by Robert McGarvey

 

What now in terms of hotel guest insecurities?  Now that Sabre has disclosed a breach that may have impacted some 32,000 hotels that use the company’s data services.

This is bad. Potentially a lot worse than the many, many hotel breaches we have learned about over the past few years, at Trump through Mandarin.  That’s because those hotel breaches largely were confined to systems used in bars, restaurants and gift shops.  The prevention was simple: don’t used plastic at those establishments, in fact just don’t use those places at all and if you must, pay cash or sign the charges over to your room. Room-related systems, we had always heard, had not been compromised.

An exception was the recent Intercontinental Hotels breach where, it was acknowledged, reservations related data may have been hacked. IHC posted a widget for checking if hotels you have used were compromised.

That IHC breach is bad. The Sabre breach may be much worse.

Oddly, it’s gotten scant coverage in the consumer press and not a lot more in the trade press. Probably due to breach burnout.

But the Sabre breach has to be looked at closely.

Buried in Sabre’s recent 10-Q filing is this: “We are investigating an incident involving unauthorized access to payment information contained in a subset of hotel reservations processed through the Sabre Hospitality Solutions SynXis Central Reservation system. The unauthorized access has been shut off, and there is no evidence of continued unauthorized activity at this time. We have retained expert third-party advisors to assist in the investigation and are working with law enforcement. There is a risk that this investigation may reveal that PII, PCI (each as defined below), or other information may have been compromised. It is not possible at this time to determine whether we will incur, or to reasonably estimate the amount of, any liabilities in connection with this incident. We maintain insurance that covers certain aspects of our cyber risks, and we are working with our insurance carriers in this matter.”

PII data, btw, is “personally identifiable information,” meaning it potentially identifies you.

According to reporting by security blogger Brian Krebs, Sabre has said that the breach has been plugged and the situation is under control: “There is no reason to believe that any other Sabre systems beyond SynXis Central Reservations have been affected,” said Sabre in a note to its customers.

But here’s the rub: Sabre’s systems are used by literally thousands of hotels to manage guest reservations and payments. Airlines too use the systems.

Sabre has declined to share more details about the breach. Nobody knows exactly what data was lifted, for how long.

But a safe assumption is that if you have stayed in hotels and/or flown on commercial planes your payments data may now be in the hands of criminals. It may not be – because we know so few details of the hack – but caution and the hospitality industry’s track record suggests erring on the side of paranoia.

What should you do?

Start by monitoring charges, especially on the cards you use for travel expenses. Really read the monthly statements. Question anything that looks hinky.

Just stop using debit cards – ever – for travel related expenses. The protections just are not as good as they are for credit cards and, in most cases, getting wrongly used cash restored to your account can involve delays when a debit card is involved.  That can be a giant hassle when a mortgage or tax payment is due and the money just is not in your account yet.

Only use credit cards at hotels and with airlines.

More advice: it’s time to stop using hotel WiFi except for the most mundane tasks. If you want to check the Yankees’ score – and I’m with you on that – sure, use hotel WiFi for checking into ESPN.

But with anything that involves a password that matters to you, use your phone’s cellular data or use the phone to create a personal hotspot to power your laptop’s surfing.  Cellular data isn’t perfect but it is far, far safer than any public WiFi.

Also, use cash to pay at hotels wherever possible.  Hotels have shown their cybersecurity cannot be trusted – even if the hotel is doing its job, its vendors may not be.  Throwing a $10 bill on the bar for your draft beer won’t come back to haunt you.

Survey cybersecurity experts and many believe still more hotels will be breached.  Why?  Hard to say, except the obvious issue is that the industry has not invested in the systems and protections needed to keep guest data truly safe.

Just know this: you can’t trust hotels to keep your card data safe.  Act accordingly.

The battle for new credit union charters – CUInsight http://bit.ly/2qHVxoh My reporting – #creditunion

 

By Robert McGarvey

I have hung back from booking with Airbnb –it all seemed too uncertain, from check-in vagaries to check out confusions and I definitely did not want roommates.

Maybe that has changed. Now Airbnb has rolled out a “Business Travel Ready” program that has me thinking anew.  Tnooz itemizes some of the characteristics of units that qualify: “All properties designated ‘Business Travel Ready’ must meet a list of criteria: At least 60% of their reviews must earn five stars. The whole home or apartment must be available, be smoke- and pet-free and include hotel-like amenities, including Wi-Fi, laptop-friendly workspace, iron, hangers, clean towels and fresh linens, hairdryer and shampoo.”

Airbnb also says 24/7 chck in, check out is available.

Is this enough to shove me out of my habits and into new digs?

Recently I got nudged into the sharing economy via American Express’s monthly $15 Uber credit for Platinum Card holders.  I’ve been very pleased with the rides – the cars, the drivers, the app – and that has prompted me to thinking more kindly about other sharing economy services.

Like Airbnb..

I’d thought for many months that what a business traveler needs – what I need – is predictability.   Whether I am staying at a Four Seasons or – more likely with my clients – a Holiday Inn Express, I know what I am getting and I get it.  No complaints.

But is there more? better? cheaper? to be had by booking in the “Business Travel Ready” program, which Airbnb has apparently had in pilots for a couple years?

I decided to look through the Airbnb site, for possible bookings with upcoming trips.

Note: reader comments on Airbnb are open.  Use the blog’s comment form.  Anonymity is possible.  

Ever more businesses are now reimbursing for Airbnb stays.  By now, just about any business will accept it if the argument can be made that using it saves money.  Does it?

I started by looking at San Francisco, where I usually stay in JDV’s Hotel Carlton, a Lower Nob Hill hotel with rates just about always under $300 per night and a very good location for my purposes – easy walks to Union Square, Market Street, and maybe a mile and a half from the Moscone Center.  

But I have also been eyeing the Tilden, a new hotel in the gritty but gentrifying Tenderloin, where rates are under $200 per night which is jaw dropping in Baghdad by the Bay.  And I really like the Tenderloin, the neighborhood where Dashiell Hammett probably lived when he wrote Maltese Falcon, etc.  

So what would prompt me to book via Arbnb instead?

How cool is this: Airbnb is showing multiple whole apartments (studios) for under $150 per night. At a glance I am seeing nothing actually in the ‘Loin but there’s plenty in true downtown, such as this $199 eye-popper.  At 205 sq. ft it actually is smaller than a typical hotel room but the price is appealing.  I’d put it on my list as a possibility for my next San Francisco trip.

Or I could go budget with this $125 studio.  

Color me interested.

A trip to Washington DC also looms and there I always stay at the Washington Plaza, a mid century hotel in Thomas Circle, a few blocks from the White House and across the street from a building where I lived years ago, when the neighborhood was, ahem, sketchier. It’s quite posh now.  But rooms at the Washington Plaza generally have been under $300 per night, typically well under.  

Here’s a one bedroom condo in Logan Circle for $155, a couple or three blocks from the Washington Plaza.  $119 gets this place.  

Jumping to where I live – Central Phoenix – $77 gets a converted shipping container in Roosevelt Row, very on trend.  

Probably I’d go for $150 for the one bedroom on artsy Roosevelt Row.  

There are plenty of places in Central Phoenix for under $150 per night on Airbnb.  Hotel rooms are typically upwards of $250 for a standard, anonymous chain accommodation.

What’s appealing is that all these places noted in this column are in the “Business Travel Ready” program – and that takes some uncertainty out of this, at least for me.

Is that good enough to separate me from the predictable comfort of a well-run chain’s hotel room?

On my next trip, I am thinking yes, that it’s time to explore the new.

How about for you?

 

Do You Need Mobile Remote Deposit Capture? – The Credit Union Forum http://bit.ly/2qeie3h My reporting for #creditunion execs

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

I have been talking with airline elites a lot in the past couple weeks, sorting out their willingness to speak up against the stunning mistreatment of passengers by legacy carriers – read United and American.

BA also merits mention for offloading a couple at a remote Portuguese airbase.  And Delta now has kicked a man off the plane fr using the toilet.

The more I have talked, the more I find myself thinking of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, a core building block in leading an ethical life.

With elites I have asked a simple question: since you have status with an airline, are you willing to use it to express distaste for how airlines are treating passengers?

What I have heard, again and again, is no, and “airlines don’t treat me badly.”

Enter Kant, an 18th century German philosopher who usually is ranked among the top five philosophers of all time (along with Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and probably Descartes).  Kant has a lot of relevance to where we find ourselves in regard to airlines and he is especially relevant to elites.

Kant would like American passenger Tony Fierro who, witnessing an American Airlines’ flight attendant’s mistreatment of a mother, stood up and defended her.  Apparently the flight attendant grabbed the woman’s stroller, possibly hitting her with it and also hitting an infant, according to some eye-witness reports.  Fierro stood up, saying: “No, I’m not going to sit here and watch this stuff.”

He said to the flight attendant: “Hey, bud. You do that to me, and I’ll knock you flat.”

A video of the incident surfaced.  American has suspended the flight attendant and offered a profuse apology.  

Meantime, the union that represents flight attendants issued this statement: “There are really two stories here related to this incident aboard a San Francisco to Dallas flight,” the statement reads. “One, we don’t know all of the facts related to a passenger who became distraught while boarding a plane and therefore neither the company nor the public should rush to judgment.”

The union continued: “Second, it appears another passenger may have threatened a flight attendant with violence, which is a violation of federal law and no small matter. Air rage has become a serious issue on our flights.”

The union statement has been widely excoriated and, really, nothing more needs be said about it.

Except to point out that just maybe the attitude reflected in the statement makes it easier to understand the American flight attendant’s behavior.-

That’s also why we need applaud passenger Fierro.

Things have sunk to incredible lows in the air.

I get that flight attendants are overworked and – very probably –  dissed by their own employers.  I empathize.

But passengers, too, deserve better. A lot better than they are getting from the legacy carriers in the US.

So where are elites in all of this?

Nowhere to be seen or heard as far as I can tell. I’m not saying every elite I know has taken cover in the fray. But too many have.

They tell me, quite accurately, that they just don’t see themselves suffering such blatantly bad behavior, so what of it

What of it is the Categorical Imperative where Kant advises us to act only in such a way that you can will that action to be a universal law.

Do elites really want everybody just to shrug off the bad behavior many passengers are exposes to on airlines?

That is what they are in effect suggesting with their passive indifference.

The Categorical Imperative says: “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law [of nature].”

That means protesting when a Dr. Dao is dragged off a plane in Chicago, or when a mother is apparently hit with her own stroller by a flight attendant.  Such behaviors just are wrong – universally wrong, by the way – and the right thing to do is to speak up.

Some elites have told me it just is not their character to make a public scene.  Fine. There is no necessity to emulate Fierro.  Write an email to the airline’s executives. Or write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Or past comments and thoughts to traveler focused websites.  There are many ways to get heard and standing up in the aisle and going toe to toe with an irate flight attendant is only one of them.

A non elite, coach class passenger does not have a lot of weight.

An elite with lots of miles in the bank does.

And it’s time to deploy the Categorical Imperative and do the right thing.

 

 

By Robert McGarvey

United Airlines is winning applause in some quarters for a crew booking policy change – but I am baffled by the why.

Here’s the story. A few days ago TMZ published a document it said was an official United internal memo.  The header said: Inflight Services Alert.  It went onto say that, effective immediately, crew will be accommodated on oversold flights only up to 60 minutes before scheduled departure.

The memo explicitly said: “This is so the denied boarding process in an oversell situation may be implemented in a gate or lobby area and not on board the aircraft.”

Read that again.  It is saying in effect to avoid another Dr. Dao, let’s be sure we bump ‘em at the gate and before their rears are on our seats in the plane.

And for this there is applause?

United, by the way, acknowledged to the New York Times that the document is legit. The Times reported: “We issued an updated policy to make sure crews traveling on our aircraft are booked at least 60 minutes prior to departure,” a spokeswoman, Maggie Schmerin, wrote in an email on Sunday. “This is one of our initial steps in a review of our policies.”

Let’s review where we are.  You can be bumped up to 61 minutes before scheduled departure to seat a crew member and, really, other than cry and perhaps pocket a few dollars there is nothing you can do.

Even though the situation is entirely the fault of the airline. The passenger did nothing wrong. But the passenger suffers the consequences of wretched scheduling and capacity management and personnel distribution policies.

No wonder a Morning Consult poll has found that we are fleeing United.  Reports Morning Consult: “People are so mad at United Airlines that almost 50 percent are willing to pay more money and even endure a layover to avoid flying with the company.”

New York Times reporting on the poll makes clear that for the moment United is paying a price for its mistreatment of Dr. Dao.  Said the Times: “About 44 percent of respondents who said they had heard of United recently preferred to fly American even when the journey cost $66 more and took an additional three hours.”

Hold on, however. Do you really think similar could not have happened at American or Delta?  Is there good reason to think United is markedly more incompetent and anti passenger than its legacy brethren?

The competitors are trying to persuade us. Delta now has sweetened its ante to nearly $10,000 to coax a passenger to give up a seat and American said it won’t bump a seated passenger.

A new DOT report in fact indicates that United is middling in the ranking of carriers and their involuntary boarding stats.

Are you feeling more loved and respected?

Do you see any significant differences among the legacy carriers? As long as I can recall I have had strong preferences – but mainly due to geography and which airline controlled my home airport. I don’t recall thinking there much difference among the US carriers.  

The puzzlement is how an industry became so myopic – so indifferent to its customers – that it has thought it okay to tell people that, no, that ticket you thought was good for a flight isn’t much good for anything unless we tell you it is – and we are telling you it isn’t so sit down and shut up.

And if you do speak up, well, you may be dragged out of your seat, given a concussion, and maybe have your nose broken and a few teeth knocked out.

Can you picture any other business – except organized crime – that treats its customers this way?

As Brandeis professor Robert Kuttner noted in a recent New York Times piece, “The current business model used by the big airlines is not the only one consistent with reasonable profit and good service. It simply reflects the sheer arrogance that comes with monopoly power.”

Kuttner added: “Elsewhere in the travel industry — hotels and car rental agencies, for example — these abuses do not exist because there is actual competition. But airlines are simply not naturally competitive.”

In the past week there’s been a flurry of politicians calling for investigations into United and what will happen is that the airlines will make a few internal rules changes – like the United 60 minute doctrine – and we’ll forget about Dao.  Things will go back to “normal” in the skies.

But the fundamental dysfunction and anti-passenger hostilities that have characterized the industry for at last 15 years will persist.

Unless we demand changes.

Changes that go way beyond this new United 60 minute rule.

Way beyond.

 

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

I grew up maybe 20 miles from Times Square and one thing I have always known is there is no gain in playing three card monte with a street hustler. Before I went to kindergarten at P.S. #4, I knew that.

And yet here I am with a Barclays AAdvantage Mastercard and a Chase MileagePlus Explorer card in my wallet.

Of course I am being played for a sucker and I am definitely the loser in this 21st century version of three card monte.

But now it’s not cards or peas – it’s airline miles.

Here’s the Bloomberg headline: “Airlines Make More Money Selling Miles Than Seats.”

Here’s the subhead: “The golden goose isn’t your ticket or bag fee—it’s the credit card you use to collect frequent flier miles.”

Why are airlines in the black? Miles just may have a lot to do with this.

The Bloomberg story goes on to say: “Each mile fetches an airline anywhere from 1.5 cents to 2.5 cents , and the big banks amass those miles by the billions, doling them out to cardholders each month.”

The story twists the knife: “For the banks, people who pay annual fees for those cards to accumulate miles are the closest thing to a sure bet. These consumers typically have higher-than-average incomes and spend more on their cards, which generates merchant fees for the banks. They also tend to maintain high credit scores, which means they pay their bills on time and banks experience fewer defaults.“

How many of those airline cards are in your wallet?

Remember, I have two – so I cannot point blaming fingers at you without a few fingers pointed back at me.

How has it comes that I am now playing three card monte with slick hustlers in the sky?

It’s time to think harder about our mileage addictions.

Honestly I have gotten many free plane trips over the years from cashing in miles.  I don’t recall ever cashing them in for anything except tickets and upgrades – definitely no merchandise or magazines.  

I have enjoyed those flights – to Rome, Paris, New York, and many more. I have savored flying upfront when I paid with miles.

But even so I have to accept I am being played for a sucker.

The thesis of the Bloomberg piece – very much worth a read – is that airlines aren’t really in the transportation business, they are in the loyalty/points business and when viewed as such they are wildly more successful (and undervalued by the market, apparently).

The hustle of course – especially looking only at the universe of miles for airfares – is that the seats airlines fill with miles cost them close to zero and they only fill the ones they want to fill. Thy most certainly do not bump paying business class fares to find room for a person cashing in miles.

What a beautiful business.  The miles cos essentially nothing. Even when redeemed they have few costs involved.  And airlines can mint as many miles as they want because they control the redemption marketplace.  

Don’t hotel rooms and iPads and other redemption items cost airlines something? Sure.  But experts still estimate that on average airlines sell miles for maybe three times what the miles cost the carriers.

Then too, at will, a carrier can devalue miles – which has happened numerous times – and all the frequent fliers can do is bellyache.  

By some estimates, too, 40% of miles are never redeemed for anything.  Not even magazine subscriptions.

New Bankrate data say that 31% of us have never redeemed credit card rewards points, by the way. Never.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that some analysts now say that maybe half of the typical airline’s profits come from selling miles and the related partnerships with big banks.

As long as we remain addicted to miles, the airlines are in the money.

It’s up to us to challenge the paradigm.

Personally I do not factor potential mileage earnings into purchases I make. In fact, to the extent I think about perks with purchases, I am more tempted by cashback offers and I particularly like many of the Discover programs.  Why? $100 in cash from Discover is worth a lot more to me than, say, 5,000 in miles.

And I try to use miles as quickly as I can. I keep a stash – around 250,000 at Amex – to use for family emergencies but as for the rest, I’ll spend ‘em as quickly as I can.

The biggest resolution: it’s time to stop playing three-card monte at 30,000.

I can’t win that game.

That means I just will try not to much think about or talk about miles – and in that direction lies a kind of freedom.

 

Is Now the Time To Buy Branches on the Cheap? – The #CreditUnion Forum http://bit.ly/2nUtRKa My reporting

 

By Robert McGarvey

Do you use hotel gyms?

The question is not rhetorical. Those who want should use the comments field to tell their experience of hotel gyms because, frankly, I want to put on the table eliminating them.  Personally I don’t use them, can’t say I have in several decades, and I also don’t know anybody who does.

There are some data points that say I’m nuts – more on them imminently – but my reality is that those who exercise on the road walk around town, or jog, some go to yoga studios, a few diehards belong to home gyms that give them reciprocal use of out of town gyms and that is where they go.

In the latter case, I am assuming they go to a dedicated gym because, judging by the hotel gyms I have looked at in recent years, most seem modestly equipped, with far from the latest gear, and often very small.  That makes sense. Hoteliers pinch pennies where they can and if no one is squawking about gyms, they won’t put money into them.

The analogy is to hotel business centers which genuinely are an endangered species.  

Then too, marketing firm MMGY Global said that in a recent survey it found profound evidence of lack of interest in fitness on the road.  Here’s its data:

• 57% of business travelers work out less when they’re on the road
• 59% of business travelers eat less healthy
• 47% sleep less

Those numbers very much sync with what I hear from fellow travelers.  A small percentage maintain a real fitness regimen on the road – personally I try and usually succeed in walking 10,000+ steps daily when traveling which is surprisingly easy when walking in airports, in Las Vegas convention hotels, and around Manhattan and San Francisco.  Word of advice: use a step counter (apps are standard on both iPhones and Androids). You may be shocked to see how many steps you log in a normal business travel day, especially days when you are in airports.

And yet there is contrary data that say we love our hotel gyms. For instance,  MMGY Global found that nearly half of millennials put a high priority on good fitness options when picking a hotel.  About a third of Gen Xers said likewise. Just one Baby Boomer in four thought this way. So there ae generation differences indeed but if you believe those numbers we very much want to preserve hotel gyms.

A 2016 survey by American Express uncovered similar data. Some 49% of millennials, said Amex, pegged a fitness center as one of a hotel’s most important features.  

Meantime, lobbying group AHLA said that 84% of hotels now offer some kind of fitness center.  

Are they in fact any good? Certainly some hotel gyms are dazzlers but what I have heard from fellow travelers, and have frequently read in reviews posted to TripAdvisor and Yelp, is that a lot of hotel gyms are genuinely mediocre.

Then, too, just maybe the numbers – showing real interest in hotel gyms – don’t add up. Data from the Cornell hotel school suggested that – just maybe – we express more interest in hotel gyms than is reflected in our actual use. Said Cornell researchers: “Of particular interest, the study also found that guests greatly overestimated the likelihood that they would use the hotels’ amenities.”

That Cornell study found stunning discrepancies between our words and our deeds when it comes to hotel gyms.  On average 46% of us say we expect to use hotel gyms. Just 22% do.

Travel & Leisure covered the report in a story headlined: Didn’t Make It to the Hotel Gym? You Aren’t the Only One
It twisted the knife: “Hotel fitness centers are a
neglected—and costly—amenity.”

Those numbers prompted a Conde Nast Traveler story titled: “Is the Hotel Gym Dead?”

Bottomline: sure, there are polls that say we plan to use the hotel gym – but very probably you’ll find us at our desks doing email, or maybe in the hotel bar. Where we won’t be, I believe, is in the hotel gym.

Does this mean it is time to think, hard, about closing hotel gyms?

My vote: yep.

Which brings us to the money question: Do you use a hotel gym?  

Would you pick one hotel over another because of its gym?

I just don’t see it mattering that much, except to those for whom it really matters and quite probably in my experience they have already made their own plans which do not necessarily involve the hotel where they are staying.

 

 

Throw out your debit cards – the cardless revolution – CUInsight http://bit.ly/2nvTMcG