In an ever-more technology dependent world, how well can we cope when it all breaks down?
EARLIER THIS YEAR, a group of international scientists – ably supported by hordes of scaremongering media types – worked themselves into a lather about a perfect storm of solar activity which was about to cause the end of the world as we know it.
Super-sized electromagnetic stuff was hurtling towards us at a rate of knots, threatening to wipe out umpteen squillions’-worth of communications satellites, before causing a global power failure and blowing fuses all over the shop.
Needless to say, like the millennium bug before it, it didn’t happen. Planes didn’t drop out of the sky, smartphones continued to function, and the never-ending stream of Come Dine With Me repeats went out as usual.
In the event, far from blasting the entire human race back to the Stone Age, all it did was to make the aurora borealis a bit prettier than usual.
However, while their worst-case-scenario prognoses failed to materialise, the prophets of doom did manage to highlight the extent to which the vast majority of the world population has become dependent upon highly sophisticated – and highly vulnerable – technology.
TECHNO-FEAR
The global travel industry is no exception. Indeed, it is more dependent and more vulnerable than most other sectors because it relies so heavily on multiple, interlinked technologies. Even the most seemingly straightforward of business trips is a recipe-for-disaster in the making.
Travellers use email to set up meetings, the internet to research destination information, and self-booking tools (SBTs) to book e-tickets and hotel reservations; they then fill up the car, pay by card for the petrol, and drive through the airport carpark’s automatic barrier.
They then use the check-in kiosk to acquire a boarding pass, clear passport control, and head to the lounge to make a few last-minute mobile phone calls. Video screens tell him or her when and where to board the aircraft – itself a technological masterpiece, which relies on positioning satellites to find its way to its destination.
At the hotel, his corporate card is swiped to cover any incidentals and, having dumped the briefcase in the room (accessed by a centrally-controlled key-card), our traveller then goes to the bar for a beer, “pulled” via an electrically-operated pump, and then uses the downtime to read through pre-meeting notes – a task made easier by electric lights – and checks emails on the company laptop.
EPIC FAIL
So it goes on. And, in the vast majority of cases, “go on” is exactly what it does. However, what happens if even one bit of the technology fails to work – even if it’s only the carpark barrier? One can waste an awful lot of time shouting into a crackly intercom to an unsympathetic attendant who may or may not believe a word you’re saying.
In short, if only one bit goes pear-shaped, all the other bits will be imperilled, too. And, despite all the reassurances from technophiles the world over, things do indeed go pear-shaped, and not infrequently – as Will Hasler, business travel manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, readily confirms. “There are certainly many points of failure in a technology-driven travel world, and you can mitigate against – but never completely prevent – such issues with service level agreements [SLAs],” he says. “I’ve seen the GDSs [global distribution systems] go down just a few times in the seven or so years I’ve been here. We coped, but a day’s outage and beyond would have been tricky.
“Our self-booking tool is down periodically, but people can use the travel management company [TMC]. In fact, links to low-cost carriers from the SBT are generally pretty hit-and-miss and people have to use the TMC, but then the TMC’s phones are down periodically, as is Trainline, which we and the TMC use to book rail.”
The tale of woe goes on. “The GDS is the biggest concern as it drives online and offline bookings, although they do have back-up servers if one gets knocked out,” says Hasler. “They also house them in extremely secure facilities.”
“In short, there are all sorts of system and phone outages that do happen periodically during a business day – but they rarely all happen simultaneously, alternatives are available, and outages are usually short enough not to be too inconvenient.
“Bigger issues for us are when a supplier loads a new release and it hasn’t been tested effectively, knocking out other systems.”
NETWORK / NOT WORK
If anything, Simone Buckley, chief executive of the Institute of Travel & Meetings (ITM), is even more candid. On a recent trip to Washington, she loaded the name, address and contact details of her hotel, and the name and contact details of the people she was supposed to be meeting, on to her iPhone. It was only when she was on the transatlantic flight that she realised that, if the networks went down, she would have no idea where she was going or who she was meeting. “I would have ended up plugging small change into a payphone to call home,” she admits – although, perhaps mercifully for those at home, the necessity didn’t arise.
Buckley does, however, highlight another issue: when technology fails, where does the responsibility lie? One leading buyer told her: “I look after travel – that kind of stuff sits with IT.” Similarly, the ITM’s request-for-proposal toolkits ask TMCs to ensure their technologies are fit for purpose. “Buyers tend to place responsibility for most of the stuff that comes through a managed travel programme on the TMC – and that’s a very good reason to have a TMC in the first place,” Buckley says. “If you don’t have them making sure that all the systems are up and running, you’d have to do all that yourself.”
Of course, that rather pre-supposes that the TMC is, or can be, in control – something about which Eric Bailey, Seattle-based senior travel manager at Microsoft, has grave doubts. Describing the notion of a technological apocalypse as “an interesting idea”, he says: “Obviously the GDSs are a big part of this as they are consolidating all the relevant data. The other big issue is air traffic control. I believe they are still using antiquated technology [radar] but it is quite robust and reliable, whereas aircraft GPS, on the other hand, is subject to satellites, triangulation, and so on.
“One of the big fears around going over to GPS is that if these satellites were tampered with, the consequences could be huge.”
At a rather more humdrum level, Bailey believes that Microsoft is already pretty secure. “In terms of booking tools and the booking process, we still have a lot of humans working the back end of reservations and we could switch a large portion of these reservations to manual mode for a while if necessary,” he says. “The back-up plan would be to let travellers go straight to Expedia if a booking-tool outage lasted more than a few days.
“One final note is that technology, such as Microsoft Lync, Skype and the like, is making business travel less relevant. If I need to have a face-to-face meeting with someone in Munich, I can now do that from my base in Seattle, 24 hours a day, while sharing documents and never needing to use my long-distance phone service.”
As if to prove the point, Julia Heesterman, Microsoft’s travel manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was this April due to “attend” a week-long team meeting with Bailey in Seattle – without ever leaving her base in the UK. One can only hope the technology worked.
BACKING UP
Paul Tilstone, the Global Business Travel Association’s (GBTA) chief global development officer and European managing director, is reasonably confident that organisations of the size and scale of Microsoft already have back-up plans in place.
“Any corporation using technological solutions for managing travel should ensure the security and reliance upon these systems is incorporated into any company-wide IT risk programme,” he says. “I would’ve thought most bigger companies would already be doing that, both from an immediate direct support element and with technology through the supply chain.”
Even so, there are concerns. “As most companies do not consider travel to be a business-critical function, I doubt whether travel servicing technology would feature heavily in any IT risk programme, but the technology used to communicate with people on the road should be of a higher priority,” Tilstone says.
“There are systems out there which allow for widespread communication with staff using all sorts of alternative systems, and any travel buyer worth their salt should not only be considering their company’s requirements and appropriate solutions at the high functioning end, but also at the lowest common denominator of communication technology.”
He continues: “Staying on top of what is out there is not always easy, so I think that this is an area in which the existing supply chain, especially the TMCs, can add considerable value to the buyers and their organisations.”
Such added value cannot come soon enough, because the really bad news is that if it does all go horribly wrong, it takes an awfully long time for lessons to be learned.
On March 5 this year, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) finally got around to publishing its guidance on how airlines should react to volcanic ash clouds – nearly two years after the Eyjafjallajökull eruption.