Travel

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Delta Airlines is betting big that you will dig into your own pocket to pay to upgrade your seat – and they say they took in $80 million last year after they allowed customers to upgrade after purchase.  

They also say they will begin allowing passengers to pay for upgrades with miles.

Are you on board with this?

The problem of course is that many employers and clients simply refuse to pay for upgraded air.  When I began in the workplace 40 years ago, the standard policy – at two of my first employers – was that if a flight was over 2 hours, they would pay for first class (business class had not yet caught on).

But now I have exactly no clients who will pay for upgraded air. To anywhere. That means if I’m flying from Phx to Sin, it’s in coach.  For maybe 21 hours.  Ouch.

If I want upgraded comfort, it comes out of my pocket.

Same for you probably.

Delta insists we are opening our own wallets.  

Are you?

I cannot recall ever paying my own money to upgrade air seating.  Never. I do recall many cases where I used miles to buy upgrades but I rationalized it with the thought that client X had in a way bought the miles because I earned them on flights paid for by X and if I used them on another flight for X, all was right with the world.

I am not sure I am entirely correct about that. But it’s how my brain worked.

And mine is a brain schooled in travel by hardened 1970s road warriors who were sure it was a sin to spend one’s own money on a business travel.

Thus my deep hesitation to pay for a better airplane seat.

Indeed, I still cannot wrap my mind around paying actual cash, from my pocket, for a better seat.  I just will not do it.

Will you?

Skift, by the way, reports that Delta will generate two receipts.  One for the base fare, one for the upgrade. The idea is to hand in for reimbursement the base fare receipt and thus dodge any hassles from bean counters.

Skift also quoted Delta’s president this way: “the goal is to avoid ‘driving to the bottom’ by selling an airline seat as a ‘commodity.’ Instead, it wants to attract “people who are discerning who want to buy premiums and products and services.”

But wait. Airline seats on US carriers are “commodities” and are fungible.  Telling me they aren’t is presupposing massive gullibility on my part.

Interesting, however, is that per Delta’s CEO – as quoted by Skift – the carrier a few years ago sold 15% of its domestic first class seats (the rest were given out to folks like me, typically for no payment at all). Now Delta sells about 50% of its upfront seats and it wants to sell more.

CEO Ed Bastian added this: “One of the reasons why we moved into the paid upgrade opportunity, not only does it allow customers to provide certainty by being able to buy the experience, but we also have a very good product in our Comfort+, which we didn’t have in the past, so that for many of our loyal customers that were unable to upgrade, they now have a place where they can actually have an enhanced experience, versus prior years where you’d be in the main cabin.”

I’m still not in.  I long ago decided I could handle the six hour discomfort of flying from LAX to EWR in coach – it’s not that bad.  Really. I don’t eat the food upfront, I don’t drink alcohol on business flights, and I don’t want to sleep on domestic flights. I don’t do any of that in coach either, but so what?

So I can get what I want, at a cheap price, from coach.

Why would I spend my money to get a slightly upgraded experience upfront?

My answer is that I won’t.

What’s yours?

When I see subheads like this – from CNBC – “Passengers are opening their wallets” what I smell is airline spin. Say it’s so loud enough and often enough and it just may be believed.

But not here.

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Blunt question: do you feel less safe in an Uber or Lyft than you do in a properly medallioned taxi driven by a properly licensed taxi driver?  The National Limousine Association is betting that you do – at least that you will after seeing its fear provoking TV ads.  

The pitch is that ride sharing drivers haven’t been drug tested or thoroughly background checked.

But licensed taxi drivers are both, said the National Limousine Association.

Ask the passengers of John Worboys about that. A black taxi driver in London – thus a certified possessor of “the knowledge” – in 2009 Worboys was sent to prison for sexually assaulting at least 12 women, usually after drugging them in his cab.  He is said to have been one of the most prolific sexual assaulters in UK history. Over 100 women stepped forward and accused him.  Police believe his victim count could have exceeded 500.

Closer to home there is Sherman Jackson II, owner and operator of Sherman’s Safe Ride in Butler County, OH, who was charged with sexually assaulting two Miami University students. (Jackson denied the accusation.)  

In Washington, DC, Yared Geremew Mekonnen, a taxi driver, was arrested for raping a passenger who, incidentally, had fallen asleep in the backseat of Mekonnen’s cab. When she awoke, she said he was raping her.  Mekonnen too denied the allegation.

In Chicago, a taxi driver was arrested for raping drunk Loyola students, according to claims by the prosecutor.  

The list could go on. Travis Bickle isn’t the only criminal taxi driver – there are plenty of deviants in real life.

I also could quickly assemble a collection of cases involving Uber and Lyft drivers. Absolutely.

My point is that the National Limousine Association is just plain ignorant if it believes it can make a case that passengers feel less safe in an Uber than a licensed taxi and that they should feel less safe.

In many cases, by the way, ride share drivers are former taxi drivers who say they make more money with the ride share outfits. At least that’s what I have heard from a number of drivers.

Understand: I personally drove a taxi, off and on, in Boston and Cambridge, Mass.  I had hackney licenses issued by both towns. As I recall, the vetting – conducted by the city issuing the license – consisted of taking my fingerprints and running them through an FBI database.  

 

In Phoenix, where I now live, getting a taxi license apparently involves providing a criminal background check.  

I am not anti taxi driver.

But I am also not anti Uber driver.

I am against inflammatory ads that hope to stoke groundless fears however.

Look, background checks aren’t that hard.  Recently, I offered myself as a volunteer in the Catholic Church in Phoenix.  I learned that volunteering requires watching a “Safe Environment” video and filling out a fairly extensive personal history as well as providing three or four personal references and agreeing to a criminal background check.

That may seem a lot but given the Church’s recent history it quite clearly is necessary.

If I can do that much to serve as a volunteer, surely ride-share drivers can do similar.

At Uber they do in fact – which makes the National Limousine Association argument that much more baffling.

Lyft does too.  

Also, with Uber and Lyft your ride is logged by the computers.  There’s a record of the route and time. That’s more than usually documents a taxi ride.

I am not saying that therefore your safety is guaranteed in an Uber ride – or a medallioned yellow cab. Use your wits. If you feel unsafe, get out.  Don’t doubt your instincts.

But very, very probably all will be well, no matter which transportation mode you choose.

Oh, one last slap at the National Limousine Association. A few years ago I was a passenger in a licensed Journal Square, Jersey City taxi where the driver’s license was prominently displayed. I look at such things, probably because of my personal background.

In this case, the photo caught my eye because it was an entirely different person!

And I’m supposed to feel safer in a taxi?

That ride proceeded without incident by the way.

They almost always do.

 

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

The Orlando Sentinel has the, well, deeply disturbing news about the apparent demise of “Do Not Disturb” signs at four Disney Florida hotels, with the door left open to expanding the policy to more hotels.  

The paper reported: “The tighter security measures come months after an Oct. 1 shooting in Las Vegas, where a gunman shot from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay casino-hotel tower and killed 58 people, wounding hundreds more.

“Disney declined to say whether the shooting prompted the change for its policy but said it made the decision for a variety of factors, including safety, security and the guest experience.”

Excuse me but this is even clumsier than the typical hotelier response to out of the normal events.

Other hotels – see below – are beginning to hop aboard this trend.

It makes no sense and, for many of us, it represents a substantial inconvenience.  I say that because over the years I have heard from many dozens of business travelers who routinely pop the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the room door when they check in and it stays there until they check out a day or two later.

Of course if a stay is longer just about all business travelers will surrender to the need for fresh towels and a bit of buffing up of the accommodations and will take off that sign – but as soon as housekeeping has done its job the sign goes back up.

Some business travelers have complained to me about the theft of personal electronics from their rooms, iPads especially – and it’s a rare inroom safe big enough to hold a full size iPad. Others tell me they suspected somebody had fiddled with their computer or maybe sifted through papers – looking for intel on a competitor?  Still others just don’t like the idea of a stranger having private time with their belongings even when that stranger is an employee of the hotel.

These business travelers will just love Disney’s new “right to enter” policy which replaces “Do Not Disturb” signs with “Room Occupied” signs and explicitly gives the hotel a right to enter daily

If you have a problem with this, Disney told the Orlando Sentinel it will discuss the issue with concerned guests individually.

Lots of people will have problems so Disney better be prepared. When travel blogger Gloria Atanmo surveyed her Facebook followers, 55% said they would rather housekeeping not tidy their rooms.  Mainly for privacy reasons.

A problem with this new Disney policy – just one of many problems – is that it sets on a collision course the desire of housekeepers to clean an unoccupied room with the desire of many business travelers to never let their unoccupied room be entered to safeguard their own privacy and security.

Many hotels of course have a policy of not allowing housekeepers to enter a room when the guest is present, I hear because of concerns over incidents where guests have sexually harassed housekeepers. These are very real issues and the housekeepers have my full support.  

But there is no plain path to satisfying both the housekeeper desire for security and the guest’s desire for security.

Let’s go back to the Stephen Paddock incident. Apparently on at least two separate occasions hotel staff helped Paddock bring gun stuffed bags up to his room via the service elevator.  

Then, too, alert staff surely might have noticed that Paddock was bringing a lot of luggage into his room. That alone would have been worth a visit by security.

But that does not mean that every guest needs to have his.her room inspected for security purposes on a daily basis.

On a business trip I typically travel with one carryon bag and one laptop case.  Most business travelers I know travel equally lean.  I scarcely have space to smuggle in a small bag of pretzels and a Diet Coke, no less an arsenal.

Why – exactly why – would my room warrant a daily visual search?

We all understand the panic triggered by Paddock’s mass killings on the Strip, just as we all felt the horrors of the 30+ murders at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai in 2008, killings perpetrated by two gunmen inside the hotel.  

Definitely hotels need better but also smarter security.

What Disney is implementing is neither. Let’s hope it doesn’t spread.

Now Hilton has climbed aboard.  Reported USA Today: “The McLean, Va.-based company is now suggesting that a team member alert a security or duty manager if a Do Not Disturb sign or light has been in place on a guestroom door for more than 24 consecutive hours.”

Hilton is a smarter take on this issue.  Not brilliant but much better than Disney.

What might hotels do better? It starts with training the front desk staff to be alert to unusual levels of baggage going into a room.  It may be harmless. The guest may be smuggling in warehouse-bought party supplies to circumvent paying for room service provisions for a soiree, for instance.

Ditto for training security staff.

Most hotels have a policy for dealing with longterm display of a “Do Not Disturb” sign by a guest but, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal, there is no industry standard. Post Paddock just about every hotel chain has scrambled to come up with an effective, coherent policy. But as the Disney fail shows, it’s not easy.

Personally, by the way, I am much more concerned about meth labs at hotels than I am about snipers – there just are a lot more meth labs and they can explode, catch on fire, and otherwise endanger the lives of unwitting guests in the same hotel.

That’s also why I say again it starts with being much more aware about what guests are bringing into their rooms as they bring the stuff in.

Not the next day when they hole up behind a “Do Not Disturb” sign.

 

 

 

Would you pay a $25 “urban fee” to stay at a hotel near Times Square?

The question is not academic. A growing number of hotels – many clustered around Times Square – are dinging guests $25 extra per night in an “urban fee,” modeled on a resort fee of course.

On the list are Hilton New York, Marriotts around Times Square, even Le Parker Meridien.

When a staffer at the UK Independent called Marriott to inquire about the fee, here’s what they learned.  “A member of staff said it was a fee reflecting the hotels’ proximity to a ‘tourist attraction,’ that it was specific to Times Square, and that none of the other Manhattan hotels charged a fee.”

Do we have to put up with this?

The urban fees are in fact not new. As far back as 2013, Reuters noted that urban fees were showing up at some hotels.

It’s not just Manhattan either. In San Francisco, some 34 hotels charge an urban fee, up from just three in 2016.

What do you get for this fee? Not much. Usually hotels point to allegedly “premium” Internet access, maybe gym access, possibly a local newspaper, probably local phone calls – and, really, this is just stuff I don’t want or use and before it was usually free.

Even some hotel executives know such fees are hinky. At a recent conference, co sponsored by Hotel Business,  Bob Habeeb, CEO of First Hospitality Group, said: “I think the tricky thing with resort fees or amenity fees is they’ve got to represent a real value for the consumer and not be just a veiled play for ADR. During the waning days of the Obama administration, the FCC called Katherine Lugar [the CEO of AHLA] and said we’ve been looking at the way your industry uses these amenity fees as a backdoor way to collect unspecified and undisclosed revenue, and I think we’re going to look at this.”

Habeeb added that in the Trump era pressures from Washington appear to have lessened. But he added: “It’s inevitable that consumers are going to push back if these fees don’t represent something that they can find value in. It’s a great idea to have little packages people can buy into and enhance their experience, but you’re on slippery ground when you start talking about charging a fee for things people perceive should be part of what they paid for in the first place.”

I am on record, for some years now, as a loud opponent of  resort fees.  They are just a way for hoteliers to sneakily grab your money.

Resort fees in some locations have crept up over $50 daily.  I am not against hotels charging more – we live in a capitalist society. What I am against is showing one price as the daily rate and then adding on taxes and fees that can significantly raise the daily rate.

Hotels love fees. In 2017, NYU professor Bjorn Hanson estimated they’d rake in around $2.7 billion in fees and upcharges.

Hanson, incidentally, has stated that hotels are doing a better job of plaininly disclosing fees.  “Some fees and surcharges are sometimes unfairly called ‘hidden’ or ‘surprise,’ but disclosure on websites, confirmation emails, ‘tent’ cards in guest rooms, room service menus, and guest service directories continues to increase in the nature of the disclosure. In interviews for this update, the issue is more about unpopularity of fees and surcharges rather than fees and surcharges being ‘hidden’. One of the reasons for the sense that some of these fees and surcharges are ‘hidden’ or ‘surprise’ is because the categories are often established and the amounts are set hotel-by-hotel rather than by brand, and both can change frequently.”

The bad news: as hotels have gotten better at disclosure they also have dug in their heels about erasing them. Used to be, four or five years ago, if you made a ruckus at checkout about the resort fee, poof, it disappeared. Not so fast anymore, frequent travelers tell me.

So how can you avoid the new urban fees? For starters, just don’t stay at hotels that charge the fees. There may be three dozen San Francisco hotels that charge an urban fee, but there are around 500 hotels in and very near the city that don’t.  The odds are with you.

As for Manhattan, mainly the urban fee seems to be found near Times Square – and whyever would you want to stay there?

Many, many hundreds of Manhattan hotels don’t charge an urban fee so if you stay at one that does it is on you. Just don’t.

The point: it’s up to us to avoid the fees we don’t want to pay.

Most hotels on the Las Vegas Strip now charge a resort fee. Most hotels in Scottsdale do likewise. Ditto Hawaii.  There just are places where it’s tough to duck a resort fee so we will pay it and grumble.

Urban fees are different. They are at a handful of properties and if we skip those properties – maybe even posting that a reason is the urban fee – hoteliers may get the message that this is one fee too far.

It’s up to us to just say no.

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Amazon has sounded its intentions loudly: it really, really wants to see its voice controlled artificial intelligence device Alexa (aka Echo) in tens of thousands of hotel rooms, pronto.

I am all for this. It’s an easy way to make my every hotel stay a little more comfortable. 

I am aware of concerns about Alexa’s potential to spy – dealt with below – but I am not deterred.  I want such gear in my hotel rooms.

I’ve been an Alexa user since early 2015 and have also supported its penetration into banking – Capital One has had a live skill for many months that I’ve used and liked.  Presently I own an Echo, a Dot, an Echo Look, and I recently added a Google Home mini.  I’ve gotten into asking my devices for the information and actions I want. It’s a whole lot simpler, and more accurate, than me typing into a cellphone.  Exactly that is why, suddenly, big tech powerhouses like Google and Amazon have plunged into voice controlled devices

And I can imagine dozens of uses for Alexa in my next hotel room, if only it’s there.

For sure, Amazon wants it there. In a recent Amazon Web Services conference in Las Vegas, Amazon executive Werner Vogels noted that Wynn is rolling Alexa out to its many thousands of hotel rooms and will let guests use it to lower the blinds, turn on the TV, turn on lights, adjust the temperature, etc.

I can already picture myself waking up in a Las Vegas hotel room and asking Alexa for the day’s weather.  Also my calendar.  I can get news headlines read to me.  And, yes, I’d definitely use Alexa to open and close the blinds (a continuing struggle for me in Las Vegas and only in Las Vegas, I can’t explain why), to adjust the room temperature, and to turn lights on and off.  No more learning curve for the inroom technology.

And with Alexa, there really is no learning curve. Just preface any request with: Alexa. That tells the device you want something. Then ask. Sometimes it won’t know the answer but Alexa confesses ignorance and moves on to the next question.

Concur, the big corporate travel manager, has also integrated an Alexa skill that will let travelers ask for their itinerary – and that’s often a question on my mind. “Alexa, when’s my flight today? Where am I going?”

Skift reports that Alexa is in trials with Marriott, also Best Western.  Skift elaborated: “At Best Western Plus Hawthorne Terrace, the Echo device greets guests on arrival in the room. Guests can ask it for services like more towels or ask it for the hotel’s recommendations on places to dine locally by cuisine and time of day.”

Hotel Management, in its reporting on the Hawthorne Terrace deployment, said: “The new device acts as a gateway to all the local happenings in Lakeview East, the vibrant neighborhood where Hawthorne Terrace resides and encourages them to ‘Live. Play. Stay. Like a local,’ which is Hawthorne Terrace’s overarching purpose.”

In Nyack, NY Dream Hotel Group has put Alexa in rooms at its Time Hotel. 

A big player in this niche is Volara, a third party that helps hotels build out customized skills and that’s key because to be truly useful, the Alexa in my hotel room has to have knowledge about the room, the hotel, the city that I don’t readily have.  

Particularly cool is that Volara – and doubtless competitors – can build in answers for Alexa, what’s the WiFi password? What are the fitness center hours? When does the restaurant open for breakfast? Can I get towels brought to my room?

Work through the many demos on the Volara demo page and you get a sense of how useful this will be.

Think of it this way. You could call the front desk with all your questions. Or you could ask Alexa. Which do you believe will be faster? More accurate? I know my answer.

A frightening question: can Alexa spy on you?  The answer seems to be yes.  Sort of.  Definitely it has the potential to hear everything said in its range and, theoretically, could transmit it to others.  Is there proof this has happened?  Not that I’m aware of but I would say that if I were having a hush-hush, on the QT convo with Jeff Bezos, I’d be surprised if he didn’t unplug Alexa before he got into the nitty gritty of his plans for throttling WalMart and making the Washington Post the nation’s best newspaper.

Do likewise. If you are having a sensitive discussion in a hotel room equipped with Alexa, unplug it. How hard is that?

When you’re done talking, plug it in and within a minute or two it’ll be ready for new questions and commands. It’s really that simple.

This is one hotel in-room technology revolution I am all in with. Color me impatient: I want it now.

 

12/9 – Changed “she” pronouns to “it,” per reader suggestion.  

 

By Robert McGarvey

I have long been on record as a TripAdvisor fan. My argument has been, sure, some of the reviews are nuts or blatant puffery but when there are enough reviews, a kind of commonsense reality will emerge.

I take all that back.

I no longer recommend TripAdvisor as a trustworthy source of hotel commentary and – sadly – I have no recommendation about what to replace it with.

TripAdvisor’s sin of course is that it has been caught deleting reviews that claimed the person had been raped on property, sometimes by hotel staff.

But other kinds of negative comments too were deleted.

An investigative piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel initially explored the suspicious death of a Wisconsin student in Mexico, apparently from drinking contaminated alcohol at a resort. As the paper poked into this, it found evidence that many, many reviews and comments on TripAdvisor apparently had been deleted.

Evidence mounts that TripAdvisor has a longstanding policy of removing some kinds of negative commentary.

Even when that commentary is exactly what a potential guest might want to know before before booking a stay.

The FTC may now be investigating TripAdvisor. The Journal Sentinel reported: “The Commission has a strong interest in protecting consumer confidence in the online marketplace, including the robust online market for hotel and travel,” wrote Maureen Ohlhausen, acting chairman of the FTC. “When consumers are unable to post honest reviews about a business, it can harm other consumers whose abilities to make well-informed purchase decisions are hindered and harm businesses that work hard to earn positive reviews.”

Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) has upped the presure on the FTC to investigate TripAdvisor. In a Tweet she wrote: “This may be a case of putting profits over providing an open, honest forum for traveler reviews on TripAdvisor. I called on the F.T.C. to look into this and they should get to the bottom of it.”

TripAdvisor apparently justified deletions by saying the posts were hearsay or off topic or in violation of a “family friendly” tone.

Maybe so, but would you want to know if a resort has a history of selling tainted booze or condoning sexual predators on staff?

It gets worse. The Journal Sentinel reported this: “An untold number of TripAdvisor users have been granted special privileges, including the ability to delete forum posts. But the company won’t disclose how those users are selected. “

Nor will TripAdvisor disclose who they are.

That has to trouble you in the way letting a coyote guard a chicken coop would.

TripAdvisor, for its part, has issued its own mea culpa. It denies that it removed any posts to please hotels and resorts but acknowledges that a prevailing “family friendly” content edict had resulted in removal of many posts.

Some of those posts detailed sexual assaults.

The company claims it has loosened its language restrictions.

TripAdvisor now says: “A simple search of TripAdvisor will show numerous reviews from travelers over the last several years who wrote about their first-hand experiences that include matters of robbery or theft, assault and rape. We believe any first-hand experience should be posted to our site as a means to communicate to other consumers looking for information on where they should travel.”

The company added: “In order to better inform consumers and provide them with even more information about their travels, TripAdvisor is creating a ‘badge’ notification to apply to businesses to alert consumers of health and safety or discrimination issues at that business reported on within the media or other credible sources of information.”

Here’s an example.

In searches on TripAdvisor for reviews that include allegations of rape I found quite a few reviews. Here are some for Cancun. Here are 1600+ sitewide – but many are mentions of “The Rape of the Sabine Women,” sometimes rape flowers, some complain about getting price gouged, but at least some pertain to claims of sexual misconduct.

Are you willing to forgive TripAdvisor and take its new policy at its word?

TripAdvisor plainly is trying to make amends for its past missteps.

Do you trust it now?

I do not. Much more transparency is required to regain trust. Who has deletion privileges? How is it used?  What hotels can delete reviews?  

A lot of deletions occurred in the past.  How can TripAdvisor be trusted to stop?

If a review site cannot be trusted to post reviews alleging serious misconduct, how can it be trusted at all?

The real hair puller here is that, honestly, there are no alternatives. Various hotel organizations talk about creating their own review sites. Some hotel companies talk about seeking out more reviews. But, really, everybody with an interest already has too much skin in the game. They aren’t unbiased.

That’s why I want TripAdvisor to work, I want them to fix this. I hope it’s fast.

  -30-

12/10 – Read about how TripAdvisor was pranked into rating a fake restaurant London’s best.  A chilling tale.

 

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Blogger Ben Schlappig at One Mile at a Time recently threw a very large spanner in the delicate machinery of many press outlets which rush to cover new first class air cabins. According to Schlappig, “All the time I see mainstream media articles ranking the world’s best first class products. There’s only one problem — the person writing the story typically hasn’t actually flown any of the products, and just uses airline-provided images  and marketing bullets for their rankings.”

Skift thought enough about that allegation that it ran this.

Color me surprised that there is a brouhaha about this.  It may not be good journalism but it is also standard operating procedure.  

A lot of coverage of travel plays by different rules than, say, political reporting or business reporting.

I know enough about hotel coverage to know that in many, many cases – possibly most – the writers who cover hotel stays have benefitted from comped rooms. Typically, too, there’s no acknowledgement that this is so. Does getting a free stay influence how a writer reviews a hotel?  Probably yes but I’m unaware of any research into this. In my own case, I have gotten many free hotel nights but I have rarely covered hotels as such. It’s not my beat. I have put hotels in lists – “where to stay in Berlin Mitte” — but that’s about it.

As for air, in years past I often got free seats, but often, too, they were in coach and I don’t think I ever wrote about specific flights. Coach flights are fungible in my mind.

The new breed first class cabins are a different breed however. They definitely are not fungible.

Business travel blogger Joe Brancatelli may believe that first class cabins are dying – he has the numbers to prove his point – and CNBC says similar. So does the Telegraph. So does Bloomberg. But nonetheless we do like reading about how the other half lives.

Thus a shower of press write ups about first class air.

Definitely, too, much of it is written by people who have never stepped inside the cabin.

Singapore Air for instance is now winning an avalanche of press for its new first class cabin which does not debut until December and, therefore, nobody has flown it. And yet the press coverage multiplies.

Coverage often gets downright gushy, as have many write ups of the new first class cabin coming to Emirates.

Some publications have covered the war among airlines to provide yet more dazzling features up front.

Now tell me this: in glancing at this coverage do you believe the writers have in fact stepped in the cabins and flown long flights?

I don’t.

I agree with Schlappig, most of this front cabin coverage is based on press releases and photo libraries supplied by the carriers. But what’s the harm in that?

Far better would be an actual review of a cabin – here’s a nice piece about flying business class on Vietnam Air with at least one grumble voiced – but doing that with the new first class cabins is difficult. Seats are few, they are very expensive, and they usually are on long flights.

Besides, the whole point of the wave of coverage pre debut is to stir up interest in buying tickets when the cabins are ready to fly.

But even if offered a freebie when the Singapore Air flight begins, I’m unsure I’d accept because my personal ROI – involving my time – probably would be pathetic.

Would I write up the cabin now if a paying editor requested I use the press release? Probably not. I don’t see that I could say anything that hasn’t already been said and, personally, I just don’t like doing stories that are entirely based on press handouts. And I do think writers who write up the cabins based solely on press materials should note this.

Brancatelli, meantime, pointed out to me that just about all the press reviews of front cabins miss the mark for business travelers because they aren’t written from a business travel perspective.  He’s right. The write ups are about fluffy PJs, good champagne, gourmet delicacies, and other tokens of the posh life. But when I travel upfront I don’t drink alcohol and I judge my flight on the quality of my sleep and the usability of the workspace to do some quality work.  If the food is health focused, all the better.  The business travelers I talk with tell me their concerns are similar. Not a one has ever mentioned the slippers that might be available. So, yes, Joe is right when he snorts that many of the front cabin reviews are “ludicrous” when read by a business traveler.

That’s why what I personally would like to write rather than a cabin review based on press handouts would be a story based on interviews of  maybe six paying passengers about their Singapore Air first class experience. Is it worth the money? What did you do? How did you sleep? What did you eat?  It would be great if it were a Rashomon but if they all agreed it was a great flight, money well spent, that would be great too.

Maybe that is a story I will write some day. But it will have to wait until December when the cabin is actually open to the public.

Until then all we have are the handouts.

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

We like our loyalty programs. That’s a fact in recent research by Phocuswright and Acxiom which found four in five US travelers belong to loyalty programs.

The story’s headline hammered the point home: US Travelers Are Heavy Users of Loyalty Programs.

But it twisted this knife in the sub-head: But travel trails several other verticals in the popularity of such plans.

What do you think?

Curiously the study found business travelers are more committed to loyalty programs than are leisure travelers. But not by much.

62% of business travelers are signed up for a hotel’s loyalty program, compared to 54% of leisure travelers.

As for air, 60% of business travelers are signed up for an airline’s program, compared to 50% of leisure.

Count me as seriously surprised that 40% of business travelers aren’t in an airline program – and more are in hotel programs than air.

I agree: air frequent flier programs have gotten progressively more worthless.  But in my mind, as long as I don’t alter my behavior to “succeed” in a program, whatever crumbs I’m tossed for my meager loyalty are welcome.

Personally in fact I belong to a packet of loyalty programs. American Air, United, Southwest, Hyatt, Hilton, and a few more hotel programs that I’ve probably joined multiple times because I don’t keep track of the log in details and when I want to claim a loyalty member perk, like free wifi, I join again.  

There were others I’ve been automatically enrolled in due to patronage – several cruise lines for instance – but I never kept track of those, either.

In all programs nowadays my loyalty is thin.  Fragile.

When I think of loyalty programs here’s what comes to mind. A few months ago I realized that there are Murray’s Cheese counters at some Fry’s supermarkets in Phoenix. I had a hankering for Cabot clothbound cheddar – the best domestic cheddar imo – and decided the Fry’s Murray’s probably sold it so I ventured into a Fry’s.

The cheese was in. But I was in a supermarket, so I tossed other stuff in the cart and at checkout of course I got a Fry’s loyalty card to get the member discounts on paper towels and bathroom cleansers.

I won’t return until the next time I crave Cabot clothbound.  (I shop at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.) I have zero loyalty to Fry’s – tho I like the discounts.  My loyalty is to Murray’s and Cabot.  

Very probably your loyalty to many – most – programs you belong to is also thin.  

I remember knowing – I was one myself – very loyal Continental Air passengers.  Flying out of Newark, often to Houston on business, there was no budging me out of Continental and I liked the many perks the airline showered on me for my loyalty. There was a time when if I didn’t get an upgrade to business class I somehow felt cheated.  That’s how often I got the upgrades.

But in recent years I have gotten bupkis and, honestly, the only travelers I know who express satisfaction with loyalty programs are the super elites, the kind who log well over 100k miles annually and 100+ room nights. They are happy.

The rest of us not so much.

That’s underlined in additional research by Bond Brand Loyalty that found only 39% of us expressed satisfaction with airline loyalty programs. That fell to 38% for hotel programs.

My surprise is that the numbers are that high. I would have guessed maybe 25% – one in four of us – for both categories. There’s just not much to be loyal to.

What’s interesting in that Bond Brand Loyalty survey is that in all but one category less than half of us expressed happiness with the various loyalty programs we belong to.

Credit cards, said Bond,  managed to hit 52% of us claiming satisfaction. And that’s the best.

Hospitality companies are performing at a mediocre level but it’s not that far off the performance of other kinds of retailers. They all sleepwalk through loyalty.

Message to retailers: if you want us to take loyalty programs seriously it starts with you. You need to take them seriously and upgrade them.

That message is all the louder in hospitality.

 

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Call it news…not.  The headline screamed: A Majority of Avid US Travelers Have Never Used Airbnb.  Color me surprised not at all.

I haven’t used it either. And I’ve become a big fan of Uber so I am fine with the sharing economy (and years ago I even drove a taxi in Boston and I feel for those drivers but by now most who can have transformed into Uber/Lyft drivers). I can’t recall the last time I took a taxi in the U.S., it’s been that long.

Sharing economy lodgings are a different matter.

The trigger for the headline is a new Skift Experiential Traveler Survey that found 63% of avid US travelers have not used Airbnb.

Only 16% said they had used Airbnb multiple times.

Incidentally, 88% said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their most recent Airbnb stay.  

The real surprise: In cooking up its numbers, Skift narrowed the focus to leisure trips.  Which means two in three vacationers still have never used it. Not once.

Of course there’s no surprise that Skift eliminated business travel from the calculations of Airbnb’s popularity. As a business traveler I have no interest in Airbnb.  Usually my timelines are tight, I need predictability, I don’t need quirky or stylish.  Chain hotels work for me. Location, reliability and price matter a lot more to me than the cool factor for business stays.

Of course Airbnb has been chipping away at how to draw in business travelers – and it’s gotten clever about enticements – but apparently some 90% of Airbnb revenues comes from leisure travel.  

It’s hard for me to see a big bump in appeal of Airbnb among business travelers anytime soon.  Millennials who are determined to be different may opt for it.

Leisure travel potentially is a very different matter.

Personally I see great appeal to using Airbnb or Homeaway if going on a family vacation to a resort area such as Santa Fe NM.  A whole two bedroom within an easy walk of the plaza can be had for $149 per night.  For friends I have researched Airbnb whole house and condo deals in many resort areas and often they are vastly superior to taking a couple adjacent hotel rooms.  Cheaper and more spacious.

I can also see real appeal to using Airbnb if I were planning on staying perhaps a couple weeks in a Manhattan or San Francisco, where I could have a whole apartment – with kitchen – for no more than a hotel room would run.

Joe Brancatelli reminded me that he has often used VRBO  to rent whole apartments in Europe and he’s right. I’m planning a trip to Dublin where the current intent is to use Airbnb or VRBO to get a whole apartment in Dublin’s D4 neighborhood.  For even a long weekend this might be the way to go in Dublin or Berlin, even Rome.  In such cases, by all means, go to the sharing economy. I’ll be there with you.

But, mainly, I still prefer traditional hotels in the US, for leisure as well as business, simply because of the predictability. It’s not because of the loyalty points. It’s not because of any brand loyalty. It’s just that a well-run chain hotel – with decent TripAdvisor ratings – can be counted on to not disappoint and if perhaps it does, generally in my experience those hotels are very, very good at recovery. They know how to make a bad situation right and they typically are committed to doing so in realtime.

Do I see Airbnb picking up an expanding market share?  I do.  There’s a real appeal to some to spend time in a real home, not a hotel.  

But for me, right now, I prefer the consistency of known hotel products and there’s nothing new in that attitude.  I recall when years ago stays at b and b’s were the rage among friends and I tried it out once or twice.  After sharing a bedroom with an owner’s extensive doll collection I decided the b & b route was not for me.  I don’t think I stayed in more than a couple b and b’s.  

I am not saying Airbnb offerings are that eccentric.  At least I have heard of none.  

But – boring traditional hotels may be to some – to me it’s that predictability that’s the draw.  

 

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Suddenly Dublin is an “in” capital again, in part because of Brexit worries among the London monied set (many are weighing Dublin as a safer harbor) and specifically for this readership because Joe Brancatelli has found for subscribers a special Aer Lingus business class fare to Europe that includes free stopovers in Dublin or Shannon.

The stopover isn’t mandatory – you can choose to fly on to Rome or Milan, Italy; Madrid or Barcelona, Spain; and Paris, London or Amsterdam. Word of advice: do plan to spend a couple night in Dublin.  If you haven’t been before, it’s a must.  And if you’ve been before, know that Dublin has been in continuous, sometimes wrenching change over the last 30 years as it transformed from a bucolic capital of an impoverished agrarian state into a hubbub of tech and real estate deals which led to an epic meltdown but now the capital again rises as an approachable, also unique city.

Size matters. Dublin is small.  Here’s a list of EU cities ranked by population.  Dublin comes in 49. that’s behind Cologne, Leipzig, even Bremen, tho it does nose out Lisbon among EU capitals.

That’s a key to its charm. This is a town that can be readily explored and enjoyed in a few days. Walk the City Centre. Stroll along the River Liffey.  Dublin is a charming, very old place and just being there is fun.

The key to enjoying Ireland is to do uniquely Irish things.  Treat Dublin as a small London and, well, you’ll be bored because London it isn’t.

Mainly proudly so. That’s what to focus on. How?

Drink a pint.  Joe Brancatelli recently snorted to me about pint prices in Dublin topping five Euros and he’s right — expect to pay near six in the trendy Temple Bar neighborhood.  But two things: you don’t tip the barman in Ireland and this will be the best Guinness you have ever tasted.

Personally I despised the stuff – tarry bitter swill, I thought growing up in northern New Jersey.  In Dublin it just tastes grand, sweet in fact, always does but no need for more than one or two.  It’s the first that taste like nectar.

Where to drink?  Not in a hotel.  Pick a pub frequented by locals in whatever neighborhood you happen to be. Personally I’d point you to John Kavanaugh’s near Glasnevin Cemetary in north Dublin.  Michael Collins, Brendan Behan,  Maude Gonne, Parnell, O’Connell, a who’s who of important Catholics in Irish history are buried there.  Stop in the cemetery, say a prayer, be Irish. Then toast the departed with a Guinness.

The Book of Kells.  I never go to Dublin without seeing the Book of Kells at Trinity College, itself a delightful, oldtime – Elizabethan – college (and still a credibly good institution of higher education).  The illuminated manucript is believed to have been created around 800 A.D.; it’s often said to be Ireland’s finest national treasure.

National Gallery of Ireland. Call me ignorant but I had no idea the Nobel laureate poet William Butler Yeats had a brother Jack until I visited the National Gallery and saw a grand collection of his art.  That is exactly the beauty of this museum: the emphasis is on things Irish so rather than having minor works by minor 17th century Dutch painters, it has extensive holdings in artists who really get Ireland because they are Irish.

James Joyce.  The other much celebrated Irish writer in my mind is James Joyce and Dublin was a city that figured large in his literature, especially Dubliners and Ulysses.  There’s Davy Byrnes pub where the thing is to order a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and a glass of red wine.  There’s Gresham Hotel, now Hotel Riu Plaza, a central place in “The Dead” short story. There’s Sandymount, a stop on the DART lightrail, and a setting for important action in Ulysses.  You could spend days retracing Joyce’s Dublin and the surprise is that much is still in tact.

A full Irish breakfast.  Don’t tell your cardiologist – I won’t tell mine – but a trip to Dublin is not finished until you start the day with a full Irish breakfast at a no frills place like TJ’s in north Dublin but near City Center.  Again, get out of the hotel and look for a neighborhood place that dishes up the real deal with fried eggs, toast, bacon, bangers, potatoes, black pudding, a few spoons of baked beans and, yes, have a cup of tea with cream and sugar.  Wherever you eat don’t spend over 10 Euros for it.  That’s plenty for a real breakfast, pay more and it’s too fancy.

A Night at the Theater.  What I love about Dublin theater is it’s easiness.  Usually I have bought same day tickets.  Typical price: about 30 Euros.  You can’t dream of doing similar on Broadway, not even off Broadway.  My usual haunt is the Abbey aka the National Theatre of Ireland. It opened in 1904. Great history including W. B. Yeats and G. B. Shaw. The Gate also is worth a look.

L’Ecrivain.  People often ask where to go for a gourmet meal in Dublin – a city that’s had a culinary renaissance – and I still point them to chef Derry Clarke’s L’Ecrivain in City Centre, where the unexpected – deer, partridge – are there with the expected (local prawns, wild turbot). A perennial Michelin star winner.  I still recall my first visit, maybe a dozen years ago, when the chef-proprietor joined me at my table after I’d finished my meal with a bottle of Midleton whiskey in hand and introduced me to what I believe is Ireland’s finest tipple.  I can’t promise he will do the same for you but the Midleton is on the menu at 22 Euros a shot. Taste it.

What about a hotel recommendation? Nah.  I have never stayed in one I’d rave about, and I’ve not stayed at one I hated either.  The TripAdvisor ranking is a good starting point.  Set your budget, select a neighborhood – I recommend City Centre, posh Dublin 4, or grittier Glasnevin – and you’re off.

Tiocfaidh ár lá.

 

Robert McGarvey has visited Dublin since 1989.  He holds Irish citizenship and lately admits to thinking about relocating there.