How Kelluu’s UFO-like airships caught the eye of Nato and conspiracy theorists 

0:01Maggie Draycott:In April, Monocle hosts the Entrepreneurs Live in Shanghai, a one-day conference bringing together founders, investors and innovators shaping businesses across China and the wider region. Join us there and visit monocle.com slash conference for more.

0:38Maggie Draycott:Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. On today's episode, we're taking to the skies. First, we'll meet one of the world's most influential travellers to hear about her exclusive new club for aviation professionals and the state of the industry in a time of war.

1:00Jiri Jormakka:We now realise how much of a significant area the Middle East is for everybody, how it's so big in global travel.

1:09Maggie Draycott:And later, the blimp is back. In a way, we'll hear about a Finnish autonomous airshipmaker that's attracted attention from NATO and from conspiracy theorists. It's super silent and it moves differently compared to multicopter drones or fixed-wind assets. People don't know what is happening, and yeah, we are in the UFO scene. This is The Entrepreneurs, with me, Tom Edwards.

1:43Maggie Draycott:You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Maggie Dracot is a globally respected authority on luxury travel, aviation, and hospitality. When not travelling the world, Maggie divides her time between her consultancy, Maggie Drake at Associates, running a private concierge for ultra-high net worth families and her philanthropic work. Widely regarded as one of the architects of modern luxury travel experiences, Maggie also helped design British Airways' most exclusive loyalty initiative, the invitation-only Premier Club. She recently stopped by Midori House to talk about her latest venture, Club Aviator, a new app designed as a one-stop hub for aviation professionals.

2:25Maggie Draycott:I began by asking Maggie, as a seasoned traveller with deep insight into the aviation industry, how she sees the state of the sector today, given the challenges caused by the conflict in the Middle East.

2:36Jiri Jormakka:I guess we now realise how much of a significant area the Middle East is for everybody, right? How it's so big in global travel. The second thing, of course, is for every passenger that might go on holiday a couple of times a year, we should also remember the crews. I think no one's mentioning them at the moment. There's a lot of crews stuck out there, traveling on their airline networks, and we need to check how they're coping as well. And that's the second thing. and obviously look at Russia. You know, when all that started with Russia, we've been coping with that for a few years. We can't fly over Russia.

3:16Jiri Jormakka:All the flights have to divert. I went to Japan personally and it took 16 hours to get there, whereas normally it'd take 12 hours. So it's interesting how these things can have a huge impact long-term as well while this is going on. But there's ways, you know, at the end of the day, airlines are very, they're very used to different things happening. constantly. So eventually they seem to get their act together.

3:42Maggie Draycott:So they're maybe more adaptable, actually, than sometimes perhaps they get given credit for, because these things are often treated like inescapable, inflexible things. But you're confident that, to generalise slightly, the industry, actually, it's more adroit at pivoting under these pressure points, you think?

3:58Jiri Jormakka:Yes, very much so. They're used to different incidents happening constantly. But saying that, it's not the greatest thing obviously what's going on so we just need to be hopeful that it'll finish

4:10Maggie Draycott:quickly well and it's interesting what you say about thinking about pilots crew other staff and we'll come back to that in a minute because obviously that's kind of part of the story of what you're one of your one of your businesses which we'll come to i mentioned your own i guess yeah reputation as an intrepid and very frequent flyer and traveler again it would be remiss of me not to ask you where you've just been. I gather you've been somewhere, I don't know, which definitely has a reputation. I'm thinking about Bhutan here. It's something we've mentioned. Obviously, in Monaco, we're obsessed about quality of life and benchmarks of excellence.

4:44Maggie Draycott:And Bhutan is always in the mix as supposedly the happiest country in the world. Tell me

4:50Jiri Jormakka:about your trip. Seriously, I went to Bhutan with a really open mind. I've wanted to go there all my life. And when I got there, I thought, oh, wow, this is paradise. First of all, there's only 50 pilots in the world that can fly there because you're flying through Mount Everest, basically. You can literally, you feel like you're going to touch the mountains. It's that close. So if you're not a very good flyer, I wouldn't go there. But actually, it wasn't bad. I'm not a very good flyer, believe it or not. When you get there, you realise it's so peaceful. There's so much space. You know, it just seems so big.

5:25Jiri Jormakka:It's the size of Switzerland, but there's only half a million people that live there. So you can imagine what it's like. It's mountains every corner. You can see the Himalayas. It's spectacular. But in terms of being the happiest place in the world, the people there, they are genuinely the happiest people in the world. I have never met people like that. We had a driver. We had a guide. Always when I go to a new country, I want to spend time with the local people. So my brief was very clear. I want to spend as much time to get to know the country, whatever you can, in two weeks. And so we met some fascinating people.

6:00Jiri Jormakka:Met the guy who does all the prayer flags for the country. There's prayer flags everywhere. We went to a place where they do these beautiful Mandela drawings on the tables with sand. You spend hours doing this, and then they just get a little brush and they break it down. And I was like, why would you do that. And what they're trying to say is nothing in life is permanent. It's all about impermanence. The belief there, basically, what I took out was you need to literally believe that this life is not important. Everything is about your next life. It's really, really fascinating. I absolutely adored it.

6:40Maggie Draycott:I didn't think we were going to go down this almost philosophical attack. That's fascinating, Maggie. Listen, I'm sure our listeners will be saying, well, hang on. All right, Tom, roll the clock back a little bit not to a former life quite Maggie but listen you've spent decades within travel hospitality aviation really the luxury travel world including of course at British Airways perhaps what you're sort of most well well known for in a way working on Concorde of course most other other programs and this idea of really driving innovation in in loyalty programs really being at the at the forefront of that how did that journey Maggie how did that all begin for you?

7:14Jiri Jormakka:I still don't know how it happened because I had this idea in my head. I happened to be at an event with the chairman of the company at that time and I mentioned it to him and he said why don't you write something up and bring it up to me. I think it's a great idea and I was, my idea was basically we need to somehow segment and look at the top five percent. The top five percent of any company, any client, they were flying five times as much as your regular cardholder, right? A top cardholder. So he said, write it down, come and see me. So off I went very nervously. I said, fine. It sounds amazing.

7:56Jiri Jormakka:You can go and do it, but I'll give you 90 days. Fix it all. It's a very complex project. So there was a great team and we set it up and delivered in 90 days. and then he said can you run it I said well I'll try and the rest is history 15 years later

8:14Maggie Draycott:yeah the rest is history incredible really and actually that was this period of extraordinary sort of consolidation actually for many of these leading brands in terms of how they safeguarded and looked after that top kind of client base and I guess it follows on you've then spent much of your career advising not just airlines but lots of luxury private clients yeah

8:36Jiri Jormakka:Since I left, I've done quite a lot. So I work with aviation, private aviation. I work on an investment club, something I knew nothing about. It's just given me that freedom because at the end of the day, you're still working with the same group of people. If you think about it, private aviation is ultra high net worth. You know, investment club, it's going to be investors who are very high net. So it's a very similar path within that group. I also work in hospitality. I work with some of the top hotels. And because of my passion for travel, I love working with different travel groups, little places that no one hears about.

9:17Jiri Jormakka:I love doing that sort of thing as well.

9:19Maggie Draycott:Tell me, Maggie, Club Aviator. Yes. Your sort of more recent initiative, you were obviously doing very well, a trusted authority, advising lots of key clients. No two days are the same. You get to indulge in lots of the things that professionally and personally you love, travel, the undiscovered. offering great advice, almost like being that friendly voice and authority. Tell me about the moment when you were like, something else needs to happen here and Club Aviator is the answer. How did that idea about what that is, tell us what it is, but how did the idea coalesce?

9:49Jiri Jormakka:So basically, it's an idea that came to me during COVID. I woke up one morning and it suddenly came to me and said, this seems like a no-brainer. Why has nobody ever done it? And then I thought, well, I better check. So I did a year's research on it. Oh, no 90 days here.

10:05Maggie Draycott:No, no, no, no 90 days.

10:07Jiri Jormakka:A year, a whole year, Tom. And literally, there was nothing like it. There is nothing in the world that gives airline staff the opportunity to engage with each other. So now when I look at the hospitality industry, everybody knows everybody. Every hotel manager knows the other hotel. But within aviation, they don't know each other. No one actually engages. So say I work for BA or someone works for Iberia or American Airlines. It'll either be, unless you're working on a project, you don't actually become friends with people. So I just thought it would be so nice if I was, say, stuck in Hong Kong in some five-star hotel.

10:47Jiri Jormakka:I know it sounds really glamorous, but actually, when you're going out there to work, it's not that glamorous. You could be someone who's 20 years old, right? And you're in this foreign country and you don't want to be with the people you've flown with necessarily. This is all about creating a community of your own friends. On any given night, there's 2 ,000 crew in New York every night, and none of them know each other. The app actually helps you do that by connecting people. We've already got 42 airlines signed up.

11:19Maggie Draycott:Wow, that's a pretty impressive number.

11:20Jiri Jormakka:And it's been like four months, right?

11:22Maggie Draycott:That's pretty impressive. And I guess to talk about numbers, we're talking about what? 10, 11 million people working in these businesses. 11 million people working. That's a big demography.

11:32Jiri Jormakka:So we've got 42 different airline staff already signed up. And that's just by word of mouth.

11:37Maggie Draycott:All of it. And tell me, I've seen some sort of, I don't know what you make of these comments, some sort of fairly kind of glib or trite remarks about it. You know, it's TripAdvisor for pilots, whatever it might be. But I guess, what is your, what's the kind of elevator pitch when you're talking, I don't know, to potential investors or to people to actually join the programme?

11:53Jiri Jormakka:I think it's about the loneliness. that for me you know the whole mental health thing it's really important the rest of it will come right you've got the perks you've got the wonderful you know you can make your own recommendation on what to do and sightseeing and restaurants and bars we've got over a thousand recommendations that have been put in by them so they know what they like but actually for me it's all about building that friendship. If I go in a country and I open up my app, if I've got my location on, it'll tell you exactly who your friendship group, who's there in that town. And it gives you the ability to create invites through the app.

12:36Jiri Jormakka:It's evolving, but there's every week we're looking at what can we give them more.

12:40Maggie Draycott:And it's funny because we kicked off this conversation talking about the current challenges, people with extended stays in, whether it's Abu Dhabi or in Dubai or wherever it might be because of circumstance and then it's all the more valuable a resource one thing i find interesting maggie is obviously going way back to the sort of the original aviation loyalty programs right through to aviator but via these other projects you've done this thread of joining the club building a community being part of something so important but what is it about that that's always drawn you is it something that was in your foundational values when you were big when you're growing up that you enjoy tell me a little bit more about that because that's always been part

13:14Jiri Jormakka:of a club when I was growing up I was actually born in the northeast of India and we lived in a town that was actually a British town it was like a little bubble so we were all members of the club there the social club from when we were kids and we used to go like we used to have swimming galas and ever since I was child I was always part of some group like some club so for me it's like feels like everyone should be doing that you know in different ways it doesn't matter if it's your church or your school or club aviator you know whatever you do i think it's a nice way to stop people and there's a big problem with loneliness i think there's a huge problem and anxiety and all sorts of things well i was going to ask you about this and it speaks a little

14:00Maggie Draycott:bit to your experience in bhutan as well look in a sort of we've got the whole digital realm it's very fragmentary and actually people saying that the offer of everything constantly in perpetuity is actually quite exhausting and people are getting this ennui, aren't they? With too much news, too many options, too much information overload. And actually, these are the kinds of programmes that can encourage people to recalibrate what they're valuing and the value should be in, who can you meet? Maybe just a final thought, Maggie, this is the kind of, if we get the lens back on Club Aviator, look, it's for aviation professionals, which is a large demography.

14:34Maggie Draycott:I can imagine this is the kind of initiative, though, that any frequent flyer, not aviation professionals per se, They will say, oh, look, that's my world. I'd like to be part of this club too. How do you see this thing going? I mean, is that something further down the track? How do you balance that? Because it's, or is it in a way putting up a little bit of a fence around it?

14:52Jiri Jormakka:For me, the reason we did it is I'm really conscious that we need to be safe and secure. There's a lot of very young people. So we want to make sure they're verified, that they actually work for an airline. I'll tell you what, there was a couple of articles and a couple of papers when I first launched. Every single day, we get hundreds of people who don't work for airlines who are trying to join. And sadly, I'd love to have everybody in the club, but you can't. You either make up your mind, you want a closed user group, or you just open it up to the whole world. And it just doesn't work like that for us.

15:30Jiri Jormakka:Anyway, at the moment, I want to make sure until we get big numbers that we focus on airline staff.

15:38Maggie Draycott:That was Maggie Dracott, the founder of Club Aviator and the eponymous Maggie Dracott Associates. And you can find out more about the new app by heading to clubaviator.co.