The Transportation Department has ordered airlines to allow passengers to deplane after a tarmac delay of three hours.
This will be hailed as a victory by groups that have lobbied for such a rule. Over the last decade, there has been no dearth of gruesome tales of passengers trapped for eight or more hours on planes with no food, water or working toilets.
The straw that broke the camel's back was overnight captivity of passengers on a Minneapolis-bound regional jet that was diverted to Rochester, Minn., in August.
In reality, the rule probably won't prevent many of the more horrifying events, at least not initially. If a major snowstorm cripples operations at an airport and there are no gates to be had, there's little that can be done. You can't allow passengers to deplane on air stairs in the middle of a blizzard. Nor can you allow ground crews to move equipment around during a lightning storm. The pilot of the Continental Express flight in the Rochester incident wanted to deplane her passengers, but the Mesaba Airlines employee who was manning the station wouldn’t allow it.
But this is a wakeup call for commercial airlines, which have appeared to ignore the rights of human cargo to be treated as human beings.
Behind the scenes, several airlines have taken steps to reduce the number of horror stories. Some, like American, have worked on technologies that track trouble spots so that aircraft sitting on tarmacs aren't forgotten. Southwest has made a point of avoiding such situations and has procedures for dealing with them when they do.
Publicly, most airlines have claimed that they are at the mercy of events over which they have no control. They point out that the horrible incidents represent a small fraction of airline operations, overlooking the fact that they represent thousands of hours of human suffering. The same people who accept no deviation from absolute safety in the air have appeared clueless when it comes to caring for passengers on the ground.
Now they are going to have to pay attention. The good news: History shows us that when airlines pay attention to problem areas – on-time performance is a good example – things get better.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
US despAIRWAYS
It’s been a long time since I’ve flown US Airways. I flew it last week, and I think it will be another long time before it happens again.
I ended up on a US Airways flight to Amsterdam because Continental, the airline on which I had piles of miles ripe for redemption, joined the Star Alliance. One day, it was offering SaverPass seats in BusinessFirst; the next day, the only thing available for the outbound flight was US Airways’ economy cabin.
This was a very sad experience. The itinerary was gruesome, with an eight-hour layover at Philadelphia. The airline would not check my bag through to Amsterdam because the layover was too long, so I had to claim it, drag it to the international terminal and recheck it. I guess they thought I might need something to do.
The flight was on a 757 – a terrible aircraft for transatlantic flights – and this one was showing its age. The bathrooms looked completely beaten up.
US Airways has taken the ancillary revenue concept to heart. Flight attendants marched up and down the aisles hawking movie headsets for $5 – this despite having only overhead monitors and no choice of film. They sold beer for $7. Budweiser. Seriously.
Saddest of all was the little “breakfast,” which confirmed for me that this airline has lost its pride. It didn’t even come with a plate.
My return flight was on Continental. I watched a couple of movies of my choice on the seatback monitor (no charge), had a gin and tonic for $5, was given actual utensils with which to eat and flew in relative comfort.
The old aphorism, “You are judged by the company you keep,” applies to airlines as well as people. If my loyalty to one airline is rewarded by a flight on a carrier with a far lower standard of service, I’m going to have to rethink where I buy my future flights.
What's wrong with this picture?
Check out this bathroom sink. The countertop was waist-high, and the protruding scallop thing in front of the sink made it impossible to brush my teeth without standing on tippy-toes or climbing up on the counter. OK, I’m on the short side, but I’m still well within the normal range. Obviously I should have paid more attention to those watermelon seed-spitting contests at camp. This wacky design is part of an otherwise very nice new Holiday Inn Express in Davenport, Fla., which has comfortable and spacious rooms and a very helpful staff.
Meanwhile, if I have to attend another conference in a hotel that cranks up the AC to the point where you need a blanket, I’m going to start lugging a space heater around. Earth to Omni Championsgate: It’s November in Florida. The weather is mild. I don't want to have to put a coat on when I go indoors.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The TSA learns about the Constitution
Somebody at the Transportation Security Administration read the U.S. Constitution and found Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The TSA issued a new directive: “Screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security.” Then it reminded screeners that “traveling with large amounts of currency is not illegal.”
The TSA’s enlightenment was aided by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union after a member of a political organization passed a metal box containing cash donations through a security checkpoint at Lambert Airport in St. Louis. He was taken to a small room where he was detained, interrogated and told he was under arrest. His “crime” was that he politely asked the agents to explain the scope of their authority.
The ACLU said its concern was that “TSA interpreted its limited authority to safeguard air travel as a license to conduct unlimited law enforcement searches for which TSA agents are not trained and which distracted from the agency’s critical mission of ensuring flight safety.”
With the new directives, the ACLU is dropping the lawsuit. Score one for the Constitution.
The TSA issued a new directive: “Screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security.” Then it reminded screeners that “traveling with large amounts of currency is not illegal.”
The TSA’s enlightenment was aided by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union after a member of a political organization passed a metal box containing cash donations through a security checkpoint at Lambert Airport in St. Louis. He was taken to a small room where he was detained, interrogated and told he was under arrest. His “crime” was that he politely asked the agents to explain the scope of their authority.
The ACLU said its concern was that “TSA interpreted its limited authority to safeguard air travel as a license to conduct unlimited law enforcement searches for which TSA agents are not trained and which distracted from the agency’s critical mission of ensuring flight safety.”
With the new directives, the ACLU is dropping the lawsuit. Score one for the Constitution.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Report walks airlines through the world of social media
For the last few years, airlines and other travel companies have tried to figure out what to do about social media.
Since the advent of TripAdvisor in 2000, suppliers at one industry conference after another were warned that they should not ignore the phenomenon. “It’s out there,” speakers would say. “You can’t ignore it.” But suggestions about the appropriate response were uniformly vague.
A new report by Steven Frischling and Addison Schonland of Innovation Analysis Group tackles the problem head-on. Titled “The Airline Industry & Social Media - A must-have strategic guide for airline marketing and sales,” the 62-page report aims to show airline executives what social media can accomplish for them and to walk them through the process of establishing a presence on Twitter, Facebook and other virtual venues.
Airlines can’t be blamed for not intuitively knowing how to get a handle on the concept, the authors noted.
“Twitter, Facebook and MySpace were never designed to be business tools,” Schonland said. “And it’s still so new. It’s still proving itself in so many ways.”
But several airlines have shown that in the right hands, social media can indeed become a powerful tool. While brand awareness is often the initial goal, there are other benefits to be had.
Southwest Airlines, for example, has an active Twitter team that acts on customers’ problems before they escalate into complaints. The report notes that retired chief executive officer Herb Kelleher attributes the reduction in the airline’s U.S. Department of Transportation complaints to this quick intervention.
The report provides a summary of the dos and don’ts of social media, as well as a rollout plan.
If any single event illustrated the need for airlines to understand the power of social media, it was the experience of a Canadian band whose instruments were callously mistreated by United Airlines baggage handlers.
After seeking restitution in vain for more than a year, the band posted a music video titled “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube in July. At last count, the original video had been viewed more than 5.5 million times. The video has been reposted on sites like Facebook countless times.
The IAG report, produced in association with the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, analyzes the behavior and experiences of several airlines on Twitter, the current hot social medium, and identifies the good, the bad and the sadly mistaken ways in which it is used.
The first lesson to be learned is that a presence on social media “cannot be created with a view to quickly turn it into a revenue stream,” the report says. “Social media is about relationships first. These systems work on referrals.”
“Airlines are jumping in and out of Twitter because they can’t figure out, ‘How do we jump in and make money?’” Frischling said. But they can’t just “jump in to say, ‘We’re here!’ They need to interact fully.”
The burnout rate on Twitter is “significantly high,” he said.
“One of the big problems is lack of resources. Another is airlines’ inability to determine who this project ‘belongs’ to: Is it the marketing department, communications, customer service?”
The reality, he said, is that the effort “needs to span all those departments. It can’t be kept in a silo.”
Many airline executives, faced with the daunting prospect of learning the Twitter “language” and protocol of # and @ and RT, do what they did when they got their first VCRs: They ask the nearest kid to set it up.
Schonland and Frischling found a number of major airlines that entrusted their Twitter accounts to college interns. “Of course, in September, the interns all go back to school,” Schonland noted.
Interns also are not usually empowered to make customers whole when problems arise; often, they may not even know where to seek help.
The IAG report cites one major U.S. airline that joined Twitter in early August, sent out its first tweet five days later and never responded to the same tweeter more than once. During the last week of the month, 231 complaints about the airline appeared on Twitter.
In addition, 186 direct questions were sent to the airline via Twitter.
Yet it sent out a total of five responses.
The carrier missed 231 opportunities to address complaints and 186 opportunities to respond to direct questions made in a public forum, the report said.
The complaints and question simply went unanswered.
While answering all the questions and complaints can be an impossible task, the report urged airlines to endeavor to address some of them based on priority and validity.
In contrast, JetBlue, Southwest and Virgin America have a high level of interaction with their followers and develop a level of loyalty among them.
For example, JetBlue is interacting frequently with purchasers of its All-You-Can-Jet pass, which offered unlimited travel between Sept. 8 and Oct. 8 for $599. JetBlue encouraged other tweeters to follow the pass users as they traveled and tweeted.
United takes a different approach, using Twitter to distribute distressed merchandise, which it calls “twares” (for Twitter fares). They tend to sell out quickly.
Twitter is more effective than e-mail for these purposes, Schonland said. “E-mail is too long, it has all the graphics, it doesn’t get to the point quickly,” he said.
Twitter, on the other hand, is like “Ding on steroids,” he said. Ding is Southwest’s application that delivers short-term deals to users’ desktops.
The phenomenon of social media is a moving target, making it tricky to determine how to allocate resources.
Notably absent from the report is any mention of Second Life, once the hot new thing just a few years ago.
The love-it-or-hate-it quality of Twitter could also send the medium into cyber-afterlife, “but there will always be something coming up behind it,” Frischling said.
“Airlines need to be there when that something shows up.”
A tale of two airlines on Twitter, and how they tweet
The authors of the IAG report on social media developed a “star chart” to plot airlines’ updates, following, followers, friends and messages in a graphical manner. The data were assembled from public sources.
To get a sense of each airline’s level of interactivity, the authors calculated the ratio of outbound traffic – messages plus updates – divided by the number of followers. The average of the airlines that were studied is 10%.
“This number suggests account managers are generating little outbound traffic relative to their constituencies,” the report states.
JetBlue and British Airways (in North America) were among the carriers whose activity was charted. Here are excerpts from the analysis:
If any airline wants to see what works best, it only needs to look at JetBlue. The airline has a team supporting its Twitter account. This team has been so successful that its members are now frequent speakers at social media events. Imagine that, an airline invited to discuss its success at making a success out of customer service. It has been, and can be, done again.
BA’s North American Twitter activity is clearly way behind the industry average. That said, it has built up a useful number of followers. Clearly it needs to grow it traffic to build dialogue.
But the U.S. operation is likely under direction from the head office and is also limited by being focused on the U.S. However, BA is a global airline, and consequently, the U.S Twitter account could be creating news and information on all points the airline serves.
Since the advent of TripAdvisor in 2000, suppliers at one industry conference after another were warned that they should not ignore the phenomenon. “It’s out there,” speakers would say. “You can’t ignore it.” But suggestions about the appropriate response were uniformly vague.
A new report by Steven Frischling and Addison Schonland of Innovation Analysis Group tackles the problem head-on. Titled “The Airline Industry & Social Media - A must-have strategic guide for airline marketing and sales,” the 62-page report aims to show airline executives what social media can accomplish for them and to walk them through the process of establishing a presence on Twitter, Facebook and other virtual venues.
Airlines can’t be blamed for not intuitively knowing how to get a handle on the concept, the authors noted.
“Twitter, Facebook and MySpace were never designed to be business tools,” Schonland said. “And it’s still so new. It’s still proving itself in so many ways.”
But several airlines have shown that in the right hands, social media can indeed become a powerful tool. While brand awareness is often the initial goal, there are other benefits to be had.
Southwest Airlines, for example, has an active Twitter team that acts on customers’ problems before they escalate into complaints. The report notes that retired chief executive officer Herb Kelleher attributes the reduction in the airline’s U.S. Department of Transportation complaints to this quick intervention.
The report provides a summary of the dos and don’ts of social media, as well as a rollout plan.
If any single event illustrated the need for airlines to understand the power of social media, it was the experience of a Canadian band whose instruments were callously mistreated by United Airlines baggage handlers.
After seeking restitution in vain for more than a year, the band posted a music video titled “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube in July. At last count, the original video had been viewed more than 5.5 million times. The video has been reposted on sites like Facebook countless times.
The IAG report, produced in association with the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, analyzes the behavior and experiences of several airlines on Twitter, the current hot social medium, and identifies the good, the bad and the sadly mistaken ways in which it is used.
The first lesson to be learned is that a presence on social media “cannot be created with a view to quickly turn it into a revenue stream,” the report says. “Social media is about relationships first. These systems work on referrals.”
“Airlines are jumping in and out of Twitter because they can’t figure out, ‘How do we jump in and make money?’” Frischling said. But they can’t just “jump in to say, ‘We’re here!’ They need to interact fully.”
The burnout rate on Twitter is “significantly high,” he said.
“One of the big problems is lack of resources. Another is airlines’ inability to determine who this project ‘belongs’ to: Is it the marketing department, communications, customer service?”
The reality, he said, is that the effort “needs to span all those departments. It can’t be kept in a silo.”
Many airline executives, faced with the daunting prospect of learning the Twitter “language” and protocol of # and @ and RT, do what they did when they got their first VCRs: They ask the nearest kid to set it up.
Schonland and Frischling found a number of major airlines that entrusted their Twitter accounts to college interns. “Of course, in September, the interns all go back to school,” Schonland noted.
Interns also are not usually empowered to make customers whole when problems arise; often, they may not even know where to seek help.
The IAG report cites one major U.S. airline that joined Twitter in early August, sent out its first tweet five days later and never responded to the same tweeter more than once. During the last week of the month, 231 complaints about the airline appeared on Twitter.
In addition, 186 direct questions were sent to the airline via Twitter.
Yet it sent out a total of five responses.
The carrier missed 231 opportunities to address complaints and 186 opportunities to respond to direct questions made in a public forum, the report said.
The complaints and question simply went unanswered.
While answering all the questions and complaints can be an impossible task, the report urged airlines to endeavor to address some of them based on priority and validity.
In contrast, JetBlue, Southwest and Virgin America have a high level of interaction with their followers and develop a level of loyalty among them.
For example, JetBlue is interacting frequently with purchasers of its All-You-Can-Jet pass, which offered unlimited travel between Sept. 8 and Oct. 8 for $599. JetBlue encouraged other tweeters to follow the pass users as they traveled and tweeted.
United takes a different approach, using Twitter to distribute distressed merchandise, which it calls “twares” (for Twitter fares). They tend to sell out quickly.
Twitter is more effective than e-mail for these purposes, Schonland said. “E-mail is too long, it has all the graphics, it doesn’t get to the point quickly,” he said.
Twitter, on the other hand, is like “Ding on steroids,” he said. Ding is Southwest’s application that delivers short-term deals to users’ desktops.
The phenomenon of social media is a moving target, making it tricky to determine how to allocate resources.
Notably absent from the report is any mention of Second Life, once the hot new thing just a few years ago.
The love-it-or-hate-it quality of Twitter could also send the medium into cyber-afterlife, “but there will always be something coming up behind it,” Frischling said.
“Airlines need to be there when that something shows up.”
A tale of two airlines on Twitter, and how they tweet
The authors of the IAG report on social media developed a “star chart” to plot airlines’ updates, following, followers, friends and messages in a graphical manner. The data were assembled from public sources.
To get a sense of each airline’s level of interactivity, the authors calculated the ratio of outbound traffic – messages plus updates – divided by the number of followers. The average of the airlines that were studied is 10%.
“This number suggests account managers are generating little outbound traffic relative to their constituencies,” the report states.
JetBlue and British Airways (in North America) were among the carriers whose activity was charted. Here are excerpts from the analysis:
If any airline wants to see what works best, it only needs to look at JetBlue. The airline has a team supporting its Twitter account. This team has been so successful that its members are now frequent speakers at social media events. Imagine that, an airline invited to discuss its success at making a success out of customer service. It has been, and can be, done again.
BA’s North American Twitter activity is clearly way behind the industry average. That said, it has built up a useful number of followers. Clearly it needs to grow it traffic to build dialogue.
But the U.S. operation is likely under direction from the head office and is also limited by being focused on the U.S. However, BA is a global airline, and consequently, the U.S Twitter account could be creating news and information on all points the airline serves.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Attention must be paid
In talking with Henry Harteveldt about the latest Forrester Research report on travelers' dissatisfaction with the online booking experience, I was reminded of my first flight on Southwest Airlines. I was sitting in the first row, and when the plane arrived at the gate, the door opened almost immediately. Having grown accustomed to standing in the aisle and cooling my own jets for several minutes, I was stunned. I asked the flight attendant, "I'm free to go?"
A few days later, I was talking to a friend at another airline. I asked him why it takes most airlines so much longer to hook up the jetway and open the door. He said, "That's because whenever one of our planes lands, it's a surprise. Southwest wants to turn its planes around quickly, so it pays attention."
You have to wonder how much money travel companies are leaving on the table — maybe even actively pushing away — because they are not paying attention to the right things. These are difficult times (I so look forward to never saying those words again), and it's hard to stay focused on customer satisfaction when staffing is at minimum levels and costs are being cut like Yul Brynner's hair. But maybe travel companies could spare a tiny bit of energy for thinking of ways to boost customer satisfaction.
This doesn't necessarily entail throwing tons of money at a problem. Sometimes, just focusing a bit more attention on a particular thing, and making it a priority, can result in some significant improvements.
A few days later, I was talking to a friend at another airline. I asked him why it takes most airlines so much longer to hook up the jetway and open the door. He said, "That's because whenever one of our planes lands, it's a surprise. Southwest wants to turn its planes around quickly, so it pays attention."
You have to wonder how much money travel companies are leaving on the table — maybe even actively pushing away — because they are not paying attention to the right things. These are difficult times (I so look forward to never saying those words again), and it's hard to stay focused on customer satisfaction when staffing is at minimum levels and costs are being cut like Yul Brynner's hair. But maybe travel companies could spare a tiny bit of energy for thinking of ways to boost customer satisfaction.
This doesn't necessarily entail throwing tons of money at a problem. Sometimes, just focusing a bit more attention on a particular thing, and making it a priority, can result in some significant improvements.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The naked truth
I seldom get into “write your Congressman” mode – we’re all busy people, after all – but I have written to mine (even though I can’t stand him) to urge him to support H.R. 2027.
This bill reads in part: “Whole-body imaging technology may not be used as the sole or primary method of screening a passenger under this section. Whole-body imaging technology may not be used to screen a passenger under this section unless another method of screening, such as metal detection, demonstrates cause for preventing such passenger from boarding an aircraft.”
Yes, the Transportation Security Administration wants every single airline passenger – that’s you, your mom, your teenage daughter and everybody else who wants to get on a plane – to get naked first. They call it “virtually naked” – the technology allows the screener to see through your clothes – but the result is the same as if you were told to go to a room, take your clothes off and allow some unseen person to check out your goods.
The TSA is in love with these machines. At first, it claimed they would only be used for secondary screening; now they want to replace all airport metal detectors with this virtual strip search. The concept of “probable cause” is tossed out the window.
H.R. 2027 also would make it illegal for anyone to store one of these images. In the past, the TSA has claimed that storing is impossible, but in truth there is an “on-off switch.” Theoretically, a naked picture of your teen could end up on the inside of a screener’s locker door.
We have behaved like sheep long enough, allowing our rights to be trampled. Let’s get behind this bill.
This bill reads in part: “Whole-body imaging technology may not be used as the sole or primary method of screening a passenger under this section. Whole-body imaging technology may not be used to screen a passenger under this section unless another method of screening, such as metal detection, demonstrates cause for preventing such passenger from boarding an aircraft.”
Yes, the Transportation Security Administration wants every single airline passenger – that’s you, your mom, your teenage daughter and everybody else who wants to get on a plane – to get naked first. They call it “virtually naked” – the technology allows the screener to see through your clothes – but the result is the same as if you were told to go to a room, take your clothes off and allow some unseen person to check out your goods.
The TSA is in love with these machines. At first, it claimed they would only be used for secondary screening; now they want to replace all airport metal detectors with this virtual strip search. The concept of “probable cause” is tossed out the window.
H.R. 2027 also would make it illegal for anyone to store one of these images. In the past, the TSA has claimed that storing is impossible, but in truth there is an “on-off switch.” Theoretically, a naked picture of your teen could end up on the inside of a screener’s locker door.
We have behaved like sheep long enough, allowing our rights to be trampled. Let’s get behind this bill.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Jobs!
In the next issue of Travel Technology Update, we will introduce a new feature: Jobs.
The name says it all. There are a lot of "unaffiliated" and very talented people out there, and many of them read TTU. If you have an opening within your organization in the field of distribution, revenue management and/or related technologies and disciplines, you can submit the details to me. If space becomes an issue, listings will appear on a first come, first served basis.
There is no cost for running a listing, no fees for snagging a great employee, no cost to respond to a listing. This is simply an extra service that we are providing exclusively to our subscribers, both employers and job-seekers. Employers will be reaching a very qualified group of potential employees at no cost and at no risk. The only requirement is that the employer must be a subscriber.
The name says it all. There are a lot of "unaffiliated" and very talented people out there, and many of them read TTU. If you have an opening within your organization in the field of distribution, revenue management and/or related technologies and disciplines, you can submit the details to me. If space becomes an issue, listings will appear on a first come, first served basis.
There is no cost for running a listing, no fees for snagging a great employee, no cost to respond to a listing. This is simply an extra service that we are providing exclusively to our subscribers, both employers and job-seekers. Employers will be reaching a very qualified group of potential employees at no cost and at no risk. The only requirement is that the employer must be a subscriber.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Oink
May I nominate Michael O’Leary as the biggest swine on earth? The Ryanair chief’s latest pathetic bid for attention came in the form of a pronouncement that swine flu is “only a tragedy for people living in slums in Asia or Mexico.” People who live in other parts of the world aren’t going to die, he stated.
Mr. O’Leary should stick to what he knows best: running a very bad airline. He is not an epidemiologist or a member of the medical profession. Flu viruses are highly unpredictable; they can start out mildly, then roar back with a vengeance, as did the 1918 version that infected a third to a half of the world’s population. In 1973, the so-called London flu, a mutation of the Asian strain, hit Northern California very hard. I came down with it and developed pneumonia. I was out of commission for a month. I consider myself lucky, since many who developed pneumonia died. Let the record show that I was not a slum-dweller.
Mr. O’Leary also needs to be reminded that not all people in Mexico are slum-dwellers. And even those who live in poor neighborhoods are human beings, which is more than I can say for him.
Mr. O’Leary should stick to what he knows best: running a very bad airline. He is not an epidemiologist or a member of the medical profession. Flu viruses are highly unpredictable; they can start out mildly, then roar back with a vengeance, as did the 1918 version that infected a third to a half of the world’s population. In 1973, the so-called London flu, a mutation of the Asian strain, hit Northern California very hard. I came down with it and developed pneumonia. I was out of commission for a month. I consider myself lucky, since many who developed pneumonia died. Let the record show that I was not a slum-dweller.
Mr. O’Leary also needs to be reminded that not all people in Mexico are slum-dwellers. And even those who live in poor neighborhoods are human beings, which is more than I can say for him.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Prudence vs. panic
Whether or not swine flu reaches pandemic status, the airlines are already bearing some of the economic pain it causes. There’s no clear line of demarcation between prudence and panic in these situations. Was it premature for the European Union to advise travelers to avoid visiting not only Mexico but areas of the U.S. where this strain of flu has been identified? We will never know.
Here is what we do know: The Spanish flu of 1918 spread so far and wide because of the unprecedented movement of people all over the world in the waning days and aftermath of WWI. At least a third of the world’s population – some estimates put it at half -- became ill, and somewhere between 20 million and 100 million died. Travel plays a role in spreading viruses, and air travel can spread them farther and more rapidly.
The airlines are waiving change fees for travel from the U.S. to Mexico, but that’s a bit like closing the barn door after the horse is gone. What might make a real difference is waiving change fees for people who feel ill or have been exposed to the virus. That will dry up some badly needed revenue in the short term, but it’s nothing compared to what would happen in a full-scale pandemic. Now is not the time to quibble over doctors’ notes.
Since the best way to avoid getting the flu is to keep your hands clean, the airlines also could distribute antibacterial wipes at the beginning and end of each flight and enforce their use as rigorously as they enforce seatbelt rules.
My mother never knew her father. He died before she was born, in the 1918 pandemic. For me, a flu epidemic is not just theoretical; it’s part of my family history. We are not yet anywhere near the time to panic, but we can take a few simple steps to avoid reaching that point, like staying home if we are sick. The airlines can and should do their part as well.
Here is what we do know: The Spanish flu of 1918 spread so far and wide because of the unprecedented movement of people all over the world in the waning days and aftermath of WWI. At least a third of the world’s population – some estimates put it at half -- became ill, and somewhere between 20 million and 100 million died. Travel plays a role in spreading viruses, and air travel can spread them farther and more rapidly.
The airlines are waiving change fees for travel from the U.S. to Mexico, but that’s a bit like closing the barn door after the horse is gone. What might make a real difference is waiving change fees for people who feel ill or have been exposed to the virus. That will dry up some badly needed revenue in the short term, but it’s nothing compared to what would happen in a full-scale pandemic. Now is not the time to quibble over doctors’ notes.
Since the best way to avoid getting the flu is to keep your hands clean, the airlines also could distribute antibacterial wipes at the beginning and end of each flight and enforce their use as rigorously as they enforce seatbelt rules.
My mother never knew her father. He died before she was born, in the 1918 pandemic. For me, a flu epidemic is not just theoretical; it’s part of my family history. We are not yet anywhere near the time to panic, but we can take a few simple steps to avoid reaching that point, like staying home if we are sick. The airlines can and should do their part as well.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
LUV is the answer
If you thought Wall Street types had learned anything over the last year, put that right out of your mind.
During a conference call to discuss Southwest Airlines’ first-quarter financial performance, the Street’s airline analysts badgered CEO Gary Kelly with the same question phrased in different ways: Why isn’t Southwest charging fees to check bags?
I could almost hear the ghost of Gordon Gekko whispering, “Greed is good.”
I suppose the analysts can be forgiven for second-guessing what is arguably the least stupid airline in America. After all, Southwest just reported a first-quarter net loss of $91 million, the bulk of which was due to charges related to fuel hedging. (American, meanwhile, reported a first-quarter net loss of $375 million.)
The money is there for the taking, the analysts argued.
“I would argue that our revenue results demonstrate that we are doing something better,” Kelly said. “Our load factor and revenue production is better in comparison to the legacy carriers.”
It’s low-hanging fruit, the Wall Street boys argued.
“We are virtually alone in not charging a bag fee,” Kelly said. “Based on all our research, there is a meaningful impact” in taking that approach. Besides, he said, in times like these, an airline is more dependent than ever on price-sensitive travelers. If you lose just one customer, you need 10 or 12 bag fees to make up for it.
Another analyst asked, what’s the matter, don’t you have the technology to do it?
Not at the moment, Kelly said. “We have the ability to charge fees at the airport, but think about the number of customers who would have to dig out their credit cards. I don’t know if that would be the right customer experience.” Down the road, Southwest will have the ability to collect fees online, but the bag fee is “not on our technology agenda.”
The analysts persisted: But everybody’s doing it!
Patiently, Kelly explained that Southwest loves having customers who love the airline. “You can’t find customers who like the fees,” he said. If Southwest charges bag fees, “We become just another airline.”
Maybe that’s what the Wall Street guys want: an airline that doesn’t fuss too much over whether its passengers are happy. An airline they can understand.
During a conference call to discuss Southwest Airlines’ first-quarter financial performance, the Street’s airline analysts badgered CEO Gary Kelly with the same question phrased in different ways: Why isn’t Southwest charging fees to check bags?
I could almost hear the ghost of Gordon Gekko whispering, “Greed is good.”
I suppose the analysts can be forgiven for second-guessing what is arguably the least stupid airline in America. After all, Southwest just reported a first-quarter net loss of $91 million, the bulk of which was due to charges related to fuel hedging. (American, meanwhile, reported a first-quarter net loss of $375 million.)
The money is there for the taking, the analysts argued.
“I would argue that our revenue results demonstrate that we are doing something better,” Kelly said. “Our load factor and revenue production is better in comparison to the legacy carriers.”
It’s low-hanging fruit, the Wall Street boys argued.
“We are virtually alone in not charging a bag fee,” Kelly said. “Based on all our research, there is a meaningful impact” in taking that approach. Besides, he said, in times like these, an airline is more dependent than ever on price-sensitive travelers. If you lose just one customer, you need 10 or 12 bag fees to make up for it.
Another analyst asked, what’s the matter, don’t you have the technology to do it?
Not at the moment, Kelly said. “We have the ability to charge fees at the airport, but think about the number of customers who would have to dig out their credit cards. I don’t know if that would be the right customer experience.” Down the road, Southwest will have the ability to collect fees online, but the bag fee is “not on our technology agenda.”
The analysts persisted: But everybody’s doing it!
Patiently, Kelly explained that Southwest loves having customers who love the airline. “You can’t find customers who like the fees,” he said. If Southwest charges bag fees, “We become just another airline.”
Maybe that’s what the Wall Street guys want: an airline that doesn’t fuss too much over whether its passengers are happy. An airline they can understand.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
A human experiment
Butterfield & Robinson is a Canadian tour operator that does some lovely trips, with an emphasis on bicycling, hiking or riding horse- or camelback. They believe in getting you out of the car and into the life of your destination. They do it with class and style, and the price tag reflects that.
Just about every travel company on earth is offering a “Stimulus Package” right now, but B&R’s has a twist: Here’s what they say:
“The special offer invites B&R travellers to pay 80% of the trip price in advance of their departure, with the balance to be charged two weeks following their return. However, the final charge will be reduced or waived for any client who determines the experience not to have been worth the full price tag.” For any reason, the company added.
This is the sort of human experiment that I love. Will people say, “Hey, I’ll take the trip and come up with some complaint or other”? Does B&R anticipate that? Is this simply a 20% discount dressed up in a cuter outfit?
Then I thought: B&R appeals to a nice demographic. It’s not mass market. Maybe its customers are above behaving like weasels, and when it comes to the moment of truth, they’ll admit they had a fabulous time.
We shall see. B&R has promised to share the results.
Just about every travel company on earth is offering a “Stimulus Package” right now, but B&R’s has a twist: Here’s what they say:
“The special offer invites B&R travellers to pay 80% of the trip price in advance of their departure, with the balance to be charged two weeks following their return. However, the final charge will be reduced or waived for any client who determines the experience not to have been worth the full price tag.” For any reason, the company added.
This is the sort of human experiment that I love. Will people say, “Hey, I’ll take the trip and come up with some complaint or other”? Does B&R anticipate that? Is this simply a 20% discount dressed up in a cuter outfit?
Then I thought: B&R appeals to a nice demographic. It’s not mass market. Maybe its customers are above behaving like weasels, and when it comes to the moment of truth, they’ll admit they had a fabulous time.
We shall see. B&R has promised to share the results.
Doing the math
Hell has officially frozen over: Southwest Airlines is going into New York’s LaGuardia Airport, something Herb Kelleher used to say would never happen. Never say never, even if you’re Herb.
I live in St. Louis, but New York will always be my spiritual home, and the $99 fares sounded nice. Southwest isn’t planning STL-LGA nonstops, at least not initially, but I'm not too proud to connect. So I went to southwest.com and started planning a super summer weekend with my friends, who can no longer afford weekends at the beach.
Alas, the $99 fare is only available on Tuesday and Wednesday, so to use it you must stay either one night or at least six days. If you want a long weekend – out on Friday, back on Monday -- the best Southwest can do for you is $376 roundtrip. With taxes and fees, it’s $411.40. Ouch.
For the same weekend – July 17-20 – I found an American nonstop for $238 roundtrip, or $259.20 with taxes and fees.
If you’ve ever wondered why Southwest doesn’t distribute through online agencies, this is why: In a side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparison, American often has the lower fare.
I live in St. Louis, but New York will always be my spiritual home, and the $99 fares sounded nice. Southwest isn’t planning STL-LGA nonstops, at least not initially, but I'm not too proud to connect. So I went to southwest.com and started planning a super summer weekend with my friends, who can no longer afford weekends at the beach.
Alas, the $99 fare is only available on Tuesday and Wednesday, so to use it you must stay either one night or at least six days. If you want a long weekend – out on Friday, back on Monday -- the best Southwest can do for you is $376 roundtrip. With taxes and fees, it’s $411.40. Ouch.
For the same weekend – July 17-20 – I found an American nonstop for $238 roundtrip, or $259.20 with taxes and fees.
If you’ve ever wondered why Southwest doesn’t distribute through online agencies, this is why: In a side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparison, American often has the lower fare.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Tweetybirds
I wasn’t enamored of Twitter before the TravelCom conference in Atlanta, but after witnessing a second noble experiment involving its use, I vote that we just leave it to the kids.
Members of the TravelCom audience had the option of submitting questions to speakers via Twitter. Here’s how it worked: A person seated in, say, the second row used technology to ask a question of a person who was on the stage 20 feet away. A third person seated in the front row read the tweet off her Blackberry to the person on the stage. Because of the 140-character limit on tweet size, the questions sometimes were misunderstood or were simply incomprehensible.
I don’t see the point.
Beyond the utility issue, the Twitter thing encourages Bad Blackberry Behavior. The conference speakers looked out onto a sea of people with their heads bent over their Blackberries or iPhones. Perhaps they were tweeting. More likely they were checking their e-mail or sending text messages. I can’t think of anything more disheartening for a speaker than to have an audience who would rather check e-mail than pay attention to what you are saying.
I told another reporter what I thought about this. He disagreed. “It keeps the conversation going,” he said.
But that’s precisely the problem. If people are speaking on a stage, should audience members carry on a conversation among themselves? Can we not shut up for 20 minutes and just listen?
Just when I thought I’d seen it all, a guy on stage pulled his Blackberry out during a panel discussion and keyed something in. Maybe he was tweeting a question to himself, but I sincerely doubt it.
I think that it’s fun to experiment with new technology, but we shouldn’t fall in love with it for its own sake. Twitter may be the trendy new thing, but is it a good substitute for raising our hands, getting off our butts and asking a question? (What’s that word for the practice of substituting an electronic device for human intercourse?)
Members of the TravelCom audience had the option of submitting questions to speakers via Twitter. Here’s how it worked: A person seated in, say, the second row used technology to ask a question of a person who was on the stage 20 feet away. A third person seated in the front row read the tweet off her Blackberry to the person on the stage. Because of the 140-character limit on tweet size, the questions sometimes were misunderstood or were simply incomprehensible.
I don’t see the point.
Beyond the utility issue, the Twitter thing encourages Bad Blackberry Behavior. The conference speakers looked out onto a sea of people with their heads bent over their Blackberries or iPhones. Perhaps they were tweeting. More likely they were checking their e-mail or sending text messages. I can’t think of anything more disheartening for a speaker than to have an audience who would rather check e-mail than pay attention to what you are saying.
I told another reporter what I thought about this. He disagreed. “It keeps the conversation going,” he said.
But that’s precisely the problem. If people are speaking on a stage, should audience members carry on a conversation among themselves? Can we not shut up for 20 minutes and just listen?
Just when I thought I’d seen it all, a guy on stage pulled his Blackberry out during a panel discussion and keyed something in. Maybe he was tweeting a question to himself, but I sincerely doubt it.
I think that it’s fun to experiment with new technology, but we shouldn’t fall in love with it for its own sake. Twitter may be the trendy new thing, but is it a good substitute for raising our hands, getting off our butts and asking a question? (What’s that word for the practice of substituting an electronic device for human intercourse?)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Love (and hospitality) in the time of economic cholera
In times like these, ripping off your customer will only work once.
Just ask Antoine Medawar. After he checks into a New York hotel, he heads out to a deli to buy a couple of bottles of water. Medawar is managing director of Amadeus Hospitality. He can afford the $6 that a hotel might charge for a bottle of water, but he’s not going to encourage that sort of behavior.
That’s why he was pleased to find a notice at a Spanish hotel that all minibar bottles of soda and mineral water were free. It’s precisely the sort of policy that will win the hearts and loyalty of travelers at a time when business travelers and their employers are watching every penny that is spent on the road.
Travelers aren’t just looking to save money, Medawar says. Just as some travelers flaunted their affluence in boom times, many are now flaunting their frugality.
These new attitudes are explored in a white paper titled “The Austere Traveller: the effect of corporate cutbacks on hotels,” commissioned by Amadeus and executed by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which surveyed 354 business executives worldwide in late 2008.
Only 29% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that it is “important for the prestige of my company to stay at the best hotels;” 35% said they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. On the other hand, 44% agreed or strongly agreed that “staying at a budget hotel shows my company is being smart in the current climate.”
Hotel customers who might have sought out expensive restaurants or spa services are now more concerned with services that will increase their productivity and help them get the most out of a trip.
According to the survey, the absence of Internet connectivity would prevent 76% of business travelers from staying in a budget hotel. Other criteria are the absence of a quiet room (56%) and good transportation links (54%). At the bottom of the list are entertainment systems and a gym (both 16%) and a good restaurant (15%).
What can a hotel do in this climate to attract business travelers? “If a person finds the same service in another hotel that is free or less expensive, he’s going to stay there,” Medawar says. Noting that many limited-service brands offer free high-speed Internet, he says, “I predict that 80% of hotels will do the same in the next few months.”
An upscale hotel doesn’t need to abandon fees completely, he says. “There’s a very nice hotel in New York where I used to pay $9 for Internet. Now I pay $4.75. You may have to choose between a smaller profit on incidentals and losing the customer. You can maintain your rate, but you should add some services or discount some services, especially if they are incremental in cost.”
Because if a customer feels ripped off, he won’t be back.
Just ask Antoine Medawar. After he checks into a New York hotel, he heads out to a deli to buy a couple of bottles of water. Medawar is managing director of Amadeus Hospitality. He can afford the $6 that a hotel might charge for a bottle of water, but he’s not going to encourage that sort of behavior.
That’s why he was pleased to find a notice at a Spanish hotel that all minibar bottles of soda and mineral water were free. It’s precisely the sort of policy that will win the hearts and loyalty of travelers at a time when business travelers and their employers are watching every penny that is spent on the road.
Travelers aren’t just looking to save money, Medawar says. Just as some travelers flaunted their affluence in boom times, many are now flaunting their frugality.
These new attitudes are explored in a white paper titled “The Austere Traveller: the effect of corporate cutbacks on hotels,” commissioned by Amadeus and executed by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which surveyed 354 business executives worldwide in late 2008.
Only 29% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that it is “important for the prestige of my company to stay at the best hotels;” 35% said they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. On the other hand, 44% agreed or strongly agreed that “staying at a budget hotel shows my company is being smart in the current climate.”
Hotel customers who might have sought out expensive restaurants or spa services are now more concerned with services that will increase their productivity and help them get the most out of a trip.
According to the survey, the absence of Internet connectivity would prevent 76% of business travelers from staying in a budget hotel. Other criteria are the absence of a quiet room (56%) and good transportation links (54%). At the bottom of the list are entertainment systems and a gym (both 16%) and a good restaurant (15%).
What can a hotel do in this climate to attract business travelers? “If a person finds the same service in another hotel that is free or less expensive, he’s going to stay there,” Medawar says. Noting that many limited-service brands offer free high-speed Internet, he says, “I predict that 80% of hotels will do the same in the next few months.”
An upscale hotel doesn’t need to abandon fees completely, he says. “There’s a very nice hotel in New York where I used to pay $9 for Internet. Now I pay $4.75. You may have to choose between a smaller profit on incidentals and losing the customer. You can maintain your rate, but you should add some services or discount some services, especially if they are incremental in cost.”
Because if a customer feels ripped off, he won’t be back.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Twitter, schmitter. I’m sticking to e-mail
I am a failed Twitterer. Or maybe I mean tweeter.
I resisted signing up for Twitter — maybe “enlisting” is a better term — until a couple of weeks ago, when a friend told me how she limited its use to business-related matters. Her Facebook world had turned into a mix of friends, family and “industry friends.” Her Twitter connections were all about business, and she was finding it useful.
So I figured I’d give it a try. I set up a profile, posted a photo that’s only a tiny bit old and started following a handful of people I know. Right off the bat, “following” seems like a weird term to me. Maybe you “follow” the teachings of the Buddha, but a bunch of travel industry geeks hardly rate that level of devotion. (Don’t get me wrong. This is not to say that I don’t love those geeks and every honeyed word that drops from their lips, or from their iPhones or whatever.)
What’s even scarier is that without doing a darned thing, and without tweeting so much as my daily intake of breakfast cereal, I now have followers. Three of them. The thought of having “followers” makes me feel sort of goddess-like, and a little bit humble, too.
Yet I, who have no problem sharing my shoe obsession, political opinions and photos of home-grown lettuce on Facebook, can’t think of a single thing to tweet. Is this some new psychological disorder? Tweet-fright? Or is this akin to my experience with college-level algebra, in which I did surprisingly well for someone who hates math until we got to logarithms? I could not think of a single application for logarithms in my young life, so I lost interest.
I’ve heard a lot of noise about ways Twitter can be used in the travel space. An alarming number of examples illustrate how it can be used against you -- for example, a “walked” hotel guest might instantly inform his 37,383 followers that yours is a very bad company. How nifty!
A friend of mine tried a noble experiment in which he tweeted the play-by-play of an entire industry conference. He linked his tweets to Facebook, which caused his friends to wonder whether Martians had taken over (and we are still plotting revenge). The 140-character limitation just isn't conducive to explorations of broad concepts.
I’m sure that at some point, someone will come up with a really compelling use for Twitter in the travel marketing arena. Until then, it strikes me as a technology in search of a raison d’etre.
I resisted signing up for Twitter — maybe “enlisting” is a better term — until a couple of weeks ago, when a friend told me how she limited its use to business-related matters. Her Facebook world had turned into a mix of friends, family and “industry friends.” Her Twitter connections were all about business, and she was finding it useful.
So I figured I’d give it a try. I set up a profile, posted a photo that’s only a tiny bit old and started following a handful of people I know. Right off the bat, “following” seems like a weird term to me. Maybe you “follow” the teachings of the Buddha, but a bunch of travel industry geeks hardly rate that level of devotion. (Don’t get me wrong. This is not to say that I don’t love those geeks and every honeyed word that drops from their lips, or from their iPhones or whatever.)
What’s even scarier is that without doing a darned thing, and without tweeting so much as my daily intake of breakfast cereal, I now have followers. Three of them. The thought of having “followers” makes me feel sort of goddess-like, and a little bit humble, too.
Yet I, who have no problem sharing my shoe obsession, political opinions and photos of home-grown lettuce on Facebook, can’t think of a single thing to tweet. Is this some new psychological disorder? Tweet-fright? Or is this akin to my experience with college-level algebra, in which I did surprisingly well for someone who hates math until we got to logarithms? I could not think of a single application for logarithms in my young life, so I lost interest.
I’ve heard a lot of noise about ways Twitter can be used in the travel space. An alarming number of examples illustrate how it can be used against you -- for example, a “walked” hotel guest might instantly inform his 37,383 followers that yours is a very bad company. How nifty!
A friend of mine tried a noble experiment in which he tweeted the play-by-play of an entire industry conference. He linked his tweets to Facebook, which caused his friends to wonder whether Martians had taken over (and we are still plotting revenge). The 140-character limitation just isn't conducive to explorations of broad concepts.
I’m sure that at some point, someone will come up with a really compelling use for Twitter in the travel marketing arena. Until then, it strikes me as a technology in search of a raison d’etre.
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