Travel

by Robert McGarvey

The friendly skies are getting friendlier – at least they are getting cheerier because, as of mid February, more carriers will be serving beer, wine, and cocktails in coach. Southwest, for instance, says it will be pouring as of February 16. For now American Airlines is a holdout (it does pour for front cabin pax) but as it hears the cash registers merrily ringing at competitors it certainly will start pouring too.

Understand this: I cannot recall the last time I had an alcoholic beverage on a domestic flight – possibly never in this century. I am a Diet Coke or coffee guy at 30,000 feet. Yes. on international flights I usually will sip some bad wine with a meal but that really is only because I am bored and know I have lots more hours of not much in front of me.

Yet I am supportive of this carrier move to sell booze. For many people, a drink or two in the air has a calming effect. It certainly isn’t enough to get a person drunk.

That said, I know many flight attendants are in a frenzy about this resumption of alcohol service in the air. Lyn Montgomery, president of Transport Workers Union Local 556, the union of Southwest flight attendants, called the airline’s decision to resume alcohol sales “both unsafe and irresponsible” in a statement emailed to the Washington Post.

“We have adamantly and unequivocally informed management that resuming sales of alcohol while the mask mandate is in place has the great potential to increase customer noncompliance and misconduct issues,” Montgomery added.

I don’t dismiss her concerns – or similar concerns on the parts of tens of thousands of flight attendants who have faced a spike in astonishingly bad and violent behavior on the part of many passengers in the pandemic era.

I also know the FAA has reported that it has logged hundreds of cases of disruptive passengers who were fueled by too much alcohol.

But I just do not believe passengers on planes, certainly not in coach, will ever be served enough booze inflight to get blotto. There just is not that much service. And flight attendants are not allowed to serve an intoxicated passenger anyway.

So how did that passenger get drunk? In some cases passengers are and have been sneaking their own booze aboard. You can’t do that – it violates multiple rules. But, anecdotally, I hear of many, many cases of passengers smuggling booze aboard and getting away with it. I also rather doubt too many flight attendants will challenge a passenger: Is that smuggled vodka you are swilling? No, I just don’t hear that.

Even so, I don’t see smuggled booze as the problem. TSA limits on liquids mean quantities smuggled aboard can’t amount to much.

And I think a way to stifle the smuggling that does occur is to slap the most flagrant violators with the $11,000 fine that can be levied. That will grab headlines and it is a frightening thought – smuggle a miniature nip aboard and pay $11,000 for it.

That still leaves the biggest issue in passenger drunkenness unresolved and that’s the passengers who stumble aboard drunk.

How did they get in this blotto condition? Often it’s by downing a half dozen martinis at an airport bar.

There’s an easy fix for that: Every state has laws that impose penalties on licensed establishments that serve an intoxicated customer. Penalties range from fines to arrests for misdemeanors to suspension of the liquor license. In many states a licensed establishment can also be held legally liable for damages caused by a drunk patron after leaving the establishment. Just remind airport bars and restaurants of their legal exposure – and inflict fines and a few arrests – and they will straighten up. The FAA needs to speak up, as do local airport authorities. That is a big, brutal stick. Wave it and hit a few who ignore the threats.

The last step is reminding carrier gate staff that they can and should deny boarding to inebriated passengers. In the US, carriers do have the right to deny boarding to a drunk – and very occasionally they exercise that right. They need to do that more and, yes, local police typically are available to assist in convincing a drunk it’s time to go home and climb into bed, not to climb on a plane.

Meantime, Delta Air CEO Ed Bastian has written to the US Attorney General asking that the government initiate a federal do not fly list that would be shared among carriers. That is a wonderful idea. Even the fear of it may be enough to coax some pax into being more civil in the sky.

Bottomline: There are ways to reduce onboard violent drunkenness but will let passengers have a Bloody Mary on board. And they are not that hard to implement.

by Robert McGarvey

It’s only been one year that we have been required to wear masks inflight – the initial federal mandate took effect February 1, 2021. The present federal mandate runs until mid-March and there is no knowing if the White House will extend it. But know this: more and louder voices are getting raised that suggest the mask mandate will become a permanent fixture.

Impossible?

Sure, the mask protesters may want to believe this is an impossibility – doubtless they believe it would be a violation of some fictitious right they claim. But I am beginning to think masks just may prove to be an inflight staple, not much different from the seatbelt (which we also are required to wear and have been since the early 1970s).

Incidentally, even into the 1950s arguments were made that seatbelts weren’t just superfluous inflight but dangerous. This Smithsonian article tracks that debate but of course belts won out and we have been wearing them for 50 years, at least for takeoff, landing and when flying through turbulence. Few voices speak out against this practice now.

Now, what prompts me to suggest that masks may become staples too? First there are statements by Dr. Fauci dating back to late 2021, where he said masks may be here to stay. He added: “Even though you have a good filtration system [inflight], I still believe that masks are a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it.”

Now more voices are echoing this idea.

Neil Sorahan, CFO at Ryanair, told the Times of London, that masks would be ‘with us for a while longer to come’ and were a ‘small price to pay.’

Sorahan, who seemed to think the mask requirements will persist into summer, drew an analogy to the treatment of liquids, post 9/1/1 when, suddenly, we were forced to carry miniatures (and who didn’t toss a larger container or three into TSA bins?).

Multiple anonymous sources are also quoted in that Times piece saying masks will be with us for some time.

Arguably, too, another analogy is to the ban on smoking inflight which took effect, in stages, in the 1980s and was a clear-cut ban on smoking on domestic flights by 1990. There was indeed resistance to that ban – many smokers covertly puffed in lavatories, even after smoke detectors were installed and even today vaping apparently is commonplace inflight. But, bottomline, non-smoking became the norm on airplanes and even smokers learned to deal with it (chewing tobacco anyone?).

Personally, too, I am drawn to the idea of masks as a permanent inflight feature. For years I have dreaded long flights in the winter months (“the cold and flu season”) because, seemingly inevitably, I came down with a nasty cold that in my mind at least I blamed on the flight and the many pax who were sniffling and coughing. Was I right in that blame? Who knows. But research funded by Boeing a half dozen years ago – pre Covid – found that indeed diseases did transmit inflight but you have to be rather close to the infected person.

If we are all wearing masks, transmission of colds and flu and other respiratory diseases just might decrease.

What about those who insist masks are useless inflight? They have a point. Especially as carriers add more food service and of course beverage service. Lift the mask to take a swallow of water or beer and, yes, you are exposed to the virus risks in passengers near you and they are at risk for your viruses.

Lift to nibble that stroopwafel and ditto.

That just is fact.

But I nonetheless plan to wear masks inflight, at least until I go through a large box of 3M N95 masks that presently sits on my desk and, yes, I have relegated my cloth masks to recycling even though I rather like many of the cloth masks I have because they are quite comfy. But cloth just hasn’t proven effective with Omicron and many carriers, meantime, have banned many kinds of cloth masks. So I have switched to the higher grade masks and have even gotten accustomed to wearing them.

N95 masks are not the cure-all but I will be wearing mine with no stop date in sight.

by Robert McGarvey

One number in the recent Expedia 2022 Travel Value Index, where some 5500 adults across eight countries offered up their thoughts and feelings about travel in this year, caught my eye: “Travelers are…keen to lean on loyalty programs, with two in five (40%) of respondents saying they plan to use loyalty points for at least part of a trip in 2022.”

Why isn’t that number 100%?

I have a six figure stash of Amex miles and my plan is to burn most of them this year. If I use them all, that’s fine because nowadays miles are a highly unstable currency. Some carriers don’t even publish rewards charts – mileage fees are instead dynamic, meaning the carrier charges what it believes the market will bear.

JoeSentMe has often featured broadside attacks on airline miles by Will Allen and Fred Abatemarco and others – and they are spot on. Miles, as Joe Brancatelli has commented, are for frequent flying suckers.

That’s all the truer today because it gets ever easier to accumulate miles. Cards that offer six figure mileage bonuses for enrolling are increasingly common and many of us now use cards at grocers, restaurants, department stores that shovel miles at us with every purchase.

If I need a fast 100,000 miles I’ll sign up for Capital One Venture X Rewards Card and, whoosh, there are the miles.

Or I could go in cheaper and get the Citi Premier Card ($95 annually) and get 60,000 miles.

Or the Delta SkyMiles Gold Amex Card (free in year one, then $99) and get 40,000 miles plus a bundle of Delta perks (free checked bag, priority boarding).

Miles are there to be grabbed when you want them.

Miles also kind of grow on trees – for instance Rakuten, the shopping service, even allows users to take their perks in Amex miles. I have 4000+ miles that I earned for doing what, I don’t recall, but they will transfer to Amex eventually. Install the program and when you surf to a site that’s a Rakuten participant, up pops a reminder about Rakuten and you are about to get more free miles.

It is damn near impossible to avoid accumulating miles, even in the pandemic era of little or no flying.

I keep earning miles even though I have consciously shifted significant spend to cash back cards – Amazon and Discover in particular – and I also do some spending on a Venmo card that is set up to reward me with Bitcoin so I now an an owner of a tiny fraction of a Bitcoin

Right there is the big wake up moment. I had been mentally stuck in a mindset where to earn miles I had to actually fly and the more miles I wanted, the more I had to fly – which often I did not actually enjoy doing. Talk about yesteryear’s headlines.

I hoarded miles because I remembered how hard I had worked to accumulate them.

Now miles just about jump out at me.

In the instant I realized that I also grasped that a wise man uses miles as they come in. The airlines are busy printing new miles that they sell, typically to credit card companies, and the more they print, the more devalued miles become. There really seems no end to that plunge.

Remember when it took 10 x-country round trips to accumulate 50,000 miles? And now I can double that just by signing up for the new Capital One elite card, which would take me about one minute to apply for. I know how fast it is because a few days ago I applied for an REI card that offers 5% back on many REI purchases (on top of the member’s 10% back) and most of my clothes shopping now is there. And if I make a purchase within 60 days I get a $100 REI gift card. Yep, more cashback.

That’s where my head presently is at – if only because I know I can always score miles if I need ’em. If you have ’em, use ’em because a refill is as easy as filling out a short form.

How great is that?

by Robert McGarvey

If Covid concerns don’t keep you away from that meeting that is on your calendar, will worries about crime and safety? That’s exactly the issue raised in a recent Hotel News Now piece that posited the moving of events, conferences and similar away from cities with crime problems.

Word of advice: if a city scares you, stay away. No need to explain. Just stay away.

But what we seem now to have is an emergent ghosting of mainstream cities, over stated worries about safety. Mind you, we are not talking about Camden NJ, East St. Louis, or Monroe LA, cities with crime rates that are stratospheric., Nope. This is cities that traditionally make the mix of candidate locations for many events.

Such as?

Reported HNN: “[Ben] Seidel [CEO of Real Hospitality Group] pointed to specific markets such as Chicago, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, as places that struggle with high crime rates that could ultimately deter meeting planners.”

Seidel has a case: crime and fear of becoming a victim is a factor in location selection for events – but it has always been so. When I lived in Washington DC a half century ago it was definitely a no go zone for most meeting planners. So was New York in the 1980s.

So it is fact: too much crime will send planners looking elsewhere.

But then Seidel said this: “Portland is a beautiful [city], but if you’re a meeting planner now, holding a conference there with their crime rates is not going to appear on the radar screen.”

Uh, Portland? Portland, Oregon’s crime rate is moderate by any measure. Yes, it is 124% of the national average crime rate but that is small potatoes compared to, say, Birmingham AL where the crime rate is 251% of the national rate.

I really cannot see event planners – at least none that don’t guzzle the antifa koolaid – thinking Portland is a crime hotspot.

San Francisco? Sad to say Baghdad by the Bay has been sliding down the safety chart and now, according to Lee Ohanian, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, it is “nearly the most crime ridden city in the US.”

He writes: “San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime, which makes the city more dangerous than 98 percent of US cities, both small and large. To put this in perspective, Compton, California, the infamous home of drug gang turf wars, and which today remains more dangerous than 90 percent of all US cities, is almost twice as safe as San Francisco.”

So, yep, some event planners definitely have crossed San Francisco off their list.

What about Chicago? I’ll give Seidel that one too. It is more dangerous than 91% of US cities – and that’s a top 10 list a meeting planner doesn’t want to put an event in. Its central location means it still scores high in attractiveness to planners but they also are eyeing the headline murders that frequently rock the city.

But there are many more cities that will get a pass from many event planners today. Other must avoids according to the stats are Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore, and New Orleans. But not so fast. I have to say I have been to New Orleans perhaps 10 times in this century, never was a crime victim, never saw a crime., will happily return. It’s a city with a great and unique vibe.

Which pinpoints an issue with any blanket statement that such and such a town is “too dangerous” – it depends upon “for whom,” that is, what group is involved and what’s its appetite for risk.

Of the cities so far mentioned in this article I have been to Baltimore once this century – no problems; Chicago five times and liked it a lot, also did a lot of walking, no problems; and San Francisco, dozens of times, no issues and often I stayed on the margin of the Tenderloin, San Francisco’s high crime mecca. The Tenderloin is cheap and conveniently located and that’s why I like it.

Would I recommend you stay in the Tenderloin? That would be up to you.

Would I recommend a group meet in San Francisco? It depends upon the group. There are some groups that would be repelled by San Francisco and for them there is Las Vegas or Orlando (and I am a fan of Las Vegas, even though I have neither gambled or seen a show in many trips there this century).

But there are other groups that will love how urban San Francisco is.

Know your group and you will know what towns work it it and what don’t.

And do remember, more than crime shapes a city’s suitability for an event. Personally I cannot imagine going to an event in Palm Beach, say, and that has little to do with the city’s iffy safety rating. You can guess why.

No, I don’t envy event planners their work. There just are lots of issues they need to weigh. And safety/crime is just one of them.

by Robert McGarvey

Everywhere we turn the buzz now loudly proclaims that travel – leisure travel – is back and, sure. there is muttering that the rebound of business travel is just around the bend but I don’t believe that and doubt that many of the people predicting it do either. But they want to believe it because our travel economy’s health remains fragile.

Eyes now are on leisure travel and four initials BNPL as the potential cure for what ails travel. Buy Now, Pay Later. Many in the travel industry are now busy buffing BNPL offerings, to entice consumers into more leisure travel. Amadeus research underlines the potential payoff to an industry struggling for survival. Per Amadeus:

• 68% said BNPL would encourage them to spend more than usual on summer travel
• 49% said they would be more likely to buy airline ancillary services if BNPL was offered

Here’s a moral – maybe also a pragmatic – question: is it good to put leisure travel on credit? That is, to pay it off over time. Is that a smart consumer tactic?

A simpler question: Isn’t BNPL just credit, as in cards, with a catchier 2022 name? Nope. There is a significant difference. Put $5,000 on a credit card funding a Spanish vacation and you can pay anywhere from $5000 back to multiples of that depending upon the interest rate charged on your card and how much you pay back, how fast.

BankRate has a for instance where $5000 is put on a credit card with 18.9% interest. The minimum monthly payment is 4% of the balance owed, $200 to start. Pay only that and, take a guess, how long will it take to repay that $5000?

11.4 years (137 months). Total payments will be $8109.

Ouch.

Where BNPL differs is that, typically, a monthly payment is specified in the origination paperwork and, in many cases, payback is timed for a couple years.

Gen Z and younger Millennials are said to be wild about BNPL which, suddenly, has become the hot trend in consumer payments. Part of the fuel is that these groups are anti credit card. They also know the horror stories of people paying back a purchase for 10+ years! They want to eschew conventional credit and BNPL, some believe, is their ticket to buying what they want now, paying for it over a specified period, with specified monthly instalments.

There isn’t much new about BNPL. It’s if anything a throwback to 1950s layaway purchases although in that case the customer did not take possession of the item until it was paid off. With BNPL 2022 style the consumer walks out of the store – or the travel agency – with the purchase.

Also new today is that modern technology allows for nearly instant credit decisions. Note that, with many BNPL providers, the decision is not FICO based. Many of the buyers have lower FICO scores anyway so that wouldn’t work. So the issuers frequently look at cash flow in a checking account – is there an extra $100 floating around most months? If yes, then ok the BNPL deal with a $100 monthly payment.

Which brings us back to BNPL and travel today. And the worries thicken. Per Amadeus, “For travel merchants the real [BNPL] opportunity is the product upsell. If the traveler has flexible credit they can potentially afford to make a higher value purchase, or to add more ancillary services.”

Why travel to Hawaii when, for maybe double the money, you can go to the Maldives or the Seychelles and how much cooler are those destinations?

Sure, the debts mount but so?

Actually Amadeus offers an insightful gloss on that so: “Offering this type of payment method isn’t without risk. Travel companies need to consider any risk to their brand that could result from a BNPL partner offering credit aggressively to travelers that are already highly indebted. At Amadeus we are consulting with our customers to assist them with BNPL strategies that prioritize responsible lending.”

Consumers, too, need to watch their own backs. Maybe, technically, BNPL does not involve credit but it clearly involves debt and too much debt is not a good thing.

Am I inalterably opposed to BNPL? No. I see it serving very good purposes in specific cases. In fact I have used a version of it on multiple occasions, getting what amounts to an interest free loan from Apple when I bought a new iPhone or iPad. From Google I got an interest free loan to buy a Pixel phone. In these cases, I had the cash on hand but couldn’t resist stretching out the payments and why not, it was free.

But using BNPL for travel? Color me financially conservative but I just cannot wrap my head around the idea of financing a vacation. This just is an idea I find creepy.

And nudging people into more expensive vacations is integral to the recovery of the travel sector?

Now I am worried.

Are you?

My first resolution for 2022 is that I am now telling clients that I am available for travel this year.

I was unavailable in 2021 and much of 2020.

This a.m. I even changed the airline designated with Amex Plat for the $200 fee credit (to Delta for those keeping score). I had not collected a penny of the credit in 2021 but I am optimistic I will in 2022 so I spent the few minutes calling Amex.

And, yes, another resolution is to travel healthy and smart. I am not joining the ranks of the maskless fools or the inflight mask rebels, indeed I will probably doubledown on sanitation and mask wearing. Yes, I plan to travel but I also plan to do what I can to stay well.

Part of that is accepting that Covid is not going away, not soon. Nonetheless I plan to travel. But not stupidly.

So I am switching from cloth masks to high tech Korean masks (KF95 and KF94), to seek to stay healthy in Maricopa County where Covid cases are rocketing higher and yet the maskless multiply. I can’t change their behavior but I can toughen up my own borders. Of course I will wear similar inflight.

Another resolution – maybe just an acknowledgement – is that the value of tracking online Covid case counters has plummeted as more of us test at home and if you test positive do you really call it in and to whom and is it recorded? Experts warn that the present counts are desperately deflated and so I am no longer basing decisions regarding safety of destinations on these numbers.

But I am checking hospital ICU capacity. Obviously, not all ICU beds are occupied by Covid patients but a reasonable guess is that cities where ICU capacity is at bursting are experiencing Covid outbreaks.

Also useful are counters for percentage of a state that is vaccinated. Pick a number you are comfortable with and don’t go to states with lower counts (Idaho brings up the rear).

Here’s an international vaccination rate tracker.

A last chart to eyeball ranks states by the percentage that is boosted and, yeah, the numbers are inexplicably, sadly low but the stats provide some guidance about where to go and where to avoid (New Hampshire and Hawaii, looking at you).

Even so, I plan to rely on my own instincts about a room when judging whether to go in or not and to stay or not. The macro numbers are useful but decisions about safety are, in my mind, very local.

Here’s the money question: Will I do long-haul travel? That’s maybe the question of the year because, from what I am seeing, it appears that many – indeed most – of us are ready for short-haul travel, often via car, and that makes sense because that is an environment we can control.

Put us in a large public conveyance (aka airplane) and we have much less – bordering on no – control and there also are the anti mask crazies, the violent nutters, and the rest we want to avoid.

But I will tell you I am deep into planning a trip to Europe in Q3 and that will involve many hours of flying. But I did a similar itinerary in Q3 2021, used commonsense and social distancing to the extent possible, and left after three weeks with a negative Covid test at Madrid Airport. I never felt real risk on the trip, except on the last day when waiting for a final flight to Phoenix at an overcrowded LAX. The European portion of my travels was delightful.

Spain does require arriving Americans to be vaccinated – and very likely soon will also require proof of a booster. Portugal does not require a vaccination but does require a recent negative test. I am planning to go to both.

What I am saying is that I am creating my own new normal. I believe we now are entering a period of learning to live with and around Covid. As more of us get vaccinated and boosted and probably boosted again, infection rates will continue to drop as will hospitalizations.

If we take our own health seriously I believe we can safely navigate the travel terrain that lies in front of us and, frankly, I am ready to go.

By Robert McGarvey

Every year, around this time, I have spent a few minutes mulling my travel plans for the new year ahead and, occasionally, doing a mileage run to grab a better elite status and almost always planning at least one trip for fun.

This year is different. Mainly because it borders on the impossible to forecast what my travel year will look like.  If forced to guess I’d say pretty similar to 2021 which featured exactly one trip (to Spain in early fall; in 2022 I plan a trip to Portugal and Spain, from Porto to San Sebastian).

What about business travel?

Yeah, what about it?

I am looking at a report from polling firm Morning Consult on “The State of Travel and Hospitality – Q4 2021 Report” (free download here) that serves up immense gloom regarding business travel.

Just about all travel in fact.

Perhaps we are at a crossroad where – fueled by environmental concerns and triggered by the immediacy of Covid – our relationship to travel is undergoing immense change.

Keep in mind that the phenomenon of mass longhaul travel is recent – the first commercial trans Pacific flight was 1936 (Pan Am).  It wasn’t until the late 1950s that commercial jet travel took root and deep into the 1960s when it became commonplace.  Meaning we have maybe 50+ years of mass longhaul travel and that’s a speck in the history of human existence.

Don’t think we cannot turn off that desire.  It’s happening.  The Morning Consult numbers suggest as much.

One in three of us say it will be more than a year (12% say never) that they will travel for leisure.

Holding back an energetic return to leisure travel, per Morning Consult, is confusion and concern about Covid-related travel concerns and requirements.  When do I need a Covid test, what kind, by when? Do I need to carry my vaccination card? Can I get into country X at all?  Does the US State Dept. say it’s safe? Can I travel back home?

If you are not at least slightly frazzled by all this you are not paying attention.  It’s a world of numerous and shifting rules, requirements, and restrictions.  

Air rage is also keeping some of us on the ground – more of us than I would have thought. Per Morning Consult, 41% of us have traveled less because of concerns about the behavior of other passengers.

63% of us are at least slightly concerned about an air rage incident on their next flight.  Only 36% are not at all concerned which, I guess, is where I fall.  

63% of us also support a vaccine mandate for air travel (and 81% support it for international travel).  These numbers tell me that the anti vaxxers may be loud but their numbers aren’t so high as to matter when setting policies.  I urge the Biden Administration to listen to the people and to issue an Executive Order that mandates vaccines for air travel. That will help get more us in the air, more often.

As for business travel, the forecast is gloomy – and it is especially gloomy coming from people who had traveled for business at least three times a year. 39% of that group in the US now say they will never travel for business again.

Never.

48% of Germans say likewise. 62% of French.  39% of Canadians.  

Of the business trips that do occur, one in five will be day trips, says Morning Consult.  And 55% will make business trips by car. 15% will travel by bus. 16% by train.

Only 50% say they expect some trips to involve a plane.

Another shoe dropping – not reflected in the Morning Consult data – is that sustainability concerns may further deflate travel, especially long haul jet travel.  Accenture data say that 66% of us are “ramping up” their sustainable/ethical purchasing.  Wall Street and thus the C suite also are climbing aboard the sustainability wagon.  

That bodes poorly for jet travel.

Back at Morning Consult, it’s forecast is pure gloom: Business travel will never return to prepandemic levels. 

I agree.  And the dramatic word is “never.”

We definitely don’t know what the new normal will be regarding business travel. But it will be different. Lots different. We know that much.

by Robert McGarvey

We know boo about Omicron – not how deadly it is, not how effective our vaccines are in warding it off, not how widespread it already is in the United States and globally. But there is one thing we do know: lots of new travel restrictions are coming, lots of travel gateways are erecting tall barriers to entry, and lots of meetings and events – which had been edging into in-person events – will be reverting to virtual.

Wishful thinking may want to deny everything in that last sentence but wishful thinking isn’t reality. We saw the reaction to delta earlier this year and we will see a rerun now, maybe with even more restrictions, especially if Omicron jumps the vaccine-booster barriers.

Know this: I am planning a trip to Portugal and Spain in this coming fall. I am reasonably confident it will happen in 10 months. But I am also very confident – indeed more confident – that the next three to six months are going to be full of chaos because of Omicron and the new variants that are likely soon to follow.

Just assume meetings and events that had been scheduled for the next three months will be virtual. It is hard to see many organizations encouraging employees to travel to in-person events and they won’t.

That’s just the beginning of the changes. Now New Year’s Eve celebrations have been canceled in the Algarve, The UK is requiring everyone to show a Covid test on arrival – that includes us, the Irish, the fully vaccinated. In the Netherlands, facemasks are now required in lots of places, from hairdressers to restaurants and bars and of course public transit. In Germany vaccinations are about to become compulsory, despite a vocal anti vax minority. In Spain support is growing for requiring a digital vaccination certificate to gain entry to many public places such as restaurants.

That last is a good idea, by the way. In the US we should require proof of full vaccination status (and very soon boosters too) to gain entry to restaurants, supermarkets, and, yes, airports. So far the political will to do this via Executive Order is lacking in the White House but that may change if the pressures grow on hospital capacity and deaths begin to mount again. Both seem very possible – hospitals already are strained in much of the country – including Vermont which once had been a poster child for doing the right things regarding Covid.

Of course the Biden Administration already has imposed a new 24 hour rule for tests required of all incoming international travelers including US citizens who are fully vaccinated. Many say that is sharply reducing the readiness of US citizens to travel abroad and probably that is true. In reality the requirement may not be that huge a hurdle. When returning from Spain in October I had to produce a test result that was no more than 72 hours old upon takeoff and that was no big deal. Madrid Airport has a very good testing facility – my test was around 100 Euros – and I think mine was within 26 hours of takeoff. I could easily tweak my timing and do it inside 24 hours – and, word of advice, definitely book an appointment in advance and pre-pay. At least in Madrid there was a long line of those who showed up without appointments and tests are administered to that group on an as available basis. Those with appointments were ushered in.

When will this end? Nobody knows, obviously.

But a guess is that we need to get the world up to maybe 75% vaccinated. Best guesses are that it will take at least five more months to get the global fully vaccinated near there.

For something like normalcy to return we also need wide distribution of booster shots. Maybe 10% of us in the US have had a booster. That number needs to ramp up much higher, soon.

We also need to return to cautious conduct – mask wearing, crowd avoidance, etc. Stop whining, it’s keeping us safer.

You thought all this was behind us? Who didn’t? But here we are again and I am not expecting much improvements for many months to come. Improvement will come, when we have taken the steps needed to get there. Until then it will be one step forward, two back. So keep your travel bags unpacked. I know I am.

By Robert McGarvey

It is tiresome – so many press releases and executive interviews spewed out by airlines and big hotel chains prognosticating that business travel will return to 2019 “normality” in 2022, probably by mid year.

These predictions are to fact based estimates as manure is to meatballs.

And I really like a good Italian American meatball (with the trinity of meats, please).

But I am no fan of fake news releases and Panglossian interviews.

Or fact free forecasts by business travel fanboys. You know who they are. Because they like travel they fervently believe everybody does. But it ain’t so.

Interlude: this blog has no comments on omicron because I have nothing useful to say other than the sooner the world gets vaccinated, the better.

Back to the present musings:

Now Google has weighed in and where data is concerned, Google is the motherlode.

That has always been the company’s business plan.  Hoover up every scrap of data, sort it, and draw fact based conclusions.  Google knows you are interested in travel to the Maldives over Christmas because you searched for exactly that 10 times this week. When Google talks it has data to back it up.

Here is Google’s prediction: Per Travel Weekly UK, “The decline in the volume of business travellers may continue beyond the pandemic, Google’s latest travel data suggests.”

Google’s Meg Elzea, global travel industry manager, added that while a majority of business travelers will be back on the road in 2022, companies and travelers are in fact “making changes.”  

Like what?  Per Travel Weekly, “She told Abta’s Travel Trends conference that Google expects business travel to return in the next year to ‘70% of pre-pandemic levels’.”

That sounds exactly on target to me.

Roughly one-third of pre-pandemic travel is not coming back and it isn’t because we have concluded t isn’t necessary and companies have decided they can save that money.

Even some air execs agree. For instance, Loganair boss Jonathan Hinkles speaking at the Airlines 2021 Conference,, said: “We are looking at a much lower level of business travel. The market will be smaller overall.  

He elaborated: “We’ve all moved on to Zoom or Teams and a proportion of that is going to stick.”

“He acknowledged that a certain amount of business will still have to be done in person, but maintained that ‘a proportion of the services sector is not going to revert back to the [business travel] ethos it had.’”

Personally, while I think the virtual meeting technology – Zoom and similar video calling tools – will erase some meetings, I think bigger factors are in play.

For me, at least, Zoom seems to be replacing oldfashioned phone calls and, frankly, I prefer the latter and often stick with a phone without video.  Why comb one’s hair when one has no need? But that is what Zoom is replacing: phone calls.

As for what is driving the reduction in meetings, I agree with Google’s research that pinpoints three triggers:  the global outcry over climate issues – and air travel is a prime offender, an employee search for better work life balance, and a corporate bean counter hunt for cost savings.

That’s a perfect storm that, I believe, will sideline just about that 30% of travel Google sees getting trimmed.

Many employees will be happier (substantial business travel is a factor in ill health as well as significant family issues in many households).  The CFOs (and Wall Street profit counters) will be overjoyed. And the planet will be in better shape if we cut back on travel.

What trips are not on the chopping block?  I see sales calls and customer service calls returning to normal when the present health issues vanish and a lot of the complicated and ever changing travel requirements (such as PCR tests) are simplified, or at the least regularized.  A world of fast changing rules is a world where we stay home.

But the day travel gets simplified will come, possibly in mid to late 2022.

What travel will be eliminated?

The kinds of trips that will be sidelined are the intramural, getting to know you get together, small meetings (often in Chicago or Dallas for big national companies).  

Oh, do I remember them,some from as far back as 1976 and were they tedious and pointless!  They doubtless still are.  Erase them from the calendar and nobody will cry.

The organization can also put out press releases – true ones – about decreased carbon load. And there can be whispers to Wall Street and investors about profit gains.  

Nope, that one-third of travel will be forever lost. And no one will much miss it.

by Robert McGarvey

The US hospitality sector is ebullient: the foreigners are coming, the foreigners are coming. After 20 months of shut international borders, the US is tearing down the barricades and is ready to welcome travelers from abroad (if they are vaccinated). New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Washington DC and more are in high alert ready for this influx of guests.

Observed the New York Times, “the beleaguered tourism industry is eagerly awaiting an influx in international visitors.”

Words of advice: stand down.

They ain’t coming. Not soon.

According to Lindsey Roeschke writing in Morning Consult, “Most travelers will wait until at least summer 2022 to visit the United States, and are prepared for the possibility of new COVID-19 developments derailing their plans.”

She added: “Among seven of the countries that send the most travelers to the United States in a typical year — in rank order of pre-pandemic arrival numbers: Canada, Mexico, the U.K., China, Brazil, Germany and France — relatively few people have definite plans to travel to the United States in the next three months.”

Why? Covid. And the fact that the US still does not have control of this epidemic. We in fact are sliding to the basement of the G7 in terms of vaccination rates.

If asked by a European if they should come to the US I would say no.

I think back to my own experience a few months ago planning a trip to Europe. I studied vaccination rates for Spain, where I wound up going, also Portugal.

Only 58% of the US is fully vaccinated today. 79% of Spaniards are. 87% of Portuguese are.

I can also attest from personal observation that mask compliance in Spain is very, very high, even outdoors in cities and definitely indoors.

The US cannot say any of that. What foreign visitors have to know is that they will be entering a country of risks. Risks that shouldn’t exist. But they do. And a rational person would decide not to come here.

And so they are.

Aren’t some US states safer than others? You bet. But that doesn’t seem to matter to many foreigner travelers. said Morning Consult, “Across all countries surveyed, respondents were much more likely to say they don’t feel comfortable planning a trip anywhere in the United States than to say they are comfortable going to some areas but not others.”

Morning Consult continues: “Travelers from key markets in the Americas — Brazil, Canada and Mexico — are the most likely to be certain about coming to the United States in the coming year.” Joy. Mexico is 49% fully vaccinated. Brazil is 59%. Both lower than us. Canada at 76% is significantly higher and if Canadians look at the math they will probably decide to stay home until we smarten up and get vaccinated.

Arguably, for Mexicans and Brazilians the math says they will be safer here and so perhaps they should come. But that same math tells Europeans to stay home. The only European nations with rates below ours are former Soviet bloc countries such as Hungary (59%), Poland (53%), and Ukraine (18%).

We need to pull our heads out of the sand and accept that if we do not get our vaccination rates up – over 70% fully vaccinated at a minimum – we won’t be globally competitive.

Reuters, incidentally, has a piece that is a dyspeptic look at the rebound of trans Atlantic business travel and its take is, don’t hold your breath. It reported: “the full transatlantic restart might not be as lucrative as airlines would hope.” Between Covid worries, travel budget cuts, and a general disenchantment with a lot of business travel, it is probable that trans Atlantic air traffic will remain at sharply diminished rates for some months to come

Meantime, back at Morning Consult, there’s a belief that international travel to the US may perk up by mid 2022. Possibly.

But surely a big issue will be if we finally get vaccinated.

If we don’t nothing will change regarding to international travelers. It would be dumb to come here until we fix our problems.

And, yes, I am personally planning a trip to Portugal. For me that is trip into a safer, healthier place.

That’s the kind of calculation smart travelers should be making and, unfortunately, the US comes out on the wrong side of the equation.