E-MAIL JOE    PRINT    2011 COLUMNS    ARCHIVES    SEARCH ARCHIVES THE ROAD WARRIOR'S GUIDE FOR 2012 By Joe Brancatelli January 4, 2012 -- Happy 2012. Ready to get back on the road? No, neither am I, but we're rarely in charge of our own flight schedules, so if the boss or the client says travel, we nod our weary heads and say "where to?" Journalistic convention (not to mention my own bosses here at Portfolio) requires me to "predict" the major developments of this year on the road. Despite quite liking the ceremonial swami's turban—the silly hat covers my bald pate during these cold winter months—I know that trying to predict the future of business travel even a year out is a fool's game. So let's be foolish. And don't forget to read with a gigantic salt shaker at the ready. The more grains of salt you apply, the more plausible my predictions become. Is There an American Way Forward? Logic dictates that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of American Airlines will dominate the knowable news in 2012. Operationally, the once-proud carrier is sure to shrink, and it already announced plans to dump almost two-dozen smaller aircraft and retreat from nearly a dozen domestic routes. Further cuts are likely, especially on transatlantic runs in which premium-class business is predicted to be weak and American can code-share with OneWorld partners such as British Airways and Iberia. A retreat from some Pacific routes in favor of more cooperation with its Cathay Pacific, Qantas, and Japan Airlines partners may also be in the cards. But what of the future existence of American and its parent, AMR Corporation? Before the tumble into Chapter 11, Tom Horton, now chief executive, made no secret of his desire to be acquired by International Airlines Group, parent company of both BA and Iberia. That would require a change in U.S. aviation law, however, which isn't likely to happen in an election year. Still, no airline that's gone into bankruptcy in the last decade has survived as an independent. Frequently bankrupt US Airways merged with America West. United Airlines, which underwent the longest, costliest airline bankruptcy in history, merged with Continental Airlines. Delta and Northwest entered Chapter 11 on the same day in 2005 and eventually merged. Bankrupt Frontier was amalgamated with Midwest Airlines. In other words, history suggests that American Airlines has zero chance of surviving as an independent carrier. Still a Few Bugs in the System Even though United and Continental have entered the third year of their merger, the combined carrier's biggest hurdle is still to come: the transition of the old United Airlines onto the computer reservations and ticketing systems that once belonged to Continental Airlines. The move is scheduled for March, and history suggests there will be substantial problems ahead. When US Airways and America West combined computer systems in 2007, the carriers' passengers were inconvenienced for weeks. And that was after the airline had boasted that the transition would be trouble-free and invisible to flyers. Even now, fly-speck-size Virgin America is more than two months into a much less complicated computer change, and its flyers continues to be dazed and confused, not to mention frequently left bereft of tickets, seat assignments, and boarding passes. Southwest's March on Atlanta By gobbling up AirTran Airways late in 2010, Southwest Airlines put itself on a collision course with Delta Air Lines in Atlanta. Until the AirTran buy, the nation's only consistently profitable major airline didn't even offer flights into Atlanta. But now that it controls AirTran, Southwest goes head-to-head with Delta's 900-flight-a-day hub at Hartsfield International. Southwest is molding AirTran in its own image, which means the perks go (AirTran's business-class seats and even the in-flight satellite radio service) and in comes Texas-based Southwest's model of simplicity: just a few fare categories, no charge for checked bags and the most consistent in-flight product in the skies. The battle between the two carriers will be fascinating for observers and at least as interesting for frequent flyers. Will AirTran customers who lose the cheap upgrades to business class defect to Delta and its first-class cabins? Will Southwest's simple, one-way fares woo business travelers away from Delta and its convoluted pricing system? The Southwest shuffle will also affect travelers in other cities as the airline rejiggers its combined route map. One immediate casualty: flyers in Philadelphia. Southwest is downsizing there, and that includes dropping the key intrastate route to Pittsburgh. Roundtrip fares on the 268-mile trip had been running about $200 when Southwest competed with Philadelphia-hubbed US Airways. But when Southwest exits this month, US Airways' walk-up prices jump into the $700 range. The Rise of the iPad Business travelers aren't necessarily the earliest adopters of new technology. It took almost a decade for them to begin buying portable computers in great numbers. We were slow to buy mobile phones too. But the Apple iPad is a different story altogether. It seems as if almost all of the estimated 40 million units that Apple has sold has gone to business travelers. You can see it anecdotally by looking around any airport gate or on flights frequented by frequent flyers. Or consider this: When I recently asked the members of my business-travel website to respond to a short survey, nearly 25 percent of the responses came from an iPad. That is an incredible rate of penetration for a product that is only two years old. Hotels are adopting iPads for roaming check-in, and airlines are switching to iPads for everything from cockpit chores to roving customer service. Expect 2012's travel-tech news to revolve around apps and other products that run on, or are optimized for, the newly iPad-equipped business traveler. Bankruptcies and Foreclosures and Auctions, Oh My! Despite the rosy hotel-industry predictions of higher nightly rates and higher occupancy, it's going to be a tough year for the people who own hotel buildings. That means it will be a tough year for us business travelers. Some estimates say that $20 billion worth of mortgage-based hotel securities come due in 2012 and less than a third of the more than 200 affected properties will be successfully refinanced. That'll mean an upsurge in hotel defaults, foreclosures, auctions, and outright closures. Not to mention cutbacks on little perks and a wave of "reflaggings," the industry term of art for when a hotel building changes from one hotel brand to another. This year, some time in some city, you're likely to go to sleep in a Hilton and wake up in a Sheraton. Or some variation of the same. Inflight and In the Cloud The widespread availability of in-flight WiFi means airlines will begin to deliver in-flight entertainment via the Web. That'll save them the cost of heavy (and thus fuel-consuming) at-seat monitors and allow them to push movies, games, TV programming, and whatever onto your tablet, laptop, or smartphone. The same goes for your hotel. Travelers are spending less time (and less money) buying in-room entertainment (OK, porn) and more time downloading onto their portable technology. That means hotels will try to spend less on hard-wired entertainment options. It also means they'll try to bifurcate their own wired and wireless Internet offerings to guests. If you want slow speeds suitable for little more than email, Internet access will be cheap or free. Want enough in-room bandwidth to download movies and other entertainment available in the cloud? Get ready to pay. The Fine Print... The hot business-travel term for 2012: "metal neutral." The airline industry, which has largely coalesced around three global "alliances" of carriers, is going to try to convince you that it doesn't matter whose aircraft you fly. They'll be pooling planes and sharing revenue on more and more routes, and you'll asked to book flights without caring about whose name is on the plane. It's called a "metal-neutral" approach to flying, and only an industry that has lost all sense of brand integrity and product innovation would think that's a good idea.

ABOUT JOE BRANCATELLI Joe Brancatelli is a publication consultant, which means that he helps media companies start, fix and reposition newspapers, magazines and Web sites. He's also the former executive editor of Frequent Flyer and has been a consultant to or columnist for more business-travel and leisure-travel publishing operations than he can remember. He started his career as a business journalist and created JoeSentMe in the dark days after 9/11 while he was stranded in a hotel room in San Francisco. He lives on the Hudson River in the tourist town of Cold Spring. THE FINE PRINT This column is Copyright © 2011 American City Business Journals. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. JoeSentMe.com is Copyright © 2011 by Joe Brancatelli. All rights reserved.