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24/9/2018
Travel and tourism bookings reached almost US$1.6B in 2017, accounting for more than 10% of the global GDP and making it one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world. Meanwhile, spending continues to shift from material goods to travel, particularly with millennials — a trend that isn’t expected to change anytime soon. Isn’t it a great time to be in the travel business? Absolutely.
But like all good things in life and business, there is always a catch. Everyone wants a piece of the action. There’s a lot of competition in the space now, not only between traditional brands, but with digital disruptors such as Online Travel Associations (OTA) and alternative accommodation providers (the Airbnbs of the world). And in the middle of all this frenzy is a new breed of traveler — a more controlling, more demanding, more informed, and more impatient consumer that holds all the cards.
The days of travelers returning again and again to their favorite brands through the pull of loyalty points are fading fast as more and more consumers flip the loyalty equation upside down. "Successful companies today realize that customer expectations are shaped by the most relevant, real-time, dynamic experiences they encounter across any and all industries. These companies have realized that to be relevant, they must build vitality into all they do. They know it’s not about customer loyalty any longer, it’s about company loyalty to customers."
Omar Abbosh, Chief Strategy Officer, Accenture
Every business is a stage
Back in 1999, B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore co-authored, “The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage.” It wasn’t the beginning of the Experience Economy; Disney and others epitomized it decades before. But it did bring the phenomenon under a spotlight that has yet to fade (Will it ever?).
The thing about being in the spotlight is that, while there are some actors (i.e. businesses) that deserve a Tony award for their mastery of marketing in the Experience Economy, others find themselves being booed off the stage.
In the Experience Economy — where time is limited, attention spans scarce (and diminishing), and money disposable — business success is predicated on capturing people’s time and attention. This is where some business executives get confused. They think good customer service is all it takes. Not true.
The differences between service and experience may look small, but in the eyes of today’s consumer, they are huge.
We live in a world of ME generations where no two people share the same experience even when placed in the exact same situation. Everyone experiences things and events in a very personal way.
There have been numerous studies over the past decade that have shown people’s preferences to spend money on experiences rather than material goods. Today, research continues to confirm these findings, but also note that consumers also want experiences to be personal — specially curated for them.
A new global Forrester study found that Experience-Led Businesses (ELB) outperform their contemporaries in terms of customer journey and topline metrics. ELBs have:
• 140% higher revenue growth
• 170% higher retention rates
• 160% higher customer life time value
Customer experience is no longer just a competitive differentiator, it’s a business imperative.
But hasn’t the travel industry always been about experience? In luxury travel, perhaps, but there’s a reason people call an airline’s economy class, “the cattle car” and refer to tolerable economy hotels as having “no surprises.” So how do travel executives transform their businesses from sleep stations to play stations, and from people movers to people pleasers? Here is some food for thought, and hopefully inspiration, from companies who have raised the experience bar to a whole new level.
Not just another economy
Now, I know what many of you’re thinking, “Enough with marketing-speak about another economy out to disrupt our businesses!” And I can’t blame you. We have the digital economy, the knowledge economy, the service economy, the sharing economy, the attention economy, the trust economy, the political economy, the mixed economy, the command economy, and more recently with blockchain, the token economy. This is just the tip of the iceberg and it’s already overwhelming.
But for a moment, put aside your frustration with all of this and make a list of your favorite brands. Now ask yourself, what’s common about them all? Why do you love them more than others?
Now take a look at what the rest of the world chose this year as their favorites.
What do they all have in common? Enviable revenues obviously, but what else?
They are all masters in the Experience Economy. All but one (Disney) are, for the most part, titans of technology. But, as much as Disney is famous for its theme parks and resorts, the media and entertainment conglomerate was at the forefront of technological innovation long before the internet was even invented.
Given the NetBase list was based on social analytics, I decided to take a look at other more traditional sources for comparison. Fortune’s 2018 list of the 15 most admired brands in the world has its share of commonality with NetBase’s, but there’re also brick-and-mortar brands on the list — two of which are favorites of mine — Starbucks and Costco.
Most admired companies in the world 2018 From the outside, Costco looks like a bulk warehouse store offering discounts across a wide variety of goods and services — savings that more than cover the cost of membership for many members. And Costco is all those things.
But walk inside and you’ll immediately see why 90 million people worldwide flock there week after week. A trip to Costco is like a treasure hunt; every day there’s something new to discover — something we may not even need, but can’t resist. Tasting stalls are strategically situated throughout the store, surrounded by curious consumers looking to satisfy a thirst, sweet tooth, or craving.
Meanwhile, Starbucks appears to be the polar opposite of the warehouse giant with its premium-priced coffee and food. But, in fact, both companies are successful for the same reason — they are geniuses in experience economics and their Net Promoter Scores (NPS) prove it.
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The mighty dollarThe Economist (UK) 10/9/2022 Why the dollar is strong—and what might threaten its supremacy in the long run
The mighty dollar
THE MOST important currency in the world is on a roll. The dollar has climbed by around 20% over the past year against a basket of global currencies, and is at its highest level in 20 years. One euro is worth less than a dollar, and other pretenders to the dollar’s throne as the world’s reserve currency, such as the yen, yuan or even crypto, have slumped. Even as America has used its financial clout to squeeze Russia, others have rushed to the dollar-based financial system as a safe haven. This cyclical strength of the dollar dominates the global financial landscape. But look closer and technological shifts that could eventually challenge it are gathering momentum.
The dollar’s run reflects several forces. Even as Europe and China face a downturn, America’s economy is proving remarkably resilient, with job growth and profits still strong. Inflation is high and the Federal Reserve is raising rates faster and higher than other big central banks. Energy crises are terms-of-trade shocks that favour energy exporters and punish the currencies of importers. Thanks to the shale revolution America became a net energy exporter in 2019 for the first time since 1952. None of these dynamics looks likely to abate soon.
For America a strong dollar has some advantages. It will help bring down inflation, even if it might pose some longer-term competitiveness problems. For much of the world, though, it is bad news. The greenback remains pre-eminent in trade invoicing and cross-border debt. As a result, as the Fed raises rates and capital shifts to America, the finances of emerging markets get
squeezed. So far big economies such as India have held up well, but smaller places with heavy debts, such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan, are in big trouble.
The endurance of this global dollar-based system, in spite of the resentments it arouses, is testament to America’s staying power. It has been through difficult times in the past 15 years, with a financial crisis, a badly handled pandemic, a widening fiscal deficit and a constitutional crisis in 2021. Nonetheless, even as the greenback soars, two technological developments bear close attention (see Finance & economics section).
First, new state-run digital currency and payments systems are, at last, gaining traction. China’s e-yuan now has 260m users and the technology involved might eventually allow China to run its own global payments network while maintaining capital controls, which it regards as necessary to maintain stability. That could make it all but immune to American sanctions. Elsewhere, state payments systems are exhibiting powerful network effects. India’s upi system is vast and Brazil’s payments system, Pix, has been used by 126m people. Today these payments networks are domestic; tomorrow they could facilitate cross-border transactions as alternatives to the dollar-based system.
Second, if you look beyond the scams and bubbles in cryptocurrencies, decentralised finance technologies continue to improve. Developers are pushing through an upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain, on which most DeFi applications are based. On September 15th it will switch to a new mechanism for making collective decisions known as proof-of-stake that is far less energy intensive: the drop in power consumption will be equivalent to Chile being switched off. It could pave the way for Ethereum to become more efficient at handling high transaction volumes—and a more credible global rival to traditional finance.
In the 20th century the dollar eclipsed sterling as the world’s reserve currency, to become widely used as a unit of account, store of value and means of payment. The next change in currency regimes may not be so clear-cut, as new technologies make it possible to separate out some reserve-currency functions—allowing countries to establish autonomy in payments, for example—without contesting the dollar’s role in other areas. The dollar’s reserve-currency status is not changing yet. But technology will change what it means to be a reserve currency. ■
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03/9/2022 Zoom fatigue
IN THE EARLY days of covid-19, the tech industry was consumed by a sense of euphoria. With billions of people locked down at home, work and play were shifting online. Many hoped that the new normal would spark a huge productivity boom as firms digitised and workers spent less time commuting. The excitement was most evident in stockmarkets, where any firm related to this trend saw its share price surge. The value of an equally weighted portfolio of five pandemic darlings—call it the “lockdown lunacy index”—increased by 320% from the start of the pandemic to its peak in August 2021. The tech-heavy nasdaq, by contrast, rose by 88%.
The mania has ended. Today the lockdown-lunacy index— which includes Netflix, a streaming service; Peloton, a maker of fancy exercise bikes; Robinhood, a stock-trading app; Shopify, an e-commerce platform; and Zoom, a videoconferencing firm—has fallen by more than 80% from its peak, far exceeding the 18% drop in the nasdaq. Zoom and friends are trading at below pre-pandemic prices.
How worrying is this return to Earth? To be sure, some of it reflects gloomier prospects for the global economy, racked by inflation, war and rising interest rates. And it is disappointing that two years of digitisation and remote work have not provided clear evidence of a productivity boom (see Finance & economics section). Yet there are reasons still to be techno-optimistic. Much of the early enthusiasm may simply have been focused on the wrong types of firm. Though the pandemic darlings have fizzled, the shift towards ever greater digitisation continues. The true winners are not the flashy consumer-tech firms, but the companies that provide the infrastructure to enable this shift.
Much of the decline of our lockdown index reflects shakier business models. On August 22nd Zoom reported that its yearon-year revenue growth had fallen to 8%, the lowest rate since the company listed in 2019. Three days later Peloton reported a nearly 30% fall in its quarterly sales, compared with a year ago. Subscribers are fleeing Netflix for other viewing platforms, such as Disney+. Robinhood is laying off a quarter of its staff as day traders cool on the markets.
The fading work-from-home boom has affected the demand for hardware, too. Worldwide pc shipments are expected to decline by 10% this year; analysts reckon mobile-phone sales will
tumble by 7%. A downturn in spending on video games and a series of crypto implosions have dented the sales of the powerful semiconductors used to mine digital currencies and render computer graphics (see Schumpeter).
Look beyond the boom and bust of consumer tech, though, and you see the real successes. The market for the infrastructure technology that underpins people’s daily lives, such as cloud computing, cybersecurity and digital payments, is thriving. The cloud-computing industry is expected to grow to almost $500bn this year, up from $243bn in 2019 (see Business section). Amazon’s cloud offering, the largest in the world, is still growing at 33% each year. It accounted for three-quarters of the firm’s operating income over the past 12 months, and is propping up the tech giant’s ailing e-commerce business. Its closest rivals are the cloud services of Microsoft and Google. Their annual sales are growing by 40% and 36%, respectively.
Cloudification has created new demands for cybersecurity, another tech winner. The combined revenue at the three largest listed cybersecurity firms has almost doubled since the start of the pandemic. Their market capitalisation has tripled, and has come down only a fraction since the start of the year. Digital payments are another bright spot, thanks to lockdowns and social distancing. Three-quarters of iPhone owners use Apple Pay, up from half in 2019, and nine out of ten American retailers now accept it as a payment method. Almost 200m people in India and China have used some form of digital payment for the first time since the onset of covid. A third of adults in sub-Saharan Africa now have a mobile-money account, up from a fifth in 2017.
Sanity reigns
The bubble may have burst on the pandemic’s darlings, but the drumbeat of digitisation continues. The less eye-catching technologies that provide the underlying infrastructure for the shift are the true beneficiaries of covid. Whether these will fuel a productivity boost one day remains to be seen. But there was more going on during the pandemic than lockdown lunacy.
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MALL THINGS can create big problems when anyone tries to build anything in Britain. A single wizened tree can scupper plans for 291 flats. A colony of terns can stall the development of a nuclear-power station. If nature does not intervene, politicians sometimes do. Government ministers, who are supposed to focus on affairs of state, can rule on the fate of a car park on the outskirts of London. Even if politicians hold off, the courts may step in. A large wind farm off the coast of Norfolk was postponed after a local resident persuaded a judge that the government had not properly assessed how it would affect his view.
Building in Britain is never easy, often difficult and sometimes impossible. The country has become a vetocracy, in which many people and agencies have the power to stymie any given development. The Town and Country Planning Act, passed in 1947, in effect nationalised the right to build. Decisions about whether to approve new projects are made by politicians who rely on the votes of nimbys (“Not in my back yard”), notes (“Not over there, either”) and bananas (“Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything”).
Green belts, which were designed to stop suburban sprawl, have achieved precisely that (see Britain section). These enormous no-build zones enjoy Pyongyangesque levels of support among voters, who picture them as rural idylls rather than the mish-mash of motorways, petrol stations, scrubland and golf courses that they are in reality. Strict environmental laws protect many creatures, especially cute ones like bats. Judges strike down government decisions if they are based on a botched process because Britain respects the rule of law. In isolation, each part of the planning system may seem unobjectionable. But the whole thing is a disaster. Britain’s failure to build enough is most pronounced when it comes to housing. England has 434 homes per 1,000 people, whereas France has 590. Its most dynamic cities can barely expand outwards, and are frequently prevented from shooting skywards as well.
But the problems extend well beyond housing. Britain has not built a reservoir since 1991 or finished a new nuclear-power station since 1995. hs2, a high-speed railway, is the first new line connecting large British cities since the 19th century. Even modest projects, such as widening the a66 road across northern England, take over a decade. The result is frustration and slower economic growth.
A truly bold government could transform the planning system. A proper land-value tax would weaken the perverse incentives to keep city centres underdeveloped and encourage landlords to build or sell up. Scrapping or shrinking the green belt is a no-brainer. A rules-based system, with local authorities declaring loose zones of development and letting developers build within them, would be preferable to a discretionary system that leaves each decision in the hands of capricious politicians.
Such drastic changes are out of the question for now. A gummed-up system in which it is hard to build anything is the revealed preference of British voters. Alongside the National Health Service, the planning system is one of the only policies of Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government to survive the free-market turn that Britain took in the 1980s. The best thing Boris Johnson’s government attempted was an ambitious reform of planning rules. It was shelved after a rebellion among Tory mps; the cabinet minister who proposed it lost his job. Notes from a NIMBY nation
More modest changes could make a difference, however. Encouraging neighbouring local authorities to work together on long-term plans has been a Conservative policy success since 2010. Mayors in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands have thrived through such co-operation. The government should go further and hand regional authorities more fiscal powers, including full control over all property taxes. Currently, who pays what is settled almost entirely in Whitehall rather than town halls. British local authorities take a far smaller slice of revenues raised in their area than is usual in other European countries. So they have little incentive to allow development: they endure all the political pain for a piffling fiscal gain. Giving local authorities a larger slice of the pie would encourage them to bake a bigger one.
If an incentive to grow is not enough, the government should compel them at least to try. All public authorities should be given a mandate to boost growth. Granted, that is a nebulous goal. Yet similar rules exist in other areas. Since the Equality Act was passed in 2010, public authorities have been expected to do their bit for “equality”, an ill-defined concept. Local authorities have had to think deeply about how to make a whole host of things more equal or end up in court. A growth mandate would provide yimbys with legal ammunition to face down their nimby nemeses.
Opponents of development have an arsenal of legal weapons. A growth mandate would help redress the balance. Expecting Rutland County Council to do its bit for gdp is no more absurd than expecting it to contribute to reaching net zero by 2050. Boosting growth and stopping climate change require systemic solutions, well beyond a local politician’s usual remit of potholes, bins and dog poo. But every little helps.
Finally, projects crucial for Britain to hit its target of being emissions-neutral by 2050 should be exempt from bog-standard planning rules. At the moment, legislation designed to protect the environment stands in the way of projects that will help reach the climate goal. Renewable-energy schemes can be blocked for environmental or aesthetic reasons. Earlier this year a council in Kent recommended refusing its own planning application for solar panels on the roof of its building because they would look “out of place”.
Britons mistake conservationism for environmentalism, confusing the protection of ancient woodland and great crested newts with the efforts needed to keep climate change at bay. If Britain’s bonkers rules on building cannot be changed, they should at least be bypassed
new study by American economists has found that the midlife crisis is real. People living in wealthy nations are at their most unhappy in their late forties and early fifties, afflicted by sleeplessness, depression, disabling headaches, memory problems, alcohol dependence and even suicidal thoughts.
The authors of the report can find no particular cause for this misery. In fact, they point out, the “middle-aged citizens in our data sets are close to their peak earnings, have typically experienced little or no illness, reside in some of the safest countries in the world, and live in the most prosperous era in human history”. Yet “something elemental appears to be going wrong in the middle of many of our citizens’ lives”. As a 51-year-old insomniac with a permanent headache, might I point out the obvious? Midlife is, for most people, when our parents start to die. We don’t tend to think of this as an elemental trauma, because it is natural and inevitable. Old people die. Parents are supposed to die before their children. And it must be manageable. People manage it all the time.
Except we don’t really. We just put on a good front. We get our work done, chivvy the children off to school, sort laundry into piles. But all the while we are reeling from a double-punch of existential shock.
In losing a parent – the person who made you, witnessed your beginnings and carried the memories you were too young to store yourself, the person who has always, always been there – you are confronted with your own mortality.
If they, the very fabric from which you are made, can die, then so can you. The secret conviction that you might have a special exemption from death is finally, belatedly, torn away.
This is what a midlife crisis really is: a confrontation with your own impermanence. As long as your parents are alive, their colossal figures obscure the road ahead. Once you can see what’s coming for you, it’s only natural to be terrified.
The good news is that you learn to live with the fear. Elliott Jaques, the psychoanalyst who coined the phrase “midlife crisis”, saw it as a necessary shift from youthful delusion to “contemplative pessimism”. Many studies have shown that, after the nadir of middle age, happiness levels rise again. Having confronted death, we get better at savouring what remains of life.
The people of Bhutan believe that, in order to find contentment, you must contemplate death at least five times a day. Since my father died five years ago, I have been able to follow this wisdom effortlessly.
I think about death – and the gruelling trials of old age that precede it – constantly. I live in a state of resigned horror not just at the loss of my father, but at the speed with which time sweeps away whole generations, their beliefs and behaviours and tastes, and will sweep away mine too. Much of the grief we feel now, as a nation, is a version of this existential angst. Someone who was always there, the repository of so much collective memory, has vanished.
In mourning Elizabeth II, we also mourn the lost, intangible atmospheres of our youths, the people we have lost, and the terrible fact of our own mortality.
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（星島日報報道）為協助基層家庭上車而推出的白表居屋第二市場計畫（俗稱白居二）需求殷切，連續三年錄得破十萬宗申請，房委會亦因而決定大增配額至四千五百個。對上一輪的「白居二 2020」，購買資格近月陸續到期，但房委會數字顯示，實際僅得約二千名中籤者選擇「入市」，意味有二千五百名中籤者放棄利用配額上車，是計畫恒常化以來最多的一次。業界留意到，「白居二」成交比例，已連續兩期跌至四成多水平，除了與疫下經濟不景有關外，也因九七高峰期後落成的大批居屋，樓齡已紛紛踏入二十年，而未能承做高成數按揭，加上政府二十年前停建停售居屋形成供應斷層，落成的新居屋也數目銳減，擔心未能「配對」上車的問題將會漸趨惡化，令「白居二」計畫逐漸失效。
「白居二」計畫在二○一三年進行首次試驗，提供五千個配額，接獲六萬六千一百五十七宗申請，成功購入單位有二千四百零五宗。二○一五年第二次試驗，配額減半至二千五百個，接獲四萬三千九百三十四宗申請，成功購入單位有一千六百一十六宗。
計畫於二○一八年起正式恆常化，同樣提供二千五百個配額，接獲六萬零五百三十四宗申請，最終成功購入單位有一千四百一十八宗。翌年配額增加五百個至三千個，接獲十三萬四千四百零三宗申請，房委會回覆本報查詢指，截至今年七月底，該期成功購入單位有一千三百宗。
至於「白居二 2020」，配額則倍增至四千五百個，接獲十一萬七千四百一十九宗申請。據了解，中籤人士為期一年的購買資格期間，已於近月陸續屆滿；房委會接受本報查詢時表示，截至七月底，成功購入單位約有二千宗。值得留意的是，計畫恆常化前後兩期，即二○一五年及二○一八年，成交量分別有逾六成四及五成六；但緊接兩年的成交量只有四成三及四成四。而隨房委會於二○二○增加名額至四千五百個，意味多達二千五百名申請者放棄選擇利用配額「入市」。
樓齡逾19年要多付首期
中原按揭董事總經理王美鳳表示，以首次出售日期起計，政府為居屋擔保三十年，銀行批出的實質按揭成數和還款年期視乎擔保期剩餘幾多年。在二手居屋市場上，如果樓齡為十九年或以下，銀行一般都可提供九成按揭及二十五年還款期；相反置業人士可能要選擇縮短還款期或多付首期。若擔保期已過，審批相對嚴謹，「私樓咁計，做壓力測試及計足供款入息比率，分別很大。」
她續指，實盤比想像中少，因居屋有折扣率，業主傾向「好啲價錢先放」，故居二市場部分單位價錢偏高，尤其是旺市的時候，業主與買家拉鋸亦較嚴重，買家未必容易找到價錢及樓齡都合心水的單位。她相信從擔保期手，讓更多居屋做到高成數按揭，能即時增加買家的選擇，流動率和成交量應有所改善。
「每當過了一年，又要跟銀行再拼過，因為又有一批居屋超過二十年的年期。」專營二手居屋買賣的祥益地產總裁汪敦敬稱，市場上未補地價的居屋超過二十多萬個，惟留意到促成買賣雙方成功「配對」，往往並不容易，而房委會僅為居屋擔保三十年之下，令很多有意透過「白居二」入市的家庭，無形中喪失置業的機會，失卻推出計畫的原意，「現在私樓都可以借九成，反而給草根階層購買居屋卻只獲借六、七成，這是極不理想，變相只是滿足一些供款能力較強的次要服務對象。」
售價偏高 旺市拉鋸嚴重
他認為，當局應循兩個方向解決問題，首要是要求房委會延長擔保期，讓樓齡超過二十至三十年的居屋可在市場正常買賣，或直接跟銀行理順居屋的按揭安排，「沒有了擔保期之後，居屋借貸條件跟同齡私樓相差很遠，這是十分脫節，亦反映銀行服務不到位；曾有銀行向居屋業主作出較為寬鬆的借貸安排，但其後已收緊，因此政府需要表態鼓勵，不能只是個別銀行『捱義氣』。」
他坦言，多年來也跟當局反映有關問題，惟一直未獲積極回應，留意到現屆政府官員積極解決房屋問題，但同時也不應忽視窒礙居屋買賣的最關鍵技術問題，否則容易引起民怨，「這是草根階層買樓的問題，民生無小事，協助他們置業不是最重要嗎？」 承做高成數按揭居屋更少
身兼房委員資助房屋小組成員的立法會議員梁文廣指出，九七樓市高峰期大量落成的一批舊居屋單位，已紛紛步入關鍵年期的「水尾」，碰巧當局在二十年前宣布停建居屋，造成供應斷層。他說，雖然其後房委會多次出售貨尾單位，但數目微不足道，加上新建居屋不可立即在市場放售，預期未來一段時間可讓「白居二」申請者承造較高成數的居屋單位，將會急劇下降，成功「配對」入市更難。