There seems to be plenty of interest from armchair astronauts. More than 40 percent of Americans yearn for an “out of this world” vacation, according to the 1997 Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown/Yankelovitch Partners National Leisure Travel Monitor, based on in-depth interviews with 1,500 U.S. households.
Forty-two percent of those surveyed say they are interested in a space cruise that would offer amenities similar to an ocean-going cruise ship while 34 percent specifically say they would be interested in a two-week vacation aboard the Space Shuttle and be willing to spend (on average) $10,800 for the trip. Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine recently reported similar surveys in Japan, Canada, Germany and the United States that found “an enormous unsatisfied desire among the general public to travel in space.”
“Space travel is about 10 to 15 years away if NASA and the private sector develop the necessary research and technology,” says George Diller, NASA spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. “I think you’ll see commercial initiatives, but it’ll be pricey. Ten thousand dollars won’t get you to the launch pad. You’d probably be looking at something closer to $50,000 for a trip lasting an hour, allowing the passenger to experience weightlessness for about 15 minutes.”
For space flights alone, Bob Citron, a former aerospace executive and director of the Foundation for the Future in Bellevue, Washington (an organization dedicated to scholarly research on life during the next millennium), speculates that $3 billion to $5 billion would be needed to buy 24 to 45 space tourist vehicles, four or five launch sites and staffing for 1,000 to 2,000 flights a year with ticket prices of up to $50,000. “A Space Shuttle vacation is certainly real in terms of consumer interest,” says Dennis Marzella, senior vice president at Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown. “The technology is there, but it needs to be adapted to accommodate tourists — comfortable seats and big windows.”
Patrick Collins of the University of Tokyo and the Japanese Rocket Society, speaking at the International Symposium on Space Tourism in Bremen, Germany, last March, estimates the development of a reusable, vertical takeoff and landing rocket for passengers would cost $10 billion and take six to seven years. “We need a lot of windows and we need bars, and the Japanese need a karaoke bar,” Collins says. “A gym with padded walls for zero-gravity sports would be a really fun place.”
The space plane designs may draw on the experience of “Hotol,” a pilot project of British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce a decade ago. Hotol was to have been a 50-to-60-passenger plane that would take off from conventional airports. After accelerating through Mach 5 to 80,000 feet, the plane would leave the atmosphere, continue to accelerate and become a satellite itself after reaching 250,000 feet — about four times the cruising altitude of Concorde — and an orbital velocity of Mach 25 to 30. Maximum flying time, ground to ground, to anywhere in the world would be about 70 minutes. Unlike the Space Shuttle, such a space plane would need no external fuel tanks and would re-enter the atmosphere and land under its own power. A space plane would be ideal for picking up and delivering tourists to a space resort en route.
Space Islands Project has an intriguing scenario for a space resort hotel based on a “20-year-old Rockwell idea” for joining up a dozen or so of the Space Shuttle’s empty external fuel tanks into a wheel-shaped space station. Each external tank measuring 28 feet in diameter and 154 feet long (a tad shorter than a 747 fuselage and walls four times thicker than those of the Mir space station) would be divided into three decks. The space station could accommodate 300 people in “cruise-ship conditions.”
‘The external tanks would be joined up end to end in the form of a ring with two more tanks joined up passing through the center like an axle through a wheel, like the orbiting Hilton in the 1969 movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” says Gene Meyers, director of Space Islands Project, “a loosely knit group of engineers, educators and architects,” in West Covina, California. “The station would take about an hour and a half to make a complete orbit of the Earth, but the ring itself would be spinning like a roulette wheel at about one revolution a minute thus developing artificial gravity. People would live in the outer ring where they would experience about half of normal gravity — they’d just be half their normal weight — so they could use bathroom facilities and suchlike at pretty well normal conditions. The central column section would be zero gravity. This could be the entertainment and recreation center, which guests could visit for an hour or so at a time. You’d have windows in the central column to view the Earth.
“There are lots of entertainment possibilities at zero gravity. Astronauts have found that blood that is normally drawn down to your legs is sort of released and drifts upwards. Astronauts’ legs become thinner, their chests expand by two to three inches, their faces fill out and wrinkles disappear. Shots of men in their forties before launch and an hour after launch look like father and son. Shannon Lucid, a 53-year-old American astronaut in the Russian space station last year, said she looked 20 years younger in space.”
Meyers and his group are looking to corporate sponsorship to meet the $10 billion to $15 billion cost of building the first space station. “You’d need about 16 of these external tanks. If we can get companies like Coca-Cola and General Motors to sponsor them for $500 million each, you’d cover big chunks of your costs for the first station; the second station would cost roughly half as much, and the third and fourth stations would be about 10 to 15 percent less.
“Space Islands Project is privately funded right now. We’ve budgeted $20 million for this first push to bring in some of the larger sponsors. The payback for them will be enormous. Coca-Cola, for example, spends $8 billion a year on marketing. So we’ve suggested that if they were to pay the cost of a shuttle launch — $400 million to $500 million — they could have the external tank painted white with their logo splashed all over it. This would give them two to three years of broad international exposure. We’re talking to Carnival Cruises, Hilton Hotels, Universal Studios, Radisson Hotels and Disney to support the project.”
‘The Frequent Traveler’ International Herald Tribune: Published: FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1997
Marseille is a city waiting to be discovered for itself not for its fearsome reputation – notably among people who have never been there – as a hotbed of crime, corruption, drug-dealing and social conflict. And indeed, this grand old Mediterranean port of 800,000 people – second largest city in France – still grand in its post-industrial decay, has had its fair share of troubles, unemployment and a large and sometimes restless immigrant population, largely North African, languishing in the bleak northern suburbs.
But for a weekend break Marseille has to be one of the best kept secrets in Europe. It is not a question of coming here out of season (although July/August can be cruel months for a pale-skinned Celt like me): there is no specific tourist season (60 percent of visitors – apart from film crews making gangster movies – are here to see friends and relations). Tourists are so rare that the city will absorb you like a surrogate immigrant into this magical melting pot of Mediterranean and African cultures. Whatever else, Marseille is an authentic experience.
‘Marseille as the Mediterranean’s largest port has always had a transient population,’ says a Marseillaise. ‘Nobody here can claim five pure generations. My father was Russian, my mother from an old Marseille family but mixed with Armenians and Italians. The problem is that the Arabs don’t mix; we’re lucky not to have the same problems as Paris, Lyon, Avignon, Toulon… Marseille is only the ninth city in terms of crime!’
‘Il faut briser les fantomes,’ an acquaintance says. And indeed this visit is long overdue. A taxi driver is pathetically concerned that we should bear glad tidings of this city back home with us; a black waiter, whom I’d forgotten to tip in the bar, wishes me a cheerful bonjour when I meet him on the stairs with a breakfast tray. A lovely black waitress serves breakfast with a dreamy smile. And the most dangerous encounter back from the restaurant late at night is with a gabby old gent in a grey chalk-stripe suit who is trying to persuade his dog to cross the road. ‘I don’t walk him; he walks me,’ he says with a well-rehearsed smile.
I’d always thought of Marseille as a city where one changed trains with some trepidation, never daring to venture down the steep steps of the Gare St Charles. Marseille always seemed somehow different – and dangerous. And indeed, on my first fugitive visit in the mid-1980s, a Foreign Legion officer in a white kepi and sun-bleached khaki, had appeared right on cue in front of the serried lines of sleek orange TGVs. A back-lit poster showed legionnaires marching bravely off into the sunset.
Sitting outside in a café on the Quai des Belges, facing the Vieux Port, with a tall pastis and the sun coming over the yard arm of the city behind, the only frisson we feel is of imminent gastronomic enquiry. Three hours away from the gun-metal skies of northern France, the sky is pale blue, whitening towards the horizon, with thin strips of high cloud; the sea is a deep hypnotic blue. In December, January and February, you can expect cloudless days with temperatures in the ‘60s; except when the Mistral blows – an icy knife slicing down the Rhone valley; howling over roofs, through crevices in doors, and etching icicles into the hearts of respectable folk. In September it is still warm enough to swim, but without the ferocious summer heat.
For a weekend visit, it makes sense to stay in or around the Vieux Port. Looking out towards the sea from the Quai des Belges, down the long rectangle of the Vieux Port, you are looking west, not south as you might expect; which explains the marvelous sunsets over the sea; and the luminous quality of the strong light reflected from the white chalk cliffs north-east of the city along the long streets: a hard light of uncompromising brightness and shade. The city is a sepia print in the late afternoon. One side of La Canebiere (Marseille’s Champs Elysees, a vestige of its former glory, which leads inland from the center of the Quai des Belges) is bathed in yellow light, while on the other side it is already night.
Arriving by boat into the deep rectangle of the Vieux Port with the sun setting behind you can be almost a religious experience; like entering the dark recesses of a cathedral with the light shining behind you. While the most wonderful way to view the city and the sea is from the gardens of the Palais du Pharo (or the nearby Sofitel Hotel) on the southern promontory at the mouth of the harbor.
On the right side (north side) of the Vieux Port as you face the sea, behind the Quai du Port, are the narrow streets of Le Panier winding up the hillside – the oldest part of the city settled by the Greeks in 600 BC, followed by the Romans and latter-day immigrants from North Africa. Many of the fine 17th/18th century houses along the quay were razed by the Germans in 1944. But the baroque façade of the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) still faces the harbor (perhaps because the Vichy authorities were even more Nazi than the Germans). The building contained a courthouse from whence prisoners were led across an enclosed bridge to the adjacent prison for incarceration, or worse…
There are vestiges of the Greek and Roman city in the public gardens, the Musee d’Histoire de Marseille in the Centre Bourse just behind the Quai des Belges, and the Musee des Docks Romainson the Place Vivaux farther down the Quai du Port. The Place des Moulins in the heart of Le Panier is reminiscent of a Greek village. Old stone fishermen’s cottages are now bars, cafes and Arab grocery stores.
On our way up the hill, our guide knocks at a nondescript door at what seems to be a private house in the Place des 13 Cantons. This is Michele Leray’s Chocolatiere, a savorous atelier-cum-front parlor inhabited by a sea of yapping dogs. Here we sample rich dark chocolate made somewhere on the premises (’85 percent cocoa’) and weighed out per kilo on ancient brass scales.
Crowning the hill is the Hospice de la Vieille Charite, a 17th century almshouse built by the Marseille architect, sculptor and painter, Pierre Puget. The building was saved from the ravages of property developers by Le Corbusier and Andre Malraux (Charles de Gaulle’s minister of culture) and restored between 1970 and 1986. It is now a museum and a center for exhibitions and concerts.
The Marche aux Poisson is held every morning from 9 until one o‘clock along the length of the Quai des Belges. Fish is fresh off the boats which are tied up behind the trestle tables – so fresh that from time to time a fish will slap about on the scales. Check that the registration plates on the stalls match those of the boats behind. (A few unscrupulous stall owners truck in their wares from somewhere else; supermarkets perhaps in the suburbs.) Bargains abound around noon when the fishwives colorfully strive to sell off the last of their catch.
The Marseillais go fishing or Sunday sailing en famille in the small boats crowded onto both sides of the Vieux Port. (There are about 300 much sought-after berths.) These are the sturdy high-prow pointus – serious little boats built to survive the open sea when the Mistral is blowing, a far cry from the plastic gin barges of Antibes, Cannes or St Tropez. While along the quay in front of the Hotel de Ville are the boat clubs – Groupe Amicale des Canotiers Phoceens; Union Nautique Provencale; Association des Vieux Marins Bateliers du Vieux Port…
On the left (south side) of the Vieux Port, behind the Quai de Rive Neuve, is t.he arsenal that Louis X1V built between 1665 and 1670 along with the two forts on each side of the entrance to the Vieux Port, less to protect the city from invasion than to establish the sovereignty of Paris over the unruly Marseillais. The Cours d’Estienne, a pedestrian precinct in the front of the restored arsenal buildings, is a popular gathering place with a multitude of bars and restaurants.
High up on the hill above the Quai de Rive Neuve is the florid much loved 18th century basilica of Notre Dame de Garde. While ten minutes drive, heading south around the headland on the Corniche are the parks and beaches of the Plage du Prado, where on winter Sundays the Marseillais parade their children and dogs.
You can drive as far as Callelongue just past Cap Croisette, where the coast road ends. Here begins the famous Calanques – a series of rocky creeks, a wilderness of cliffs and sea stretching 12 miles between Marseille and the picturesque little seaside town of Cassis – an unspoiled edition of St Tropez – 20 minutes drive on the D559. After Callelongue there is nothing but raw nature which you can only visit on foot – or by boat from the sea. You can walk for hours above the Calanques without ever seeing a sign of human habitation. In summer there are boat trips to the Calanques from the Vieux Port. In winter, you can hire a boat from Cassis.
You come in over the sea to land at Marseille-Provence Airport 18 miles north of the city. A terminal designed by the British architect Richard Rogers. It’s worth renting a car
at the airport: follow the signs on the autoroute to Vieux Port/Hotel de Ville. Parking is not a big problem over the weekend.
Arriving early evening on a Friday, we just wanted to stroll along the Vieux Port to get our bearings. A little ferry, which plies between the Hotel de Ville on the north side of the harbor and Place aux Huiles on the south side, saves you the longish walk via the Quai des Belges. For a taste of Provence, head for the fish restaurants around the Place Thiars. In the pedestrian precinct just off the Quai de Rive Neuve; or Les Arcenaulx on the Cours d’Estienne nearby – a bustling restaurant which comprises an art gallery and bookshop open till midnight. Or take the ferry across to the Bar de la Marine on the Quai de Rive Neuve – where Marcel Pagnol gathered material for his Marie et Cesar trilogy.
Saturday morning we explore Le Panier and La Veille Charite. Either have lunch in or around, or drive to l’Estaque, a small fishing port ten minutes north of Marseille past the Docks de la Joliette (restored like London’s docklands into offices and apartments) and the working commercial port.
Cezanne, Braque, Derain, Dufy and Renoir lived and worked at l’Estaque. Braque developed Cubism during several visits here between 1906 and 1910. Looking down on the roofs of the village from the little square in front of the church you could be sitting behind the easel of Braque or Cezanne, witnessing the birth of Cubism. There are lots of good places for lunch.
The Marche des Capucines, a 10-minute walk back from the Vieux Port, to the right of La Canebiere, is a taste of Africa, a crucial part of the Marseille experience. Here people come to shop among a dazzling array of fruit, vegetables and spices. Close by in a maze of streets and alleys around the Cours Julien is a multitude of restaurants – Pakistani, Indian, Chinese, Armenian, Jewish, Tunisian, Morrocan… Here you can eat authentic couscous; stewed lamb and spicy merguez sausages. Afterwards, you might want to stop by the Cantini Museum of contemporary art, a short walk away on Rue Grignan.
Saturday evening is the time to splurge at somewhere like Le Patalain, an elegant, rather garish restaurant in post art deco style – a place for serious gastronomes, shirt-sleeved arms akimbo… who want to see what they’re eating.
We had looked forward to bouillabaisse, the famous Provencale fish stew, said to be at its best in Marseille; but here you have to order it 48 hours in advance and for four to six people. Don’t expect the real thing unless you order it the day before, we are sternly told,
The ‘real thing’ consists of ‘at least six’ kinds of fish – baudroie; rascasse; rouget; St Pierre; congre; grondin – islands of juicy chunks swimming in a saffron-tinted broth. Don’t ask me to translate: some fish have different names in Marseille than in other parts of France. (Similarly, deep sea bass is called loup de mer along the Mediterranean and Bar if it is caught in the North Sea.) All I can tell you is that the villainous looking rascasse, which you often see in fish tanks, is called hog fish and that rouget (red mullet) is full of bones (filets de rougets need to be well filleted). Shell fish and prawns and the like are often simply tourist trappings. Today’s gastronomic presentation is a far cry from its origins as a simple fish stew made from the remains of the unsold catch (mostly bony fish) left over at the end of the day.
Bourride is a simpler, some say more refined, form of bouillabaisse, using firm white fish such as cod, brill, turbot or monkfish, in fish stock and laced with aioli – the provencale garlic mayonnaise.
I compromise with dos de loup aux epices while the others have moules mariniere and pieds et paquets marseillais (‘little parcels’ of lamb wrapped in its tripe and stewed for seven hours in tomatoes, herbs and white wine, which sounds revolting but is delicious). We drink a crisp white wine from Cassis.
At table, the French invariably talk about food, what they ate yesterday, what they are eating now, and what they’ll eat tomorrow. We are joined by the ebullient patronne-chef Suzanne Quaglia. She orders up portions of other dishes for everyone to try.
‘I’ve taken to putting coriander in my moules.’
‘I use the broth from roast quail to make risotto.’
‘My sauce was too thick.’ ‘Ah, too many tomatoes: and you must let it simmer slowly.’
Plus a lot of cross-table talk about the illegal delights of small birds (including, would you believe sparrows and robins?) for which the French have a bizarre predilection and consider as fair game (no pun intended)…
‘Ah, yes, I had a warning last year,’ Suzanne says. ‘Next time it’s a fine.’ She gives a Gallic shrug and stretches her mouth in a mock grimace.
Sunday we have time for a leisurely drive along the Corniche, past the Plages des Prado to Callelongue, just after Cap Croisette, and walk down to La Grotte for lunch of charcoal grilled steaks and the best pizzas this side of San Remo. And more chat with the natives.
‘Marseille isn’t dead city, a museum like Florence or Venice,’ our Marseillaise says. ‘People don’t like tourists who just come to gape and stare. You have to discover the city through the people. The spirit of Marseille is the Marseillais.
1994 – revised 2010.
Airborne between Paris and Hong Kong on a Global Airlines Boeing 2000ER, John and Jane Harbinger are lingering over lunch in the gourmet restaurant on the top deck (not much point in fast food on a 16-hour flight) figuring how they’re going to spend the rest of the afternoon. Jane decides on a soothing séance in the beauty parlor: John will make a few calls from the business center and polish his presentation. They’ll meet for drinks at six in the suite before dinner. ‘Would sushi hit the spot? I’ll book a table downstairs.’ John asks a passing ‘skycop’ for directions. ‘Head down the main corridor towards the tail and take the elevator down to the bottom deck.’
Planes such as this three-deck 1,000-seat Goliath – which entered service in 2015 – are derived from the 600-seat super jumbos promised (or threatened) by Airbus and Boeing in 1999. They are flying villages, allowing infinite scope for social congress, with half a dozen restaurant concessions – from classical French to McDonalds’ junk food – casinos, shops, cyber-cafes with Internet access, and health clubs. About the only things missing are a pool and an outside jogging track. But you never know!
There is no such thing these days as first, business or economy class. The price you pay depends on your choice of seating, cuisine and entertainment along with the kind of service you want on the ground. Accommodation ranges from standard cattle class and ergonomic sleeper seats with more personal space to air-conditioned cabins with beds, bathroom and butler service, that convert to a daytime lounge. For an extra charge, the airline will deliver a container to your home or office, transport you through the airport and load you onto the plan. Some tycoons have converted their offices into flight containers, re-creating the private railroad cars of a century ago – the ultimate in seamless travel.
Many people travel ‘a la carte.’ You book a seat or cabin and pay extra for meals and in-flight facilities and lounges, limos and other trimmings on the ground. Traveling cattle class is no longer much of an ordeal. You only have to stay in your seat for take-off and landing; the rest of the time you can move around freely. Skycops patrol the crowded aisles ready to deal with unruly or abusive passengers who can threaten not only the well being of other passengers but the safety of the aircraft. After all, on a long-haul flight you can be in the air for up to 18 hours – almost long enough to get married, start a family and get divorced, although not necessarily in that order. Some enterprising agents are using reservations computers to help people choose in-flight companions. They punch in your high-altitude likes and dislikes and match you up with a suitable seatmate.
Global Airlines is one of three mega-carriers that together share 80 percent of the world air travel market – the culmination of the giant airline alliances and code-sharing deals that carved up the skies in the late 1990s. These compete with consortia of regional airlines in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, along with half a dozen long-haul carriers mainly serving the business market.
Code sharing, whereby two or more airlines operate the same flight, and ‘block seat’ arrangements, whereby one airline sells seats on another airline’s flights, became commonplace by 2000. The abundance of space on the superjumbos allowed several airlines to share the same plane with their own fares, flight attendants, in-flight cuisine and service.
This led to the concept of the ‘virtual’ airline. You don’t need to own aircraft and infrastructure when you can ‘brand’ your own cabin in a superjumbo. Travel agents can buy blocks of seats (and hotel rooms) and market them under their own brands to corporate customers.
Since 1999, superjumbos – along with advanced technology for better control of the airways with new satellite navigation systems and new airports and terminals – have diminished the specter of gridlock in the skies by quadrupling air traffic capacity since 1999. But the challenge was daunting. Since 1999, air traffic has been growing at around 10 percent a year.
Thus the number of passengers has doubled every seven years, reaching a staggering 20 billion in 2020. Where are all these people going? And, more to the point, why do they all seem to be going with me?
The growth of tourism in China has been phenomenal. The Chinese government set the ball rolling when it cut the working week to five days, giving the nation’s workers an extra half-day off a week.
This was even better news for the travel trade, because – assuming a workforce of 750 million from a total population of 1.2 billion – it meant an extra 15 billion days’ leisure time coming on stream. And with more disposable income and the liberalization of passports, the Chinese have become international travelers.
According to the World Tourism Organization, China now generates more out-bound tourism than any country in the world apart from Japan, Germany and the United States. China has also become the world’s top tourist destination with 137 million visitors in 2020.
The world’s top 30 airports will handle more than 16 billion passengers this year. The traditional mega-hubs such as Chicago O’Hare, Los Angeles International, Atlanta, London Heathrow, Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok and Singapore’s Changi are bursting at the seams, each handling around 200 million passengers a year. But an airport building boom, especially in Asia, has added capacity. China has built more than 50 new airports since 1999.
Meanwhile, the creation of ‘wayports,’ or new hubs, in remote parts of Norway and Siberia has siphoned off a large amount of connecting traffic. More than 30 percent of the people milling around Heathrow, for example, were simply trying to get somewhere else.
Supersonic travel has become space age with Orbitol, a 50-passenger space plane that travels in low earth orbit enabling it to fly from London to Sydney in 45 minutes. Unlike the old space shuttles, Orbitol takes off and lands under its own power. After accelerating through Mach 5 to 80, 000 feet, the plane leaves the atmosphere, continues to accelerate and becomes a satellite itself after reaching 250,000 feet – around four times the cruising altitude of Concorde – with an orbital velocity of Mach 25 to 30.
More down to earth, high-speed maglev (magnetically levitated) trains traveling at 300 miles per hour have replaced air travel on journeys of up to 500 miles, releasing slots at major airports, most of which have train stations, for long-haul traffic.
Regional airlines serve ‘thinner routes,’ enabling business travelers to avoid mega-hubs. Thus ‘regional long-haul’ services allow travelers to fly point-to-point between cities such as Manchester and Osaka, Seattle and Perth, Stuttgart and San Francisco.
Mega-hubs, with a larger daily population than many major cities, are no longer a means to an end but an end in itself, destinations in their own right. They form a worldwide network of alternative cities – what you might call the terrestrial equivalent of space stations – with their own business communities and civic amenities, hotels and conference centers. Who needs to go downtown when you are already there? Many people don’t travel to cities any more, just to airports.
John Harbinger, on-line to his office in Broken Springs, Colorado, asks himself a routine question: whether he really needed to make this trip.
Technology enables (and requires) him to be totally wired at all times. The No. 1 rule for business travelers is wherever you are, always to be on the phone to somewhere else. So why travel? John rationalizes that this is a working vacation – a chance to bring Jane along. He’s looking forward to a round of golf with his Chinese associates. And he and Jane plan to take off for a five-day airship cruise among the Hong Kong islands.
Modern airships are safe, comfortable, and environmentally friendly, as they sail and hover less than 100 feet above the ground. An airship cruise is a spectacular way to see many wonders of the world, such as the Amazon and what’s left of the rain forests in Brazil and Peru, chateaux of the Loire, fly along the Nile to see the pyramids, explore Venice or make an air safari in Kenya.
‘Virtual conferencing,’ has done away with the need for many business trips. A 100-inch (256 centimeter) illuminated high-resolution screen with ‘wrap-around’ sound makes everyone seem life-like and gives the illusion that you’re in the same room. This means that you can participate normally in the discussion; using the same body language.
Travel was in danger of becoming an end in itself. I am therefore I travel: I travel therefore I am. Travel is about human interaction, hands-on experience. Getting the best return on your ‘interaction expense’ is a trade-off between cost in terms of time, money and hassle and the opportunity of staying doing something more productive somewhere else.
Of course, there’s sometimes a need to be somewhere in person – the eye contact, the real, compared to the cybernetic, handshake, the impromptu meeting and, of course, the social dimension can be pure gold. It is not something you can quantify; it’s intuitive, gut feeling. Who goes to a conference to listen to the speakers? You can pick up a transcript or receive it live in your office. It’s real-time networking that counts.
In the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Homeric hero, Ulysses, back in 1842:
‘I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch where thro’
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.’
But business travel is less poetic and a good deal less sentimental. Which is why John Harbinger makes fewer trips these days. This excursion with Jane is a fairly rare experience in real-time reality. Like most other road warriors, John embraces the new ‘travel avoidance’ technology, such as virtual conferencing and virtual meetings in real or ‘displaced’ time, with chiliastic zeal.
The technology is rooted in voice recognition software developed back in the late 90s that enabled you to call a computer from anywhere in the world, check your e-mail your voice-mail and faxes, either by computer or through the telephone. You could convert them from voice to text, or vice versa, and re-direct them by any medium.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence make it possible to hold an open-ended discussion through a computer. The machine not only understands the meaning of what you say but replies to you in a normal voice – which might be the digitalized voice of a real person.
John Millennium, along with his colleagues, has had his voice ‘digitalized’ and stored on-line. Early computer-generated voices sounded robotic because words were mechanically strung together into sentences, thereby losing the rhythm of the dialogue; whereas digitalized voices are produced by recording entire sentences, then shoehorning in numbers and letters of the alphabet.
Voices are recorded in three ways. If you say the number nine, for instance, at the beginning of a word, it sounds different from if you say it in the middle or the end. The same applies to words and phrases.
It’s hard to detect a digitalized voice in displaced time from a real voice in real time. Meetings can thus be conducted in real or displaced time. You program your responses, to say, a budget meeting, in advance and your digitalized voice conducts a dialogue on your behalf. Cognitive programs are being designed whereby John can participate vicariously at several meetings while he is away. It beats the old way of having answering machines talk to one another, or batting e-mails back and forth, communication lost in fruitless volleys of non sequiturs.
Back in their suite, the Harbingers are mentally packing their bags for an ‘out of this world’ space vacation. They have been armchair astronauts for years and are looking forward to five days in a Disney Space Resort 300 miles above Earth. They will take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a NASA space shuttle adapted to carry 40 tourists, experiencing weightless for about 15 minutes.
The resort accommodates 300 people in cruise-ship luxury. It takes an hour and a half to make a complete orbit of the Earth, spinning like a roulette wheel at about one revolution a minute, thus developing artificial gravity.
You stay in an outer ring, where you experience about half of normal gravity – just about half your normal weight – so you can use bathroom facilities and such at practically normal conditions. A central column section has zero gravity. This is the entertainment and recreation center, which guests can visit for an hour or so at a time. There are windows in the central column to view the Earth.
There are lots of entertainment possibilities at zero gravity, including a gym with padded walls. Astronauts have found that blood that is normally drawn down to your legs is released and drifts upwards. You become thinner, your chest expands by two to three inches, your face fills out and wrinkles disappear.
While Jane muses about a second honeymoon in space, John is thinking about the final frontier in space travel – to experience Einstein’s paradox of relativity, that if you travel faster than the speed of light, you are younger when you get back than when you left. Daunting implications for a career in international business.
The latest return to the future comes in the form of the patented ‘Flex-Seat’ from Boston-based Jacob-Innovations – a ‘two-storey pod-like design for business-class seating which can be converted to an economy-class set-up on demand’ for airlines ‘that might want to alter a plane’s configuration depending on how many tickets of each class it has sold; and at the same time, ‘increasing the density of a conventional business class cabin by 50 per cent while providing full reclining’ – whatever that means.
The Flex-Seat was presented at the ‘Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg – ‘launchpad for cabin programmes that showcase tomorrow’s designs. Check it out at http://jacob-innovations.com/FLEX-SEAT.html. Flex-Seat looks to me like Lego re-invented by the Japanese – pods for bods. Think of it as an accountant’s dream for raising the ergonomic stakes of ‘cattle-class’, or maximising the return on investment of ‘premium’ passengers – responsible, according to IATA, for 25-30 percent of passenger revenues but only 7-10 percent of numbers.’
Whatever the merits of Flex-Seat, airlines need a deus ex machina to extricate them from a dire dilemma: how to reconfigure the expensive real estate of aircraft cabins to conform to a new reality: that all-important premium traffic is declining; and that the class system, as it has evolved over the years, needs to be re-invented.
The statistics are appalling: premium ticket sales continue to fall – they were off 21.3 percent off in June 2009 compared with June 2008, according to the International Air Transport Association Premium Travel Monitor, which should have most airlines in a catatonic tailspin. Premium travel numbers have been in decline for 12 consecutive months.
Even the business travelers that are staying in the front of the plane during the down-turn are doing so at cheaper rates; revenues from premium travel fell even more – 41 percent in the second quarter as airlines slash prices in a frantic attempt to maintain demand.
The effect on the bottom line has been catastrophic. Consider this: according to IATA, ‘Premium passengers are responsible for 25-30 percent of passenger revenues but only 7-10 percent of numbers.’ Every percentage loss of travelers in the premium cabins reflects on the yield like a shadow on the wall.
And yet airlines have only themselves to blame. They failed to learn the lessons of the 9/11 crisis, which exquisitely coincided with the cusp of a recession, and sent travel into free fall – precipitating a sea change in the way people view business travel, and view their lives, sharpening their priorities. And they failed to understand that their ‘branding,’ their class system as it had evolved over the past 40 years had got out of sync with the changing needs of the business traveler. What is more, they have ‘debased’ the value of their brands through indiscriminate upgrades and cut prices.
Even I am too young to go back to the 1930’s with bunk beds on the flying boats and the trans-continental flights between New York (La Guardia and California (Birkbank L.A.) taking two or three days. The opening chapter in Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel ‘The last tycoon’ has an opening chapter on such a flight. My only surrogate recollection is a photo of a woman fastening her stockings on a bunk bed on a United Airlines flight in the 1930’s.
Lillian Hellman wrote about the time on a flight from Los Angeles to New York in the 1950s when Hollywood producer Harry Cohn sent back an invitation for her to join him for lunch, saying that it was much healthier than the “dreck on the plane.”
“Two of his younger employees hauled down the largest picnic hamper I have ever seen,” Hellman wrote. “It was filled with forty or fifty fine, thin chicken sandwiches, cold white wine, prosciutto wrapped around perfect ripe melon, homemade pickles, large peaches, wonderful walnut cookies.”
So what else is new?
When I started traveling on business in the mid-1960s, there were only two classes on the old narrow-body planes and the early jumbos – first and economy. And only three types of fare: first; full (flexible) economy; and ‘excursion.’
First class was a golden ghetto for chief honchos and the seriously rich. Everyone else flew economy – which wasn’t nearly as grand as business class is today: you had to pay for drinks and headsets (with those little plugs that used to bore into your brain) but the food was okay and you had enough space to stretch your legs. Cattle class it was not. And it was democratic. You might find yourself chatting to a lieutenant if not a captain of industry, a diplomat, an aircraft salesman, a honeymoon couple, or perhaps an ambiguous lady of uncertain provenance. There was much scope for social congress.
My fondest memory of those days is of flying back from Chicago to Europe. Staff at the row of airline check-in desks behaved like barkers at a fairground. As most flights left more or less at the same time in the evening, I would up and down with my flexible ticket and bestow my custom on the airline that would ‘guarantee’ me four seats across, ideally behind the bulkhead in the non-movie section of the cabin, where I could stretch out and sleep. More creative souls would invoke a last-moment client meeting and upgrade to first class using their Air Travel Cards, swearing blind that there were no seats left in economy.
Life became more complicated when business class emerged as a third cabin in the late 1970s. The idea, you may remember, was to ‘reward’ business travelers paying the full economy (Y) fare on the new wide-bodied planes with their own exclusive cabin, sequestrating them from backpackers and savvy leisure travelers who might have paid two-thirds or less for their tickets. Comfort and service in most long-haul business class cabins is arguably more comfortable than the old first class, with lie-flat all-singing-all-dancing sleeper seats, and a galaxy of perks and gizmos; but a lot less exclusive.
Piling on frills inevitably piled on the price of the ticket. First class can cost twice the price of business class, which in turn costs up to four times more than a fully flexible economy ticket and 20 times more than the cheapest excursion ticket.
Faced with a blizzard of discounted or ‘gray’ fares, upgrades, special promotions, such as two-for-one fares, and a maze of frequent flier awards, it’s easy to pay a lot more for a lot less – or vice versa.
Virgin Atlantic re-invented the two-class (first/economy) system in 1985 with its Upper Class – billed as first class service and comfort at business-class prices. Upper Class became the concept for the early 1990s as several airlines abandoned first class for a more spacious business class (business class had become a tough act to follow; though there are always people prepared to pay serious money for serious in-flight real estate.)
Continental Airlines was the first carrier to create a combined first/business class, followed by Delta Air Lines, Air Canada, KLM, and many others. Even airlines that have kept first class cabins, only offer them on certain routes.
Premium economy is a successful compromise between the ever-increasing cost of business class and the squalor of cattle class. It attracts and business travelers whose budgets, or corporate travel policies, do not permit them to fly business class; and many leisure, especially older people. The idea is to ‘reward’ economy passengers paying the full fare, and passengers who could no longer afford business class, with a separate cabin – echoing the rationale for business class 40 years ago.
Perhaps it is time to re-invent the wheel.
Will the successful no-frills, or budget airline, model work for long-haul, trans-continental flights? That is the question – especially in such dire economic times, when many airlines are cutting services and reducing capacity.
One airline that is bucking the trend is AirAsia X, the low-cost, long-haul affiliate of AirAsia (www.airasia.com), which has announced plans to fly five-times weekly non-stop (a 12-hour flight) between London Stansted and Kuala Lumpur, starting March 11, 2009. One-way fares start at £99 (RM49) for a 31-inch pitch seat, and from £549 (RM1,999) including airport taxes.
(Currently AirAsia X flies 4 times weekly to Gold Coast, Australia, and 5 times weekly to Hangzhou, China. AirAsia X aims to cover destinations which are more than four hours away from Kuala Lumpur, complementing the existing AirAsia network and offering daily point-to-point frequencies to popular destinations in Australia, North Asia, India, the Middle East and Europe.)
[No-frills carriers are modeled on Southwest Airlines in the United States. They are characterized by point-to-point services, high utilization of aircraft, low distribution costs, achieved with on-line booking, and variable one-way fares that reflect demand for flights at different dates and times of the day. Such has been the success of carriers such as EasyJet, Ryanair, Air Berlin, and German Wings, that ‘full-service’ airlines, like Air France, SAS, Swiss and British Airways, have adopted similar low-cost, one-way pricing in order to compete on short-haul routes in Europe. It is often hard to tell the difference these days between no-frills and the full-service, or ‘legacy,’ carriers in Europe, as they both raise the stakes in competing with one another.
Analysts have long debated whether the ‘no-frills’ formula can work with long-haul services, if only because quick aircraft turnarounds can be frustrated by issues of safety and time-zone constraints, and crew schedules. And of course, the discomfort span: will passengers tolerate being jammed for eight hours into a knee-crunching seat that they might just about put up with for a short flight? And one has to offer some creature comforts on a long flight.
Craig Jenks, president of Airline/Aircraft Projects Inc. in New York, says, ‘You are asking, can one become the other and vice versa? The answer is that the high-cost full-service carriers are doing their best to reduce costs. And the low-cost carriers over here are going progressively longer haul. JetBlue and Southwest both fly from Coast to Coast, one hour less than the North Atlantic. You might say, if they can do that, why can’t they just cross the Atlantic? It so happens that that one hour time difference is the difference between operating a narrow body plane like the Boeing 757 and a wide body like the 767. Simplicity of equipment is absolutely paramount. And when you go long haul, you have to have better food, service and entertainment. And probably a premium cabin of some kind.’
‘Pay-per-frill,’ such as charging for priority boarding, and disembarking, in-flight use of mobile phones, extra legroom and baggage allowance, and gourmet meals, might be the answer for both airlines and passengers. Look out for hybrid premium seats or cabins, not as fancy (or pricey) as the all-singing-all-dancing ergonomic lie-flat sleeper seats in first and business-class cabins of the big name carriers, but at least as comfortable as those old first class seats in the narrow body Boeing 707s and DC 8s back in the late 1960s, before business class was invented. Following perhaps in the tradition of the much lamented Canadian carrier, Ward Air (long since subsumed by Air Canada) that had a ‘Big Seat’ option on long-haul routes between Canada and Europe. Everyone got the same service, but you could opt to pay extra for a larger, more comfortable, seat. ]
I spoke first with Azran Osman-Rani, CEO of Air Asia X:, and then Tony Fernandes, AirAsia group CEO.
R.C: There are various business models for ‘no-frills,’ ‘low-cost’ and ‘budget’ that are sometimes hard to define; then you get so-called ‘hybrid’ carries – a sort of segmentation within the low-cost category. What sort of model is Air Asia on this particular route?
A.O-R: I joined AirAsia a year and a half ago to start AirAsia X – a separate company that does long-haul services – operationally, we’re one and the same and we have one consumer brand which is Air Asia, but Tony has kept us as a separate entity because he did not want to expose AirAsia’s public shareholders to the different risk profile of long haul, which at that time was unproven compared to short haul – he wanted to use public shareholder funds to underpin the financing of AirAsia short haul operations.
As we started AirAsia X as a separate company, we were able to raise our own funding, buy our own planes, but we take advantage of the strength Air Asia has in terms of the brand and the network; we share the same pilots and crew, and ground handling… now, here’s Tony.
R.C: Successful no-frills carriers, such as Ryanair and EasyJet, have been based on the Southwest Airlines model, which is essentially point-to-point; single equipment; low overhead; low distribution costs – they pioneered on-line booking, and one-way pricing, which legacy carriers have been following; high aircraft turnaround and high utilization of capital; no interlining… Now this works for short haul, but can it work for long haul? Can you give me a rationale for the long haul? and how you are going to make it work?
T.F: Right now I think we are the only airline that is using our present model how does it work? Since we started everyone has said the long haul model doesn’t work for the all the reasons you have said. Now where we buck the trend is we take AirAsia and we put it on steroids and it becomes AirAsia X and it becomes high capacity, high utilization; we still do quick turnarounds, we’re not slaves to a timetable; so if you look at our London flight, we arrive at different times during the day so we maximize utilization. But the key is really the point-to-point; we’re not really point-to-point, though we operate as point-to-point. What does that mean? It means that when I fly from London to Kula Lumpur, the point-to-point traffic in KL may not be that large, but you now have a short haul network that’s second to none. You can go from KL to scores of destinations, like Bali, Phuket, Bangkok, Singapore and so on… So we marry the long haul with the short haul in what we think is a winning formula.
R.C: So you can interline?
T.F: We don’t actually practice the interlining policy; we have all the advantages without the costs…
R.C. Interlining is costly?
T.F: Correct. We’re like EasyJet; if you want to fly on you, have to have a separate ticket. We make it easy. For example, in our new terminal were building in KL, we have for the first time put in a transfer desk; and people coming off Azan’s planes can go to this desk and recheck in for their next flight. We will make it a form of interlining, but we’ll make it self-liquidating; i.e. if you say I don’t want to deal with my bags, can you put them on the next flight? then we will charge you for that service. So it’s still a menu of services, that are priced, so that you can virtually get a full service product. But you pay for it.
R.C: This a la carte pricing is now happening with the full service airlines; it started with baggage. I see it working for the consumer because if you just want a basic fare you get it; you think you’re getting free food or interline, but you’re not; it’s in the cost structure. I prefer to pay for my own champagne if I want it.
T.F: Correct. It’s inequitable; because the guy in front of you may drink three bottles; the guy behind you may be a teetotaler…
R.C: But tell me how it works.
T.F: You buy a base fare, a seat; change your ticket? No, you want to change anything, there are change fees and so on. We ask for discipline. Why? Because a lot of people will book a seat and then they don’t turn up. It’s a perishable product; when you don’t turn up we have very little time to sell it again, so we say, to maintain our low fares, our efficiency, we ask a little bit of discipline from you. One base fare, dynamically priced, based on demand. Our yield management is exactly like Ryanair or EasyJet. The best passenger in the crude sense, according to [Michael] O’Leary, is someone going to a funeral. Why? Because he has to get there. So you open a newspaper (you had no intention of going to KL), you see £99, you say, I’m going to go; that’s the discretionary market that we fill up using our low fares; then the middle market people, who had planned to take a trip; then the last minute travelers. We charge a bit more for them because we know they’re time sensitive.
So that’s how we work; maybe I’m a little bit biased. It’s been in my mind since I was a 13-year-old plane spotter at Heathrow. I’ve looked at how could we get people cheaper across from Europe to Asia; and I think that for £99 pounds, people will say, I was going to Spain, but now I’ll go to Bali. The same for people in Southeast Asia, who only dreamed of seeing Big Ben. There are three things people in Asia people are dying to see: the Queen, Big Ben, and a football match. It’s now a reality.
You buy your basic fare and get a 31-inch pitch; it’s a shell-back seat that slides down – we think it’s irritating when someone puts their seat back on you. We have a wonderful in flight system that costs you about £5; you pay for that and order from a choice of food on a touch screen; the order goes straight to the galley and crew will bring it out with drinks; it’s all there, comfort kits, extra blankets, order what you want, just swipe your card. I reckon you’d spend another £20 more on a 12-hour flight; one meal and a snack in between. You’re talking about £10 for food; maybe £5 for luggage.
You can also pay extra for a better seat; this could be an aisle seat, one by the emergency exit or by the bulkhead – allows you to stretch a bit more. Or it could be a completely better seat, the XL seat we call it, leather, fully reclining with more leg-room. It’s not a class. You see, that’s where complexity comes in; if I put in a class, then I have to have a separate check-in; people’s expectations are different, and your costs start creeping up. We have 30 XL seats on the Airbus A340 we’re leasing initially from Air Canada. Our load factor on those seats is about 65 percent.
Eventually, our configuration will be about 50 flat beds. Again, as a traveler I don’t care too much about the food; it is space and getting a good night’s sleep with really flat beds. One thing airlines screw up on is the duvet; they cut costs and put polyester and tiny pillows. We give you a really decent pillow and a decent blanket; that’s all inclusive in the seat cost – about £1,000 return.
So I keep the tradition; I’m not changing my model – I have high utilization; point-to-point, I don’t interline, don’t have a separate class; but we manage to tweak it without spoiling the operational efficiency, by giving customers a choice, so they can supplement it.
R.C. Would you call it a hybrid?
T.F: I’d like to say it isn’t actually, because I do think we’re in the traditions of Southwest Airlines; but I’d like to say we’ve been innovative, in being very religious to the model but finding ways to preserve the model. I sit down with Herb Kelleher of Southwest and he thinks what I’m saying is complete sacrilege. O’Leary would crucify me on the stake of low cost for abandoning the model. But I think one of the dangers of those guys is they don’t look at different ways of doing it. Jet Blue took out rows of seats, and put in live TV and all that, and putting in lounges. Or Air Tran having a business class; I don’t agree with that. But I think if you’re just stuck in your way for 40 years, then you do miss opportunities; one has to be evolving. But the core principles of the model are still there, although you can add value to that model.
R.C: How can you get fast turnaround on long haul?
T.F: We’re doing it. We’ve got 18 hours utilization; we’re turning around a 340 in about an hour right now; our 330 with 383 passengers we’re doing it in 55 minutes. An hour versus 25 minutes isn’t going to get you an extra flight to London. But let me tell you how we get it, how we differ from a traditional long-haul airline. One is if you look at our timetable. Everyone is flying at the same time every day; if I took a Malaysian Airlines flight, it would leave KL at 12 o’clock at night, arrive in London at six in the morning. Because of its integrity to its schedule, it would leave London about 11 o’clock in the morning and arrive back at KL at five; and then it wouldn’t leave again till 12. So in two days you lose 12 hours, because it doesn’t want its business class passengers getting up at six in the morning.
We’ll start off with five flights a week. But I’m going to look at London to KL as being a shuttle route. It sounds bizarre, but I really think I can get five, even seven flights a day. But I don’t want to scare the hell out of anyone. I’d say to them five times, but I really think we could do seven times a day; every three hours. Now why do I think that? Because I’m not just serving the UK market in Stansted; all my low cost brethren are there: Ryanair, EasyJet, Air Berlin, and whoever else survives this mess. So someone from Paris or Prague can fly over to Stansted, and take us to KL; and equally, someone from Malaysia can get over to Stansted with us, and travel on to Paris or wherever.
R.C: Will you do deals with them, with other low-cost carriers?
T.F: Well, I think eventually. Mind you, doing a deal with Michael O’Leary sounds a scary thought. Stelios though is a good friend; I started this airline based on Stelios, and yeah, Stelios is a much nicer person to deal with than O’Leary. I’ve got 600 million people in Asia I can promote to, so basically, I don’t think we need a formal tie up; because the Internet brings it all together anyway.
R.C: But why on earth are you launching at this particular time? Oasis, Zoom and others all going out of business?
T.F: What they did wrong was, number one, they didn’t have size; number two, they only had two or three planes; they didn’t have a brand like AirAsia. But the most important thing is they veered away from the low-cost model. Oasis had a business class with the same seating configuration as Singapore Airlines, and lounges. But the most important factor was, they didn’t have Air Asia’s short-haul network. When you arrive on KL with us, you’ve got the connectivity with us throughout Asia.
We have 100 destinations out of KL, and hubs in Bangkok and Jakarta, like Stelios in Europe. I think that’s the difference between us, plus we were religious to the model; we pack the seats in and made it as comfortable as possible.
R.C. What sort of load factors do you have to have for this?
T.F: Well, right now, fuel’s come down so much, so our load factors come down dramatically. Right now, at today’s oil price, for break-even we’re looking at 52 percent; with oil at $100 dollars, we’d be looking at about 65 percent; $150 dollars, we’re looking at 85 percent – at these fares.
R.C: Still, doing this in the credit crunch; why are you so optimistic?
T.F: I thrive on calamity; I thrive on the fact that everyone’s got their heads in a spin and don’t know what to do. And in a world of chaos, it’s the best time to capitalize and to build market share when everyone’s too busy looking after their own back sides; they’re not worried about what you do, all they’re saying is, this guy’s a lunatic, he will fail. So they leave us alone.
What I say, if anyone listens, is the best time to build a brand is during a recession, because everyone else has cut advertising. The worst time to cut your marketing budget is during a recession, because when you come out of the recession, your brand is very strong; those who survive will be very strong. So it’s the easiest thing to cut, that’s correct, but it’s the worst thing, and you sometimes can’t see the effects of the brand building, you know, to the bottom line. I have daily battles with my controller who says, why don’t you take a quarter page ad instead of a full page? But we thrive on this; we’re contrarian, we believe people want to travel, that we have good news and this will stimulate travel.
R.C: What about other routes?
T.F: The big question is, whether I put all my eggs into Stansted, and use that as the base into Europe; or whether we split and say, okay, let’s have one in Stansted, one in central Europe, and one in eastern Europe. I would probably say the latter. So we’d look at somewhere in southern Europe or central Europe. And I’m a big believer in eastern Europe; I believe the Poles, and the Czechs, and the Slovaks would love to come to our part of the world; and we would love to go to their part of the world.
Call me any time. I would love to pick your brains.
London, Dec. 2008
Cuba is a time capsule, a refuge for real travelers who seek to escape from the ravages, the detritus, the cynicism of western mass tourism. It is a glimpse of life untainted by McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Starbucks. Havana is one of the grandest and best preserved and romantic colonial cities in Latin America, steeped in living culture, vibrant with music, song, and dance. Familiar images in the glossy magazines of 1950’s American cars and decaying Spanish colonial buildings, are only part of the story. Cuba is a country in transition, developing tourism, infrastructure and industry, often in joint ventures with foreign capital. But it is not a country waiting to be taken over by the U.S., or anyone else for that matter.
Politics is in the air one breathes here, and Cubans seem surprisingly willing to talk politics - especially over a mojito. They are survivors (and prisoners) of a mythology, nourished by the 49-year U.S. embargo, and relentless hostility and propaganda war. There is still the spirit of the 1959 revolution when Fidel’s ‘July 26 Movement’ overthrew the odious U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
A giant poster of Fidel on the road from Havana airport proclaims: Fidel - Vamos! Fidel Get Lost?! My companion reassures me with a smile. ‘No, it means, Forward with Fidel.
Fidel Castro (universally known as ‘Fidel’ and described when discretion requires by a beard-stroking motion) has been ill since 2006, when he handed over power to his brother Raul. But Fidel, though visibly frail, is performing once again on the world stage.
The ‘Miami Mafia’ - the half-million Cuban-American exiles in Little Havana, Miami - have had to postpone the wild street party. Few serious observers believe that Fidel’s demise would suddenly change Cuba. The revolution has evolved into a ‘third way’ - a pragmatic form of independent socialism. As Fidel said in May 1959: ‘Our revolution is neither capitalist nor Communist… Capitalism sacrifices the human being.
Communism, with its totalitarian conceptions, sacrifices human rights.’
Accusations from Washington about the alleged violation by Cuba of ‘human rights’ have a hollow ring with the somber specter of Guantanamo Bay, just 1,000 kilometers from Havana on the eastern edge of the island.
But tourism will inevitably transform the island’s economy and the quality of the travel experience. Tourism is a vital earner of hard currency.
But one of the strange things is how tourism has integrated into the country without causing much unrest; there seems to be very little resentment. Cubans keep smiling; if there’s a problem they laugh, buy a bottle of rum and take a guitar and go dancing.
Some 2.5 million tourists came to Cuba in 2006, including 200,000 British (mainly to the beach resorts), Russians, Spanish and Germans. North American accents are likely to be Canadian - although 200,000 Americans came in illegally, mainly through Cancun, risking penalties from the State Department if they are caught breaking the embargo.
David Bingham, an Englishman and director of a financial group that has a joint venture with the Cuban government in the Saratoga Hotel, a newly restored building facing El Capitolio in La Habana Veija, says: ‘You won’t see much change before the U.S. elections in two years time; although they won’t be able to swamp the country - Cubans are very proud. But within two to five years you will begin to feel the American influence; it will start with relaxation allowing Cuban Americans to come back here, and then to allow other Americans. Every American you meet wants to come to Cuba.’