Will your smart car end the monopoly of Airlines?

No, (but I wanted to have a catchy title, clarifications to follow)

When people talk about cutting edge technologies entering the mainstream the word disruptive gets thrown about way too frequently.  "How quantum computers will disrupt the world of encryption"  things of that nature.  For autonomous cars, the promise of a vehicle that needs no oversite of a human driver, the potential impacts are incredibly, traffic will no longer need to use tradtional traffic lights, cities can do away with the majority of their parking lots, the list goes on.  What has not recieved too much conversation, has been the impact on airports (well so far as this author has run into during casual updates on the tech sphere).

An autonous car means that flightstrips(the party responsible for this mistake has been slapped as a result of this mistake (1/31/17)) to locations 500 or so miles away are no longer as necessary, why spend the an hour inside of a plane, plus the hassle of security, when you can just queue up a destination in a sleeper car, and wake up 8 hours later at your target destination, on its own this will certainly change people's habits but it doesn't necessarily mean that airlines would be quaking in their boots.  Not everyone wants to try to sleep and drive.  An autonomous car, in tandem with smart planning software, and airlines that are willing to collaborate, that's got some real promise.  For someone based in a city Boston, a smart car means that they don't necessarily need to go to Logan for their flight to Bejing instead, they could commute to find the most optimal international airport.  The journey could  be seemless, computers can account for net travel time, you get picked up, driven to a target airport that minimizes how many hours you spend in layover (or at least optimizes the length of your layover).  Every trip a perfect balance of cost, convenience, and transit time.  This augmenting of travel would also mean that hub airports and regional airports would need to compete againts eachother potentially driving down costs, or at least minimizing congestion.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, feedback, please let me know in the comments.

The future of the hotel mini-bar

As I fly out on my first work trip as a consultant a thought on the future of the hotel mini bar, which my employers have reminded me that I should not expect to be reimbursed for having a scotch from the minibar at the end of the day.  As the autonomous delivery by drone moves away from beta testing to real world uses the hotel industry is looking at losing another one of their revenue sources, think the internet making adult film rentals obsolete, or at least less likely (I’m not going to speak for other people’s media habits).  If I can request a burrito to be delivered to me by robot in 30 minutes or less why would I grab a snack bar from the mini-bar fridge?  For hotels, who ostensibly own the low-lying airspace directly above their property (I do not know the altitude limits so I am being vague), they can restrict which aircraft can make deliveries to their hotels.  Some hotels may choose to simply prevent all aerial deliveries, which is their right, but what about hotel franchises that want to be more engaged in the future of technology?  (In this authors opinion)

 Freemium drone delivery.

Hotels could treat drone delivery how companies approach app downloads.

Basic deliveries arrive at the front desk and can occur between 7 AM and 11 PM

*Free deliveries, you can only order a limited number of items from a vetted list of vendors, these can be picked up at vending machines at the end of the hallway.

Premium Direct, you room’s drone docking station is activated, aircraft are able to deposit items 24/7 and with complete discretion.

Concierge Diamond (or some marketing style name)  the drone works with remote concierge services to allowfor autonomous anonymous delivery of items that might not be normally delivered by drone.  This might include picking up dinner from a restaurant that doesn't actually do delivery. 

I hope you like the concept, if you have questions, thoughts suggestions feel free to reach out in the comments.

*as in you don’t know what kind of money was exchanged between the hotel and the 3^rd party seller