Princess Beatrice Flew Economy and Carried Her Own Luggage En Route to Speaking on a Panel About AI at Cannes Lions

Princess Beatrice may be just that—a princess—but she’s anything but high-maintenance while traveling, apparently. En route to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity—a film festival that kicked off yesterday in Cannes, France and runs until June 21, this Friday—Beatrice flew in on an economy flight and was perfectly content to carry her own luggage, Page Six reports.

Beatrice flew to the festival on an EasyJet flight—the U.K.’s popular low-cost airline—and didn’t fly out of London’s Heathrow and its ritzy Windsor Suite (that her cousins the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been known to enjoy) but instead flew in from London’s Luton Airport, “a very small, less flashy counterpart” to Heathrow, Page Six writes. She also “carried her own luggage while schlepping to the South of France,” the publication reports. 

Beatrice, despite recent pleas to change this fact, is not a working royal; instead, she is employed as Vice President of Partnerships and Strategy for the software brand Afiniti. With that in mind, it makes sense that she came to Cannes to participate in the “Emotional Intelligence in the AI Age” panel at Journal House alongside Spotify’s Chief Public Affairs Officer Dustee Jenkins, whom Beatrice called her “hero.”

Beatrice has been open about having dyslexia in the past, and did so again on the panel, telling attendees how her struggles with dyslexia played a role in her desire to pursue a career in the tech space: “Technology in general, it really gave me a space to really be myself,” she said. “You know, I’ve got dyslexia, [so] I always was fascinated by how things worked—that was the way that my brain worked. I was a very visual learner.”

She added “It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from, what you’re doing. If you can deliver—that, for me, is the most exciting thing about the technology sector.”

Beatrice is now, apparently, an adviser to Jenkins’ team at Spotify, and Jenkins said that the team has “benefited tremendously, because she’s looking to create mentorships, networking, entrepreneurship—at the same time, understanding technology,” Jenkins said of Beatrice. (This isn’t the royal family’s first association with Spotify, by the way; though the deal has now ended, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle inked a multimillion dollar deal with the company back in 2020 before the partnership ended last year.)

Cannes Lions, according to Page Six, “convenes powerhouses in marketing, advertising, media, and more industries,” and, while the festival runs until Friday, it’s not known how long Beatrice will be there, or if she’s already boarded, presumably, an EasyJet flight back home. Of attending the festival, Beatrice said “It’s a wonder to behold, the moment to be with each other—and we are reminded that some of these most important conversations have to happen with human-to-human interactions,” she told the panel attendees.

She continued, “They have to happen in a place like this, to be able to sort of awaken your consciousness to make sure that you’re ready to take it on. So I’m very grateful to be here.”