Consumer affairs

by Robert McGarvey

It occurred to me the other day as I packed for a trip that just maybe the biggest change in my packing isn’t in the clothes (remarkably similar to what I packed 30 years ago) but in just about everything else.

Remember, now I prefer a backpack – a 35 liter Cotopaxi or a 40 liter Osprey – whereas decades ago my bag of choice was a big garment bag, mainly because folding clothes has never been a skill of mine. Still isn’t but I have grown to accept wrinkles, in my face and my clothes. A backpack is a functional choice and it is a change for me but it by no means is the biggest change in how I travel.

Probably the even bigger change is in the tech I tote and that’s despite the fact that tech today is a near universal reality whereas 30 years ago it was something of a rarity.

Rare it may have been but back circa 1990 I always brought a Toshiba T1100 Plus laptop, a modem, extension cords, a power bar, a screwdriver, and still more to insure I could in fact plug into the hotel’s phones and access CompuServe and/or AOL which were the online networks I used in those days. I also owned an acoustic coupler that I occasionally brought. Sometimes I also packed a bulky tape recorder (with spare D batteries) and a three pound Tandy-100 notebook which ran on batteries, had a tiny 8 line display and could store data on audio tape (thus the tape recorder). I remember transcribing an interview with Gerry Adams, the legendary Northern Irish politician, as a sat in a Belfast guest house and pecked away on the Tandy (which probably is the only oldtime tech I wish I still had – it was genuinely cool).

Add up all that weight I had to be lugging 20+ pounds of tech.

Looking back I have no real idea why I was so fixated on staying connected. I got few emails (I remember when CompuServe charged for emails). The Tandy could do most of what the Toshiba could do and, well, I guess I was just exhibiting my inner tech geek in my fondness for bringing so much gear on my travels.

But now it is 2023 and I travel light. Very light. For a computer my choice today is either a 9th generation iPad which cost under $300 and weighs about a pound or a Samsung Galaxy S6 Lite tablet which also weighs around a pound and cost $250. Note: I used to buy iPad Airs with all the bells and whistles but it occurred to me I didn’t use those features so I went cheap this past year. Either device does just fine with email, web searching, and the occasional writing chore.

Oh, the tablet, whichever I bring, also will double as my portable library with around 2000 Kindle books on tap in my library. Just think about how much weight that alone eliminates from my baggage.

WiFi is built into both tablets, no modem needed.

If I want I can bring a $30 Fosmon mini keyboard (it fits in a shirt pocket) or a lightweight Logitech keyboard, also $30. I probably will only bring a keyboard if I anticipate writing lengthy documents.

Of I course there’s also an iPhone 12. On it is a $23 Hindenburg field recorder app that recorded five interviews on a recent trip – very good sound quality without using an external microphone. The iPhone also can produce a powerful hotspot to handle my devices if I prefer to avoid public WiFi at hotels, airports etc (which I often boycott – security issues make using them unwise unless you deploy robust VPN).

Add in a USB cord or two and a USB outlet plug and tech is handled.

In a pinch, of course I could take quite good, even printable, photos with the phone (but I don’t customarily do photography). But if I had to I could.

Total weight is maybe three pounds, max.

And of course I can actually do much, much more with today’s pared down gear. Less is more.

How has your packing changed in your years of business travel? Speak up in the comments below.

by Robert McGarvey

Everywhere I turn suddenly the word I hear is AI. AI can do this, it will do that, but can it in fact plan our travels?

Remember, the AI tools are 1.0 versions. They are very, very far from perfect.

Case in point: moments ago I asked ChatGPT, the current AI leader, to plan a two night business trip from Phoenix to Dallas. Seems simple right? A fast flight via American or Southwest, stay in a hotel near the event, and that’s 75% completed.

Not with ChatGPT. Here’s how it started: “Start your journey early in the morning and drive from Phoenix to Albuquerque, which is about a 6-hour drive.”

Note: I specifically asked this: Plan a two night trip from Phoenix to Dallas. The itinerary I got back showed one night in Albuquerque, one night in Amarillo and one night in Dallas, then returning home., presumably by driving but those details are not specified.

I gave Bard the same direction and it at least put me on a plane. It also suggested a trip to the G W Bush Library at SMU; I didn’t know it was there.

For day 1, Bard suggested: “In the evening, have dinner at one of Dallas’ many great restaurants. I recommend Tei-An, Uchiko, or Fearing’s Restaurant.”

Not bad actually. Score one for Bard.

I next asked ChatGPT to plan a six day walking itinerary on the Camino Ingles in northern Spain. A big win: it started me in Ferrol, not A Coruna which is the bigger city in that part of Galicia, but a pilgrim needs to start a few miles west in Ferrol if he/she wants a Compostela, an official document testifying to completion of a pilgrimage to Santiago.

As for Bard it returned a route of 93 kilometers…which is shy of the 100 minimum to qualify for a Compostela.

The ChatGPT route involved 117 KM.

The Stingy Nomads stages route – a human created route; I’ve found them reliable on past Caminos – comes in at 116 KM.

Score one for ChatGPT.

Next test: I asked both to plan a three night trip to Belfast to see the history of “the Troubles.”

Bard did ok, suggesting a Black Taxi tour to travel the Falls Rd, the Shankhill, and the Crumlin Rd museum. But on Day 3 it fizzled out with a suggestion to see the Titanic Museum. A fine stop for many but it has nothing to do with the Troubles.,

As for ChatGPT, it waived a white flag: “The server had an error processing your request. Sorry about that!”

You probably heard the recent story of tourists in Hawaii who, following GPS. drove directly into a harbor. There’s video. Personally I think that incident has more to do with human error than machine error but, then again, I have not see the directions the tourists were given, nor do I know what GPS mapping tool they used. Maybe it was in fact a machine malfunction.

But back to AI and travel. My best guess is that two or three years from now, AI will be able to plan most business trips literally in seconds with high accuracy, assuming the question is framed properly. The “prompts” – as they are called in AI – are crucial in shaping the results. Poor questions will produce poor results.

Why am I optimistic that better times are just around the bend? Partly it’s because the AI tools will get better – their databases will grow and their speed will accelerate. Partly it’s because we will get better at shaping our prompts.

Give it a couple years and about all that will be left for travel agents will be trips involving enormous complexities and poor source materials – such as travels in sub-Saharan Africa or India. I’ve tried to plan such trips myself and frankly gave up.

For now, however, by all means play with AI, even ask it simple questions. But always remember the machine is fallible. I just asked Bard the best steak houses in Manhattan and came back with a list headed by Peter Luger which happens to be in Brooklyn and, well, don’t ask Pete Wells what he thinks of the joint. On this list of 10 there were at least two more that just do not belong on any list of the best steak houses in Manhattan.

I asked ChatGPT the same question and, again, it offered up Peter Luger and on its list of five one other – clearly – did not belong.

But both named Wolfgangs which is at the top of my list.

The answers will keep getting better. Give AI time.

By Robert McGarvey

A passenger on your flight is flagrantly drunk. Is this OK with you? Or do you disapprove?

A baby cries – ok or no?

A couple has a public display of affection – are you tolerant or not?

Blogs and newspapers are chock full of flagrant inflight misbehavior – here are a few record-setting FAA fines imposed for genuinely over the top misbehavior including head butting flight attendants and attempting to open airplane doors in flight.  No reader will dispute that these passengers are completely out of line and my vote is to ban them forever from flying commercial.

It’s with the peccadillos, the smaller violations, where doubts arise, even down to: is this okay behavior or isn’t it? Let the debates begin.

For instance: is it ok for a passenger to listen to audio without wearing a headset? Ask me and the answer is: Nope.  If I wanted to hear c & w flying to Madrid I’d have downloaded some to my phone. I just don’t want to hear what you want to hear. What’s your opinion? Before answering understand that there’s a recent YouGov poll that took a deep dive into exactly these types of behaviors.  Are they social infractions? Or ignorable instances of individuality? Vox populi.

Understand: the most widely disapproved behavior is drunkenness with 55% calling it completely unacceptable and another 20% saying it is somewhat unacceptable. That is the high water mark in this exercise with 75% thumbs down.  By the way, 4% called it completely acceptable and of course we know where those sports fans come from. The miracle is that they were sober enough to record a response.  

The most widely accepted behavior: crying babies.  9% called this completely unacceptable while 20% said it’s completely acceptable.  

As for passengers not using headsets, 59% call it wrong.  

Try this one: is it wrong for a passenger to remove footwear (shoes, socks, etc)?  51% say it is.  Just 25% say it’s ok, kind of.  Color me puzzled because I usually remove shoes on international flights (I can’t recall doing it ever on a domestic flight) – but my socks stay on even when flying to Madrid.  I don’t feel a twinge of guilt about doing this.

Here’s a flash point: is it ok to fully recline a  seat (in coach)?  You may remember I have written often and favorably about KneeDefender so that’s probably a tip off to my position and, yes, I think a fully reclined seat in coach is a violation of the social contract.  Do most travelers?  Yep. just 21% think it’s acceptable, while 53% label it unacceptable.

A few more questions to ponder:

Is personal grooming inflight ok? That’s hair combing, nail clipping etc.

How about chatty seatmates – ok or nay?

What’s your tolerance for loud and noisy children (not babies)? Are they out of line on a plane?

Backing up, public displays of affection are fine with 28% but 39% walk the Puritan line and say save it for home. What’s wrong with a public kiss? Don’t ask me, ask them.  I see no problem with displays of affection.  Better that than displays of disaffection such as slapping or punching.

As for personal grooming, 55% give it the green light.  

As for that chatty seatmate, 39% say it’s fine and and 34% just shrug that they have no onion on this.  That neutral group is the largest of any of the survey questions which surprises me.  I thought opinions would be stronger, pro and con.

And when kids are loud and noisy, 51% want to 86 them. Just 22% say it’s acceptable.

Which shows: what do I know?  Just about nothing and that’s why these surveys intrigue me. I know what I think is ok – but it is fun to find out where the larger public disagrees.

Even when they are wrong.

By Robert McGarvey

Call me a hotel cheapskate.  I don’t recall spending more than $500 on a hotel room night, ever.  Occasionally I got comped a room that is that much or more but I wouldn’t personally shell out that much because, well, a room is just a room, a bed is just a bed.

Now it turns out I have company, lots of company, according to an MLIV Pulse survey for Bloomberg where 69% of respondents said $500 was their top hotel dollar and another 24% put their high mark at $1000. Respondents are Bloomberg readers which tells you money is on their minds.

Keep in mind that an average room at the Mark in Manhattan will run upwards of $800 most nights, the Watergate in Washington DC runs $600 and higher, the Langham in Chicago usually is $450 and up, and the list goes on.  It just is very easy to eclipse $500 in major US city hotels.

Per Bloomberg in explaining our tight fistedness: “This may be a reflection of diminishing consumer confidence or complaints that inflated pricing hasn’t been accompanied by a proportionate increase in service quality.”

Probably it’s a combination of both is my guess.

Service complaints, often at five star hotels, have hit new, high levels. Even Robb Report has sniffed, “Hotels Are Trying to Recapture Losses With Skyrocketing Prices. Too Bad Service Isn’t Following.”

As for diminished consumer confidence, even among executives, during a recent week in Boulder where I chatted with multiple fintech executives, I heard loud teeth gnashing about the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and what that portends for other, aggressive regional banks.  Worries were heard about deposit safety – a topic last aired in 2008 as many banks failed.  There also appeared to a growing belief that we are in for a recession this summer, although it is likely to be of short duration and mild impact.  Nonetheless, there is no disputing that consumer confidence – even among very high rollers – is on a downswing.  

The Bloomberg poll also asked participants about their “revenge spending” on travel post pandemic. That is, will they splurge to make up for lost travel due to the pandemic?  50% said nope. 18% added that they planned to reduce spending.  Just 25% said they might splurge on travel “a notch higher” than their norm. Only 7% said they would “really splash out” on their travels.

Will you “really splash out” or will you pull the belt in a notch? Personally I am more in the pull the belt in crowd – not so much because I envision an economic cataclysm as that I see us in what will turn out to be three to five years of a choppy economy with definite downs.  

The way I read the Bloomberg poll results, lots of their readers share my cautions and concerns about the short-term economic outlook.

And then there is my lifelong stinginess when it comes to hotels.  On a recent trip to Boulder CO I spent $175 per night on a room at the Hilton Garden Inn and, you know, I had no complaints. I don’t think there are any hotels in Boulder that charge above $500 per night anyway. Either way, I was satisfied with my room and don’t wish I had splurged on a better experience.

For an upcoming trip to Dallas I am booked into the Crescent Court at significantly under $500.  Sure, Dallas has hotels that cross that mark but do I need them? Nah.

What if I have to go to New York? Probably I’d stay in Jersey City – a room at the Hyatt Regency on the Hudson runs around $250 (and the views are indeed gorgeous). In Washington DC I’d stay at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Thomas Circle, a midcentury hotel across the street from where I lived many decades ago (and just a few blocks from the White House). In Chicago the Palmer House Hotel is around $200 per night. Pretty much wherever I’ll go there’s a hotel in my price range that I like.

I’ll blame it on my concerns about the economic outlook – but, really, we both know I am just stingy about splurges at hotels.

by Robert McGarvey

I am three months into a cashback first philosophy – putting miles accumulation secondary, mainly because miles, increasingly, seem a fool’s errand.  Just when you have enough, the carrier pushes the goal out further because, of course, the era of awards charts is history.

So, how am I doing with cashback? Lemme tell you, it’s harder than I thought. The key is remembering to use the right card at the right place at the right time. If you liked calculus with multiple variables you’ll love playing cashback roulette.

Here’s the inventory of my cashback cards: Discover, where I will have maxed out the 5% grocery cashback in Q1 and earned around $80 In the first three months. In Q2 restaurants earn 5% cashback and I expect to pick up some coin there.  My 2023 goal for this card however is just $150 in cashback.

Amex Blue Preferred – where I will pocket around $100 in cashback in my first three months and am also galloping along to a $200 bonus for spending $2000 in the first six months. It’s picking up my supermarket spend with its 6% cashback (up to $6000 in groceries). I also buy gasoline with it (3%) and I pay for Netflix with it (6%). The fee is $95 after the first year.  My cashback goal for this card in 2023 is $600.

Affinity Cash Rewards – a newcomer to my wallet. I swapped out a great Affinity FCU credit card where the interest rate on a carried balance was very low. But I don’t carry a balance.  I happened to notice Affinity offered this no fee cashback card which offers 5% back on Amazon purchases, 2% cashback at restaurants, gas stations and supermarkets. It also offers $200 back after spending $3000 in the first 90 days. I will collect that bonus. My cashback goal for this card is $500 in 2023. A fee free card.

Apple Card – I realized I owned this card when I moved my cards from one wallet to a new one (with a built-in slot for an Apple Airtag!).  Up until now I have only used this card to buy from Apple (3% back).  But when I looked into it I realized I could also get 3% at Panera Bread, Walgreens, and Ace Hardware, all of which I patronize. My cashback goal for the Apple Card is a paltry $100 in 2023. Fee free.

REI Capital One – 5% back on REI purchases, 1.5% back on purchases elsewhere.  Mainly I will use it at REI but last year I did use it at European hotels because there is no foreign exchange fee.  Goal for 2023: $50.  I don’t plan much REI shopping this year.  Fee free.

Venmo – 3% back on my biggest spending category. A flexible card, it lets the user pick his/her biggest spending category. So far this year I have gotten $25 which I took in Bitcoin, not cash. This card has fallen to the back of my wallet but I imagine I’ll get back around $100 all in by year end.

That’s $1525 total.

Am I working too hard for the money?  I wonder.  Truth is, the main work is remembering to carry and use the right cards at the right places and I am hoping that over time I will form memories that free me from much of that conscious effort.

The main casualties are that I earn fewer rewards miles on my Amex Plat. I probably will sideline a Chase card that gets me 5% back at Amazon in favor of using the Affinity card but that is as much a consequence of my pique with Chase as anything else.  The card is the last remaining piece of our relationship and I will be happy to jettison it.

Are there better – different – cashback cards that I could get? Possibly. But for the present I am satisfied with my arsenal.

Btw Amex Plat is still paying for itself – $20/monthly towards a NY Times digital subscription, $15/monthly for Uber, $50 on a Saks credit. By year end I will more than cover the $695 annual fee. Even as I divert spending into the cashback cards. I remain a fan.

By Robert McGarvey

Sure, I get a kick out of mentally counting my cashback and other rewards – in recent weeks 1200 Amex points via Rakuten just for filing my taxes with H & R Block, maybe $25 in credits at Amazon because I used a particular Chase credit card, $35 at Discover for buying groceries; another $35 for buying more groceries with the Amex Blues Preferred, $10 a day at a Hilton stay for food purchases because I have elite status via Amex Plat and the list could go on.

You get the idea: every month I am getting well over $100 in rewards just because I have and use particular credit cards.

Now chew on this: “Credit card perks for educated, usually urban professionals are being subsidized by people who have less. In other words, when you book a hotel room or enjoy entry to an airport lounge at no cost, poor consumers are ultimately footing the bill.”

That’s from a New York Times op-ed written by a Stanford finance prof and a grad student.

Their piece explores the question: what pays for our perks?

That question matters because – obviously – perks are increasing, Just look at the many card acquisition bonuses that today cross $1000 in value. What’s paying for that?

Reality #1: It’s not our imagination. Perks are getting richer.  Write the Stanford duo: “In 2022, the Federal Reserve published data showing that the cost of rewards, as a share of total transaction volume on credit cards, increased 25 percent from 2015 through 2021.”

Reality #2: Maybe credit card issuers swallow some of the increased costs as marketing expenses but they don’t swallow all of it.  How do they cover these costs? Per the Stanfords it’s via what’s called interchange fees which are the charges imposed on merchants when they accept a credit card in payment. On a $1 purchase, a merchant will in fact get somewhere between 94 cents and 98 cents depending upon their deal with the credit card outfits and the card used in the transaction.

Except the interchange fees apparently have been climbing, to cover the costs of our perks.  Claim the Stanfords: “A recent study at Stanford found that when credit card rewards increase, so do these fees.”

In that study Lulu Wang, another Stanford graduate student, says: “Data on bank payment volumes and consumer payment preferences suggest that consumers are sensitive to rewards, but merchants are insensitive to fees.”

They may be insensitive but that’s because they pass them on. Writes Wang: “Merchants pass on merchant fees to retail prices, creating a regressive transfer from cash and debit card consumers to credit card consumers.”

Therein is the nub of the whole argument.  When Chase hands out 100,000 points to a new Sapphire Preferred cardholder, we all pay a bit more at retail to cover that cost – and that’s true whether we have a Chase card or not, indeed whether we have any credit cards or are simply hand to mouth cash paying customers.

Can’t the cost of credit cards be passed on by the merchant to consumers? That was not legal until 2013 but now almost all states allow merchants to impose a credit card surcharge.  (Connecticut and Massachusetts still outlaw surcharges.)

Me, I live in Arizona, which allows surcharges, but I can’t say I have seen any except at gas stations.

Which means that all the other places I shop the surcharges are eventually paid for by all consumers in the form of higher prices.

You might think we are quibbling over pocket change. Wang disagrees.  He writes “consumers receive around $50 billion per year in rewards to use cards.”

That’s a mighty big pocket. 

The Stanford op-ed authors sum this up: “Lower-income consumers are forced to pay higher prices on the goods they buy, but they rarely receive any benefit from rewards programs, according to the Federal Reserve, which has been tracking the distributional effects of card rewards. Its December 2022 report estimates an annual redistribution of $15 billion in rewards value from poorer people to richer people”

Understand, this analysis does not necessarily apply to airline miles, at least ones awarded for actual travel. Many other factors are involved in calculating the costs to airlines, not least of which is that at most carriers the goal is to “sell” seats that otherwise would go empty. That math gets very complicated.

As for rewards on other purchases…I don’t know what I plan to do.  

But the math is disturbing.  Very disturbing.

by Robert McGarvey

I almost spit up a sip of coffee when I clicked on a piece by Richard Tams in Business Traveller and saw this: “There’s a new buzzword doing the rounds in business travel circles and it’s ‘purposeful’. According to those in the know, we should all be bracing for ‘an era of purposeful business travel’.

The applause you hear are mine. I’ve been preaching a similar doctrine for some time because, really, the time is ripe for a shift in attitudes towards business travel.

And, yes, I think a lot of business travel has been without purpose.  I can’t tell you how often I have traveled great distances to attend meetings where, very soon, I realized I had nothing to contribute and wouldn’t learn anything and so my attendance was purposeless.

But now companies – recoiling from the ever higher costs of airfare and hotels – want to trim travel expenses but they want to do it without impacting the bottomline. Note, too. Travel expenses really are up – 9% year on year per NerdWallet but airfare is up 26%.

Consider cost cutting as the first leg of a proverbial three legged stool. Eliminate purposeless travel and that is easy savings.

The second leg is the generational shift in business travel where millennials – unlike Baby Boomers, my generation, who have obediently kept a travel bag ever packed – now are carrying the bulk of the travel load and they question just about every trip. Why am I going? Am I needed? And of course what’s my purpose? Millennials just are shouting hell, no, I won’t go when they are instructed to fly to Cleveland for a meeting that could just as well be via Zoom.

A third leg of this stool is the corporate push for more environmentally sensitive travel which necessarily means less purposeless travel.  

Put those three trends together and, suddenly, the focus is on funding travel that is purposive. And funding only that travel.

What’s that? It isn’t travel that brings the traveler near to elite status.  Nor is it likely often to be travel to “show face.”

What it is, says Tams, is travel that genuinely supports the business and its interests. He elaborated: “The new model is designed to analyse trips by type and determine what purposeful travel means to your organisation.”

He went on: “Purposeful travel will mean different things to every company.”

Right there is the rub. Every organization needs to do a deep rethink about when travel is justified, for whom, and there won’t be and can’t be a common playbook.

A starting point in my mind is to look at last year’s travel – or maybe just last quarter’s in an organization with a heavy travel schedule – and ask what was the benefit of this trip? Could we have gotten it without any travel?

Extend the analysis to every employee who made the trip.  Junior staff, for instance, may genuinely benefit from attending meetings with very senior peers – I know I did when I was in my twenties and attended many meetings where most attendees were more than twice my age and held upper middle management or lower senior management jobs at Fortune 100 companies.  

Nowadays, however, I won’t attend a meeting unless I am going to serve an active role.

Companies won’t want me to attend unless my presence serves a measurable presence because that is their money wasted if I don’t.

Your turn: What does purposeful travel mean to you? To your organization? Your definition will differ from mine.

Also, note, purposeful travel does not always have to have a sales component. At some companies – you probably know the ones I mean – almost certainly most trips will involve selling but these companies have lived that way for a quarter century or longer.  But most organizations will bring a wider definition of purposeful to their analysis.

My guess is that in 2023 – where earnings and revenues will be flat in most organizations – we will see a rigorous application of the purposeful test for travel. A lot of trips will be nixed. As corporate economies get healthier in 2024, more trips will slip through the purpose net and get approved.

That’s when there needs be a reminder that costs and money are just one of three tests. There still are the issues of the environment and the generational shift.

Bottomline: business travel almost certainly isn’t returning to 2019 levels this year but what is cut won’t be missed. It’s in 2024-2025 where we will see if purposeful has become a word that organizations live by in travel planning. Or it was just another puff of meaningless air.

by Robert McGarvey

I just spent almost $500 on a roundtrip ticket from PHX to DEN in March and that was maybe twice what I had expected to pay. Exactly what is happening here?

The answer is simple: as a people we in the US have a ravenous appetite for travel. Initially that had been explained as a post pandemic frenzy but that can’t still be the explanation. One third more Americans now plan a leisure trip this year than did last year, per an NPD survey.

In the process prices for just about all things travel have been climbing, partly due to today’s inflation but also the apparently unquenchable consumer appetite for travel.

That appetite is so strong it’s even impacting sales of gear like backpacks and travel gear per NPD: “The travel accessories market, including luggage, backpacks, duffle bags, fanny and chest packs, garment bags, and toiletry cases, not only regained the revenue it lost in 2020 but also added more than $1 billion in U.S. sales revenue.”

We even are deferring clothing purchases in favor of putting our money to use traveling. “U.S. consumers are transferring some of their apparel spending toward travel plans. In the fourth quarter of 2022, 41% of consumers reported giving up apparel purchases in favor of travel, according to NPD Future of Apparel findings.”

Per Insider Intelligence, 22% of US adults name leisure travel as a top budget priority in 2023.

The upshot: don’t think that waiting will likely bring us cheaper air fares. Very possibly dramatic price cuts for oil – which no one expects as the Saudis have cut production – would prompt lower prices for airfares. So would an economic recession but few see that in the United States’ near-term future.

Show Me The Bargains

How can a penny-pinching traveler best navigate this terrain? Today, just about every traveler is actively hunting for discounts and deals. That means competition for these discounts is keen. The early bird will catch this worm; late comers will stay hungry. That means if you see a deal on a website, act on it. Don’t dither.

An upshot is that, suddenly, there is surging interest in sites such as The Points Guy where today I see a half off airfare to the Dominican Republic, via Jet Blue and Delta, that will have expired before this story posts.

Deals now seem to sell out in a day or two, quantities are limited, and quick action is rewarded.

Know Your Limits

I want to save money but I am not a fan of self-flagellation. Which means I generally will dodge discount airlines. The sticker prices for a flight may be tempting but the add on charges are not only annoying but may erase most of the savings.

I also like low priced hotels but there, too, there are limits.

Know your own limits when you set off on this bargain hunting quest.

Use the Many Credit Card Discounts You Probably Have

American Express cards usually feature around 100 deals and discounts for cardholders. Many involve travel brands.

Many other credit cards do likewise.

Some times the quickest way to cut travel costs is to use the discounts that already are extended to you.

Travel Against the Crowd

Wee Willie Keeler, a baseball Hall of Famer, famously offered this advice: Hit the ball where they ain’t.

Borrowing from Keeler my advice to the frugal traveler is go where they ain’t.

For years an habitual trip of mine was to spend Thanksgiving in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland. Airfares always were minuscule, hotel rooms were cheap and plentiful, and only once do I remember there being snow (in Belfast) and it had pretty much melted by the next afternoon.

See a blizzard of stories and social media posts about particular destinations – Portugal for instance is spectacularly popular nowadays as are polar cruises, to pick two comparative newcomers to mass acclaim – and you can assume prices match the high interest.

Me, I’ll go to Spain in early fall (not the pricey and hot summer).

While I’m at this, I will stay not in wildly popular Barcelona but in Madrid. Second cities are usually a good money saving tactic – and oftentimes are more welcoming to travelers.

Where do you want to go where legions of leisure travelers aren’t?

Spend Accrued Miles

Yes, carriers are demanding – and getting – huge piles of miles for award travel. Now American has joined other carriers in dynamically pricing award trips – which means more expensive in many cases. But my advice remains: use your miles because their value only seems to go down as carriers mint ever more of them. Besides, redeeming miles is one sure way to lower the cost of flying.

By Robert McGarvey

If you have traveled in the past 9 months or so, you have been smacked upside the head with the reality that the air travel experience is woefully lacking across multiple dimensions. From overcrowded clubs to jam packed planes there is not much to like about an experience that, by the way, is getting ever pricier too (about 27% more than same flights to Europe last year for instance).  

You and I are not alone in that doubtful sentiment.

An Ipsos poll found that almost half of travelers (45%) rated their experience as average or worse.  As to where the process had gone awry, malcontent travelers pointed their fingers in multiple directions in Ipsos polling: “[they] cited crowding and congestion (58%), flight delays or cancellations (44%), the airport security process (31%), and cumbersome travel logistics (31%) as the top three contributing factors to their less than excellent travel experience.”

Matters are so grim that the United States Travel Association (USTA) has acknowledged that the travel experience needs improvement.  “The latest data is a clear sign that significant upgrades are needed to kickstart a reimagined air travel experience that works for all Americans,” said USTA’s CEO, Geoff Freeman.

There’s no need to guess what needs to be fixed with air travel. Ipsos pinpointed them: “For their upcoming leisure travel, business travelers are most interested in increasing flight availability and direct flights (43%), and travel discounts and loyalty programs (33%). They are also significantly more likely to want flexible cancellation policies (32%).”

Think about that: we want more and more direct flights; discounts and meaningful loyalty programs; and flexible cancellation policies.

The desires are realistic. But how likely are the airlines to deliver on any of this?

The Crowded Airport Problem

You are not imagining that airports, airport clubs, airport restaurants, and airport lavatories all seem so much more crowded this year. A Travel Weekly story examined the problem and came up with an explanation: “Aircraft used by large U.S. airlines are quickly getting bigger. As plane sizes increase, so do the surges of people during peak flying hours who pass through TSA security, wait at gates, use bathrooms and queue up for Starbucks.”

Pursuit of more profits is why airports are overflowing with people, said Travel Weekly: “The upsizing is unfolding as airlines work to improve flight economics by reducing average operating costs per seat. They’re doing that by replacing smaller Boeing 737 and Airbus A320-series narrowbodies with stretched versions and by replacing 50-seat regional jets with regional aircraft in the 70- to 76-seat range. Delta and JetBlue are also bringing on Airbus A220 aircraft with well over 100 seats to replace regional planes.”

There don’t have to be more planes to create airport crowds. There do have to be more passengers and that is in fact happening with more seats in planes.

Airport Lounges

You know this is a problem.  Like me, you probably have walked up to a lounge recently, sniffed a long line outside waiting for entry, and just walked away.

Sorry, I don’t have a solution.

Experts say the root problem is that so many of us now have lounge access built into the credit cards we carry.  

That’s why I am doubtful that steps such as Amex’s elimination of free guest entry into the Centurion Club  for Platinum card holders – it now costs $50 a head – will seriously reduce the bodies in airport clubs.  

What’s the solution? I have no idea. For now I am accepting that very probably a lounge will not figure into my airport hours.

Gate Checked Baggage – For a Fee!

Airlines are adept at twisting the knife and, frankly, they believe we have no other choices – and for many trips we don’t.  Nobody except a few hard core greens is thinking of skipping a transcontinental flight for a train ride.  

So I am not surprised that apparently major US carriers are enviously eyeing the revenues Ryan Air and most other European budget carriers squeeze out of gate checked baggage – and they are beginning to do it in the US.

Face it, we have brought some of this on ourselves. How often have I seen a coach passenger wrestling with both an oversized piece of luggage, to be jammed into the overhead compartment, as well as a stuffed department store bag that will fit about as gracefully under the seat as would Haystacks Calhoun.  

The historic rule of thumb with gate checking used to be that fees were not involved.

No more is that a blanket rule. Many airlines have begun charging basic economy passengers who are sneaking a full size bag aboard for gate checking. 

Many airlines also are now said to be charging fees for gate checking clearly oversized “personal items.”

The appeal is money.

Our money.

Personally I don’t push the limits when it comes to carryons – but I’ll still yell foul when I see other travelers nicked for cash just because airlines want it.

When Will It End?   

Don’t count on air travel getting better anytime soon.  Wherever I look it is getting worse. Personally I will be eyeing all possible trips looking for reasons to say no.  

If enough of us do likewise, you know what, air travel just may get more pleasant.

At least until word spreads that the skies are again friendly – and the cycle will begin anew.

by Robert McGarvey

Getting credit as an individual usually happens automatically. Turn 18, or maybe 21, and suddenly financial institutions will tempt you with credit card offers.

For a startup business, the reality is different — founders often struggle to get a good credit offer. What happened? And how can you generate legit credit offers for your company?

Keep reading. The steps are — surprisingly — simple.

Get the full story here.