Will Shrinking Credit Card Swipe Fees Mean the End to Rich Rewards for Us?

By Robert McGarvey

On Tuesday Mastercard and Visa dropped a bomb on their swipe fees that had been long expected and yet now we’re left to sort out what it means and, in particular, for those of us who pursue credit card rewards so we can live the high life for less.

You might think this is much ado about small change but the National Retail Federation says the pennies add up fast.  “Applied to millions of transactions each day, swipe fees are most retailers’ highest operating cost after labor, driving up consumer prices by more than $1,000 a year for the average household and hurting retail sales because consumers buy less when prices go up. Swipe fees have grown from about $20 billion a year when NRF began tracking them in 2001 to $160.7 billion in 2022.”

A lot of hands grab change out of this till. Northwestern’s KelloggInsight sums up what happens: “The merchant bank…pays a fee to the network and a fee to the card issuer called an ‘interchange fee.’ The issuer, meanwhile, pays its own fee to the network and delivers rewards to the consumer—rewards funded by interchange fees.”

Those credit card rewards add up of course.

In my case I have bought pairs of tickets from Phoenix to Madrid three times in this decade with points and also a pair of tickets to Dallas. There’s also cashback, I don’t know how much I’ve gotten in recent years but I can tell you I’ve accumulated $1098 in Bitcoin with a Venmo rewards card and that’s just one of a half dozen cashback cards in my wallet.

And then there’s the Visa/Mastercard explosion. What they did, to settle a class action suit, is agree to cut so called swipe fees 20% which will save merchants some $30 billion over five years.

That *may* result in lower prices at retail although there is skepticism in many quarters that we’ll see this happen. But a reality is that merchants of course do pass on swipe fees to consumers, just as they pass on their electric bill and their shoplifting losses and a loud complaint has been that it’s America’s lower income folks who pay with cash who pay the bills that fund our rewards.

So why aren’ merchants cheering this move by the two big card networks?  And they aren’t. “The settlement does nothing to actually bring competitive market forces to swipe fees or change the behavior of a cartel that centrally fixes rates and bars competition,” Christopher Jones, a senior vice president of government relations at the National Grocers Association, told the New York Times.  

But the reality is that the credit card industry will have less cash to toss around and so they will be looking to make cuts in costs and a likely place to look is at credit card rewards.  Will there in fact be meaningful cuts there? Is the era of free flights over?

Well…the era of free flights is largely over anyway except for power players who scoop up card sign up bonuses that indeed can be rich.  Trying to accumulate enough points via spending alone is downright difficult.  Ditto for just accumulating honest miles via flights.

Personally I believe sign up bonuses will continue to be rich as card issuers battle it out to gain top of wallet status in our pockets.  Issuers may make it harder to qualify for their cards but the cards will be out there despite this settlement.

I also believe that airlines, because they know they have issued immense numbers of miles, will continue to raise the tariff for redemption.  When coach tickets to Europe in peak summer months can and do fetch 100,000 miles you know that winning the game has just gotten harder. And it will get still harder.

Another wrinkle to the settlement is that merchants will now be able to charge different fees to process different cards.  Reported the NYTimes, “Merchants will also be permitted to adjust their prices based on the costs associated with accepting different cards, while letting customers know why some cards — typically business cards and those with more rewards and perks — cost more than others.”

Does that mean much? Too early to say. Some merchants are grumbling that implementing a range of charges for cards adds complexities to retail that may not be easy to implement.  Others also worry about consumer grumbles when their favorite card with rich rewards now involves a higher fee for use at retail.  But we already see a version of that where many merchants decline to accept Amex, complaining about the fees.  And we have survived that.

Bottomline: it’s too early to panic about losing out on credit card rewards and it’s pretty much a certainty that this small settlement will not trigger huge cuts in credit card rewards…just as it’s unlikely to produce cost cuts at checkout. 

We may have to shuffle our card use preferences but hasn’t that been an ongoing practice for some years already?  Probably we do need to pay more attention to cards and perks right now, as the impacts of the settlement play out.

But there’s no reason, not based on this settlement, to toss in our cards and stop playing.  Not yet.

The hospitality guest of the future – Deloitte’s Crystal Ball

By Robert McGarvey

We all know that travel today is different and so is the traveler who in many cases, simply is much younger as Millennials and Gen Z elbow aside Baby Boomers.  A generation that for essentially its entire life has always been catered to suddenly isn’t the prime target, not in the eyes of many businesses, hospitality very much included.

So just who is the guest of tomorrow and how do travel providers need to respond?

Remember a key fact about the two prime generational cohorts, Gen Z and Millennials: they have grown up with cell phones, which became commonplace in the US in the fading years of the 20th century, and also with smartphones (introduced in 2007) and tablets (the iPad debuted in 2010). To them, ubiquitous technology is just part of life, it’s not “technology,” but how things get done, from ordering a delivery meal to summoning a car and driver or booking a haircut.

Deloitte UK decided to dive into what’s happening and issued its findings in a report.  Remember that the UK is in recession – the US isn’t, in fact the economy is the strongest among the G 7.  Fallout from Brexit may also mean that there aren’t happy days ahead for the UK.  

Probably the most interesting element in Deloitte’s musings is this: Technology enables the luxury experience.  This is a wake up call for those in hospitality who continue to think that plush fabrics, fawning staff, and lots of golden items are integral to the luxury experience.  They aren’t.

Technology has the potential to give each of us more of what we want.

Deloitte offers a sharp for instance: “using technology to tailor services to the unique demands of guests will be expected, for instance, by calculating average wait times for food delivery at airports to notify passengers who might be rushing to catch a flight.”  Haven’t you walked away from a busy airport counter because a delivery delay meant the food wasn’t going to be ready on your timetable?  And there is no good reason why a well run airport restaurant can’t calculate how long it will take for your order to reach you.

Multiply that idea out to hotels and the same principles apply.  I still remember the single worst hotel room service meal I wished I hadn’t had – I won’t name the pricey Manhattan hotel because this was 15 years ago and similar may no longer happen there – and that’s because it took an hour for the coffee, scrambled eggs and toast to reach my room and, even more staggering, everything on the tray was cold.  I pushed it all aside because I remembered there was a Starbucks a half block away.  (No, I haven’t stayed in that hotel since and won’t.) Service catastrophes of this magnitude just are unacceptable today and, hey, Mr. Hotel Man, if you can’t deliver a room service breakfast within 15 minutes at least tell the guest who has the right to curse and cancel the order. You must be able to forecast with some precision delivery times. Period.

Remember, Uber and Waymo tell you how long the wait for a ride will be and they generally are pretty accurate. If they can do it, even when confronting so many variables not in their control, surely restaurants and hotels can.

Another key idea from Deloitte is this: Creat[e] agile strategies that cater to future travellers and adapt to new market trends is crucial for the industry.

New is the magic word in that. When I reflect back on a half century of business travel I don’t see much difference between what I experienced in 1975 and what I experienced in 2000. Very little had changed.

Go from 2000 to 2024 and, wow, there are innumerable changes from the death of the taxi industry to the sharp rise of Sunday as a key business travel day and of course the generational shift. New is everywhere in travel now.

Deloitte’s point is smart however: don’t take what we see today for granted as tomorrow’s reality. It probably won’t be but what will prevail remains very fuzzy. Anybody who tells you they know what travel 2025 will look like is wrong and if he/she says they know what 2035 will look like they need psychotropics.

As for where Boomers fit into all this, do you remember that phrase that popped up everywhere from 1965 to 1975, don’t trust anyone over 30? (The phrase, incidentally, is attributed to U C Berkeley student Jack Weinberg who was not in fact a Boomer and who turned 30 in 1970.)

In 2024, I‘m expecting to start regularly hearing, don’t trust anyone over 60. Why should they

Camping – and Dirt! – Are the New Luxuries

By Robert McGarvey

Is camping the new luxury? So says Travel + Leisure, a publication that I can’t say I turn to as a mainstay source but in this instance it won my attention. That’s because, as regular readers know, for the past six months I have had a monthly habit of spending a couple or three nights tent camping, something I had no history of doing but suddenly – inexplicably – I was seized by the desire to sleep on dirt.

Maybe T + L has insight into what motivated me.

“We see travelers seeking out activities that require more mental and physical exertion,” Misty Belles, vice president of global public relations for Virtuoso, a network of luxury travel advisors, told T + L. “C-suite clients in particular want experiences that go beyond their comfort zone. Executives at the highest levels are willing to push boundaries, and they like to test themselves.”

I am no c-suiter but I’ve spent my life working with my brain and a keyboard and, as I age, I am attracted to wholly different kinds of activities. Admittedly I do not fit the tent camping demographic. Just 10% of tent campers are Baby Boomers and older.  (57.7% of RV owners, by contrast, are Boomers.  That just holds no appeal for me right now.  A few years from now, who knows.)

But I find myself attracted to pushing my personal boundaries.

What I like about tent camping is its utter strangeness for me.  It’s way out of my comfort zone.

Each camping trip brings me new challenges. Last month in Joshua Tree CA, it was wind that threatened to blow away the tent. And then I remembered I’d read something, somewhere about guy lines, strings that make a tent set up taut.  I was sure I didn’t have any so I drove to a nearby town bought some strings – not exactly guy lines but a workable substitution – and an hour later I had the tent secure.

Of course I also found when I was taking the tent down that, amid the stakes provided with my fancy tent, there already was a small packet of genuine guy lines. That’s ok. Tomorrow I am heading to a campsite in Sedona where there likely will be wind and rain so this will involve all my guy lines to keep the tent taut and the inside dry.

It may seem as though I simply did a 180 and there I was camping.  But arguably the 150 miles I walked in Spain on the Camino in 2021 and the 150 I walked in Portugal and Spain in 2022 helped to reset my mind regarding the outdoors.  Incidentally there is little camping available along the Camino – but I did spend hundreds of hours outside in nature and in the process grew to enjoy it.

What do you need to do similar? You don’t have to spend the $2000 or so I’ve plunked down to make my camping somewhat comfortable. REI offers rental gear and a camping kit costs $151 for the first night and $36 per additional night.  It has all the basics.  I’d recommend using the rental stuff for the first couple trips.  You may like it, you may hate it.

Where to do your first camping? I did mine at Bryce Canyon in Utah, a beautiful park that’s neglected by campers as most seek out nearby Zion and Moab.  

I also highly recommend Organ Pipe National Monument in southern Arizona (on the Mexican border) and Joshua Tree, 150 miles west of Los Angeles.

The marquee national parks – the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Zion – have complex reservation systems and it can take patience to get a booking. The lesser known national parks are easier to book into and that works for me.

First impressions are that the national parks and monuments are better serviced and equipped than campgrounds in national forests.  But national forest campgrounds often have more availability and, personally, I like Manzanita a few miles outside Sedona.

I have only used federal campsites.  In some states there are very good state campsites but I can’t comment specifically.

What you can’t rent from REI is the right mental attitude and you will need it.

Go into camping with utter humility. You know nothing. At least I didn’t. Be prepared to figure out everything. And keep adapting and evolving. Every trip I bring some new gear as new needs arise. Every trip I see things a little differently.

Will I ever get this figured out? I’m not betting that I will but that’s part of the excitement. It’s just fun to embrace one’s ignorance,  And that is what nature lets us do.

Is ChatGPT Your New Travel Agent?

by Robert McGarvey

My personal experience with travel agents has been little and miserable.  A classic example — booked by a large publisher’s outside travel agency – was a room in a far off Strip hotel when I was going to Las Vegas for an event in the convention center which admittedly is not on the Strip but is nearby.  The hotel was 10 miles from the Strip and as I pointed out the cost savings in room nights would be obliterated by the taxi fares.  I was booked into the Strip hotel I’d wanted in the first place.

Just about every time a travel agent has been involved in my travels something was wrong.  I admit that is unquestionably a deviant history.  But it sets me up as keenly curious about ChatGPT’s argument that travel is an ideal use case for AI.  The initial proof of concept is an Ireland trip planner that, said ChatGPT,  “will showcase how bespoke travel recommendations can make Dublin’s rich cultural heritage and vibrant city life more accessible to visitors. This prototype has been designed to show the potential of generative AI to support unique, bespoke experiences for visitors instead of generic to-do lists.”

In a first take the Irish Times curled its lip in distaste: “The itinerary – produced by the chatbot on Wednesday when The Irish Times asked for travel advice – is not entirely imaginative or necessarily appealing to locals. But it is a programme that will resonate with the millions of people who visit the city from overseas each year searching for the craic and stout costing the guts of a tenner for a pint.”

ChatGPT’s Dublin IRA

My experiments with ChatGPT are a bit more encouraging.  For instance, I asked ChatGPT to give me a three day itinerary for exploring the history of the Irish Republican Army in Dublin.  It came up with this:

Day 1: General Overview of Irish Independence

Morning:

  • GPO Witness History Museum:
    • Start your day with a visit to the General Post Office (GPO) Witness History Museum. The GPO played a significant role in the Easter Rising of 1916, a key event in Irish history.

Afternoon:

2. Kilmainham Gaol:

  • Explore Kilmainham Gaol, where many leaders of the 1916 Rising were imprisoned and executed. The guided tour provides insights into Ireland’s struggle for independence.
  • Collins Barracks:
    • Visit the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History at Collins Barracks. This museum covers a wide range of Irish history, including the War of Independence and the Civil War.

Day 2: The War of Independence

Morning:

  • Dublin Castle:
    • Start at Dublin Castle, which played a role in both the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations and the establishment of the Irish Free State. [Note: Dublin Castle was the seat of British power until Irish independence.}

Afternoon:

2. War Memorial Gardens:

  • Visit the Irish National War Memorial Gardens, dedicated to the memory of Irish soldiers who died in World War I. This provides context for the complex relationships during the War of Independence.
  • Custom House:
    • Walk along the River Liffey to the Custom House, a symbol of British authority that was targeted during the War of Independence.

Day 3: The Troubles and Contemporary Ireland

Morning:

  • Dublin City Hall:
    • Explore Dublin City Hall, which features an exhibition on the history of Dublin, including the impact of the Troubles.

Afternoon:

2. Arbour Hill Cemetery:

  • Visit Arbour Hill Cemetery, the burial place of many leaders of the 1916 Rising. It includes a memorial to those who died in the struggle for Irish independence.
  • National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology:
    • Conclude your trip with a visit to the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology, which covers Ireland’s history from prehistoric times to the present day.

McGarvey’s Dublin Additions

As it happens I have been to the GPO, Dublin Castle, Kilmainham Gaol, the Custom House and I should visit Arbor Hill Cemetery and Collins Barracks. My verdict: I find the ChatGPT itinerary a decent start and if a tourist did only the ChatGPT itinerary it wouldn’t be a bad three days.

I would make them better however. To the itinerary I would add Croke Park, where the British Army murdered 30 people at a Gaelic football match in 1920, the first Bloody Sunday. Glasnevin Cemetery  belongs on the list too.  

I would also stop at the spot where Nelson’s Pillar once stood until a 1966 IRA bomb blew it up. This is central Dublin (O’Connell Street). The Spire of Dublin now occupies that space.

This being Dublin I also would visit a few pubs frequented by the legendary Michael Collins – definitely Davy Byrnes which also ticks an important Ulysses box.  Besides, a tourist has to eat and drink so go for pubs with important history or literary connections.

Gemini’s Counter-Offensive

No assessment of AI is complete without a look at Google’s Gemini (nee Bard).

Here is its pass:

“Dublin boasts a rich and complex history, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) played a significant role in shaping the city’s landscape. This 3-day itinerary delves into the key events and locations associated with the IRA, offering a deeper understanding of Ireland’s fight for independence.

Day 1: Setting the Stage

  • Morning: Start your day at the National Museum of Ireland – Collins Barracks ( ). This impressive building houses a vast collection of artifacts related to Irish history, including a dedicated section to the Easter Rising and the IRA.Opens in a new windowwww.museum.ieNational Museum of Ireland Collins Barracks Dublin
  • Afternoon: Take a guided walking tour focused on the 1916 Easter Rising. These tours, offered by companies like Dublin Historical Walking Tours ( ), bring history to life as you walk past iconic landmarks like the GPO (General Post Office) ( ) and Kilmainham Gaol ( ), both of which played crucial roles in the rebellion.Opens in a new windowchevron_rightwanderyourway.comDublin Historical Walking Tours
  • Evening: Enjoy a traditional Irish dinner at The Brazen Head ( ), a historic pub established in 1754. This pub is rumored to have been a meeting point for IRA members throughout history.Opens in a new windowen.wikipedia.orgBrazen Head Dublin

Day 2: Kilmainham Gaol and Beyond

  • Morning: Dedicate the morning to a guided tour of Kilmainham Gaol. This former prison played a pivotal role in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, where many leaders were imprisoned and executed. The tour offers a chilling yet poignant look into this significant location.
  • Afternoon: Head to the National Library of Ireland ( ) to delve deeper into the history of the IRA. The library archives house a wealth of primary sources, including newspapers, pamphlets, and documents related to the organization.Opens in a new windowwww.nli.ieNational Library of Ireland Dublin
  • Evening: Catch a performance at the Abbey Theatre ( ). Founded by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, the Abbey Theatre has a long history of staging plays that explore Irish history and identity, including themes related to the IRA.Opens in a new windowwww.abbeytheatre.ieAbbey Theatre Dublin

Day 3: Reflecting on the Legacy

  • Morning: Visit the Glasnevin Cemetery Museum ( ). This cemetery is the final resting place for many prominent Irish figures, including several IRA leaders. The museum offers guided tours that explore the complex history of Irish nationalism and the role of the IRA.Opens in a new windowwww.atlasobscura.comGlasnevin Cemetery Museum Dublin
  • Afternoon: Spend some time at the Irish National War Memorial Gardens located at Islandbridge. This peaceful park commemorates Irish soldiers who died in various wars, including the fight for independence.
  • Evening: For your final dinner, head to The Winding Stair ( ), a pub located in Dublin Castle. This historic pub offers a warm atmosphere to reflect on your exploration of Dublin’s IRA history and enjoy some live traditional music.Opens in a new windowwww.cntraveler.comWinding Stair Dublin

Additional Tips:

  • Consider purchasing a Dublin Pass to save on entrance fees to many of the attractions mentioned in this itinerary.
  • For a deeper understanding of the IRA’s motivations and actions, it’s helpful to research the historical context of Ireland’s fight for independence before your trip.
  • If you’re interested in a more comprehensive experience, consider extending your stay in Dublin to explore other historical sites and museums.

This itinerary provides a starting point for your exploration of Dublin’s IRA history. Remember, history is a complex subject, and there are multiple perspectives on the IRA’s legacy. Embrace the opportunity to learn, reflect, and form your own conclusions.”

Gemini Wins the Jar of Jameson

Note: Gemini includes Glasnevin and my suggested pub crawl. It also, rather smartly, tossed in the Abbey Theater, a place I always go to when I visit Ireland.

For my money (although I’m using free versions of both), Gemini’s is the tour I’d recommend

Personally I plan to make extensive use of ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini (nee Bard) in planning a long stay in Madrid and now I am also going to use it to plan my monthly visits to camp grounds, particularly in identifying the best hiking trails.

Give AI a try on your next trip. You just may like what you get.

Are You Really Ready for “Authentic” Travel Experiences?

by Robert McGarvey

The Phocuswire headline caught my eye: “WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TRAVELERS FIND TOURS TOO AUTHENTIC?”  For some months I’d been monitoring a surging American traveler insistence that what they want is travel experiences that are authentic – and part of me well knew there are limits to the “authenticity” we want to experience on holiday.

In the particular case mentioned in the Phocuswire story a traveler complained loudly when during a tour of a local food market in Hanoi he came upon a whole fried dog.

What would you say and do?

As I picture this scene in my head, I am taken back 30 years to a trip I made to Sweden, sponsored by Absolut, where lunch one day was at the beach at an eel shack where the edible was eel paired with scrambled eggs and bread slices that resembled Wonderbread. Oh, and vast quantities of vodka.  

Do understand there is a long tradition of eel fishing in Sweden.  It’s now under attack but 30 years ago it was a shining example of traditional Sweden which my Absolut hosts wanted to expose me to.  On the same trip I spent a night in an historic hunting lodge where wealthy city Swedes would go, 100 years ago and probably today too, to hunt deer which would show up on the dinner table. 

I ate the venison and enjoyed it.

The eel was a different matter.

I had never eaten eel before and indeed my only experience of eel as an edible was from the scene in The Tin Drum (viewer discretion advised).  There was no way I intended to eat that thing and I didn’t. But I did eat some scrambled eggs – fluffy and tasty – and even had a few bites of the bland white bread.  Of course I swallowed my share of vodka, probably more as I contemplated the horrors of this lunch, and I don’t believe the host was aggrieved about my eel abstinence.

What I did not do is rant about eel eating. Others in my small group seemed to enjoy their bites of house smoked eel and indeed even I got that the very scene and the meal represented hundreds of years of Swedish culinary history.  

Back to Hanoi and the crispy dog – my view (which departs from that of many experts quoted in the Phocuswire piece – is that the problem is entirely the sensitive traveler’s, most certainly not the tour organizer who, in my view, had no responsibility to prepare travelers for the possibility of seeing food items that would disturb then.

Heavens, what bubble of ignorance do these people live in?  The Humane Society plainly says: “An estimated 30 million dogs are killed for human consumption each year across Asia in a brutal trade that involves terrible cruelty to animals and often, criminal activity. From 10-20 million dogs are slaughtered in China, up to 1 million in South Korea, 1 million in Indonesia, and around 5 million in Viet Nam.”

Please, don’t tell me you are surprised – indeed horrified – by cooked dog in a Vietnam market.

The world does not share our US food peculiarities.

I still remember, with a shiver, a years ago trip with a chef to an authentic (that is, for locals) food market in Bali – yes, that idyllic island – where a half dozen adorable little piglets were putting up a shriek as they awaited purchase (and one hopes swift delivery from this mortal coil). They knew their fate and they weren’t going without a howl. As for me, I shrugged and attempted to avert my eyes (and ears).

But I did not tell the Balinese to go vegan and repent for their sins. But I suppose I might have suggested they see Babe.

In France many eat horse meat which in the US we view as verboten, although how we justify chowing down on Elsie but refuse to eat Trigger is beyond me.  

In Mexico there’s rampant consumption of insects and, no, I wouldn’t personally crunch on a beetle, I also certainly wouldn’t complain about a tour that involved a stop at a bug emporium.  

We eat differently than people in much of the world do.

But the real question is how much “authenticity” do we want?

My guess is not a helluva lot.

That’s ok but, please, stop whining about it.  If you sign up for an”authentic” tour, stay quiet on the ride.

Or just stay home in the first place.

American Airlines Declares War on Third Party Travel Agents – Are We in the Crosshairs?

By Robert McGarvey

Effective May 1, if you want to earn frequent flier miles with American AIrlines, you must purchase tickets via the airline directly or from “preferred” third party travel agencies and websites which have yet to be named, presumably because American is trying to hammer out deals that benefit it the most. The list, supposedly, will be revealed in late April.

Miles will be awarded on Basic Economy fares only when booked via American or partner operators. No third party agency bookings qualify.

Travel agents predictably are a -flutter. “This latest development doubles down on American Airlines’ clear disregard for the travel agencies that distribute its service,” wrote American Society of Travel Advisors CEO Zane Kerby.

What about passengers? Are you applauding these changes? American believes you should.  “We want to make it more convenient for customers to enjoy the value and magic of travel,” American Airlines’ chief commercial officer Vasu Raja said in a statement. “Not only does booking directly with American provide the best possible experience, it’s also where we offer the best fares and it’s most rewarding for our AAdvantage members.”

I can’t speak for you but I don’t experience the “magic of travel” when making a few clicks on an airline website. I have no idea what Raja is saying here and rather doubt he does either.

Strange American’s explanation for the changes may be, they still may stick. American is unconcerned with travel agent ire, no matter how loud it gets. Assuming American can weather the passenger pushback against these changes (and I believe it can), Delta and United will quickly do likewise because the carriers are in a monkey see, monkey do business.  The other two surely like American’s gambit and if the water looks safe they’ll jump in.

Should we be rushing to man the barricades against these changes?

I am a North Jersey guy, a good brawl is always an appealing idea – but I don’t like to engage in sure loser fights and that’s what this is.

Little by little, airlines have been tweaking frequent flier programs to benefit them (and in a zero sum game that means we are losers).  

So too are travel agents and the first salvo in the airline war on them goes back almost 30 years, to 1995, when Delta sliced its commission payments from 10% to 5.  Now some airlines pay exactly zero and just about all have reduced or even eliminated any support services for travel agents.  That’s why some travel agents will book air only if paid a fee by the customer and it’s hard to blame them.

Hotels, meantime, have been at war over travel agent commissions for years – some simply refuse to deal with OTAs, online travel agents such as Expedia.  The hotels want to keep the money in their pockets.

Which brings us back to frequent flier miles which of course airlines see as a cash equivalent and therefore they want to maximize their control of it. So American is waving a cudgel, insisting that if we want miles (and they know we do), we’ll book with American or a “preferred” third party and those who play the miles game will go along with this rule change.

Some very occasional fliers may not, simply because they don’t know about it.

But most of us will shrug, grumble and play by the airlines’ new rules. That’s what we’ve done in the past when, for instance, we accepted the much more monumental shift of rewards flights to “dynamic pricing,” meaning what the market will bear.

We’ll do it again with this attempt by American to direct bookings into its own channels and those that benefit it the most.

Personally, I don’t much care.  For some years most of my flight bookings have been direct with the carrier anyway (except for a handful booked via Amex).  It’s just been more convenient for me to center every detail of a flight in the carrier’s mobile app.

Meantime, I’ll be bracing myself for still more erosion in the value of miles.

But, hey, at least we’ll get to experience that “magic of travel.” That’s what Raja said.

A Tale of Two Rides with a Side of Food Criticism (Mora Italian)

By Robert McGarvey

At 5:30p on Valentine’s Day I summoned an Uber to transport me 3.7 miles to Mora Italian, Scott Conant’s restaurant in Phoenix.  It took maybe 10 minutes to arrive, the ride also took around 10 minutes, uneventful. The trip fare was $21.67, Uber added a $4.25 booking fee, and I tipped $5.18.

That totals $31.10.  I paid $16.10 because I get a monthly $15 credit on Uber via Amex Plat.

At approximately 8:00p I summoned a Waymo driverless car.  It took around 20 minutes to arrive – “busy night,” said Google – but much of that time was spent finishing a coffee at my table in Mora.

The ride itself also took around 10 minutes.  The robot took exactly the route I would have driven.  There was nothing unusual about the ride, except that the driver’s seat was empty.  Oh – and that gave us much to comment on because for both of us this was a first time in a driverless car.  The fare totaled $18.70. No tip and please don’t tell me that in our current era of tip mania that it’s become necessary to tip to keep the robots placated.  

Which is the better ride?

My conclusion: I only get one $15 Uber credit a month ($35 in December to round the credit up to $200 for the year) and whenever I have already used that credit Waymo will get the business. It’s cheaper and more fun and also a gateway into tomorrow where robots do a lot of stuff for us.

Waymo operates in San Francisco and Phoenix and says it’s “ramping up” in Austin TX and Los Angeles County. I’m glad I live in phoenix and get to use it.

If you’re in San Francisco or Phoenix, use Waymo. It’s a ride into the future.

Mora Is Lessa

I have eaten a half dozen times at Mora since it opened in 2017 and I have been something of a fan. Early on I even had a pleasant chat with Scott Conant who was often in the house in those years.

I did not see him in Mora last night. He was missed.

I’d settled into a menu of my making: Little Gems Lettuce Caesar salad; pasta pomodoro (a Conant specialty – note the generous heap of butter); and a half roast chicken.  That was an option on Valentine’s Day and with a dessert, the tab was $190 for two.

Add in a couple negronis (lovely) and a $95 Super Tuscan (a solid buy) and the tab, inclusive of tax and a service charge, hit $425.

The meal wasn’t worth that much. 

Maybe the kitchen was simply hammered by the torrent of diners on Valentine’s Day but even the pomodoro seemed, well, mediocre and that’s the dish that propelled Conant to culinary stardom. This wasn’t a bad meal, don’t misunderstand, but it did not rise above the ho-hum.

One Open Table reviewer wrote this about the Valentine’s 2024 service: “All in all it wasn’t a great experience, food was overpriced and the quality was subpar.”  I agree and that reviewer had a problem with cold meatballs.  In our case it was the chicken that was cold and, somehow, that seemed only appropriate given the mediocrity of the first two dishes. We didn’t send ours back because there was no reason to believe there’d be improvement.

I gave the meal just two stars on Open Table. That was mainly for the outstanding negroni and the Super Tuscan which was good and fairly priced.

Sure, I understand that Valentine’s Day is not a good day at most restaurants.  It rings the cash register but the food usually reflects the hurried, harried atmosphere in the kitchen. As Delicious Magazine noted, “Even decent restaurants underperform on Valentine’s Day.”

I know all that but it’s just that I have experienced better at Mora in the past, even on very busy nights. Something was very off at Mora on Valentine’s Day 2024.

My hope is that last night simply was a miscue. I’ll give it another chance.


But if you are an out of towner who happens to be in Phoenix with a craving for Italian, my advice now is to go to Chris Bianco’s Tratto. It’s never failed me, always surprises me.

Delta SkyMiles Gold Card: To Keep or Cut Up

By Robert McGarvey

When I signed up for the Delta SkyMiles Gold card, mainly to get the welcome bonus cache of miles, the fee was $99. Now it’s been bumped up to $150.  Do I keep it or cut it up?

Know that in the past year or so I’ve cut up a United Explorer card and a Barclays AA card.  I live in Phoenix where the United presence is slender so it went. Delta doesn’t have many more flights but it does have a swank new Phoenix terminal and club and it also is an airline with a real relationship with Amex and its Platinum card (club access, yes, that will be capped in 2025 but it’s better than the bupkis at United).

As for American, I’d gotten a  Southwest card for the welcome bonus and it flies to pretty much all the useful AA domestic locations and I saw no point in carrying both cards. So AA went through the shredder.

Is it now the turn of the Delta card?

I’ve already used the welcome bonus – it plus existing miles bought two coach tickets to Madrid in the summer and that wiped out my stash of around 300,000 miles.  Pricey? You bet. But in the era of devalued air miles, if you have ‘em, burn ‘em.

As for my verdict on the pricier Delta SkyMiles Gold, I just transferred it from a tertiary wallet into the wallet I carry every day.  I have decided to keep it.

Amex raised the fee but also threw in a new perk: Spend $10,000 in the calendar year and get a $200 Delta credit. That’s up from $100, which hadn’t been enough to entice me but the $200 does.

The $10,000 spend also earns 10,000 SkyMiles, worth around $120 at a valuation of 1.2 cents per mile. Yes, I could put the spend on Amex Plat and get putatively richer miles…but, honestly, in my redemptions I am probably only getting around 1.2 cents per mile anyway.  Sure, I could play the redemption game more cleverly but I know me and my appetite for that kind of gaming.  

Other perks with the Delta card include a free bag check, priority boarding in the main cabin, and a 15% discount on awards travel. There’s also a $100 credit on a hotel stay booked through Delta and paid in advance.  I especially value the 15% discount awards – which saved me upwards of 40,000 miles on my Madrid tickets.

Perks I won’t use include a discount on inflight purchases and secondary insurance on rental cars. I don’t recall the last time I did either.

Aren’t these calculations tedious? They are. But they have emerged as essential in today’s credit card world.  Used to be, most of us could get by using a few mainstay cards for just about all purchases but nowadays as we pursue welcome bonuses, cashback, and in my case a Bitcoin reward (via a Venmo card and, thank you for asking, I’m up 73.5% on my holdings), cards are in a state of continuous churn.

As cards approach their renewal data, instead of just letting them renew, I find myself doing a quick and dirty cost benefit analysis. I also find myself weighing adding a new card with a rich welcome bonus instead of keeping a veteran card.

That means, in 2025, when the SkyMiles Gold card comes up for renewal, again I will do a fast calculation: keep it or cut it.  

That decision all comes down to how much value I have gotten from the card and timeframe is the past year and a forecast for the coming year.  What happened long ago no longer figures in the decision.

Does card shuffling hurt one’s credit score? I’ve seen a tiny dent, a loss of a few FICO points, mainly due to a loss of some credit capacity.  The two cards I recently cut had huge credit lines and no utilization.

But I don’t see any meaningful consequences of a loss of a couple points. Your mileage might vary.

It’s up to us to get the most value out of our credit cards.

The Blue Zones Blow Up: Commercialism Runs Amok

By Robert McGarvey

I come not to praise Dan Buttner’s Blue Zones but to bury it – or, rather, the New York Times did the execution and I am here to lament the fading of an idea I have admired and recommended for 15 years.  

The essence of the original Blue Zones story is that Buettner found five discrete communities where the inhabitants live a lot longer than the rest of us.  They are Ikaria (a remote Greek island). Sardinia (the villages up in the mountains), Okinawa, Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, and Loma Linda CA, a town around 60 miles east of Los Angeles that is distinguished by the fact that 9000 of the 25,000 residents are 7th Day Adventists who are vegetarians and don’t smoke or drink alcohol.

The kicker is that in these communities people are 10 times more likely to reach 100 than the rest of us and they also are generally healthier.

Sadly, the Nicoya Peninsula and Okinawa are fading out of Blue Zones status as the traditional lifestyles are replaced by a 21st century convenience and fast food culture.  But Singapore recently was added and it, interestingly, is not a product of a traditional lifestyle so much as it has been created by a society that seeks to control pretty much everything.

What do residents of the Blue Zones have in common? They eat little meat (maybe once a week), they eat nuts, they drink alcohol in moderation (or not at all), and they get a lot of exercise, not typically in a gym but more commonly as an ordinary part of their lives (walking, gardening, etc).

What they don’t do is follow health fads on TikTok, consume “super foods,” frequent expensive “wellness” spas or, really, do much of anything except live the kind of life people in their communities have lived for a very long time.

For me, all this is practical, reasonably easy to follow and it makes good commonsense. So for a decade I’ve tried to live something of a Blue Zones life and it’s not terribly hard to do.  It also has much in common with a traditional Mediterranean Diet so cooking ideas are easy to come by and not expensive to implement.

Where did all this go wrong?  The New York Times story’s subhead points us in a direction: “Communities certified as ‘blue zones,’ a concept that promotes healthy living and longevity, are multiplying, but some wonder if the movement is just another gimmick.”

Some 70 communities in the US have worked with the Blue Zones company to create better, healthier lifestyles for their residents. 

Along the way, a Blue Zones tag has also found its way on cans of beans, bottled teas and frozen burrito bowls.  

Meantime, too, some real estate developers have determined it’s a selling point to be a Blue Zones and so they are claiming.  Noted the New York Times: “in some cases, it appears to be more a marketing strategy than anything else, joining a flurry of real estate certification programs and having little to do with the modest way of life that Blue Zones is meant to reflect.”

Not every community even wants to be a Blue Zone. In South Phoenix, a lower income neighborhood with a majority Hispanic population, there has been a push to implement Blue Zones lifestyles – but that has been met by vocal opposition.  

Said one group of opponents: “The Collaborative for Black & Indigenous Land Restoration and Reparations, is choosing to push against this project that does not share the decision making power with the community it intends to help.”

Here’s my bottomline: I still like and recommend the original Blue Zones concept that the traditional lifestyles of various communities foster longevity.  We can adopt what pieces we want and likely will see some benefits.

But I for one have no intention of buying products that are slapped with a Blue Zones seal of approval, and neither do I want my community (midtown Phoenix) to go all in on a Blue Zones project. And I definitely have no interest in buying a home in a “certified” Blue Zones. If I did I’d probably move to Loma Linda.  But I don’t.

As far as the six Blue Zones, I’m interested in visiting Ikaria but can’t say I’m keen on any of the others.

And I’ll still mainly eat a Blue Zones diet that’s veg forward with sparing intake of meats.

I was walking 5 or 6 miles a day before I stumbled on the Blue Zones and still do.  That won’t stop.

But I won’t try to tell you what to do.

It’s your life, live it your way. 

The Robots Are Coming: Is Hotel Automation Getting Realer?

By Robert McGarvey

We’ve heard about it for at least a decade but now the warnings are getting louder: the robots are coming to hotels and restaurants near you.

Probably the loudest gong was rung at this year’s CES in early January.  Headlined AP: “Robot baristas and AI chefs caused a stir at CES 2024 as casino union workers fear for their jobs.”

Tech Times headlined likewise: “Robot Bartenders: CES 2024 Showcases Future of Hospitality, Sparking Job Security Worries.”

CNET got in the trenches with the robots: “I Tried Ice Cream, Stir Fry, Beer and Cocktails, all Made by Machines at CES ’24.”

Understand two facts: even though I am all for helping workers keep good jobs, I also am not opposed to replacing humans in many hospitality positions with robots.  

Will that in fact happen?

Headlines aside, no time soon.

The Hotel Tech Report has a summary that seeks to separate fact from fiction. It is a year old but much of what it reports remains true. Robots are coming our way but they aren’t here yet.

Case in point: housekeeping jobs are not presently threatened, although truth to tell most hotel managers would love to put a stake in housekeepers if in fact affordable machines could replace them.  It’s simply the case that we are far removed from being able to create a robot that can make a bed and that would have a clue between what’s trash on the floor of a hotel room and what needs to be preserved for the guest.  Is that dirty, torn white sock on the bathroom floor trash?

Yes, robots can deliver towels and probably can do a better job operating the slick window coverings I find in many hotels (and that I struggle to use properly).  But it will be some years before housekeeping jobs are endangered. I can see big hotels deploying robots to do some of a housekeeper’s work – vacuuming is another case in point.

But much of the present housekeeper’s job is beyond a robot’s current ken.

Another case in point: robot bartenders are real, they actually do work – see Royal Carribean’s Bionic Bar.  There’s also a plus to a robot bartender: it’s unlikely to steal from the establishment, either cash or booze.  But devices such as RCL’s robots are costly – prices are upwards of $100,000 for one device and humans would still be needed to replenish the bottles and do a clean up of the place.  A robot’s useful life expectancy is also unknown. So far, robot bartenders are deployed as conversation starters more than as replacements for people.

Can I think of jobs that actually are in jeopardy in hospitality? I can.  At least some dealers at casinos are not long for the world.  Robots already are in use at some Macau casinos, with apparently good results.

Aren’t humans needed to spot cheaters?  I’m not persuaded that dealers are good at that except in the case of the clumsiest cheats.  Eyes in the sky at casinos watch every move at the tables and there also are many casino workers whose jobs are to monitor action at tables. Dealers aren’t essential in this security and if casino management believe robots are better for the bottomline, bet on the demise of dealers.

How about front desk personnel at hotels?  The experts say yes – but, you know, I’d say it has largely already happened but it’s not robots who are replacing front desk staff but guests.  I can’t remember the last time I checked out at the front desk – it’s accomplished with a few clicks on my phone.  I’ve also used self check in at hotels and have no complaints. Hotel management has cleverly outsourced many front desk tasks to us.

The conclusion: the robots are coming to hospitality but so far it’s more talk than actual job loss by humans.  It’s taken a good decade for bots to adequately replace humans, most of the time, in providing customer service via phone – and there still are times when the bots completely strike out.

I expect to see human bartenders and waiters and cooks and housekeepers for some years to come. Whether we’d rather interact with machines or not.