New York (AirGuide - Travel Security Update North America) Jan 15, 2012
John F. Kennedy International Airport JFK renovations will improve screening for travelers. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expects to complete work on renovations to John F. Kennedy International Airport in spring of 2013. The USD1.2 billion project will include a new mechanized baggage screening system that will automate the process for checking luggage. The project will also relocate the airport's security screening station and allow travelers to move more quickly through checkpoints. Jan 11, 2012
Juneau International Airport Alaska airport will start using new scanners this month. Transportation Security Administration agents at Alaska's Juneau International Airport will start using scanners later this month that produce generic images of travelers. The machines use "advanced imaging technology," which scans the surface of a traveler's body. Officials said travelers who have had medical procedures usually pass through these scanners without a problem. Jan 13, 2012
Pearson International Airport Toronto airport will lay off 300 screeners. Some observers say the layoff of 300 security screeners at Toronto's Pearson International Airport raises concerns about security. Pearson is Canada's busiest airport. The layoffs of the the 300 screeners will come after about 80 screeners have already been laid off in the past few weeks. Jan 12, 2012
Sabre Airline Solutions Airline executives kept awake at night by government regulation on airport security, emissions and taxes. Government regulation regarding airport security, emissions and taxes is one of top issues negatively impacting global airlinesO revenues over the next 18 months. This is according to a bi-annual Sabre Airline Solutions survey of executives at nearly 80 regional and global airlines worldwide who were asked to rank what positively and negatively impacts airline revenue. Many airlines from around the world are opposed to the recently launched EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which requires airlines flying into European airspace to pay for carbon emissions. A number of airlines worldwide have also faced a number of proposed or new airline taxes which threaten to increase the cost of air travel considerably, depressing travel demand in an already unstable economic environment. This is the first time that Government Regulations has ranked in the top three challenges that will negatively impact an airlineOs business revenues. OAirlines already invest significantly to reduce their carbon emissions, so rather than imposing one-off taxes and compliance schemes that hamper this investment, governments would be better served having more sustainable policies, such as incentives for the research and development of alternative fuels, and adopting policies around NextGen air traffic control,O said Sam Gilliland, chairman and chief executive officer of Sabre. In the past year, airlines and U.S. airport security officials have also come under fire by passengers for increasingly lengthy airport security measures, which also threaten to dampen air travel demand. OTravel plays such a critically important role in a healthy global economy and we should all be focused on finding ways to make travel easier and more accessible without compromising security and the health of the industry,O Gilliland said. OWhile some global governments are grappling with how to solve economic problems, they must remember to not bite the hand that feeds them. Airlines are significant contributors to regional and global economies [ETH] making it more costly and difficult to travel will only add to fiscal hardships [ETH] not solve them.O Airline industry leaders, including Gilliland, have voiced their concerns with U.S. government officials in an attempt to spur reform. In his role with the U.S. Travel Tourism Advisory Board, Gilliland put forth recommendations for a Trusted Traveler Program that would see frequent travelers move through airport security quicker. Gilliland also recently put forth recommendations for a new energy policy that would help drive less reliance on fossil fuels. Challenges having the greatest negative impact on airline revenues: [yen] Fuel prices [ETH] 81% [yen] Government Regulations [ETH] 72% [yen] Airport/Passenger Security [ETH] 59% Fuel price concerns continue to top the Sabre survey with 69 percent of airline executives surveyed specifically identifying Fuel Price Instability as the biggest challenge facing airlines. Fuel purchase management and fuel hedging management were most often identified as the primary issues related to fuel price instability. Challenges having the greatest positive impact on airline revenues: [yen] Revenue/Yield [ETH] 81% [yen] Customer Loyalty and Retention [ETH] 81% [yen] IT investment [ETH] 76% Airlines surveyed by Sabre recognize Customer Loyalty/Retention as important to increasing revenues but there was a sharp decline over the past two years in the number of airlines that view customer loyalty and retention as a chief challenge for them. This comes in stark contrast to recent consumer surveys conducted by a variety of organizations that have shown complaints about poor airline customer service have significantly increased. Regional Results A larger percentage of airlines in Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) indicated government regulations as a significant negative challenge. Latin America carriers viewed Network Planning and Scheduling among their top three challenges compared to airlines in other regions which rated that operational issue much lower. More survey respondents in APAC and North America rated Labor Management as a top challenge as compared to their counterparts in EMEA and Latin America. Seventy-seven of the top 200 airlines worldwide were among survey participants. Airlines surveyed included various business models and carrier types including global network carriers, low-cost carriers, regional/domestic carriers. Airlines from every major geographic region are also represented including carriers based in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North America. Sabre Airline Solutions provides technology solutions to the global aviation industry. It operates the industryOs largest Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, with its innovative reservations system, commercial planning and operations software used by more than 300 airlines and over 100 airports around the world. More than 300 million passengers are put on airplanes every year using Sabre technology. Sabre Airline Solutions is part of Sabre Holdings, a global technology company serving the worldOs largest industry- travel and tourism. Its innovative technology is used by more than a billion people around the world to plan, book and experience their travel at a time and price that's right for them. It works behind the scenes to make the world a better place, one journey at a time. For more information, please visit: www.sabre.com. Jan 10, 2012
Symantec Symantec conducts damage control following security breach. A hacker breached the network defenses of a company affiliated with security firm Symantec, maker of the Norton brand of antivirus software, and stole source code to two dated versions of the company's products. Analysts say the theft of the code for Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 and Symantec Antivirus 10.2 is unlikely to affect consumers, as the products are more than five years old, but threatens to undermine Symantec's credibility. Jan 9, 2012
Visa, Zynga and Groupon Banks start playing games with your money. A new video game has gotten its hooks into Brian Kealer, a 26-year-old San Francisco software engineer. He's not killing birds or using his vocabulary to impress his friends. No, Kealer is after real prizes, like the iPad2 he just scored. And he's playing with his bank account. At least once every day, Kealer signs into SaveUp.com, a new financial website, and does some financial activity that wins him credits he can then use to play for big money prizes. To earn those credits, he can pay a credit card bill, deposit money into his savings account, or watch a sponsored video about personal finance. To be clear, Kealer's not making any real dollar bets; he's just paying his bills. But by participating in SaveUp, he is playing into the financial services industry's latest attempts to attract and keep engaged consumers. Call it, inelegantly, "gamification." It involves the use of game-like attributes and mechanics -- contests, prizes, scorecards, badges, friendly competitions and the like -- to make the boring business of money more appealing to hard-to-snag consumers. "It's a word that everybody hates, but it is descriptive of what's going on," says Jim Bruene of Netbanker, a banking technology consulting firm. Financial firms are turning to games to attract a younger demographic that may be impervious to advertising. Online games afford banks a cheaper way to attract customers in an era when interest rates on savings are practically nil, debit card fees are capped and banks have small margins and little leeway to throw rewards at consumers. "It doesn't cost much" for bankers to market this way, he says. And the ability to push games out in smart phone and tablet applications probably contributes to the interest, too. But financial games may have a more serious social purpose too: Some policymakers believe that bank-run lotteries can encourage lower income people to save more money. Of course, it's not just banks that are "gamifying." Zynga, the company that creates social-network games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, raised USD1 billion in its recent public offering on the expectation that its commercial tie-ins with companies like Pizza Hut and Paramount Pictures would pull real cash from the 200-million monthly active users the company claims. Web network marketing companies like Groupon and FourSquare offer participants badges, crowns and other awards. USD2.8 BILLION OUTLOOK SETS UP HYPE Gamification is a USD100 million market that should grow to USD2.8 billion by 2016, according to M2 Research, an Encinitas, California, analysis firm, that is assessing the trend across the board. Another consulting firm, Gartner Inc, says it expects that by 2014 "more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application." But because game attributes are hard to define these numbers can be dicey; it's a little bit difficult to isolate what counts as gamification and where the profits come from. So loud is the buzz that Gartner recently placed gamification on its "hype cycle" -- a list of technology trends -- at a place where it is approaching the "peak of inflated expectations." Banks have been a little bit slower to come to the game table than other companies, perhaps worried that using frivolous games to market serious financial products would be perceived negatively. But in 2011, CapitalOne did a promotion inside a couple of Zynga games, and credit card companies have been running sweepstake-like promotions for years. Since the early 2000s, for example, Visa has been running contests in which cardholders would be entered into lotteries every time they used their cards, for prizes like 100 times their purchase amount or a year's worth of bills. Currently, Chase is gamifying its bank account promotions; in the third quarter of 2011 it ran a USD6 million sweepstakes for customers who paid a Chase bill (like a mortgage or credit card) with a Chase checking account. The new players are a little bit different. SaveUp, a San Francisco startup, isn't a bank; it's an intermediary that hopes to attract banks as marketing clients, but consumers can play regardless of what bank they use. Behind the games, SaveUp is an aggregator that claims to use the same technology as Mint.com to bring in user accounts from hundreds of financial institutions. Another new intermediary firm, Bobber Interactive, has created "GoalCard" - a Facebook-linked debit card that lets users play games with friends to win rewards points that they can trade for cash prizes. Some of the games are financial literacy quizzes, and players who do well enough on them can graduate to a level that allows them to play "Credits and Debits," a game that is bejeweled with dollar signs and piggy banks, instead of emeralds and diamonds. All of the financial games get really serious when they have a higher policy purpose. A paper published a year ago by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggested that savings accounts with a lottery component could encourage low-income families to save more money. These prize-linked accounts, which offer savers a chance to win a specified (and potentially large) amount of money, are already offered in various countries, including many in Latin America and Europe. In Great Britain, the government issues Premium Bonds that pay off in lottery chances instead of interest. "This is a well-tested product. (and its ). appeal is fairly widespread," the study's authors, led by Melissa Schettini Kearney of the University of Maryland, concluded. Prize-linked savings accounts were piloted in the U.S., starting in 2009, by a group of Michigan credit unions, and now some in Nebraska have launched a new "Save to Win" program at the beginning of this year. Depositors who put at least USD25 in a share certificate at a participating credit union will be entered into a drawing. Every USD25 (up to USD250 a month) is another entry. Monthly prizes range from USD125 to USD1,000; there will be one USD25,000 grand prize at the end of the year. In the last two years, six states (Rhode Island, Nebraska, Washington, Maryland, Maine and North Carolina) have changed their state laws to allow savings promotional raffles. "No one can deny that people love lotteries," Peter Orszag, President Obama's first budget director, wrote in a Financial Times op ed last year. "Let's give savings accounts linked to lotteries a chance. It's a gamble but it could well pay off handsomely." BIG PRIZES SaveUp, the site that Kealer frequents, isn't messing around. Its top prize is a USD2-million annuity; it also has airline tickets, cars, scholarships and a USD5,000 Apple gift card in the mix. Many of its prizes are furnished through sponsorships; and they are all bonded and insured, according to CEO Priya Haji, who founded the start-up with Sammy Shreibati, an engineer who has worked on education products. To win awards, customers sign up for the site, and link it to their bank and credit card accounts. Every time they save USD10, they are entered with a chance to win. They get three chances to play every time they watch a sponsored educational videos. Titles include "Harnessing the Power of Mutual Funds," for example. Haji sees gamification as a way to engage financial customers who might not be tempted by net worth reports, even if they are in colorful pie chart form. She says her site capitalizes on the top three trends in the banking sector: (1) consumers being more concerned about reducing debt; (2) the industry moving beyond conventional financial management to behavioral approaches of modifying financial behavior, and (3) social networking. Progress mechanics, like a thermometer that shows you how much you've saved for a goal; socializing mechanics (how much you spend at Starbucks compared to your friends, or even compared to other people at your salary level); leaderboards and badges "are all elements of games that make you feel like you are achieving something," says Gabriel Zichermann, a gaming expert and editor at Gamification.co. But not everyone is a believer. "If that works to get some people to have good behavior, I'm all for that," said Mark Schwanhausser, a senior analyst with Javelin Strategy & Research, a Pleasanton, California, consulting company that monitors financial services trends. "But it's like mixing a game into something that is pretty darn serious, and I don't think it's going to be a widespread winner with banks." Gartner analyst Stessa Cohen doesn't think banks can afford to ignore this trend. Basic bank services are becoming commoditized, and intermediaries like SaveUp and Bobber could easily induce gamers to switch financial services companies. That's because consumers banking through intermediary firms could easily switch banks if another deal came along. "That's a big problem for banks," she said. "They may think 'we don't have to pay attention to that,' but then all of the sudden, 10 percent of their customers are just using them as a storage facility." And it's not clear that the financial gamesmanship will win over those coveted Gen Y customers, either, despite the blatant pitch. "GoalCard is integrated completely into the Facebook ecosystem, which our Gen Y user Nathan uses as his primary filter for relevance and validation around all aspects of his life," Bobber Interactive's CEO Eric Eastman says of the model Gen Y customer he uses in his presentations. That sounds like a challenge to a pretty cynical generation. "They don't believe anything a brand says," says Zichermann. "'Oh, really? That's the fastest car? And the tastiest burger?'" It's a short step from that attitude to the one expressed by one 20-something who Reuters recently introduced to SaveUp for this story: "I don't want my personal finance tied up with marketing ploys," he said. Said another: "That sounds like a site that is probably just selling your info, which is scary." SaveUp claims bank-level security and "does not sell any information to third parties," according to Shreibati, the company's chief technology officer. But a free iPad is a free iPad. Kealer, a Gen Y-er who says his job involves discovering new mobile apps, has cast his cynicism aside after winning the coveted tablet and a USD100 Macy's gift card. "This is a good time to play because fewer people are participating," he says. He makes a good point. As more players join the games, and the financial games themselves proliferate, it may get harder for consumers to win at these contests. Just choosing which games to play may start to feel a lot less like play and more like work. (Reporting By Linda Stern) Jan 13, 2012
World Economic Forum Cyber-attacks rank No. 4 on World Economic Forum's list of global risks. The World Economic Forum's list of the top global risks for 2012 names cyber-attacks against governments and businesses as one of the five threats most likely to occur. The report cites the complexity of Internet security, a lack of reliable data and the fast-changing technological landscape as challenges, and calls for the establishment of a "healthy digital space ... to ensure stability in the world economy and balance of power." Jan 12, 2012
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