FOR YEARS, LEGIONS of Swiss-trained hoteliers could afford to dismiss airlines as glorified buses in the sky, serving barely edible food with smiles as plastic as the cutlery.
However, in the past five years, the leading carriers can rightfully point to huge leaps in the quality of business passenger pampering, with cocooned flatbeds and high-end entertainment systems.
So we thought it might be fun to ask some airline executives to tell us how they would help hotels deliver better service to travellers.
And, in the interests of fair play, Hong Kong hoteliers were invited to look beyond their marble-clad foyers and suggest some airborne improvements.
Finding a senior executive willing to talk, however, was about as easy as securing one of those tantalising fares advertised by low-cost carriers.
After painstaking research and off-the-record briefings with travel executives, here is a Top 10 list of things that airlines and hotels could learn from each other to make life easier for the business traveller.