Travel. Some people love it; some people hate it. For most of us, I think it’s a little bit of both.
The word brings to mind two things. First, it’s always an adventure – hopefully in the good sense, even if it may be work-related. But second, boy can it be a nightmare! My latest travel experience definitely falls into the nightmare category, although I guess some may call it an adventure as well.
Here’s why I’m bringing this up: As I finally got to my destination, I looked back at the whole ordeal and realized how many of the NexGen technologies and trends we have talked about helped me get through it all.
Okay, ready for all of the crazy details? You may want to grab some popcorn.
The goal was to get from New York City to my home in Nashville. I had a flight booked with United Airlines, so it should have been as simple as getting myself to the airport and on the flight, right? Wrong.
I walked out of my hotel with the Uber app pulled up on my iPhone to get a car to take me to the airport. I have to say, what in the world did we do before Uber changed the way we get from point A to point B? Just think, the iPhone has only been around 10 years and Uber is just six years old – even less in most cities. Pretty soon we’ll forget all about the days of calling a shuttle service or fighting the crowds in hopes of hailing down a bright yellow taxi.
Just as I was about to order my Uber, I received an email alerting me that my United flight had been cancelled. Great. But it is nice to know that in this day and age where mobile service is available in nearly every corner of the world, I was able to be notified before arriving at the bustling airport – and I could start my efforts to work around the problem.
I walked into Bryant Park to figure out how I was going to get home. Luckily the park has fast and free wireless internet, so I took full advantage and checked the United app for a new flight. Nothing. There wasn’t another one available until the following evening.
Since I was probably stuck, my next move was to open up the HotelTonight app – which is similar to Trivago (TRVG), a stock that brought us more than 14% profits in less than a month in NexGen Trader. HotelTonight has also mentioned it is looking into an IPO. I wanted to see how much a room would cost if I did have to stay another night in the city. As you can imagine, it wasn’t cheap at all, so as a man who thinks about the value of a dollar often (alright, so I can be cheap once in a while), I decided to try some other options.
I realized that my next move was to look for a flight from another airline. I jumped on several travel apps – think Priceline (PCLN) and Expedia (EXPE) – and finally found an American Airlines (AAL) flight from a different New York airport. So guess what I did next. Back to the Uber app to get a ride, and the car picked me up literally within minutes.
I ran to the car and asked the driver to go as fast as he could. And since I’m still connected to the whole world through my phone, I took advantage of the time in transit trying to book my flight online. Another dead end. Because the flight was less than two hours from taking off, I had to get a ticket from the check-in counter at the airport. Seems a little old fashioned, but I had no choice.
Once I arrived, I found myself in a long line of travelers who must not understand the power they have at their fingertips. But I finally had a stroke of luck and found a very helpful employee who got me on the flight. I was charged an extra $35 to book with her rather than online, which I wasn’t thrilled about but certainly didn’t feel like arguing after the headaches I’d already been through. So I paid the fee and in a short time found myself comfortably seated on a flight home.
I was exhausted, but sitting on that flight is when it hit me: We already live in a different world. When I started in the investing business nearly 20 years ago, none of this would have been possible. Without these NexGen technologies, I would have been sitting in an overpriced hotel waiting at the mercy of United to book me a new flight who knows when. Instead, I was able to take things into my own hands.
In doing so, I quickly came up with a bunch of next-generation mega-trends I had used to my advantage: mobile connectivity, travel apps, semiconductor chips that power smart devices, the Internet of Things (IoT) with the Wi-Fi in Brant Park and everything being connected, and electronic payments.
It made me all the more eager to get back to my main office and get to work making us money on these exciting trends. We already booked nice profits on TRVG, and we currently have a semiconductor stock that is a major player in self-driving cars in NexGen Investor, as well as my favorite mobile provider in NexGen Trader. (You can find out more about them here.)
It’s an exciting world we live in, and I can’t wait for all of the additional advancements and innovations we will see in the coming years. There are so many ways to make money off of these trends, and we’re already well ahead of the game.
