Travel

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.

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.

by Robert McGarvey

Regular Brancatelli readers know that Joe is extremely pessimistic about life on the road this year – “crisis” is a common descriptor in his arsenal. So there may be good news for concerned readers in a recent SAP Concur survey that found business travelers grumbling that if their demands aren’t met they just may leave their bags unpacked and stay home.

But the real news is that those numbers are gaining enough bulk to win notice by corporate higher-ups.

SAP Concur warns that the grumbling is so loud and it is coming from so many that there may be resignations: “Sixty-one percent of global business travelers are unhappy with their current travel schedules. Nearly a quarter of them are a flight risk.“

That is, almost 25% are so grumpy they just may be circulating their resumes.

What’s the root of the problem?

The rub, according to SAP Concurs, is that more business travelers have higher expectations about their health and safety when they travel for business. Others have sustainability concerns. Another SAP Concur survey found that 88% of business travelers say they will take steps to reduce their carbon impact if their companies go along. Many business travelers believe their employers just don’t give enough of a hoot about these matters. This is a season of widespread discontent. But it is discontent that appears to be breeding not just grumbles but actions.

Some are choosing to leave their bags unpacked as a result.

“This year’s survey revealed that a degree of unhappiness and anxiety persists among business travelers and travel managers worldwide,” said Charlie Sultan, president of Concur Travel. 

Various numbers in the survey underline the extent of the unhappiness.

82% of business travelers say their employer is returning to pre-pandemic travel levels with an important difference: fewer people are traveling much more (and many are traveling less). The rainmakers who turn travel into dollars are out on the road and they apparently are staying out there because they keep bringing money in the door.

But 91% want their company to offer more flexibility in travel arrangements due to traveler health and safety concerns.

And 52% say they will decline a business trip if the arrangements don’t satisfy their Covid concerns.

24% say they will decline a trip if it involves non-sustainable travel options.

A bottomline: travel increasingly is seen not as a perk but as a bother and a risky one at that. This fact is illustrated by a startling stat: “travelers aren’t willing to accept a position that requires more travel without added perks: 92% say they’d need additional salary, benefits, or travel flexibility to take a position with more travel.” That is, just about everybody now wants more of something to justify travel. Used to be, many took a job precisely because it afforded lots of travel. Now employees want to be compensated for hitting the road.

Understand, too, increasing numbers of experts believe Covid will be with us a very long time. The good news is that many of the variants seem to be mild – truly flu-like – but quite possibly very contagious. I personally know more people now with active Covid than ever before. Yes, the cases are mild (most tell me they have no symptoms) – but travel in crowded airports and flying on stuffed planes are reliable ways to get Covid. Health and safety concerns on the road are not going to vanish anytime soon.

So the employees who are demanding some flexibility in travel arrangements to up their chances of staying healthy are doing the smart thing.

My advice: do likewise. Don’t accept a trip unless your health is protected. I know I will be doing that.

Incidentally, it’s not just business travelers who are feeling stressed. Traveler managers too are feeling the heat. Noted SAP Concur: “All surveyed travel managers (100%) expect their role to be more challenging in the next 12 months compared to last year, with nearly half (49%) reporting that the stress is coming from above, through increasing pressure from senior leadership to demonstrate the ROI of their role.“

Life on the road just isn’t going to get smoother. Not this summer. Probably not this year.

Keep that bag unpacked.

SAP Concur has a one minute snappy video that succinctly presents the survey finding. Watch it here.

by Robert McGarvey

The Travel Weekly headline gave me shudders: “It’s trays down once again as U.S. airlines restore meal service.”

The photo of the food made me gag.

Per the story, Delta, American and United are all shoveling gruel at their front of the plane passengers and, increasingly, in the back of the bus food manque is for sale

Put down that fork. And vow with me: I will not eat airline food.

It doesn’t matter what class of carriage. The stuff is not something one should eat.

Say it loud, say it proud, say it until you mean it.

Not even stroopwafel, which can’t possibly be good for you.

I stand with Gordon Ramsey with this (and I never thought I’d write that). Here’s what he told Refinery 29: “There’s no f–king way I eat on planes. I worked for airlines for 10 years, so I know where this food’s been and where it goes, and how long it took before it got on board.”

There’s even a website Airline Meals where passengers document, typically in words and pix, how appalling their food has been.

When Time Magazine ate some airline food, it offered this comment: “Low air pressure and background noises further impact the way we taste, by repressing the ability to taste sweet and salty foods…. For food to taste the same before it is in the air, airline caterers have to add up to 30% more of sugar or salt to a meal.”

I don’t want to put that stuff in my mouth.

Yet a fact is that. just maybe, airline food isn’t as bad as we think – but the environment (low air pressure, often very low humidity, noise) affects our taste buds and, very probably, it would require an explosion of flavors to make any kind of impression.

That’s also why buying take-away food at airport concessions – and there are increasing numbers of good options (at Phoenix Sky Harbor there’s an emphasis on local favorites such as Zinc Brasserie, La Grande Orange, and Matt’s Big Breakfast) – is not such a smart move. It generally won’t taste like much at altitude. Eat it in the airport and enjoy it more. At 30,000 ft. not much will taste good.

That’s why when I believe I will be hungry on a flight I usually buy a bag of nuts and maybe a Starbucks coffee. A 4 oz bag of cashews packs 650 calories and that’s around 100 more than a Big Mac. The nuts will tide you over on a x-country flight. And they also are modestly good for us.

That last bit matters because the research says that frequent flying is bad for our health – and so the smarter we eat at 30,000 feet the better for our health.

As for the research, it’s in a Harvard Business Review article by Columbia University professor Andrew Rundle. The professor had access to mounds of deidentified data from EHE which has data from tens of thousands of US employees including both health and travel info.

Rundle wanted to know if a diet of steady travel – which he sets at 14 or more nights way from home monthly – impacts health.

Wrote Rundle: “We found a strong correlation between the frequency of business travel and a wide range of physical and behavioral health risks.”

What risks? The heavy travelers self-reported “clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression and alcohol dependence; no physical activity or exercise; smoking; and trouble sleeping.”

Really frequent travelers – those away from home 21 or more nights monthly – fared even worse. Wrote Rundle: “The odds of being obese were 92% higher for those who traveled 21 or more nights per month compared to those who traveled only one to six nights per month, and this ultra-traveling group also had higher diastolic blood pressure and lower high density lipoprotein (the good cholesterol).”

Ouch.

Of course, in the last two pandemic years, there have been few of us logging 21 nights away monthly or even 14.

But the growing crowds at airports augur a return of business travel. I remain convinced that business travel will never again reach the levels of 2019 – but I also believe that the heaviest travelers in 2019 will again soon be traveling heavily and maybe already are. Their travel rings the corporate cash register, it brings in new customers and keeps existing customers happy.

For those heavy travelers in particular but for all of us too, a simple step towards slightly better road health is to skip the airline inflight meals, reduce or eliminate inflight alcohol consumption, and be mindful of what we eat and drink in airports and hotels.

That regimen is no cure. But it’s a step. And that’s smarter than falling back into bad old habits like eating inflight food just because it kills time.

But maybe it kills more than that.

Just say no.

by Robert McGarvey

Three recent trade industry headlines have made clear to me that, suddenly, in addition to weighing issues such as Covid and environmental impacts of travel I must also factor in ethics. Why? Read the headlines:

CNBC: Carnival is Exploring Sale of Seabourn to Saudi Investors

Saudi Arabia to Spend $1 Trillion Over a Decade to Build a Global Tourism Economy

Hotel companies lured by lavish Saudi Arabia projects must find way to balance humanitarian promises

The Saudi goal is bold: to attract 100 million tourists yearly by 2030.

The Saudis know which way the wind is blowing. Between a global shift away from fossil fuels and the inevitable depletion of the country’s oil reserves, the petroleum cash gusher that has propped up this country won’t last forever.

So why not pour cash into buying a stake in the global tourist economy? Especially now when assets are cheap (vide Seabourn).

Know this: Saudi Arabia is by no means the only nation that wants tourist dollars but which would be viewed as ethically repugnant by many. Think Myanmar, Russia, Yemen, and Iran for a start on a global human rights violators list.

But, honestly, most of those nations take half hearted approaches to tourism.

And US companies are skittish about doing business in them – even with Russia, now, post the Ukraine invasion.

Saudi Arabia is different. It is actively wooing US businesses and it is waving wads of riyals to get their attention. It is working.

Marriot, Hilton and Hyatt all have signaled intent to develop properties on Saudi sand – Hyatt is saying it will open a Miraval at a Red Sea resort and Marriott is blabbering about a Ritz-Carlton.

Will they actually attract US tourists?

Fact is, Saudi Arabia already has a thriving tourism industry that is centered on religious tourism.

But now the Saudi eyes have shifted to winning tourists from western Europe and the US and, it believes, it has the goods to sell them, notably the Red Sea – sometimes islands in it are referred to as the Saudi Maldives – but there also are ruins, stunning (if sandy) landscapes, and coast lines and mountains.

It’s not just the monotone sandbox many Americans believe it to be.

So why not go there?

This is where ethics and personal choices enter the equation.

Of course there have long been suggestions of significant involvement by powerful Saudi officials in 9/11, a claim many take as fact although there is little hard evidence. It is undeniable however that 15 of the hijackers were Saudi citizens. That’s out of a total of 19.

Then there is the murder of Wapo columnist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Istanbul – a sadistic killing that many say was authorized at the highest level of the Saudi government. But the official Saudi position is this was a rogue killing.

The Saudis also have a medley of oppressive laws, from a ban on alcohol and pork products (don’t even joke about a breakfast of a Bloody Mary and a Bacon Butty) and modest dress is mandatory. It is illegal to carry binoculars in Saudi Arabia.

It is also illegal to carry two passports in the country (something I have always done for 30+ years).

It is illegal to possess photos of scantily glad women. Don’t try to bring in a Playboy or even the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

It gets worse. The Saudis are serious violators of human rights.

A 2020 US State Department report on Saudi Arabia noted: “Significant human rights issues included: unlawful killings; executions for nonviolent offenses; forced disappearances; torture and cases of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of prisoners and detainees by government agents; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including threats of violence or unjustified arrests or prosecutions against journalists, censorship, site blocking, and engaging in harassment and intimidation against Saudi dissidents living abroad; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; severe restrictions of religious freedom; restrictions on freedom of movement; inability of citizens to choose their government peacefully through free and fair elections; violence and discrimination against women, although new women’s rights initiatives were implemented; trafficking in persons; criminalization of consensual same-sex sexual activity; and restrictions on workers’ freedom of association, including prohibition of trade unions and collective bargaining.”

A 2021 Amnesty International report on Saudi Arabia said: “The crackdown continued on the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. The Specialized Criminal Court handed down heavy prison terms to individuals for their human rights work and expression of dissenting views. Among those arbitrarily detained, prosecuted or sentenced were human rights defenders, government critics and other political activists. Women human rights defenders were subjected to judicially imposed travel bans following conditional release from prison. Courts resorted extensively to the death penalty and people were executed for a wide range of crimes. Migrant workers continued to be vulnerable to abuse and exploitation under the country’s sponsorship system, and tens of thousands were arbitrarily detained and subsequently deported. Prison authorities violated the right to health of human rights defenders and others imprisoned after grossly unfair trials.”

Nope, that’s not a country where I would plan to spend my volitional leisure travel dollars or time.

Very probably you soon will have to make your own decision on the Saudi question. Their intentions are plain, their money is plentiful, and they are in a hurry to make a mark in global tourism. Will you help them?

I know I won’t.

by Robert McGarvey

Another shoe just fell and unless you closely follow Iberian news you probably didn’t hear it. Spain has suddenly eased its requirements for unvaccinated Americans to enter the country, now demanding simply a negative result on a Covid test. Previously Spain had required the unvaccinated to provide proof of recovery from a recent case of coronavirus, meaning the person had antibodies and thus a natural immunity.

What prompted this? Reported the Washington Post, “The Spanish minister of industry, trade and tourism, María Reyes Maroto, said in an announcement that the ‘new phase of the pandemic’ allowed the country to relax the entry rules. The country saw a 9 percent drop in daily cases over the past week, with 229 new cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days as of Monday, according to tracking data compiled by The Washington Post.” 

I am following Spain’s behavior because I vacationed there last fall, in part because I liked their requirement that all Americans who entered had to be vaccinated. I have another trip there planned for this fall. I am not thrilled by this easing of entry requirements so I will monitor what happens to the Iberian infection rate.

But Spain is just the start. The more I think on it the more I see a troubling stampede to eliminate Covid related protections – even though the disease is still out there and it is still killing.

Where? Try here, in the US of A. Unlike Spain, the US in fact now is seeing rise case numbers, indeed double digit increases. The New York Times reports a staggering 53% jump in the number of cases in the past 14 days…and the real number is doubtless higher because the proliferation of at home test kits means innumerable positives are noted but not recorded (and, we hope, the affected individuals choose to self isolate but who knows?).

Worse probably is coming. This is a Walt Kelly moment and we have met the enemy and he is us.

We are suddenly behaving as though Covid had been defeated. Even when – quite obviously – it remains very much on the prowl for victims among us.

I definitely am not preaching do as I do. My own recent behavior, looked at through this Covid lens, embarrasses me.

My guard isn’t down, it has fled. On Friday night I went to a buzzy, busy, crowded restaurant in Phoenix – Scott Conant’s Mora Italian, don’t miss the polenta or the pasta pomodoro. The food was great. But, although the servers were masked, I wasn’t and neither were many others. It was only when I was back home and reviewing a very pleasant meal in my head that the thought suddenly occurred: what the hell was I thinking (or not thinking).

But my behavior gets weirder. On Saturday I went with my wife to a matinee of the new Downton movie (no sniggers, sometimes one does what one needs to do) and again did not even think of a mask. Honestly it did not matter. There was one other person in the theater – which seats probably 150 – so we were fine. But what if 50 had tumbled in? What if?

On Sunday I went to a church service, again without a mask. Probably 250 were at the service, a crowd but not jammed. (Capacity is said to be around 500.) I noted maybe a half dozen people wearing masks. The rest were maskless. Including me.

How dumb are we?

The NYTimes Covid tracker shows an 84% jump in Covid cases in metro Phoenix in the past two weeks. That’s a huge leap.

America also remains vaccine stupid, where a full one third of us are not fully vaccinated. In Arizona, where I live, 38% aren’t (a lot of Stop the Steal cretins here).

Yeah, I am vaccinated and doubly boosted – but I also know that many fully vaccinated have come down with cases of Covid as new variants emerge. That’s not unexpected.

Here’s my vow: the mask goes back on my face in public settings because Arizona remains a dangerous place.

It ain’t back to normal yet.

No matter how much I wish it were.

It won’t be normal until we defeat this virus. That means acting smart. And safe.

Me too.

by Robert McGarvey

The American Express offer jumped out at me and how could I miss it because it was at the very top of the list of 100 offers available to me: Get 20,000 Amex Miles just by signing up for Pay Over Time, an Amex response to the rapid rise of BNPL (Buy Now Pay later) options for consumers who are buying everything from Goldbelly lobster rolls to Peloton exercise machines via BNPL.

20,000 miles is nothing to sniff at and, by the accounting of ThePointsGuy, that cache is worth $400 (at two cents a mile). My accounting is more conservative but I would still say it is worth $200. Just for signing up.

Different cardholders are offered different mileage amounts to sign up. Some are offered zilch. Others may be offered more than 20,000. Some may be tempted with 30,000.

Sign up and what happens is that eligible purchases are shuffled into Pay Over Time – where interest charges and fees apply – and that happens at 8pm ET if your Pay Over Time setting is set to active. If not set to active the charges of course do not tumble into that bucket.

What is especially intriguing about the Amex 20,000 mile offer is that there appears to be no obligation to actually use the Pay Over Time feature. Ever. It seems one can sign up, wait for the miles to deposit, then rush over and deactivate Pay Over Time.

With a Platinum Card, eligible purchases are $100 and over. I understand that lower thresholds apply to Green Card purchases but have not confirmed that.

Experts report that interest rates in Pay Over Time may reach up to 23.24% and fees may also be applied, up to 1.33%.

I have not signed up for that offer.

Understand, I have very occasionally used versions of BNPL in recent years – notably to buy an iPad Air a few years ago and, last week, when I was about to purchase an iPhone 12 (for the 5G speeds – I live in a T-Mo neighborhood with lots of good 5G) Apple offered me two year financing at 0 percent interest with no application because I had an existing account.

But I also have turned down -indeed mocked – BNPL offers from other vendors such as Goldbelly which offered to finance a Jacques Torres box of chocolates (probably the best in America) over three payments which seemed a laughable idea for something that would be eaten in three days.

BNPL really is not aimed at me. Its core target are consumers with thin credit histories – not bad, just not much.

So why is Amex offering me a BNPL service?

Beats me.

Why won’t I sign up for the Amex BNPL?

Yes, I know that if I take all the precautionary steps – and remember to read Amex emails about Pay Over Time – I won’t ever have to pay a penny in interest. But I also know the probability is high I won’t read the emails because, well, I read very few emails that land in my inbox because way too many do.

I also have more Amex Miles than I presently have a use for. Another 20,000 would just gather some kind of metaphorical dust.

And, lastly. nowadays I am slowly easing the Amex Plat card back into its original role which is as a travel and entertainment card and, constitutionally, I just am opposed to paying interest on travel and restaurant bills. Those are charges that – in my mind – should be paid off as they arrive.

You think differently? That is your right. And know that many travel vendors see their sector as a BNPL hot zone.

But to me leisure travel, restaurant meals, etc. are non essentials and ought to be paid for with surplus money.

Have I always thought that way? Nope and I got the credit bruises to focus my mind on a more targeted deployment of credit tools. Basically I like credit for a home mortgage, for a car loan, and probably not much else. That’s a conservative approach, I know it’s not for everyone, but it works for me.

And I’ll even skip the 20,000 Amex Mile gift – just call me Odysseus.

by Robert McGarvey

This is the year to make a vow, this is the year to travel meaningfully.

That means no more stupid check the box trips (“I’m going to the Azores because I’ve never been”), no more trips driven by envy (“everybody’s been to Kenya so I gotta go”). no more trips taken just to fill time in a vacation season where it seems everybody else is traveling.

Do note: this primarily applies to leisure travel. A lot of the business travel I have taken and will take is, er, meaning deficient. Somebody thinks I should be in Chicago and, well, there’s no pressing conflicts in my calendar so, sure, I will go. Nowadays I will grumble, I will try to invoke alternatives (“will a Zoom call suffice”), but when the order is given I will pack and go.

Leisure travel on the other hand is largely within my control and so this year my travel will be meaningful.

What’s that mean?

I’m riffing on an idea put forth by Wolfgang Georg Arlt in a recent Phocuswire piece where he stated a provocative thesis: “Quality, satisfaction and benefits for all stakeholders involved need to become the guideposts for the tourism development in the 2020s. 

“The world developed economically at an ever-growing speed in last 30 years without a parallel growth of political institutions managing globalization – the climate catastrophe, rise of despotism and the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands have been the result.”

Too much meaningless travel has been a large contributor to the eco mess we now find ourselves in.

Let’s be honest: overtourism vanished in 2020-2022 but that was a Covid pause, it most certainly wasn’t indicative of a fundamental shift in traveler attitudes. If anything, more of us today are speeding off to Mykonos and Santorini, Vatican City, Paris, and the rest of the travel hotspots.

Locals may grumble, from Florence to Japan about too many tourists, but money is talking louder than common decency and rational planning. This summer will see tsunamis of overtourism – there just is no doubt about it. And the natterers among us will resume their grumbles about too many tourists mindlessly traveling but that won’t change a thing.

It’s time for individual, personal action. It’s time to dig heels in the ground and insist on meaningful travel and that is travel with a purpose (beyond sheer hedonism) and travel that plainly benefits multiple stakeholders. Per Arlt, “‘Meaningful Tourism’ [is] a paradigm that is based on a return to quality, satisfaction and benefits for all stakeholders involved, namely the guests, the host communities, the employees of service providers, the companies, the government and the environment, with quality and satisfaction measured by the stakeholders themselves.”

And it’s not just where we travel, but how we travel and what we do when we get there.

So much leisure travel is and always has been all about me. What do i want to do? How do I feel about that?

In my new mindset I am trying to see my travel through multiple lenses – including the locals and the businesses I will interact with along the way.

The only leisure travel I have planned for this year is a three week trip in the fall to the Iberian Peninsula, to walk a second Camino de Santiago route (the so called Portuguese Camino from Porto to Santiago de Compostela in Spain). This walk will include many nights in small, independent hotels, meals in small, local restaurants and countless coffees along the way bought at small shops.

Pre-trip there will a multi night stay in Lisbon, where I have never been, and post trip there will be a multi night stay in Madrid (if nothing else to again tour the Prado).

(In fall 2021 I did a similar trip, walking a different Camino route only in Spain.)

Just one trans Atlantic roundtrip is involved in this fall’s holiday, the trip is after the peak Camino season (summer) and many small businesses, primarily owned and operated by locals will benefit.

The Camino also is per se a “meaningful” trip because it blends history, architecture, culture, the outdoors, exercise and spirituality into a single package.

Do all trips have to be that heavily laden with obvious meaning? Nope. Meaning is to a large extent in the traveler’s eye. We know what we do that is harmful to the planet and its people and we know what we do that isn’t.

Just do more of the beneficial, less of the harmful, and that is a trip well taken.

By Robert McGarvey

Business travelers have been sidelined for two years, thanks to the pandemic, but you know who has not been sidelined: hackers, cyber criminals, and a huge cast of malefactors in Russia, China, Iran, and, yes, of course the United States who want to take advantage of road weary travelers who too often let down their guards and thus are easy marks.

So I was not surprised when I saw that the World Travel & Tourism Council had worked with Microsoft to generate a report on cyber risks and travel, a business that is exceptionally vulnerable because, per WTTC data, 80% of the players in travel are small and medium sized businesses and that group generally has been laggard in arming up to thwart cyber attackers.

Phocuswire reported: “Julia Simpson, WTTC president and CEO, says: ‘Technology and digitalization play a key role in making the whole travel experience more seamless, from booking a holiday, to checking in for a flight or embarking on a cruise.

‘But the impact of cyberattacks carries enormous financial, reputational and regulatory risk.’”

Reprising Capt. Willard

That quote put me in mind of Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard as he passed time in a Saigon hotel room waiting for his mission in Apocalypse Now.  Muttered Willard, “Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker and every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger.”

YouTube video clip (two minutes) here.

As we have grown soft sipping Scotch nursing our memories of hotel rooms past the cyber bad actors have grown tougher, smarter, hardened and hungrier.

And as we go out on the road again we will be prime targets.

The Leaky Sieve Travel Industry

The WTTC/Microsoft report gloomily set this stage: “Cyber criminals tend to be opportunistic and will exploit any possible area of vulnerability, from a payment process to a loyalty programme. While loyalty programmes enhance the travel experience by creating reward opportunities based on travel, they are also a target of cyber criminals. These programmes contain sensitive data which makes them susceptible to attack, underlining the need to treat these programmes as part of the larger eco-system of the business.”

The report also noted: “According to Kelly White at Mastercard, ‘most people assume and expect security and privacy,’ both in how the data is being used and stored. This highlights the trust consumers have had in their providers, even in the absence of overt safety measures.”

Face this fact: your security on the road is on you. That includes taking personal responsibility for safeguarding your personal data and credit card info when dealing with travel providers.

You cannot trust travel providers. They have been cyber leaky sieves for decades and there is no question that in the past two years of economic oblivion most have grievously neglected their cyber security.

Hotels, airlines, cruise ships have lost literally billions of dollars in the past two years.  What budget item haven’t they cut?

Depend on them to protect you and, honestly, make sure you pack a rosary and dutifully say your prayers on the road because you will definitely need God’s help.  

6 Steps to Better Road Safety

What steps should you take to stay cyber safe in 2022:

• Do not use public WiFi.  Use your phone to create a personal hotspot — cellular data is vastly safer than public WiFi.
• If you must use public WiFi, always have a VPN as a filter.  And never use a free VPN
• This all is definitely true for hotel WiFi – don’t use it and if you must use a VPN.
• Regularly check loyalty points totals – the sooner you blow the whistle about a theft the more likely matters will quickly resolve in your favor.  Even smarter: drive your totals down as near as you can to  zero. Loyalty points spent cannot be stolen. 
• Never, ever use a debit card at a hotel, airline, saloon, or restaurant. Your federal protections are much stronger with credit cards.  
• When traveling – especially abroad – use a credit card that has built in chip and PIN protection.  That means you need to enter a four digit code to complete the transaction. This is vastly safer than the US standard of chip and signature.  Personally I use Diners Club card. Here are others noted by WalletHub. 

Look, I too want travel businesses to read and act on the Microsoft report which is stuffed with suggestions for toughening defenses.

But I am not optimistic.

Trust no one in the travel industry.