Yet More Bonuses with Amex Plat: Find Cash When You Look For It

By Robert McGarvey

In the past week, I got exactly $270 in credits on my Amex Plat card and all I did was use the programs Amex has in place and in plain sight.

I have said it before: part of me is irritated that now I have to look around for and, in some cases, specifically enroll in programs to gain the Amex benefits.  Life was simpler when – pre pandemic – I flew enough to think the card paid for itself with airport club access.  The fact that I accumulated points that I could cash in for vacation flights to Europe, which I have done twice that I recall in recent years, sweetened the deal.

Who needed the rest of the deals and discounts that caused my eyes to fog whenever I contemplated them?

Things are different today. I have not flown in 18 months, have not been in a club in a like timeframe, and that put me into a big rethink regarding Plat. I even contemplated downgrading to Gold.  Literally hundreds of dollars in credits that I claimedso far this year – HomeDepot, BestBuy, Goldbelly, miscellaneous streaming video credits – persuaded me to stay put.

But now things are different again, I am traveling, I will within days make use of club access, and in the process I stumbled into very easy Amex credits.

You may already know about them but, as I said, I have no real history of hunting for bonuses. Besides, Amex keeps mixing up the credits – such as the new cellphone protection credit.

Then I noticed an Amex $200 credit to my account for a hotel stay booked via Amex’s Fine Hotels and Resorts tab.  I have a one night stay coming up in Madrid, for convenience sake I wanted to stay very near the airport, and I came upon a Hilton that happens to be in that program.  I booked it and, a few days later, a credit for the full amount popped up in my account.

Oh, and I already had free Hilton elite status with the card.  

I also wanted to book a flight from Santiago de Compostela in Galicia to Madrid and options were few on the day I wanted to travel.  Amex Travel had a flight that worked and it also qualified for a $50 credit.

Then there’s also a twice yearly $50 credit at Saks, just for buying stuff online.

And the Madrid hotel and Santiago flight also qualify for 5X points.

Amex also now credits me for the cost of my NY Times digital subscription and I also now get free cellphone protection on two phones, just by paying the T-Mo charge with an Amex card (which I had already been doing).

There’s also a $15/month Uber credit monthly, plus a bonus $20 in December.  For the past year I have put that credit to use with Uber Eats.

And a $200 annual airline credit at a carrier I designate.  Alas, this year it is American which I have not flown all year and may not fly this year.  But once yearly it is allowed to switch carriers which probably I will.

A rub is that many of the Amex programs require enrollment – the Saks credit for instance as well as the $20/month digital credit and there’s that annual selection of one airline for the $200 credit.

Aren’t there programs I would never use? Lots in fact, such as a $25/month credit at Equinox.

But the $695 annual fee for Plat really is rather easy to cover.

The Points Guy, in a recent piece, claims there is an easy $1400 to be had in rewards.  I would quibble and immediately erase $300 for the Equinox credit and probably I won’t bother with the $179 Clear credit either.

But will I get $700?  Yeah, I will and I am finding that it’s less work than it had been, mainly because I understand the game better.  But I just may get the card effectively for free – plus various club stays.  There’s nothing not to like about that.

The End of Business Travel – Unpack Now

by Robert McGarvey

It is time to face up to reality. After months of optimistic forecasts about the return to “normal” in business travel – Panglossian utterances proliferated from the mouths of airline CEOs and their counterparts in the hotel industry – it is increasingly obvious that it ain’t happening. not this year, not next, nowhere in the future we can realistically envision.

Money talks.

A recent Bloomberg survey of 45 large businesses found that 84% plan to spend less on business travel in the post Covid era. Most expected budgets to drop 20 to 40% and to stay dropped.

Why? The c-suite has discovered that we do not need to travel to keep the bottomline climbing. Profits, in most sectors, have been rosy in this era of Zoom calls.

Meantime, a new survey by the American Hotel and Lodging Association found that even business travelers are souring on the idea of going on the road: “About 60% of business traveler respondents indicated they likely would postpone their travel plans until a later date. About 67% noted they are likely to take fewer trips, while 68% said they are likely to take shorter and 66% said they are likely will travel only places they can drive to.”

Not all travel will be nixed, not by the c-suite and not by business travelers. I expect that the travel budgets for sales teams will be restored as soon as we pass through the Delta variant resurgence of Covid-19. I imagine c-suiters and other corporate high flyers will continue to circle the globe too.

What will be cut are many inhouse get togethers and very probably quite a few conferences too.

Ditto trips to offsite trainings. You can learn better email hygiene just as well at your desk watching a Zoom presentation as you would traveling to an offsite meeting at a Virginia hotel.

Travel without a tangible bottomline payoff just is going to be cancelled. But that’s not the only factor.

There are many reasons not to travel and saving money is just one. There also is the sustainability issue and, by any measure, business travel is increasingly seen for what it is – a disaster in terms of carbon and, in 2021, with fires and floods and hurricanes, it is ever harder to deny that climate change is triggering mayhem across the planet. Any organization that wants to be on the right side of sustainability has to be trimming its travel.

Then there are the health impacts of frequent business travel. A 2018 Harvard Business Review article told the sad story: “we found a strong correlation between the frequency of business travel and a wide range of physical and behavioral health risks. Compared to those who spent one to six nights a month away from home for business travel, those who spent 14 or more nights away from home per month had significantly higher body mass index scores and were significantly more likely to report the following: poor self-rated health; clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression and alcohol dependence; no physical activity or exercise; smoking; and trouble sleeping. The odds of being obese were 92% higher for those who traveled 21 or more nights per month compared to those who traveled only one to six nights per month, and this ultra-traveling group also had higher diastolic blood pressure and lower high density lipoprotein (the good cholesterol).”

Frequent business travel may also dull our performance on the job. “Frequent business travelers experience 20 percent less productivity due to jet lag. Business travelers often have less time to recover from journey related stress, which leads to ‘brain fog.'”

The dirty secret is that lots of frequent business travelers plain dislike the grind. The pretense is that it is a life of glamor and excitement but is it really? Maybe it was in 1975. But today? With fist fights over masks, ridiculous arguments about vaccines, hotels without cleaning crews, a shortage of Uber drivers, and the list can go on. Travel just is not much fun anymore and it won’t be anytime soon.

And yet…I remain on track to take a trip to Spain later this year. I look forward to it. I want to go. And it will be fun.

The right trip is a joy. But too much business travel is done just because it gets entered into a calendar.

Me, I am actively erasing future trips.

For instance: although I had been a frequent traveler to conferences and conventions, I have not been to one in a couple years and have no present plans to go. What I get out of them can largely be gotten via Zoom.

I will use the same analytics on all travel possibilities. Whatever travel presents itself to me I will ask, is it necessary? Will it get better results in person?

If the answers aren’t resounding yesses, I will be a no go.

A lot of business travelers feel likewise. Half? I don’t know the percentage but I do believe it is a significant minority who will not only not protest company slashing of travel budgets they will, probably quietly, cheer it.

When a trip is right – and necessary – go. Otherwise I am staying home.,

A Warning from the NSA: Just Don’t Use Public Wi-Fi

by Robert McGarvey

I don’t recall the first time I wrote up a warning against using public Wi-Fi when traveling – and that means hotel, airport, restaurant, public transportation (subways, busses) coffee shop, even inflight Wi-Fi. Probably 10 years ago. Maybe longer.

And yet public Wi-Fi sites multiply – one count finds over a half billion globally. That’s because we use it. One survey found 18% of respondents use it more than once a day.

Definitely, too, usage is upped among travelers. When I ask people if they would use the public Wi-Fi up the street from their home the reaction displays similar enthusiasm to what I’d get if I asked their willingness to use a public toilet in the Covid-19 era. But those very same people, when asked, acknowledge they do use public Wi-fi when they travel because “what are my better options?”

We’ll answer that question momentarily – you do have a better option – but, first, understand I now have a heavyweight that is issuing the same stern warnings about public Wi-Fi as I have been. That’s the NSA – aka National Security Agency aka the Puzzle Palace — which now has broken its cover to warn about public Wi-Fi and the risks it poses to us and our employers.

In a recent information sheet, NSA pulls no punches: “Avoid connecting to public Wi-Fi, when possible, as there is an increased risk when using public Wi-Fi networks…. If users choose to connect to public Wi-Fi, they must take precautions. Data sent over public Wi-Fi—especially open public Wi-Fi that does not require a password to access—
is vulnerable to theft or manipulation.”

What that says – put in simple terms – is don’t use public Wi-Fi because whatever data you enter is easy pickins for savvy cyber criminals.

Sure, if you want to grab a baseball score from ESPN, or a stock quote, by all means use public Wi-Fi if that’s easy. It probably doesn’t matter. But if what you want to do is send business email or access files on your company’s server or even research prospects on LinkedIn, the strong advice is don’t use public Wi-Fi.

There are thousands of white papers online documenting how hackers hack public Wi-Fi. For them it is rather straightforward. There even are automated tools to speed up the process for the inexpert hackers.

NSA elaborates: “Accessing public Wi-Fi hotspots may be convenient to catch up on work or check email, but public Wi-Fi is often not configured securely. Using these networks may make users’ data and devices more vulnerable to compromise, as cyber actors employ malicious access points, redirect to malicious websites, inject malicious
proxies, and eavesdrop on network traffic.”

What the NSA is saying is that when you are using public Wi-Fi you are a fish in a transparent fish bowl and the hackers’ eyes are on your every keystroke. The password to your employer’s server – it’s theirs. The login to your email – it’s theirs. The login to your bank account – yep, that’s theirs too.

All because you took what seemed the easy – and free! – access lane onto the Internet Superhighway and that is what public Wi-Fi is for many millions of us.

What if public Wi-Fi truly is your best option? Here’s NSA’s advice: “If connecting to a public Wi-Fi network, NSA strongly advises using a personal or corporate-provided virtual private network (VPN) to encrypt the traffic.”

Not all VPNs are good. Not all are even trustworthy. Choose a VPN cautiously. Here’s a list of recommended providers from TechRadar. Here’s CNET’s list.

Won’t a VPN slow your speed? Probably, at least a little. But that is a price worth paying for the enhanced security a good VPN provides.

Even with a VPN in place NSA’s “don’t’s list” includes these about public Wi-Fi: *Do not enter most sensitive account
passwords on sites/applications. *Avoid accessing personal data (e.g., bank accounts, medical, etc.).

That’s good, cautious advice.

Either way, if you really insist on using public Wi-Fi, do it with a VPN. You don’t have guaranteed safety. But you are pretty secure.

Personally, however, I still prefer to use my cellphone to create a hotspot that I connect an iPad or laptop to. The security is quite good.

Alternatively, since I use a Google Pixel phone on Google FI network, an option I have set up is to use a Google VPN when surfing via Wi-Fi. I use that feature often.

This is the reality: safer surfing is yours if you want it.

But with all the cyber criminals out there, just do something to stay safe.

Here Come the Travel Scammers

By Robert McGarvey

As sure as we are now – in fits and starts – getting back on the road, scammers, flimflam artists, and thieves are right behind us and now they have an edge because many of us have lost our instincts when it comes to being suspicious of what might be criminal activity.

Eighteen months ago most of us would have have spotted a travel related scam before it bit us but now we are fresh innocents and you can bet the hucksters are hungry for our dough.

Matters are so sinister that the Better Business Bureau has rushed out a warning headlined: BBB Scam Alert: Beware of hotel scams.

Time for a refresher on road smarts.

Phishing.  Enormously popular with criminals today is telephone phishing where, usually, the scam is that “this is the front desk, there’s a problem with your credit card, could you give us the number again?”  Often the call comes in fairly late at night so you may be drowsy too and in PJs.  Give over the number and expiration date and, oh, will you verify the spelling of your name?  And that will present the criminal with a credit card that can put to immediate use buying gift cards and other cash equivalents.

The antidote: No matter how late at night it is, say you will be down to the front desk in a few minutes and hang up.  At this point you have three options: Do nothing whatsoever, just assume the call was a scam. Or actually go down to the desk and don’t be surprised if the staff has no clue about this issue with your card. Or call the front desk and ask, is there a question about my credit card?

Food Scams.  This actually is a new one on me but it makes perfect sense.  The BBB explains how it works: “Make sure the menus left in the hotel room are authentic…. Scammers will distribute fake menus to rooms with phone numbers that connect the caller to them instead of the hotel or a real business. They will collect the callers credit card information over the phone then never deliver food.”

I salute the cleverness of the criminals.  Make up a flyer, insert fake quotes (“the best pastrami in Phoenix,” Pete Wells NYTimes), and for sure calls will come in.

Word of caution: before ordering with a restaurant unknown to you, check Yelp to see if it in fact exists. While you are at it, skim the reviews.  I personally find Yelp of hit or miss utility – but it will definitely help you detect a restaurant that does not really exist. And you may even get some useful insights about the joint’s quality or lack.  (Hint: there is no great pastrami in Phoenix. The nearest is Langer’s in LA.)

Fake WiFi: They are called “rogue access points” and what this refers to are WiFi networks with names like “Free + Fast WiFi” or “Your Hotel’s Best WiFi.”  The problem is that a tech savvy criminal can spend maybe $100 and create a WiFi hotspot that exists mainly to collect personal information from users, possibly to download malware to their computers.

This is very bad and, as I said, it is also very cheap for the crook to perpetrate.  It often surfaces at meetings, convention centers, airports and, definitely, hotels especially public areas.  How to detect it? Usually it is very slow but, hey, isn’t that the norm for hotel WiFi even when we are paying to access it?

My advice is this: don’t use hotel WiFi or airport Wifi at all.  Ever. I use a hotspot that I create with my phone. (In Android, go to SETTINGS/Network and Internet/Hotspot. Similar works on iPhone)  It takes literally seconds to create, in most cases its speed is comparable to that of a hotel network (sometimes faster), and, yeah, in many cell plans you will pay a few bucks for data in a two hour session but that is money well spent if it keeps you out of the clutches of these cyber criminals.

This all sounds simple? It is. But criminals also know we are out of training and no longer instantly see risks when before we would have.  

Just remember: they are out to grab your money and if we have lost our cautions we are easy prey.  Stay alert, stay safe, safe travels. 

Time for a New Travel Bag

by Robert McGarvey

Know that I am a travel bag cheapskate. I doubt I have spent over $1000 on luggage in a lifetime of travels. For the past eight years I have relied on a carryon Travelpro rollaboard that cost $85 and it has been a reliable companion but now as new travel looms I had to admit it had gotten shabby.

I had also grown annoyed with the clatter of the aging wheels and a propensity of the rolling bag to tip over when I am moving at speed.

Time for a new bag.

I had non negotiable requirements. It had to be cheap and it had to be carryon (22″ x 14″ x 9″). Otherwise I had no requirements. I have mulled this issue in print for some years and I thought my preferences were settled. Hah.

What I bought surprised even me.

I bought an Osprey Fairpoint 40 men’s bag – 40 liter capacity – and here’s the deal: no wheels but this is a backpack. Price: $137 at Amazon.

But this is not just any backpack.

A huge difference between the Osprey Fairpoint and traditional backpacks is that the latter have a big cavern where you stuff your belongings while the Fairpoint has a clamshell opening so what you have packed is immediately visible. Hunt for fresh socks with a typical backpack and you may wind up dumping everything out on a nearby bed. With the Fairpoint just unzip the thing and what you are seeking is right there.

Everything about the Osprey is well designed and thought out. “Also great,” ruled the NY Times’ Wirecutter reviewers who also point out it comes with a lifetime warranty which is surprisingly common with luggage (Patagonia, Briggs and Riley, etc.) but it nonetheless is a nice Osprey perk.

Many years ago I bought a backpack carryon on bag from a travel gear purveyor and frankly it was poorly designed junk. The load kept slipping and sliding around inside the bag as I walked (usually around an airport and a city, not up a slippery hiking trail). I soon gave it to a friend who admired the quirkiness of it but it cannot possibly have provided much useful service.

The Osprey is better designed. It is designed both to be a straightforward piece of carryon but also for a backpacker who wants a compact bag. And it even has a laptop sleeve. as well as compression straps to keep contents from shifting. There also are multiple organizational inserts for sale – such as a three cube set for $38 – that allow for customization of the storage.

Am I comfortable with a backpack? That is a good question. Many find them to be very uncomfortable and, initially, I did too.

In some years of walking and hiking around Phoenix I have grown accustomed to wearing a backpack – usually a compact Fjallraven that I have stuffed with water bottles. You don’t want to walk long distances around Phoenix without water. A backpack doesn’t bother me anymore.

Is the Fairpoint genuinely good for hiking? Probably, for serious hikers, purpose built hiking backpacks are a better option when you want to walk most of the Appalachian Trail. I have a 10 year old LL Bean AT 55 pack (60 liter capacity) which is what I would take if I decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. The Osprey Fairpoint – many reviewers agree – is better suited to day hikes where you will be bunking in hotels not campsites.

That’s me. I don’t plan to jam a sleeping bag and a cook stove in the Osprey and it was never designed for such loads. What I plan to use it for are light loads – under 20 pounds including an iPad – and for that weight the Fairpoint is a match. I have heard some say they crammed 40 pounds in it but, frankly, I think a well chosen expedition backpack is more appropriate for comfortably and safely lugging heavy weights.

That light weight load of the Osprey on my back is also why I think I won’t mind carrying the weight instead of rolling it. It just isn’t that much to grumble about.

Besides, in carrying my sack I will be fulfilling a half century desire to live novelist Jack Kerouac’s vision: “I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ’em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures ….”

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Why Hotel Cybersecurity Is Still A Problem and It Is Getting Worse

By Robert McGarvey

For probably two decades I have covered hotel data breaches.  Everything from the Trump hotels to the Hard Rock has been breached and truth to tell I doubt that there is a single large hotel group that has never been breached.  If there is I don’t know it.

Bet on this: there will be more breaches in the hotel business and soon.  A perfect set of circumstances makes this a safe bet.  Hotel revenues were near zero for 18 months and that meant, for sure, cybersecurity spend was also near zero.  If money was getting spent it was on better ways to sanitize hotels in the pandemic in order to lure guests back.

Cyber criminals, like all predators, target the weak.

Besides, cyber insecurity is a perennial industry problem. Hoteliers resist expenditures that do not contribute to the bottomline and the average hotelier sees cybersecurity as a cost, not as investment that could contribute to the bottomline.

This is why I strongly urge hotel guests to never use a debit card (protections against fraudulent use are weaker than with a credit card) and to use a credit card with a very low credit limit. If need be, ask a bank to issue a card with, say, a $2000 limit. $1000 if you think you can navigate within that budget.  Probably if a credit card of yours is stolen in a hotel data breach and put to use by crooks you will eventually be made whole.  But my advice is to try to minimize the damage by using a card with limited spending ability.

Note: you usually won’t know for many months that a credit card of yours has been scooped up in a hotel data breach.  These breaches often go undetected by the hotel for years and once discovered, hotels are reluctant to go broadly public with the info.  The massive Starwood breach – involving some 500 million consumers – was not disclosed until late 2018.

Assume any card you give a hotel is likely to be breached and behave accordingly.

By now you are probably looking for proof that in fact hotels are wretched at cybersecurity. NordPass, which makes password management software, recently looked into password sophistication across many industries and, no surprise, hospitality fared poorly.

NordPass collected its data by looking into known breaches and eyeballing the passwords that had surfaced. The researchers looked into 15,603,438 breaches and broke down the resulting data into 17 different industries.

Remember this, a company website is only as secure as the passwords used by employees who access it.  If employees use passwords that are easy for crooks to guess, the site security is nil.

Here are the top 10 most used passwords among hospitality employees, according to NordPass’s digging:

password

123456

Company name123 *

Company name*

Company name*

Hello123

Company name 1*

Company name*

company name*

company name1*

NordPass offered this explanatory gloss about the recurring company name password: “This password is a company name or a variation of it (e.g. Company name2002). We are not naming the exact company.”

Commented NordPass, “The hospitality industry had the most passwords that were the company’s name or its variation.”

That list of hospitality passwords is gravely disturbing.  Wrote TechRepublic: “Some of the weak passwords uncovered seem almost comical, but this trend has serious ramifications. Weak passwords are actually one of the leading vulnerabilities that lead to data breaches.”

Know that how cybercriminals hack a company site is they send a bot to it and the bot is scripted to try common passwords. Like what? Like, well, password, which is a perennial top ten most used password.  Hackers use the common password lists to script their bots of course and in hospitality the employees obligingly seem to use such lists to pick their own passwords and, astonishingly, the company websites are not programmed to reject their use,

According to NordPass, only 29% of hospitality industry employees use unique passwords (which is something like Ma!yo#Cty908& – the sort of password usually generated by any decent password management tool).

More than two thirds of hospitality industry employees reuse passwords across multiple accounts which is another big no no.  

Call this a huge fail on the part of hospitality.  

Just don’t say it is surprising and don’t believe ir will be fixed soon.

The Crisis of the Unvaccinated: Why Business Travel Will Not Rebound This Year

By Robert McGarvey

I know a guy – call him Tom – who is fully vaccinated and a couple weeks ago his company told him to show up at a golf tournament they were holding for big customers at one of the nation’s swankiest courses.

At this event there were no masks and why would there be, everybody being fully vaccinated, or at least claiming to be.

There wasn’t much social distancing either.

You know where this story is ending, right?

Tom now is in bed with a case of Covid.

His case so far is mild.  But he has Covid and he was fully vaccinated.

That is why I now say it is plain delusional and loony to talk about a return of business travel this year. And there won’t be a return of in-person events, either.

Not in 2021.

Don’t blame me.  Blame the unvaccinated who right now are about 50% of us.  Why so many?  I have no idea.  Cockamamie beliefs, twisted politics, who knows – but here’s the deal: their refusal to get vaccinated is endangering the rest of us.  Sure, if they quarantined they would be out of harm’s way, at least our harms way.  That would be fine by me.  

But I don’t trust them to self quarantine until the Covid-19 epidemic runs its course.

I don’t even trust them to wear masks.

Will they get vaccinated now that the Delta variant is rampaging across the country (and especially in states such as Florida and Louisiana with loudly anti vax populations)?  

So far many of them have ignored the carrot and what comes next is the stick.  Such as? Some experts suggest allowing health insurers to charge a penalty premium from the unvaccinated and why not? Insurers already charge smokers a penalty fee on the grounds that personal choices sometimes have horrendous health consequences and who better to pay for it than the person who made the choice?

Most who are sickened by the Delta variant are unvaccinated and the vast majority of serious illnesses are. Which means a price could be paid.

That might help motivate the unvaccinated to get on the script.

Meantime, a stampede of large employers has announced a vaccine requirement for employees, although most offer a loophole where an employee who wants to stay unvaccinated can provide frequent, negative Covid test results.  The federal government, WalMart, Disney, Google, Facebook have all joined the parade.

Another parade is forming of organizations that are pushing back their return to the office date for employees.  Many had been noodling on a September date.  As the Delta variant explodes across America, employers have torn up those orders and now are talking about a late winter 2022 return date, say February.  

Do you hear the sound of business travel plans coursing through the shredder?

To quote from Business Travel News, “Corporate travel’s return from its Covid-19-induced standstill will pick up speed throughout the remainder of 2021 but likely will remain significantly below pre-pandemic levels for at least another year, and some types of travel may never fully return, according to a new study from Deloitte.”

To quote from Finance & Commerce: “A year and a half of forgoing virtually all travel and doing business by video conference has led many business people to conclude that a lot of their previous travel wasn’t worth the time and toll on their bodies and mental state, on their families and the environment. That’s even before considering the role that travel played in transmitting the virus across continents.”

Unpack, those business trips you had been planning just a few weeks ago – and they looked very probable – now look like mirages that disappeared.  

Thank the unvaccinated in our midst.

As Dr. Anthony Fauci said on “Face the Nation,” “We have 100 million people in this country … who are eligible to be vaccinated, who are not vaccinated. We’ve really got to get those people to change their minds, make it easy for them, convince them, do something to get them to be vaccinated because they are the ones that are propagating this outbreak.”

Amen.

Europeans Are Smarter than Us: Here’s Proof

by Robert McGarvey

I never thought I would say this so loudly and emphatically but now I have to: Europeans are smarter than we are. Here the proof: Starting August 6 Italy will require proof of vaccination (a so called health pass) to gain entry to bars, restaurants, concerts, museums, and just about all places where large numbers congregate. To get the pass there must be evidence of at least one vaccination shot.

Also in August, France will enforce a similar requirement. France, understand, had had a reputation of being something of a vaccine skeptic but, obviously, that was before. Now the government is all in with vaccines.

Greece already has in place a vaccine requirement for those who want entry at indoor restaurants, cafes, bars, or movie theaters

Understand: neither country has issued a broad requirement that residents get vaccinated. But they have said that for those who choose not to get vaccinated there is a price to pay and that price involves exclusion from most social venues.

Bravo. Globally Covid-19 is on a rampage. It is absurd to think we are on the other side of this pandemic. We are still in the thick of it. Nine nations – nine, count ’em – claim that more than 50% of their people have gotten at least one shot of a vaccine. On that list are Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, United States, Saudi Arabia, Argentina.

Globally only around one in four of us has gotten at least one vaccine shot. That means 75% have gotten none.

Meantime it is plain that the leading vaccinations are effective – especially Pfizer and Moderna. There is no rational basis for being a vaccine skeptic.

And yet in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas – to point to the bottom three US states in terms of population percentage vaccinated – only about one third of the population is fully vaccinated and indications are that it will be very hard to persuade the vax deniers in those states to roll up a sleeve.

According to Politico, “many people…in the Southeast are turning down Covid-19 vaccines because they are angry that President Donald Trump lost the election and sick of Democrats in Washington thinking they know what’s best.”

I have no idea if that is right but what I do know is Covid is having its way in Alabama, where already 11,483 of them have died from Covid and more will, probably lots more.

Arkansas and Mississippi are doing no better.

But getting vax refusers vaccinated isn’t my mission. I have no suggestions about how to encourage them, especially when they are surrounded by sickness and death of neighbors, friends and family and that isn’t persuasion enough.

My mission is getting the US to implement a health pass a la France and Italy and Greece where those who are vaccinated get privileges that will be denied the vax refusers,

That seems a simple ask – but it is anything but.

Lots of US governors are implementing high barriers to prevent discrimination against the unvaccinated.

In Arizona, for instance, Governor Doug Ducey in June signed an executive order prohibiting public colleges and universities from requiring students to get vaccinated and they cannot require proof of vaccination to attend in person classes. What prompted that other than sheer stupidity? Ducey offered this feeble explanation: “The vaccine works, and we encourage Arizonans to take it. But it is a choice and we need to keep it that way,” said Gov. Ducey said in a statement. “Public education is a public right, and taxpayers are paying for it. We need to make our public universities available for students to return to learning. They have already missed out on too much learning.”

Ducey also signed an order banning “vaccine passports” at businesses.

The Arizona Covid-19 rate is ticking up right now. Rates are climbing so fast Ducey recently issued a statement urging residents to get vaccinated.

In Florida, meantime, Governor Ron DeSantis doubled down by signing into law a bill that bans businesses from seeking proof of vaccination by customers.

The Florida Covid-19 rate is really spiking upward, by the way, and if you are keeping lists of where not to go, put Florida high on that list.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbot signed into a law that bans businesses from requiring proof of vaccination by customers. It’s sweeping legislation with real teeth: “In addition to banning private businesses from requiring proof of vaccination, SB 968 provides that any business that does require proof of vaccination will not be permitted to engage in state contracts, and some state agencies that regulate different business sectors may screen for compliance with SB 968 in issuing licenses and permits,” explained a Texas law firm.

Covid-19 rates are climbing in Texas too.

Sigh.

And now you understand why – obviously – Europeans are smarter than we are. They are taking steps to safely re-open their economies to those who are vaccinated and, no, vaccination is no guarantee against infection but right now it is the very best thing we have. As I said before, I see no need to require vaccinations – as long as we are willing and able to exclude those who refuse the shot.

How to Make the Skies Friendlier

by Robert McGarvey

How many more articles must I read that document flamboyantly stupid and obnoxious behavior of passengers? The latest one is headlined: Unruly airplane passengers are straining the system for keeping peace in the sky.

What is wrong with these mask refusing idiots?

One fact: the Federal Aviation Administration is incompetent. Per WAPO: “despite launching a ‘zero-tolerance’ enforcement policy in January — amid a rise in conflicts often tied to mask requirements in the air — the agency said that as of mid-July it had ‘completely closed’ just seven cases.”

What is wrong with those idiots?

There are two things I know about all this and the first is that until something like peace returns to the skies we will not resume full tilt flying and among the holdouts I believe will be business travelers. Lots of companies just will not feel safe putting employees on planes where fellow travelers include dazed and drunk mask deniers who joyfully slug flight crew, attempt to open emergency doors, and pee in their seats. Nope, most companies will hesitate to push employees onto planes until tranquility is restored.

The second thing is that I am unconvinced government intervention is the best option.

Airlines for America and some nine other trade groups disagree. In a letter to the US Attorney General, they said, “The federal government should send a strong and consistent message through criminal enforcement that compliance with federal law and upholding aviation safety are of paramount importance,.”

Is this necessary?

To me, the surest route to better inflight behavior is for the carriers to ban unruly passengers. Instantly. Over 4000 passengers have been banned in the last year and more should be. Besides, the feds can still prosecute. In many cases they should.

But the airlines can act much faster and can issue a ban without much rigmarole.

That’s appealing.

Meantime. however, I do ponder exactly how bad it truly is the skies, despite the many unruly passenger stories I have read. As of July 13, the FAA said it had 3420 unruly passenger reports. Let’s say the real, unfiltered number ought to be 10,000. (I’m assuming many reports just didn’t get filed because the flight crew had other issues to deal with and the paperwork never got filled in.)

On July 18, 2021 passenger throughput reached 2,227,704. That’s just one day of flying. The 10,000 unruly passenger number over six months is a rounding error, an inconsequential number.

There is just a smidgen of unruly behavior in the air. Annoying, unnerving, perhaps frightening if it is on your flight? Undeniably. But odds are slender that it will happen.

Now go back and look closely at the FAA graph that charts the incidence of unruly behavior from 1995 to 2020. Today it may seem high but there were 50% more FAA investigations initiated into unruly behavior complaints in the period 2000 to 2004. Initially I wondered if this coincided with the ban on inflight smoking but, nope, that happened in stages from 1988 to 1990.

Of course there were the horrific 9-11-2001 flight incidents and afterwards there were unfortunate and wrong acts of hostility on airplanes towards many people who somehow seemed Middle Eastern. But enough to warrant a spike in unruly behavior filings and investigations?

Color me uncertain exactly what triggered so many FAA investigations in that period. But the lesson is that what we have now is not so much worse than what we have been seeing for many years.

But my more pressing concern is how to get today’s skies friendlier and the recipe seems simple: ban booze in coach (alcohol is intimately linked with bad inflight behavior and some carriers already 86 hooch) and encourage carriers to drop the flight ban on ever more passengers. and publicize bannings, FAA fines, and all manner of punitive actions against inflight miscreants. Make them understand that their actions will have consequences and at least some will play nicer.

Misbehaving at 30,000 feet has consequences – when it does, the misbehavior will decline.

That’s my bet.

If you agree forward a link to this column to any and all airline employees you know. They can give us friendlier skies and the key just is to be unfriendly to a handful of rude morons who are violating our right to peace in the skies.

This Has to Happen Before Business Travel Returns

The Travel Weekly headline screamed the obvious: “Vaccine hesitancy is slowing the reopening of the U.S.”

Just about daily I am seeing multiple reports and predictions auguring a brisk and quick return of business travel. Today for instance Bloomberg observes that “Business trips coming back faster than expected in the U.S.” And United’s CEO “voices optimism” including a prediction that business travel will rebound in the fall: “We expect the demand to pick up in September, October.”

Nonsense and the reason I say that is that the US vaccination rates have fallen off a cliff. As of today 48.4% of us are fully vaccinated and with the Delta variant multiplying that simply means we are unsafe in crowded places and, to me, that means just about any meeting or in person event I can imagine. Experts say that with the emergence of variants we need perhaps 85% of us to be fully vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Some say maybe we can get by with 70% vaccinated. But nobody thinks we will reach a 70% rate in every state this year. States like Mississippi, Louisiana, Idaho may never reach 70%.

As Travel Weekly noted. “Go back to April 21, and 40.2% of the U.S. population had received one vaccine dose, compared with 26.1% of Canada’s population and 20.1% of the population of the EU, to cite two prominent examples. As of July 4, however, the U.S. had only increased that figure to 54.5%, while Canada’s single-vaccination rate had soared to 68.6% and the EU was fast catching up to us at 52.1%, according to an analysis by Our World in Data. Barring an unforeseen turn, of course, Canada, EU countries and other wealthy nations will eclipse our fully vaccinated rate in due time.”

I told you we had fallen off a cliff. There now are plenty of vaccine shots available but there are too few willing arms.

Actions have consequences or, in this case, inaction has consequences. Those who decline to be vaccinated are in effect telling travelers to stay home.

And I think many of us will do exactly that. Or they will opt to go to destinations where the residents are more levelheaded.

Any way you parse the numbers, the reality is that anti vaxxers just are saying nope and a consequence is that travel just will not rebound as more of us are cautious about mingling with the unvaxxed.

About half the country’s states are simply unsafe. But CDC makes the data more useful by offering county level reports and, gulp, I find where I live, Maricopa County in AZ, has a “substantial” risk of community transmission and, worse, just 41.2% of us are fully vaccinated. That is why I still generally wear a mask when around others.

If I were you I would not come to Maricopa County – and I think many of us will be making decisions based on these data.

Personally I saw this vividly when, contemplating a possible trip to east Texas, I impulsively decided to look up the particular county I might go to. Just 27.4% of the people have gotten at least one shot. How about neighboring Arkansas? Only 34% of the residents are fully vaccinated, the Delta variant is galloping around the state and, no, I would not even think about going there.

Scratch that trip.

My prediction is that when confronted with a possible business trip we will include in our calculation a look at the state’s vaccination rate and also the particular county’s. See a high number and that nixes that trip.

The number’s look bad in much of the country. Just 47% of the residents of Clark County – where Las Vegas schemes about rebooting business meetings – have gotten even a single shot and that is nowhere near good enough. Erase Nevada off the go to list.

There are successes – Chicago for instance has been smart about vaccinations. So is San Antonio. But for every success, there is a failure.

This is mid 2021 reality. Vaccination rates will make our travel choices for us. Here’s a list of the most and least vaccinated states

And as more of us study such lists before booking a trip that will be very bad news for many destinations. Case in point: Fox 17 TV in Nashville asked this question: “With 10th lowest vaccination rate in US, is it responsible to tout tourism in Tennessee?” I can’t speak for leisure travelers but as regards business travelers my advice to Nashville is promote vaccines first, business travel second.

Or just look at the empty beds around town.