New Normal, Metaverse, “I minted my own NFT”, Connectivity – what’s yours?
WELL, 2021 has been quite the journey and it looks like we could be in for another journey in 2022, the way the year is starting out. And there, I’ve done it – committed the crime of the journalist’s profession by using 2021’s biggest business buzzword twice in one sentence.
According to this Bloomberg report, “Mentions of the word ‘journey’ by S&P 500 executives on conference calls this year have soared almost 70% to 3,091, making it one of the fastest-growing corporate buzzwords in recent memory. The term was rarely used before – in fact, just once in 2001 – but it’s now used to describe practically any kind of business goal, even if it’s totally mundane.”
Tragic really, because journey is such a beautiful word, especially in travel. It implies movement, flow, passage, jaunt, roam – and everyone who works in travel lives by this quote – “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey” – although in terms of Covid, I think we’d all rather skip the journey and let’s just get to the destination already.
But here we are, somewhat stuck in the “journey” to “recovery” with the “light at the end of the tunnel” seeming more elusive and now, all of us are just waiting for January to pass and hope the Tiger Year will kill all future variants.
All around us, our friends are falling sick – thankfully, most I know are mild or are symptomatic. I am hearing more and more stories of friends testing positive while abroad and everyone figuring out on their own what to do, and most behaving responsibly unlike someone we know who hits tennis balls for a (very good) living.
At this stage of the “journey”, we can expect that more travellers coming to destinations that are open in Asia will test positive and the other day, I got a call from a travel colleague in a South-east Asian destination asking what happens if a traveller tests positive while in Singapore – so I rummaged around the web and found this link – “Covid Recovery for Travellers” from the Ministry of Health in Singapore – and am sharing it in case it helps anyone out there.
I know, inbound travellers are right now few and far between across Asia – with uncertainty around changing rules keeping travellers away for the moment. In Singapore, stomachs churned when the CEO of Singapore Tourism Board, Keith Tan, was quoted as saying in this report, “We will be reliant on local demand for some time to come. It will take a few more years before people feel comfortable going overseas.”
Immediately, people started asking, what does “some time to come” mean? The whole of this year? Imagine another year of having to rely on domestic business in this tiny island … I recall our first WiT Virtual back in April 2020 and I asked Louise Daley, then deputy CEO of Accor, which destination would be the last to recover and she said rather apologetically, “Singapore.”
So now we have to live with the “new normal” – another buzzword from 2022. We should be prepared to test positive while abroad this year, for as long as testing remains as part of the travel “journey” and do the right thing. On January 5, the UK scrapped pre-departure tests for arrival to the UK, given how endemic the pandemic had become.
I hope “endemic” becomes the new buzzword for 2022.
So what will be other buzzwords of 2022 be? Well, top of mind – “metaverse” and “NFT”. There’s not a day goes by that I am not receiving a media pitch, about some new metaverse and NFT idea, and you will see these two words pop up frequently in investor decks this year. “I minted my own NFT” is the new cocktail party boast.
Of course, the concept of a “metaverse” is not new – every new tech buzzword is usually a reskinning or is it respinning of something done before? In this “Sway” podcast, Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, reminded us that the Xbox is 20 years old and video gaming is the original “metaverse” – in which people got together to socialise, play, transact …
The term was also used by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash” but it was after a famous company decided to rename itself in a bid to own that universe that the term caught fire in the Valley, and now if you Google the word, you get 1,430,000,000 results. S.. still rules though – with 4,330,000,000 results. Combine the two words? You get 5,960,000 results.
So what I liked about Spencer’s interview was, he said crucial to the “metaverse” is content, community, cloud. In travel, I’d add “connectivity” as a new buzzword for 2022 – those who connect best by bypassing gatekeepers, busting walls and building bridges, will own the keys to the travel universe (in real life).
Okay I really don’t know where I am going with this column but hey, writing is also a journey.
Featured image: A DeLorean on the road from Marseille to Paris – get ready for the “journey” of 2022