Consumer affairs

by Robert McGarvey

Let’s be clear about two facts: (1) our planet is experiencing some kind of climate change that in many locations is producing not simply unpleasant changes but possibly deadly ones; (2) for travelers the reality is that sustainable travel is a fantasy – nice to think about but it isn’t happening in my lifetime.

The only sustainable travel is to not travel and that simply is not viable for many of us.

What should we do given the reality of climate change?

If the Democrats in Washington DC can deliver something of a climate bill – and flawed as it is, it nonetheless is the most important legislation of its kind since the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972 – we can do something too.

Like what? As I mull my options I don’t see me cancelling my upcoming trip to Portugal/Spain or any of several short business trips on my near-term agenda. Nor do I see myself selling my gasoline powered car and swapping into an electric – electric cars are too pricey, my condo tower doesn’t have chargers, and my car is a 2017 BMW with under 15,000 miles on it (meaning I don’t use it much at all anyway).

But just as the new federal measure will include some significant environmental steps – some $369 billion in tax credits and spending over 10 years for renewable energy – I can take some significant steps too. And I bet I can do it without spending buckets of money either.

I also have no confidence that the travel purveyors – carriers, hotels, DMOs, etc – will do more than the greenwashing lip service they have offered for at least a generation. We have heard it all many times before and it has produced squat.

Governments will actually take steps, that’s so. The US finally has but many in Europe already had. However, over half the globe by land mass has not and will not soon join this parade. Governments such as Germany and Sweden are helpful indeed but much more will be required.

This is where we come in. For my part in aiding the environment here are the steps I will take:

*Fly as little as possible. I used to think nothing of a quick hop to Berlin or Belfast or a same day business trip from LA to San Francisco but nowadays I am rationing my flying because it is a significant source of greenhouse gases. I am not saying my cuts will save the planet but if we all take fewer flights, we could breathe easier.

*Fly in coach or economy plus. OK, I am cheap about airplane seating but now I can justify my seat preference by saying it is better for the environment when more of us are crammed into a plane. Those upfront are eating the proverbial cake.

*Walk as much as possible. Every month Google sends me a breakdown of my travels and a metric that fascinates me is miles in a car vs. miles walked. Most months I walk more than I travel in a car and my goal is to keep it that way. No, I am not going to walk to Los Angeles from Phoenix but I pretty much always walk the 2 miles that take me to downtown. Little walks add up.

*Use public transit instead of Uber. I am lucky. The Phoenix lightrail stops in front my building and it goes quickly to the airport. If it’s too hot outside the lightrail also takes me downtown. Trips I might have used Uber for now are mainly lightrail rides. I suffer little inconvenience and even save a few dollars here and there.

*I really need to start using reusable water bottles. Throwaway plastic ones are just no good for the planet. I know that. And I have the reusable bottles. I just need to remember to use them.

*I am crossing off my bucket list trips that are purely self-indulgent. Yeah, I’d like to see Bhutan or Chengdu or Peru…but other than my idle curiosity what purpose would be served? Too much travel is just pure vanity. I have done my share of those trips. I want to do this no more. Call these trips not taken my gift to the environment.

Add up my actions and will we all celebrate the end of the climate change threat? Of course not. But if we all take little steps that suit us the planet will thank us.

What steps will you start taking? Your steps probably will be different. What matters is taking some steps. As more of us do that that quicker changes will come.

by Robert McGarvey

We all know the brouhaha – sometimes even fisticuffs and videos – involving seat pitch which is the distance between rows of seats in coach on a plane. That number by the way is around 4 inches smaller than it was 50 years ago. If you think your knees clang into the seat in front of you more often, it’s not because your legs have grown but because the pitch has shrunk.

But just maybe the real problem in coach is the size of the seat itself. A half century ago seats were usually 18 inches wide and today they are 16-1/2 inches wide, according to reporting by Stephanie Rosenbloom in the NYTimes.

Doesn’t seem that much?

The aggravating reality is that meantime we have gotten bigger. A lot bigger. In the 1960s the average American male was 5’8″ and weighed 163 pounds. The average woman was 5’3″ and weighed 140.

Today the average woman weighs 170 and is 5’4″. The average man is 5’9″ and weighs 200 pounds.

Just as we are getting bigger the seats in coach are getting smaller.

In 2018 Congress ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to set minimum sizes for airplane seats but it has yet to do so. How exactly it managed to ignore that Congressional mandate for so long is a bit of mystery but not much useful was done in many agencies in that era. But now, according to USA Today, the FAA is seeking public comment on seat size with the intent of issuing a ruling.

Comments from ordinary citizens apparently are welcome. Don’t be shy.

Consumer advocates are not being shy. Case in point: “Seats have continued to shrink by some airlines, and people are continuing to get larger,” said Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights.org. “Our estimate is that only 20% of the population can reasonably fit in these seats now. It’s beyond a matter of comfort, or even emergency evacuation, there are serious health and safety issues when you’re put in cramped conditions for hours on end.”

Hudson is right. The issue that powers the FAA involvement isn’t comfort – surprise! – but safety and in particular speed and ease of evacuation in an emergency. It doesn’t take an ergonomics expert to assert that snug seats, tiny rows and bigger people complicate evacuation at speed and very well might lead to more injuries, possibly even deaths.

What the FAA wants to calibrate is what are the optimal sizes from a safety perspective – and the more you stare at how our sizes have gone in one direction over the past 50 years while airplane seating has gone in the opposite direction you have to think that something is flatout crazy here.

But for many of us the money questions are more personal: Will I fit comfortably in my seat? Will I spill into the adjacent seat?

A stop at Seatguru will give you useful info that may help you reach your own decisions. Take your body measurements and drill into that site’s data. You’ll get a good read on how comfortable you will be on a particular flight.

Another option – pricey, yes, but sure – is to sit in the front of plane. For instance: in Premium Economy on Delta, seat width is about the same as coach (18.5″ vs 18″ in coach). But there’s a couple inches more pitch.

And there’s lot more room in business class. Both pitch and seat width.

Personally my current preference is Premium Economy but if I had more bucks or miles to burn I’d always go for business class. Especially on a flight of more than a couple hours. When you want assured comfort on a flight, know you must spend for it.

But then there are many who need and want a comfortable flight in coach. What will the FAA rule about seat size?

Unless catastrophic predictions emerge about emergencies and current seat sizes – and I don’t see that happening because so far it hasn’t – it is difficult to envision the FAA issuing a rule that airplane seats must be a larger size than currently prevails. Congress may have ordered the FAA to set minimum seat sizes but so far the agency has ducked that order and you can bet that the carriers and their airplane makers are busily lobbying, both the FAA and Congress, to leave that decision in the hands of the private sector.

Which means it is up to us – you and me – to personally provide for our own comfort in the sky. The airlines won’t do it, I doubt the FAA will, but we can.

by Robert McGarvey

Call this a routine review of the advantages versus costs of the Amex Platinum card.

For me, there also is some urgency attached to my review. My membership renews next month and with the pricey Amex Plat the question has to be, to renew or not? For most of us that has become an annual question where there is no certain answer.

Let’s do a deep dive into the value I have gotten from the card this year – and only this year matters. Where travel is concerned, what happened in 2019 is no longer relevant. We are in a world of the now.

Through the first six months of 2022, I have collected 20,853 bonus Amex Membership Miles which, per The Points Guy’s calculator, are worth $417 (at 2 cents a mile) and here is the deal: I scored that bounty putting in very little effort or time and buying absolutely nothing I did not want. Note: personally I value these bonus points (and all Amex Miles) nearer a penny apiece., which puts the real value of this cache to me at $208. Still not bad for a few minutes a week looking through Amex Offers.

So how did I score so many bonus miles? This year I have seen and activated a 5x points offer with WalMart (shopping online or instore) which is good for 1500 points (on a spend of $300).

I have done similar with a 1500 point Amazon 5X offer on a $300 spend.

I picked up 5200 points via Rakuten, mostly for referring a friend who signed up for the service.

An airline ticket purchase – $1600 for business class to Hawaii – brought in 5X points, around 8000.

There are benefits beyond miles with Amex and, for me, this is where the real value of the card lies. There are miscellaneous, recurring cash credits. $18.07 monthly for a NY Times subscription. $25 for Google Services (an Amex Offer that shows up every so often). $1.07 for a Hulu subscription. $12.95 for WalMart Plus (an Amazon Prime competitor without the video). $200 annually for Uber Eats.  $100 reimbursing some miscellaneous expenses with Delta and I will soon get another $100 with an upcoming trip (the annual airline credit is $200).

The credits total around $790 for the year.

And I get free repairs on three cellphones because all three are on accounts paid for by an Amex card. That’s worth maybe $25/monthly, $300 for the year.

I’ve also logged a few airport club stops on the card and can see maybe six more in the next couple months. Value every club entry at $30 and this is the quickest way to get Plat to pay for itself.

Amex covers my TSA Pre ($85) too.

Add up what I get in credits and perks and I have significantly more in benefits than the annual fee I pay.

This year I also am staying aware of the free trip interruption coverage. With a Europe outing on my calendar I may well need it.

Sure, I know the $695 annual fee I pay for Amex Plat is steep. But whenever I run the numbers it seems to me I am breaking even, maybe even coming out a little ahead because the card builds in so many perks.

Amex dings me another $175 for my wife’s card – but she made that back with a free Clear membership ($189). She uses an annual $100 credit at Saks.  She’s also logged around a half dozen airport club stops this year. She gets the card’s fee back in multiples.

Here’s my advice: if you have an Amex Card, especially one with a premium price tag, at least once a year before renewal do what I am doing in this blog.  Add up the credits you get, including bonus and regular miles, and if the total isn’t around the cost of the card – and ideally more than the annual fee – cancel the thing. If it’s not working for you, end the relationship.

But if it is working for you – and I remain satisfied with my return – keep the card. I know I am for another year.

by Robert McGarvey

For decades I have lived by an unbreakable business travel rule: use only carryon luggage. For me that’s long been a (rather battered) Travelpro 22″ rollaboard that I got for under $100.

And then there are personal trips that generally are longer, often involve wardrobe changes (from, say, hiking clothes to appropriate attire for a fine dining restaurant in a stuffy city), and I never use hotel laundry facilities – honestly cannot recall ever doing it – so I need to bring all I need. That load may involve a couple big bags and, yes, they usually get checked because they are too big for carryon.

And now I have a 26 night trip coming up to Portugal and Spain and here’s my resolve: all I bring will fit in a carryon bag.

The logic is simple: Europe’s airports are scenes of disordered chaos and lost luggage is the new normal.

The only way around this is to not do it, that is, to revert to the old business travel rule. I will bring everything I need in a 40 liter Osprey Farpoint backpack that is acceptable carryon. According to REI that size pack is good for a 1 to 3 night trip. My plan is to make it work for 26 nights.

Last year the same bag worked for a similar trip but of only 19 nights. There’s one more week this year lived out of the same 40 liter bag.

That was not my original plan. I had conceived the trip with me bringing a 60 liter L.L. Bean backpack that I have had for years but never used because, well, it has seemed too damn big but for this trip it seemed ideal. Now it has been deleted from the script and a more compact bag will take its place.

How?

The enveloping question: how can anyone travel on a long trip in 2022 with only carryon?

A personal complexity is that on this trip I will be walking around 150 miles of the Portuguese Camino, from Porto to Santiago de Compostela. Many pilgrims wear their backpacks for the full walk. I do not plan to and will instead use a pack service that for maybe 5 Euros per day will transport the pack to my next lodgings. For me, the walk is enough. I don’t also need to be a pack animal. But…if there are any doubts about the reliability of pack services in 2022 I want to be able to wear the pack which means the total weight should be no more than 20 pounds. And the Farpoint weighs 3.17 pounds empty. That leaves 17 pounds.

The other complexity: this year’s trip involves many nights in two European capitals, Lisbon and Madrid. The scruffy pilgrim look needs to be spiffed up for the big cities.

The first step is to tightly edit the packing list. The bag is small, it just won’t hold that much. Here’s what I envision stuffing into it:

*3 shirts (2 dress, 1 hiking)

*2 pants (1 dressy)

*3 underwear

*2 undershirts

*3 pairs socks

*1 pair sandals (sorry, no dressy shoes in the mix)

Much of this will be hand washable in a hotel sink.

There also will be European plugs, phone chargers, the usual stuff.

How to organize everything? Traditionally I pack a business travel suitcase simply by dropping things in it, zipping it up and off I go. That won’t work on a trip this length and with me literally moving just about every night to different accommodations.

So I have become something of a nerd about backpack organizing devices.

For instance I have an Osprey Ultralight Garment Folder that will hold a couple shirts and a pair of pants. It keeps them neat and pressed.

I also have an Osprey three piece packing cube set: 1 for socks, 1 for undershirt, one for underpants.

I have a large toiletry bag that will hold everything from a toothbrush and paste through prescription pills.

There’s also a 14.5 liter Eagle Creek clean/dirty cube with two compartments, one for soiled clothes.

The backpack also has a sleeve for a tablet – I may bring a very old iPad – and a security pocket with a mesh organization panel.

Call me Mr. Organized.

You don’t like my array of inserts? Understandably. Each of us has to personalize his/her own set and that will hinge on the trip itself and the gear we are packing.

My inserts will differ from yours. But poke around Amazon – or specialty outfits like REI or manufacturers like Osprey – and you will find many thousands of inserts to choose among.

Choose wisely because you will need the proper inserts. The reality is that there is no other way to do long trips carrying so little luggage.

Understand, too, that although many peregrinos – walkers on the Camino – start off carrying huge and stuffed backpacks, some 75 liters and more. Most soon regret that and start tossing stuff, literally on the first day.

Small is beautiful on the Camino but it also is beautiful in just about all European travel if you want to arrive with your luggage.

Buen Camino.

by Robert McGarvey

In about two months I am off on a trip to Portugal and Spain and I find myself doing something I have never before done in decades of travel: I am planning for a trip interruption/delay.

The continuing chaos in Europe is why and of course there also are cancellations of domestic US flights. Just this morning I got an email from Delta about a flight change and what had been a multi hour layover in Atlanta now is cut to 62 minutes – a very workable time in ordinary circumstances but today?

A recent New York Times piece written by a flight attendant warned: “A One Hour Layover Is not Enough Anymore.”

I found that out last fall when I missed a tight connection at JFK (to Madrid) and, because it was weather related (lightning), Delta assumed no responsibility and I was out of pocket for a hotel in New York plus taxis, dinner, etc.

That is why this year I am planning for a trip interruption. I absolutely never have done this before but last year’s was an expensive education in the necessity of such planning.

Understand this: I assume the present 62 minute in Atlanta will change. Last year there must have been a half dozen flight changes in the weeks leading up to departure. I may be routed through JFK or Chicago or Boston or who knows where. I may wind up with a six hour layover. I just can’t know in 2022 air travel.

The one constant is that I must assume the trip could fizzle.

Last year – entirely my fault – I did not understand how the Amex Trip Interruption protection that comes with my Platinum card works. I had only a hazy awareness that I had such coverage. Why would I? I had never had a need to use it. When I did last fall it wasn’t there for me but – again – my fault. Amex did not let me down. I had simply not followed the rules.

The main rule is this: eligible expenses must be on the eligible card. Amex is not going to reimburse me for a missed train in Madrid, a charge that had been put on Diners. Nor would it cover a New York hotel, a charge put on my wife’s credit card (and not an Amex card) because she made the reservation. Ditto for an expensive hotel room in Leon, Spain. Basically if there was a mistake to make I made it.

And paid for it. At least $1000 lost due to some lightning.

You can prevent a similar loss from happening to you.

Word of advice: if you have a credit card that you believe will cover costs incurred due to trip interruption/cancellation, now is the time to read the rules. Here’s the Amex Plat rules – seven pages of them.

The Amex rules aren’t onerous or ridiculous but they must be followed to win reimbursement.

Fortunately the airfare involved in this fall’s trip was paid for with Amex miles, which count in this context, and a few miscellaneous Delta charges were put on the card. So far so good.

Amex Plat is not unusual. Many premium cards include some trip cancellation/interruption coverage but always there are rules. A Chase United Air card I have also covers trip delays/interruption – but of course there are rules and the main one is that the charges be on the card.

Most purchases of travel insurance usually involve coverage for trip interruption too. But if you buy such a policy do check if such coverage is included and, again, what are the exclusions and rules for qualifying.

However you get such coverage, get it. You’ll need it this year.

Face it: in 2022 we are dealing with a wholly new set of aviation related problems. I do think the industry will sort them out – especially in the US (Europe may have deeper issues) – but I would not count on a return to smoother flying until 2023. Until then, accept that you will have flight changes, you may have travel interruptions, you probably will miss connecting flights. Pleasant it won’t be but if we use the tools and perks and protections that we already have the skies will be a little bit friendlier.

by Robert McGarvey

About four years after founding her business for mothers Bump Club and Beyond, Lindsay Pinchuk had a moment of reckoning: she realized it was time to sell her company. Bump Club and Beyond was built to serve pregnant women with infants. Pinchuk had been in that situation when she started the company but wasn’t anymore. “My kids were 8 and 11. I was no longer in the baby life stage,” she said. So, she decided to sell.

The realization that it may be time to sell the business strikes many entrepreneurs. But here’s a chilling reality: selling a business is not easy. In fact, many find it impossible. By some counts, 90% of startups close, and a key reason for that is no buyer could be found. 

How did Pinchuk succeed when many others failed? Because she understood that “getting acquired does not happen overnight. It is really hard,” she said. That means you have to work at it, maybe as hard as the work involved in starting a new business.

You want to sell your business and have the same happy ending as Pinchuk, who eventually had three companies seeking to buy her out? Below are four steps that just about every business that sells will have to take and two mistakes that will likely kill all sales prospects for a company. Use this as your road map for a perilous journey.

Continued at Startup Savant

by Robert McGarvey

The recent Reuters story’s headline has to push your worry buttons: No experience, no resume, you’re hired! Hotels fight for staff

Many eyes are glued to the ongoing crisis at airlines and airports – a London bookmaker should start taking bets on how many flights BA will cancel today. But it’s not one airline, seemingly all are imploding and many thousands of travelers find themselves in a quandary.

But a global economic slowdown will help cure these woes, as will the end of peak summer travel season. By October, even if airlines do nothing intelligent or positive, matters will become much less stressful.

As for hotels however it is hard to be sanguine. The industry faces a longterm problem. As Reuters reported, “Thousands of workers left the hospitality industry when international travel shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many chose not to return, finding better paid employment elsewhere, leaving hoteliers facing a desperate shortage.”

That’s the rub. Hotels have traditionally offered low wages, often for jobs with unpleasant working conditions.

Of course Japan already is operating hotels staffed primarily by robots and very probably that is the future for many hotels in the US – but that future is some years removed. The US hotel industry has a long history of under investing in infrastructure – see the decades of data leaks – and, absolutely, there already are robots that replace bartenders and robots that act as porters for delivery of room service meals and shifting baggage. There’s even a robot that can replace a hotel housekeeper.

Robots have a toehold in US hotels. Just don’t expect to see many soon.

Some of these devices cost in the six figures, nobody honestly knows the life expectancy of one, and given how hotels have struggled with high tech devices for a generation it is hard to see a smooth or graceful integration of robots into the daily operations of most hotels.

Turning more tasks into self-serve activities is another option, very probably the most likely to happen near-term. We can check ourselves into hotels, even provisioning ourselves with in app keys, for instance. I pretty much always carry my own bag to the room. And I am usually quite OK with housekeeping every other day. Realistically, however, what we will do for ourselves will represent a tiny amount of labor displaced onto our shoulders.

The reality: even with some robots and more DIY hotels will face continuing, huge staff shortfalls.

Can hotels in the US and in Europe hire and train enough staff to operate with at least a minimal level of service?

The short answer is of course they can. But they also have to change to become an employer of choice rather than the employer of last resort which often is what they are for many.

How to make hotel jobs more attractive?

For one thing, pay staff competitively. That means offering a range of benefits too – from paid sick days to paid holidays.

It also means training workers so that they can do their jobs at a satisfactory level. And keep training. Cross train a bar back to fill in as a restaurant waiter, for instance.

And it means increasing the attractiveness of the jobs – a lot of hospitality work just is not appealing and when work is unappealing, workers go elsewhere. Hotel managers need always to ask themselves: would I want this job?

Another step – already showing up in Europe – is to fill hotel jobs with more foreign workers but that likely means immigration policies would need to be relaxed and it is hard to see where the political will for that could be found. It’s a good idea – already helping in Germany and Spain to name two – but in the US immigration has been so thoroughly politicized we have slid into paralysis. I don’t see more foreign workers as a fix, certainly not in an election year.

Here’s the bottomline: today’s hotel staff shortages can be remedied but for there to be a real fix the industry has to accept that many of its jobs have a desirability problem, as in they are simply undesirable. Reinvent them, make them better and the jobs will bring in applicants. It’s that easy.

 Meet Michele Dean, CEO of Suffolk Federal Credit Union on Long Island in New York and that is a $1.5 billion institution.

That makes Dean one of few female CEOs of big credit unions – and in this podcast she talks about that. She also talks about her credit union mentor, Kirk Kordeleski, who hired her when he was at Bethpage and who gave her increasing responsibilities that put her on the path to senior leadership.  You know Kordesleski. He’s twice been a guest on this podcast, most recently talking about creative credit union compensation strategies. Link in the show notes.

Dean gets animated in talking about what Suffolk needs to do to stay competitive in a region where three credit unions are bigger, and one of them is much bigger.

How to survive? According to Dean it will be by harnessing smart tech and she is on the hunt for just that.

Proof: your podcast host met her a few months ago at an Austin Texas conference hosted by CU 2.0 – and, she says, she already is pursuing tech projects with three fintechs she learned about there.

In the show she mentions crypto expert Joe – that is Joe Keller, a digital guru and a past guest on this show. Link to his podcast in the show notes.

And there’s also a shout out for cannabis banking leader Sundie Seefried – and there’s a link to her show in the show notes.

Here’s a question for you: Do sharedraft accounts matter anymore? You want to hear Dean’s answer.

A final thought to ponder: is Dean a harbinger of a generation shift that is radically remaking the CEO office in credit unions as Baby Boomers punch the clock for the last time? And what would that mean?

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

At first I wanted to scornfully laugh – really, people will fly air ships? In the 21st century? I’d thought enthusiasm for gas-powered air ships had literally gone up in flames with the 1937 Hindenburg disaster in New Jersey that killed 35. Grim footage of the disaster, via British Pathe, is on Youtube.

That fiery crash- seen by countless millions in movie theaters back in an era when news clips preceded many feature films – sealed the death of airships. Who’d fly one? Ever again?

Today in Spain a company called Air Nostrum is asking that question and expecting the answer to be enthusiasm. It has ordered 10 airships from a British manufacturer, Airlander.

How crazy is this?

Maybe it is crazy smart and just right for the times.

For one thing who remembers the Hindenburg crash? I do because in the 1950s New Jersey where I grew up that crash still was talked about. The crash occurred about 55 miles from where I lived and very possibly as the airship traveled past Newark NJ it may have flown over the Linden NJ block where I grew up. The crash was real to me.

But few have that tangible relationship to it. I doubt many know any specifics about the crash.

The new airship also will be fundamentally different from the Hindenburg.

There is one tangible fact that has to be grasped. The Hindenburg relied on hydrogen gas for its lighter than air structure and hydrogen is indeed the lightest gas but it also is flammable.

The Airlander craft relies on helium which is slightly heavier but still lighter than air and it is inert and non-flammable. It’s the gas used to fill party balloons for instance.

Yes, helium can be dangerous – even fatal – but that involves breathing in lots of it. “You don’t have to worry about fatal asphyxiation if you’re sucking from a helium balloon at a party. At worst you’ll keep going until you get light‐headed and pass out, at which point you’ll stop inhaling helium and your body’s oxygen levels will return to normal. Of more concern is the possibility that you’ll hurt yourself when you fall down,” says the National Library of Medicine. Helium-caused deaths do occur but most revolve around people going inside a big helium filled balloon.

So why isn’t there a rush to get fleets of helium airships afloat?

Understand that the Hindenburg was beastly slow by 21st centuries. It took around two and one-half days to journey from Frankfurt Airport in Germany to Lakehurst, NJ. It’s cruising speed was 76 mph. (It was twice as fast as ocean going liners, by the way.) A commercial jet typically cruises at 550 mph.

The Airlander honestly isn’t faster than the Hindenburg. Its maximum speed is around 80 mph. You are highly unlikely to want to cross the Atlantic from Madrid to Newark in an Airlander.

But where you may want to fly an Airlander is from, say, Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain to Madrid, about 300 miles. Maybe a four hour ride in an Airlander. Sure, a conventional airplane flight takes around 70 minutes.

But the kicker is that the Airlander produces perhaps 90% less emissions than a jet and as environmental consequences of jet travel enter the consideration of travel planners, particularly in Europe, Air Nostrum may be onto something.

Airlander also is talking about a zero emission airship.

Yet Spain already has an extensive high speed train system that covers 3100 km and those trains move twice as fast as the Airlander (about 310km/hour) and produce few or no emissions. But there are big gaps in coverage. There’s no high speed train from Madrid to Lisbon for instance. Neither is there one to Santiago.

Airlander just maybe can plug a lot of transportation holes, not just in Spain but across Europe.

Air Nostrum, by the way, already runs regional routes in Spain for Iberia, using conventional planes of course. But if it in fact launches its air buses in 2026 as scheduled, a world gasping through climate change issues may well be ready to climb aboard a gigantic 300ft long air balloon.

I definitely am ready to set aside my Hindenburg nightmares and just might give Air Nostrum’s Airlander a flyer.

by Robert McGarvey

The Hotel Management headline caught my eye: What hoteliers need to know about protecting guest data. To be candid my instant reaction was one word: Everything. Given how many documented hotel data breaches there have been in this century, to call hotels data sieves is to flatter them.

Now matters may be worsening, mainly due to the labor crisis that is engulfing US hotels.

But hotel already are documented bad at data protection. Here’s a hotel breach timeline dating back to 2010 in Hotel News Now. What is stunning is how many breaches go undetected for many months. For instance, in 2019 Choice Hotels reported a data leak that “inadvertently” disclosed customer info to business partners. How often? Per Hotel News Now: “Overall, this issue occurred approximately 88,000 times from June 2015 through 12 November 2019.”

Read the HNN timeline and the victims are a roll call of hotel management companies, from Marriott to Trump, Hilton to White Lodging.

You want to laugh at their ineptitude but hold that chuckle because it is your data that is in play, your info that is getting sucked out and put in the hands of criminals.

Surely, matters are improving, data will be more scrupulously guarded. You might think so.

Lots of companies – including the several profiled in the Hotel Management article – offer contemporary data protection technology and practices. The availability of protection is not in doubt. The readiness of hotels to spend the money and the readiness of their staff to implement the procedures very much are in doubt.

How many stories have you read about hotel labor shortages? This impacts everything from front desk clerks to gardeners and housekeepers. It definitely means there is a shortage of IT security staff who probably have migrated into industries with better pay and superior technology. See this April 2022 Law.com article, Hackers’ Path Eased as US Cybersecurity Jobs Sit Empty. Per the article: “About 1 million people work in cybersecurity in the U.S., but there are nearly 600,000 unfilled positions, data from CyberSeek shows.” You can bet that a lot of those unfilled positions are in hospitality where, as a rule, pay lags. If you have an in demand skill, the smart move of course is to go where the money is and that will rarely be hospitality.

Assume any hotel you stay in has cybersecurity openings and it has struggled and generally lost out in efforts to keep their best cybersecurity staffers.

More bad news is that the professional cyber criminal organizations are in full gear to attack travelers and hotels because the criminals – who have been staffing up – believe the odds increasingly favor them.

Current events play into this. Attacks out of Russia are skilled and they are growing in number.

Your cyber safety depends upon an understaffed and possibly under talented workforce.

Check into a hotel and the property hoovers up lots of data from you – a credit card number, probably a driver’s license number, business address, possibly also home address. That is ample info to enable a crook to make purchases on your credit card, possibly to attempt opening new accounts in your name.

Know this: although it is tempting to use a fake id at a hotel most (possibly all) states have laws making it illegal. I am no lawyer but my guess is that without evidence of criminal intent, no one would prosecute a worried traveler who used a fake ID and a credit card in the same name to check into a hotel in order to minimize risks of data theft. And I seriously doubt many hotels would have any interest in a prosecution going forward when the guest did not defraud them and the guest intends to mount a defense built around hotels and their data leaks. But caveat emptor.

I am not presently using a fake ID but I put hotel related charges on a credit card where I check the activity frequently (several times a week). It’s also a credit card issued by a company with generally good security practices.

I suggest you do likewise. Put all hotel related expenses on one card that you check frequently. If you travel a lot this year – between hotel staff shortages and what seems to be chronic under investment in cyber by hoteliers – your data is at risk.

Keep that in mind with every transaction at a hotel. Incidentally, hotel bars and restaurants seem especially leaky – think hard about paying cash. Ditto hotel gift shops.

I wish I had better news for you but the best I can say is. assume your data may be breached everytime you stay in a hotel. With that attitude you will stay on the defense and that’s now a traveler’s must.

You know how savvy travelers brace themselves against pickpockets when in crowded train stations especially in Europe? Me, I will literally keep a hand on my pocket touching my wallet. Paranoid? Nah. Just careful.

Do likewise with your data in a hotel.

Maybe you can’t cuddle it but you can be mindful about it and that’s the next best thing.