Trailblazing Travel Tech Taylor

“The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds”, Mark Twain

?

?

We all know those people who live in the past.

These days we’re being guided towards living in the moment, in the present, being more mindful.

The people who live in the future are rare, sometimes misunderstood.

Occasionally, if you’re lucky, you may encounter the extraordinary.

Someone who creates the future.

?

David Taylor is one of those extraordinary people, and he’s not really a crank!

He has a phenomenal knack for delivering game changing radical solutions across the travel?sector that have gone on to become the norm in the industry.

?

As a young engineer in British Airways, he followed his gut and stepped out of the predictable world of Aircraft engineering and into the unchartered realm of imagining new business ideas.

?

A new phenomenon was emerging onto the horizon at the time. Some spoke excitedly of the World Wide Web, while others feared the internet. David remembers a conversation with a BA Board member who said, “people won’t buy airline tickets online, they’re too worried about credit card security”. ?

?

Despite the pushback and the uncertainty, David persevered with what he knew was right.

With likeminded colleagues he co-founded ba.com to sell British Airways tickets online in 1995.

?

If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, David then set about convincing the BA board to show all of the airline options online, including their competitors, for corporate clients and then trust that they would choose BA.

?

The conversation went like this, “So let me get this straight. You want us to spend millions developing software for BA that allows our corporates to book flights with our competitors?”

?

Again David followed his gut and, alongside another trailblazer Johnny Thorsen (from a Silicon Valley start-up called GetThere), they developed yourtravelmanager.com.

Together, they developed the blueprint still used to this day for most business travel booking engines.

As well as being a huge success for BA with 93% of bookings in favour of BA, GetThere went on to great success, eventually selling to Sabre for $757M.

?

David then rose to a new challenge in completely unchartered waters as employee no. 1 with Opodo. David took the reigns as Operations Director and, with McKinsey by his side, built the first European pan-European online travel agent.

?

David’s instinct for seeing the future, and then building it, has spanned 4 decades and touched most parts of the travel industry.

?

It includes building an AI engine, long before AI was even a buzzword, for package holidays.

He then expanded Worldspan into Asia.

He helped to launch one of the first online only Travel Management Companies.

He was instrumental in bringing another new product (Travelpass) to market, which allows airlines to sell multiple flights and unlimited flying with a subscription. Post pandemic recovery, you’re likely to see much more of this with the likes of Etihad launching this product recently.

?

Most recently, David’s gut has brought him to Table4One.

His instinct for spotting game changing solutions that go on to become the norm in the travel industry was triggered again.

?

He sees an amazing opportunity to create a new business and a brand-new business model.

?

There is a big problem that needs to be solved, coupled with a huge commercial opportunity.

?

Solo business travel has so much potential – and Table4One not only solves its problems, and provides huge opportunities at every touchpoint, it also makes the world a better place.

?

David’s philosophy in life is to look for the good things, because there are good things everywhere.

Table 4One is a good thing!

David is excited about building the future with Table4One, and to see it take wings and fly.?

?