The pandemic didn't extinguish wanderlust, but it reshaped how we want to travel

Two young women wearing masks while waiting together in an airport — For the Travel section of this year's edition of Insider's 100 People Transforming Business, we've highlighted 10 people making the most of shifting patterns in how we explore the world.
Francesco Carta fotografo/Getty Images

Nearly two years into the pandemic, Americans are starting to travel en masse again.
The time at home changed where we want to go, and how we get there.
These 10 industry players are leading the industry's effort to stay ahead of those shifts.
Transforming Business homepage for more stories.

For most Americans, the COVID-19 pandemic meant shifting where and how they did things. Working from home instead of the office. Getting groceries delivered rather than going to the store. Playdates for the kids at the park, not somebody's house.

But for the denizens of the travel industry, those shifts represented an existential threat. Life went on, but with a whole lot less moving around. Cruises shut down, road trips were postponed, and flights were reserved for acts of desperation.

Nearly two years in, with effective vaccines nearly universally available, the industry is coaxing Americans out of their bunkers — and starting to understand the many ways we've changed how we all think about movement.

For the Travel section of this year's edition of Insider's 100 People Transforming Business, we've highlighted 10 of those transformers, people working to accommodate those shifts and make the most of them, whether they're helping us get across town or around the world.

Street life

The dream of the self-driving car has been knocking around nearly as long as the car itself, but now that the technology is approaching ready for wide-scale deployment, it's time to figure out how to work it into people's lives.

At Argo AI, much of that work falls to Cynthia Kwon. The Waymo competitor's VP of strategy and business development is in charge of striking the deals to do all the non-technological stuff Argo doesn't want to take on. Lately, that means partnerships with Walmart to deliver goods in Miami, Austin, and Washington, D.C, and with Lyft to put robo-cars on the ride-hail platform in Miami this year and Austin in 2022.

At Zoox, the self-driving startup acquired by Amazon last year, CEO Aicha Evans is working to make good on the outfit's promise not just to change the role of the human in the vehicle but to rethink the nature of the vehicle itself. "The hard problems aren't something to be feared," Evans told Insider, "but rather an opportunity to learn."

Meanwhile, Uber veteran Raquel Urtasun is going back to the beginning of the process. This summer, she launched her startup, Waabi, with the goal of building a self-driving car from the ground up, based heavily on her expertise, machine learning. "When you don't have a solution yet, everybody thinks the same," Urtasun said. "Everybody's going for the same approach. Chances of success actually diminish."

By air and by sea

If managing director of global operations for United Airlines David Kensick gets his way, we could see the end of a time-honored airport tradition: sprinting through the airport, desperate to make your connection. Kensick is the force behind the airline's ConnectionSaver program, which prioritizes helping people make their flights over traditional performance indicators like airplane turnaround time. "This is such a leap that I do think at some point the industry will start to evolve towards these metrics," Kensick said.

Roei Ganzarski wants to make a bigger change to the flying experience. The aviation industry may be many years from erasing its Bigfoot-sized carbon footprint, but Ganzarski's startup, MagniX, is looking to take it down a size by developing a 40-seat, hydrogen-powered, electric aircraft set to take off in 2024.

Norwegian Cruise Line CEO Frank Del Rio is dealing with a much more imminent problem: how to safely return to the high seas, especially after multiple virus outbreaks on cruise ships in the early days of the pandemic. His answer: a strict mandate that everyone on board be vaccinated, even if that means saying no to families with kids too young for the shot and battling with politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Getting a room

The biggest travel-related changes stemming from the pandemic may be those hitting the hospitality business, as people rethink where they want to spend their time, whether they're working or on vacation. At Sonder, an Airbnb competitor that rents out properties it owns itself, CEO Francis Davidson says he's witnessed a decade's worth of "behavioral progress" in about 18 months.

Hopper's head of fintech, Anwesha Bhattacharjee, has deployed a "price freeze" tool to let customers lock in rates. "People wanted to travel, but we had to create something that made them comfortable booking it," she said. "We constantly kept our ears to the ground as we shifted to understand what customers wanted out of this product."

Since becoming Airbnb's global head of hosting in July 2020, Catherine Powell has been helping the company's hosts navigate those shifts. "Their ability to be resilient, their willingness to adapt, and their desire to continue to really create the best possible hosted experience has been really humbling," she said.

Read the original article on Business Insider