used the example of her employer's approach to distribution for its Nespresso product to show how the approach by companies in all sectors to distribution and sales was changing.
Why did we ever expect it to stay the same in travel?