Who knows you best? Your friends and family, or a computer?
New Yorker, Chris O’Leary had his moment of fame this week after a booking error meant that he was the only passenger on a Delta, 76-seat flight from Cleveland to NYC. After heavy delays on his initial journey he was booked onto another flight, only to find when he boarded that all other passengers were on a different flight. Chris took to Twitter to celebrate his private jet experience with commentary including ‘Just got a personal safety briefing from my two flight attendants’ and when the plane had to pick up another passenger, ‘The thrill is gone, you guys. Just as we were about to push back, they reconnected the jet bridge to let a second passenger on the flight’. His live Tweeting went viral with Chris rounding up his experience with ‘So @ConanOBrien, @Letterman, and @sethmeyers have all made jokes about my flight this week. Guess my 15 minutes have fully run their course!’.
Marriott hotels never ceases to amaze with its innovative approach to improving guests’ stay and its latest project with GoPro is no exception. The hotel group is offering guests the latest GoPro HERO4s at 17 of their Caribbean and Latin America resorts and hotels so they can capture and share their adventures and experiences during their stay. Guests are encouraged to share their footage across a variety of social media platforms using the hashtags #GoPro, #travelbrilliantly and #viajegnial and they will be in with a chance of being featured on the Marriott Hotels website www.travelbrilliantly.com/gopro. During the launch of the programme, Marriott Hotels will choose guests who have uploaded content to different social media channels and award them with prizes including holiday stays, Marriott Reward points and GoPros.
Seems that 2015 might be the year that bad flight manners are finally put in the bin, or at least easily avoided, as airlines turn to social media to intervene. Last week we brought you news of Jet Blue’s #FlightEtiquette campaign, and this week we present KLM’s new ‘Meet & Seat’ function which lets passengers share their LinkedIn and Facebook details and find like-minded people to sit next to. While the function presents a great opportunity to make new connections and network in the sky, it’s also useful to find the people you would prefer to avoid completely.
And finally, according to a new study by the University of Cambridge and Stamford University, computers can be better at assessing someone’s basic personality than close friends or family and almost as good as someone’s spouse. A study of more than 86,000 Facebook users has demonstrated the power of intelligent machines to predict an individual’s character based on what they have listed as their ‘Likes’. Researchers have said that the day when computers are able to judge a person’s personality accurately has almost arrived. #TheFutureIsHere
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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