Travel

By Robert McGarvey

Ian Schrager (The Edition, The Public Hotel, et. al.) unquestionably is a hotel innovator but I will tell you this: His crystal ball is broken and he doesn’t know what is happening, or not happening, in tomorrow’s travel.

What triggers this is that I have recently been bombarded with emails and calls from friends and colleagues telling me I am wrong in my predictions that our travel lives after Covid-19 will be very different from what we had before. I am no pessimist – indeed I think great times are ahead, starting probably in 2022. But they will be different.

Where Schrager comes into the frame is in a speech he gave at the 2020 Boutique Lifestyle Digital Summit where he said that when the hospitality industry recovers it will return to “not a new normal, but the same normal we’ve always had.”

He added: “I don’t believe in paradigm shifts.”

An odd comment because the world of 20th century travel is a world of paradigm shifts, where the car made it possible to travel hundreds of miles, quickly and in comfort, the plane extended the range, the jet made intercontinental travel accessible and reasonably comfortable, and mass market hotels (think Holiday Inn) redefined who would stay in hotels, for what reasons.

I understand why my hospitality industry friends take comfort in Schrager’s viewpoint – a comfort zone is a frightening place to exit – but to my eyes those in hospitality who cling to old paradigms will perish. And some who recognize that things are different today just may find a path to a new prosperity.

Covid-19 has unquestionably triggered what will be enormous paradigm shifts in travel.

Three legs of a stool of change say this will be so and they are all coming together at the same time.

The duration of the Covid-19 crisis. It takes time to form new habits, new attitudes. We have that time with Covid-19. People are still dying. World Bank forecasts show 2.5 million dead globally by January 1, 2021. That’s more than double today’s 1 million death toll.

Yes, there are those in Washington DC who insist we will have vaccines available before year end (by all means, take mine; I won’t, not this year when the process has been tainted by toxic politics). No rational person thinks we will have any significant distribution in the US of a vaccine until mid 2021 at the soonest.

And then there is the rest of the world to vaccinate. When will that happen? And know that the US has said it will not participate in a WHO effort to distribute a vaccine globally – leaving that up to, I don’t know, maybe imaginary beings?

But if the rest of the world is sick, we will never be healthy. Not in today’s interconnected society.

Count me as saying Covid-19 will continue to hold back travel through 2021 and into 2022. Meaning we will have two years of training how to live a Covid-19 lifestyle and most of us already have adjusted to it. We may grumble but we wear masks, we don’t go to movie theaters, we don’t eat in restaurants (we do love take-out), we don’t fly in planes (especially not internationally) and we don’t stay in hotels. You know what, this “new normal” isn’t so bad and I know few people who really, truly want to get back to how travel was.

The Revenge of the Beancounter. Corporate bookkeepers have always hated business travel, which they have seen as a giant boondoggle that paid for golf, booze, steaks and to what end? Covid-19 just may have given them the ammo they need to dramatically lower travel budgets longterm.

That’s because most companies are learning that they can continue to make sales and develop relationships without travel and face to face meetings. For how many decades have I heard that if we don’t travel we can’t close deals? And yet deals are getting done even with what amounts to a near total ban on travel in many companies.

This has not gone unnoticed by the beancounters.

Face it, some business travel has indeed been important, maybe essential. But a lot happened because we always have done it.

The business world hasn’t ended even though a lot of travel has stopped.

There also is a simultaneous generational change. Baby Boomers may have grumbled about business travel but in our guts we kind of liked it and we prided ourselves on being “road warriors,” a label that glamorized bone crushing monotony and somehow made airline food seem, well, edible.

Don’t think Millennials and Gen Z are on board with this. They aren’t. They see much business travel for the drab, uninspiring slog that it is. Of course they will travel when there is a reason. But a lot of business travel has happened without reason and, as for these younger generations, hell no, they won’t go.

Sustainability and climate change. The elephant in the room when talking about travel is the negative impact it has on the environment, especially the impact of air travel. The era of flight shaming will only grow in volume and intensity as the economy heals and Covid-19 retreats.

The reality of climate change is undeniable, as is the damage and destruction it is bringing.

Millennials and Gen Z are especially concerned about longterm environmental impacts, understandably so. They will question the need and desirability of air travel and these will not be generations that hop on a plane to weekend in Paris or for a lunch meeting with a prospect in Tulsa.

Add up duration, frugality, and climate change and it’s a trifecta for change in how we travel. The new normal will be different. Very different indeed, and I applaud the Millennials and Gen Z who are creating this reality because they will have to live in it.

by Robert McGarvey

New medical research published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, issued by the CDC, starkly shows just how risky long haul international travel is and know this: the warning applies to front of the plane passengers too.

What the paper explores in detail is a 10 hour Vietnam Air flight from London to Hanoi (VN54) that resulted in 15 ill passengers and crew in addition to the virus carrier (referred to as case 1) who boarded the plane ill.

The authors detail how most passengers and crew, 217 in total, were successfully contacted post flight, once it became clear that this journey was in fact a “super spreader.”

15 out of 217, big deal? So you may think. But drill deeper into the facts. This was a disease outbreak largely limited to business class where case 1 sat: “Of the 15 persons with flight-associated cases, 12 (80%) had traveled in business class with case 1, and 2 travelers (cases 14 and 15) and 1 flight attendant (case 16) had been in economy class. Among persons in business class, the attack rate was 62% (13/21). Among passengers seated within 2 meters from case 1, which we approximated in business class to be <2 seats away, 11 (92%) were SARS-CoV-2–positive compared with 1 (13%) located >2 seats away. Of the 12 additional cases in business class, symptoms subsequently developed in 8 (67%); median symptom onset was 8.8 days (interquartile range 5.8–13.5) after arrival. None of the additional cases showed COVID-19 symptoms while on board VN54.”

If you were in business class on that flight you had a two in three chance of landing with Covid-19. If you were actually near case 1, you almost certainly were going to get Covid-19. That is fact. That also is a grim prospect.

In business class!

How did the disease spread? Aerosol or droplet transmission, said the authors.

As for the disease carrier, she is a 27-year-old businesswoman from Vietnam, who had traveled from her London base to Italy with her sister in February. The sister was later confirmed to be positive for the virus. She later traveled with that sister back to Italy and also to Paris for Fashion Week. On February 29, she had a sore throat and cough. On March 1, she boarded VN54. She was ill throughout the flight. After landing, the disease progressed and on March 5 she sought treatment at a Hanoi hospital.

The study authors challenge the safety protocols advocated by international aviation carriers. Right now, the international flight experts say the risk of inflight transmission is very low and the only safety measure they recommend is a face mask. They explicitly do not endorse blocking middle seats. The paper says hogwash. “Our findings challenge these recommendations. Transmission on flight VN54 was clustered in business class, where seats are already more widely spaced than in economy class, and infection spread much further than the existing 2-row (36) or 2 meters (37) rule recommended for COVID-19 prevention on airplanes and other public transport would have captured.”

Meantime, airports, from LAX to Honolulu, have been testing and/or busily installing thermal cameras – but what if they simply do not provide useful information? The authors wrote: “thermal imaging and self-declaration of symptoms have clear limitations, as demonstrated by case 1, who boarded the flight with symptoms and did not declare them before or after the flight.”

And with many passengers who became ill it took eight days for symptoms to show. So much for checks on incoming passengers at airports.

Just maybe long flights are simply dangerous. Wrote the authors, “long flights…can provide conditions for superspreader events. It has been hypothesized that a combination of environmental factors on airplanes (humidity, temperature, air flow) can prolong the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in flight cabins.”

What do we need to do to stay safer in the air? There is no silver bullet. The study authors offer three prescriptions: wear face masks and wash your hands often. Lastly, maintain physical distance before and after boarding. Do those three things and, suggest the authors, we are doing what we can.

But very probably the safest course is step number 4, do not fly long haul unless it is absolutely necessary.

by Robert McGarvey

The Chicago Sun-Times headline grabbed my attention: “Palmer House foreclosure points to industry’s trouble.” The last big conference I attended was there, the Finastra Community Markets fintech show in October 2019, and I had marveled at the hugeness of Chicago’s second biggest hotel (1641 guest rooms and with public spaces to spare). And now the pandemic may be shutting its doors.

It’s not alone. Other big names are teetering. In Manhattan it took a judge to stop a foreclosure proceeding against The Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side.

And it’s not just storied hotels. In Miami Beach the 68 key Variety Hotel just went on the market for $37.5 million, in response to a lawsuit filed by a holder of a $25 million loan. The lienholder said there had been no payments since April.

There will be many more foreclosures. The American Hotel & Lodging Association says one in four hotels is behind on its mortgage payments and, honestly, there is no happy news in the near future. Nobody sees a quick rebound in business travel and leisure travel, to the extent its showing some life, seems to gravitate towards small motels (no elevators! No public spaces of any size!).

Financial reporter Michael Taylor, writing in the Beaumont Enterprise newspaper, said “This is nothing short of catastrophic. Nobody knows how long the travel and tourism industry will suffer, so nobody knows how much worse hotel mortgage delinquencies will get. Without massive government intervention, we will see an extraordinary number of hotel foreclosures in the coming year.”

Even putatively well-heeled hotel owners are looking at a slide into financial doom. Reported the New York Times: “Thomas J. Barrack Jr., the billionaire investor and major donor to President Trump, has run into an unexpected patch of red ink thanks to the pandemic: He has struggled to keep up with payments on $1.97 billion in Wall Street debt he used to buy a collection of more than 160 hotels.”

Monty Bennett, another plunger, has reportedly stopped paying on the $2.6 billion in debt he took on as he built out his Ashford collection of hotels.

Many others are in similar, dire financial shape and that has triggered an intense lobbying campaign to seek to pry many billions in federal aid out of Washington, D.C. The White House has not found a path for it to offer direct assistance and what also is clear is that the enabling legislation is not coming out of Congress without a huge quid pro quo that would put substantial monies into small businesses and the pockets of middle and lower income Americans. It is hard to see that legislation coming out of Washington DC in this election year.

Hotel employee labor union UNITE Here is unenthusiastic about a federal bail out. It said: “We are concerned that a bailout of hotel CMBS [commercial mortgage backed security] borrowers would mainly benefit large private equity companies and real estate investment trusts, and would have absolutely no effect on hotel employment levels.”

Face facts: there just are way too many hotels, for this year, the next, and the one after that. It’s just time to hunt for alternative uses and there are many. In Maricopa County in Arizona, some hotels already have been put to use as homeless shelters. Many more should be. The collapsed economy has put millions more on the streets and empty hotels are a solution.

There are other, creative uses for hotels.

Some colleges and universities are buying out hotels to use to expand their pools of dorm rooms in a socially distant era. That too is smart.

Some resorts could be adapted to serve as nursing homes.

Let your imagination fly. Accept that maybe one in four hotels are superfluous and should be put to alternative uses by owners who cannot make a go of it as hoteliers. The structures don’t have to be – shouldn’t be – torn down. But it is a waste of money to put federal funds to use propping up enterprises that are zombies, that is, hotels and resorts that are unlikely to become going concerns in any foreseeable future.

That is the proverbial good money after bad. Let’s shut them as hotels – and give them new life where they are needed.

By Robert McGarvey

It’s not just airplanes and airports where tempers run high over commandments to wear masks. Hotels increasingly are the prime battlefield.

That’s partly because the big four US carriers – Delta, United, American, Southwest – all have come around to requiring masks most of the time.  Yes, they initially had hesitation but then a sanity prevailed centered around the realization that airlines live in a no masks, no passengers universe, that is, without a stated and largely enforced mask policy, airlines were facing acres of empty seats for months to come.

Hotels have talked the talk of requiring masks – but do they really walk the walk?

Understand: guests want masks in hotels. A survey for the American Hotel & Lodging Association found 87% of us want masked hotel employees and 85% want guests to be required to wear masks in pubic spaces.

That’s in line with the CDC which has loudly asked us to wear masks to slow the spread of Covid-19.  

The big hotel operators – Marriott, IHG, Hyatt, Hilton, Best Western – all formally mandate masks for guests.  But face reality: a mandate from corporate HQ is one thing. Compliance on the ground in tens of thousands of scattered hotels is entirely another thing.

Evidence mounts that mask refusal is not uncommon – how could we expect otherwise when the president is a mask refuser who sometimes even harasses mask wearers?

In hotels, tensions get raised on elevators, airport shuttles, restaurants, lobbies and also in the hotel gyms that are open.  

I expect tensions to keep rising because there is a vocal minority that believes they have a right not to wear a mask.  They have no such right but there’s really no way to argue them out of their entrenched position.

Meantime, the rest of us have rising reasons to wear masks and to want to see those around us compliant. That’s because the incidence of the virus keeps multiplying and now in fact seems to be ticking up again.  We are approaching 190,000 US deaths and known infections now number 6.2 million.  This virus is nowhere near under control in the US.  And even if a vaccine miraculously is ready for distribution in late fall, the vast majority of us won’t take it, according to pollsters.  I am all for vaccinations and in fact have already gotten this year’s flu shot but count me as a Covid vaccine skeptic.  Rushed work plus political meddling is a recipe for a deadly vaccine.  Count me out, at least until maybe 9 months of use have elapsed on any vaccine released this year.  The majority of Americans seem to think similarly. That means the impact of any vaccination, assuming there is one later this year, will be small.

So we are back to needing masks and sanitary procedures (hand washing for instance) because that is all we have in our arsenal.

Some hotels, too, now believe that guests don’t give a hoot about star ratings – but they are focused on the emerging sanitation ratings.  There’s probably truth to that.  I don’t care nearly as much about the luxury metrics that star ratings seek to capture as I do about how my health might be impacted by a hotel stay.

Which brings us back to the willful non-compliers. How are hotels handling them? Chip Rogers, CEO of AH&LA, told Hotel News Now: “Right now, hotels are (navigating) it on an individual, case-by-case basis, similar to what they would do for smoking in the lobby when that was not allowed or, back in the old days, it was ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service.’ Those types of things, hotels have always dealt with.”

One problem: most of the staff is untrained when it comes to dealing with rude guests who choose to endanger the health of other guests by ignoring commonsense rules requiring masks in public places.

What frontline staff needs is a helping hand from management. When the Delta c-suite weighed in to support mask wearing – and to threaten non compliant passengers with a “no fly” penalty exclusion – the flight attendants got exactly the help they needed.

Other airlines followed and, by now, according to The Points Guy, 877 have been put on do not fly lists by seven US carriers. Delta leads with 270 banned. (American and Southwest did not provide counts.)

Similar should happen at the big, branded hotels.  Where is Marriott’s do not stay list targeting non mask wearers? Where is Hilton’s? Admittedly, hotels don’t have as much clout as carriers (pity the Atlantan who lands on Delta’s list!). But there’s a definite sting in simply being banned from booking at any of a chain’s hotels.

Listen up, c-suiters: we are not staying in hotels if we don’t feel safe and if you don’t insist on mask wearing we won’t feel safe.

The health of your industry hinges on the health of the guests.

AH&LA’s Rogers gets this. As he told Hotel News Now, “What is important for the recovery of our industry, are those folks who are contemplating whether to book a stay in a hotel, and once they know that face coverings in public spaces are mandatory, you’re going to see the confidence level of consumers rise on this … that will ultimately lead to more guests and business activity.”

Mask up for our health and for the health of the hotel business.

By Robert McGarvey

Think twice – maybe thrice – before clicking post on that image of you in Merida with an icy margarita in one fist and a carnitas taco in the other.

Be similarly circumspect before posting that image of you sitting in the Ephesus stadium looking holy.

Or maybe you are in Belarus living out a LeCarre fantasy, dodging Karlas pro and anti government and you want to memorialize that moment with a Facebook post.

All three countries are on the short list of international destinations heartily welcoming US passport holders and, yes, it’s a list dotted with destinations you probably don’t want to go to (Tunisia anyone?).  

At least there are places you can get in on hols but what you probably don’t want to do is publicly brag about any of this. Because we now have entered an era of travel shaming, a status corroborated by articles on the topic in both the New York Times and the Washington Post.  Even trade pub Travel Weekly shrugs that travel shaming is on the rise.

The basic idea: there simply is something wrong about non essential travel in a global pandemic that already has killed 850,000 of us, will likely kill over one million by Thanksgiving, and where there is no end to the sickness and death in sight.

Add in the economic ruination in much of the globe – and especially in the US which has an economy that is the worst US economy in 90 years – and where hundreds of millions lack the money for proper shelter, medical care, and nutrition, it just seems the worst kind of flaunting to travel to luscious locations and brag about it in social media.

Sure, travel has always been about conspicuous consumption, a term coined by American economist Thorstein Veblin, and simply put means buying stuff to impress the Joneses and Smiths. You know about the dreaded 1950s vacation slideshows. But now social media – especially Facebook and Instagram – have made it terribly easy to post pix, even videos, from trips and we have responded by posting acres of the stuff.  

But now is not the time.  Post and you just may trigger a tidal wave of acrimony, accusing you of being an ugly American and worse. Indeed, two thirds of the 4000 of us surveyed in June by Ketchum, a PR agency, said they would judge travel content posted before such a trip was considered safe, according to the New York Times.   

Half added they would self censor their posts to avoid travel shaming.

And just a year ago we were merrily posting our trips and expecting kudos from our neighbors and friends.

What a difference a year makes.

But there was a hint this might happen, even pre Covid 19.  About a year ago flygskam entered the public conversation and that’s flight shaming, a movement embraced by Greta Thunberg, a  Swedish teenager. The pitch is that the eco consequences of non essential flying – global warming for instance – make it justified to pillory those who fly. And so posts about long trips suddenly were met not with envy but with calumny and shaming.

There’s now a doubling down on the wrongness of non essential travel and thus we have entered the era of travel shaming.

The more exotic and distant the trip, the more the travel shame. Live in Phoenix and post pix of the Grand Canyon and you just may escape travel shame.  It’s an instate national park – outdoors! 

But post photos of you cavorting on the beaches in Brazil and buckle up because the brickbats are heading your way.

What’s wrong with distant travel?  Partly it’s driven by a belief that our non essential travel endangers locals in the region we travel too – and then endangers those in our environs when we return home. The CDC puts it plainly: “Travel increases your chance of getting and spreading COVID-19. Staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others from COVID-19.“

Partly too it’s just that a lot of us are plain angry about lots of things – so why not diss an acquaintance about an exotic, non essential trip?

And really there’s also the reality that non essential travel is, uh, unnecessary so just don’t do it right now.

What are your choices? Don’t travel and avoid the shaming potential.

Travel, post and suck up the abuse. You’ll survive it.

Or – and this is my preference – just don’t post images of the trip.  I rarely have even pre Covid-19.  You’ve read the stories, social media posts bring thieves to your door. I have long believed that’s true. So I rarely have posted personal travel photos. I didn’t pre Covid. I don’t in the pandemic. And I won’t afterwards.

I have not traveled in the Covid-19 era but if I had, you wouldn’t know about it.

Color me travel shaming free.

By Robert McGarvey

I applauded when I saw the headline: “Marriott International faces class action suit over mass data breach.”

The lede sets the table: “Hotel group Marriott International is facing a class action lawsuit in London’s high court from millions of customers, who are seeking compensation after their personal details were stolen in one of the world’s largest data breaches.”

There’s nothing new here. Hoteliers suck at data security. From Trump to White Lodgings, the roll of shame grows louder.  Hotel News Now offers a catalog of the worst offenses going back to 2008 when Wyndham suffered the first of what became three breaches extending into 2010.  

Give a hotel your credit card and you put your finances in jeopardy. Hand over a debit card – with its weaker consumer protections – and you have entered a high risk zone.

So it is about time that consumers are banding together in a class action suit to seek to exact a reputational pound of flesh, plus some actual lucre, from Marriott. The source of the breach is Starwood.  Reported Hotel News Now: “For approximately 327 million of these [breached] guests, the information includes some combination of name, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number, Starwood Preferred Guest (“SPG”) account information, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure information, reservation date, and communication preferences. For some, the information also includes payment card numbers and payment card expiration dates.”

What’s stunning is that the breach appears to have gone undetected from 2014 to 2018.

Was no one minding the store? Obviously, uh, no.

Alas, as I read about the suit it seems to involve only guests from England and Wales.

Even so, some of us who cannot join the suit still might want to savor Schadenfreude and watch the action. The Internet makes this easy.

This is 2020 so of course there is a Twitter feed about the suit.  

And there’s a website with plenty of information about the suit and the breach that caused it.

Want to be updated on the status of the suit? Here’s where to register.

Michael Bywell, one of the lawyers involved in filing the suit, explained the why of the suit: “Over a period of several years, Marriott International failed to take adequate technical or organisational measures to protect millions of their guests’ personal data which was entrusted to them. Marriott International acted in clear breach of data protection laws specifically put in place to protect data subjects.”

Martin Bryant, who brought the action, added: “I hope this case will raise awareness of the value of our personal data, result in fair compensation for those of us who have fallen foul of Marriott’s vast and long-lasting data breach, and also serve notice to other data owners that they must hold our data responsibly.”

The sad bit is that exactly the same could and should be said about many other hotel management companies because indifference to data security is the industry norm.  Go back and look again at the Hotel News Now database of breaches.  It is only a minor exaggeration to say that if you stayed in a US hotel in the past decade, very probably you are a victim of a data breach.

I wish I could say that because of the publicity over breaches, the fines, and now the lawsuits, hotels are safer today.

But they aren’t. If anything, in the pandemic with the resulting collapse in bookings and revenues, the fear is that many hotels and management companies are cutting back on data security.  And criminals live to exploit weaknesses.

For some years I have said that, sadly, protection against data breaches when traveling is on us.  That’s all the more so now.

That means giving hotels the least amount of information possible.  If asked for information you don’t believe they have a valid need for, lie.

Always use credit cards with the smallest possible balances.

Monitor loyalty accounts with a regularity that suits your balance.  I never check my Bonvoy account (an Amex plat perk) because I have not had an eligible stay. But if I had many thousands of points I’d check weekly.

Assume that when you travel, your data may be hacked. It could be the restaurant where you eat that is breached.  It could be a nation state breaches your cellphone. 

But in my eyes it’s hotels that pose the biggest security risks.

It’s dangerous on the road, my friends, act accordingly.

By Robert McGarvey

How screwed are you if you own a timeshare in the pandemic – and know we probably will be in this for at least another year.  Maybe longer.  Maybe until 2024.  

Timeshares aren’t cheap. The average cost of a one week timeshare (pre pandemic) was north of $22,000.  Many also involved an annual maintenance fee that runs on average about $1000 and which you pay whether you use the property or not. In some cases, too, timeshare owners are hit with special assessments to cover extraordinary repairs and upgrades.

And this year some of the very most preferred timeshare destinations – think Kuai, Maui, the Big Island, Oahu – have effectively been closed to tourists and no one now sees that changing before September 1 in the case of Hawaii.  Besides, who wants to get on an airplane and go a long distance this year?  Not many of us.  

I’ve long been a timeshare skeptic.  This year, maybe more than ever. With tens of millions of us out of work and uncounted millions more working reduced hours for fewer bucks, a lot of timeshare owners are thinking that, yes, they are due a timeshare vacation this year but they are in no mood for a vacay and may not have the dough for airplane tickets. To say nothing about their not wanting to pay the annual maintenance fee. 

Look, if you own a timeshare,  I come not to mock you. And I know it is very hard to unload a timeshare – with a cottage industry of timeshare exit firms, many of which don’t do much good.

One positive note: the big names in timeshares (the usual suspects such as Marriott, Hyatt, Wyndham, Disney) all have offered some flexibility when it comes to booking and cancellations this year. The Points Guy ably sums up the high and low points for the main players here.  

Cancellation policies also are a moving target. Here’s a Marriott Vacation Club update. Very probably every other major operator has issued updates, possibly multiple times, because the Covid-19 pandemic is playing out in ways most in travel just did not anticipate (and with far more devastating impacts than had been anticipated, such as closures of state and even national borders to most travelers, timeshare owners very much on the excluded list). 

Wyndham has what looks to be a very fair cancellation policy: “If you need to cancel an upcoming reservation with an arrival date through August 16, 2020, you can do so online without penalty up to 24 hours prior to your scheduled arrival. Your vacation points, housekeeping credits, and reservation transaction(s) will be returned to your account within 72 hours.”

Hyatt timeshare owners can get updated info here.  

Yours is with a smaller player? Good luck.  Every situation will be ad hoc, no two companies will offer the same deals, and you probably are advised to say a novena before calling.  I mean neither to be cynical nor pessimistic – but this indeed is a situation that may call for praying for a special dispensation to help you navigate rocky waters.

Probably you can’t end your miseries by selling the timeshare. The ABC-15 TV headline (Phoenix) tells the story: Pandemic brings surge of people looking to dump timeshares — and scams.  

What this piece – and many other stories – tell is the waters are full of hustlers and crooks who will promise desperate timeshare owners an exit for a fee…and they pocket the payment but frequently do nothing.  The unwitting timeshare owner often has a few months of thinking him or herself free of the albatross – until demand letters seeking annual fees start arriving and that owner is still on the hook

Even ARDA-Resort Owners’ Coalition, an association of timeshare operators, has loudly warned timeshare owners to be on the alert for scammers. 

There just is no easy out for a timeshare owner who no longer wants it.  

Which brings us to good news for non timeshare owners: you just may be able to score a terrific bargain renting a timeshare for a vacation week, very possibly scoring an apartment for less than a hotel room in the same town could cost.  Some timeshare owners just don’t want to use their week this year – understandably – and so they are seeking to cut their losses by renting the unit out.  That can be a win-win.

And you know what: you will get to see, first hand and personal, exactly what’s involved in a timeshare.  And if you like it?  There are many websites selling timeshares put on the market by owners who want to unload them – eBay has a brisk market – and frequently you will find discounts of 50% and more off sticker price. Word of advice from timeshare veterans is stick with the names you know and, very possibly, you will score a terrific deal.

Especially now.

By Robert McGarvey

The nation’s airlines are at a crossroads – indeed, confronting an existential threat – that will decide their near-term fate. Will they live…or die?

It is all about the face mask.

Understand: a face mask probably will not protect the wearer.  What it does is lessen the odds that the wearer will infect others.  A mask protects others around you.

By now, most US carriers say that if you refuse to wear a mask, you will be kicked off the plane and may even be banned.  Delta in fact says it has banned 120 flyers for refusing to comply: “‘Countless studies and medical experts have advised us that masks are an essential response to the virus that will help us reduce transmission,’ Delta CEO Ed Bastian told employees Thursday in an internal memo obtained by CBS News. ‘That’s why we’re taking it very seriously. We’ve already banned 120 flyers from future travel with Delta for refusing to wear masks on board.’”

Delta has also taken steps to define what is an acceptable mask (ones with exhaust valves don’t cut it, for instance). That deserves applause.

Especially because you can get Covid-19 on a plane. Indisputable fact.

And then there is the persistent problem of self-centered, obstreperous flyers who insist they have a right not to wear a mask and loudly refuse to do so.

In some cases, they delay the flight and inconvenience every other passenger.  A Delta flight from Detroit to Atlanta actually turned around and returned to Detroit when a couple passengers refused to comply.  

An American flight caved in when a passenger refused to wear a mask – he cited his alleged HIPAA rights – and then the situation went into flagrant absurdity. Let Travel Pulse tell what ensued: “The aircraft’s captain did speak with [the non-compliant passenger], who said the crew attempted to kick him off the plane, but he remained in his seat. The captain then made an announcement over the public address system saying that any passengers who did not feel safe could get off the plane and re-book their travel without a change fee.”

Wait: so if I am a passenger who feels my health is compromised because a passenger believes he has a right to not wear a mask I can dramatically inconvenience myself by getting off the plane, throwing my schedule into turmoil, and, joy, I won’t have to pay a change fee.

If this were an Ionesco play I’d laugh. It’s not. It’s our lives and this is maddening.

Understand this, American Airlines: If that happened to me I wouldn’t want to change flights, I would demand a refund and I would use every tool in my personal tool box to collect my money.  

Just don’t fly American: that’s the plain take-away.

Understand this too: Airlines have an absolute right to refuse service to any who refuse to comply with their rules unless the person is in a protected class.  Doesn’t that mean people with health conditions that preclude mask wearing? Definitely.  But that does not mean all who claim a qualifying health condition have one.

United, for instance, asks passengers who believe they have a valid condition that makes it impossible to wear a mask to contact the airline in advance and to be prepared to document the condition. Delta tells such passengers to be prepared to go through a “special screening.”  

Which brings us to the existential problem: how many of us will just decide not to fly because so many seem determined to flaunt face mask requirements – and that endangers us. If we feel our health is significantly jeopardized by flying, we won’t, it’s that simple.

Even WHO acknowledges the risks are real.  

There are many more people who want to be mask compliant than who are determined to refuse to wear a mask.  Drive away the mask wearers and that is a fast highway to economic oblivion for carriers.

Why doesn’t the White House step in and order mask wearing in airports and on planes?  That’s exactly what the carriers have hoped would happen. Ditto flight attendants.

But that hope is fanciful.  Trump has sought to duck and weave around Covid-19 from the beginning – even denying it amounted to a significant health threat – and it is highly improbable that he would demand mask wearing on planes. Yes, he backtracked from his mask wearing refusal and personally wore a mask at least once in public and in fact said mask wearing in public places is a good idea. But do not expect him to flatly insist that all of us who can must wear masks on planes and other modes of public conveyance.  He won’t go there.

Not even if this refusal to act endangers the very future of the major US carriers and not even if it endangers the health of millions of us who fly and may find ourselves on a plane with a bozo who refuses to wear a mask because he/she has a “right” not to.

A few short sentences from Trump could stop all this.

Meantime, I plan to continue my flying abstinence.  What about you?

By Robert McGarvey

Ask Chip Rogers, CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, when business travel will rebound and what he tells reporters is that a year from now it will be at 70% of normal, assuming a best case scenario.

He does not expect large meetings, conferences, conventions to rebound to more than 50% before early next year.

Color me skeptical, on both scores.

Color me deeply skeptical that it makes any sense whatsoever to assume a best case scenario when the White House’s handling of the corona virus has been about as bad as any dystopian novelist could have imagined on an especially dour day. There is no reason to expect it to improve, if only because the White House is heavily invested in downplaying the crisis.  That’s no way to succeed with a health emergency and it won’t work this time.

When I talk with business travel experts – including industry senior executives – they always tell me that business travel will return, including large meetings, when a vaccine is available and has been widely distributed. Yes, there is good news out of Oxford University in this regard.  But don’t be too hasty to hold celebrations.  Prof. Sarah Gilbert, from the University of Oxford, told the BBC: “There is still much work to be done before we can confirm if our vaccine will help manage the Covid-19 pandemic, but these early results hold promise.”

What early Oxford research is showing is that their vaccine is safe enough to administer to people. So far, so good.

What the research has not yet shown is if the vaccine can prevent people from getting sick with the virus or spreading it.

Assuming all goes well, even the Professor Panglosses among us acknowledge it will be early 2021 at the very soonest before there is wide availability of the vaccine. So don’t expect a rush to resume business travel and definitely not large meetings and conferences. According to trade publisher Northstar, “Just four weeks ago, 40 percent of meeting planners expected to hold rescheduled events during this calendar year, according to the Pulse Survey’s June 17 findings. With increasing uncertainty and rapidly rising COVID-19 cases in the U.S., that number has declined to 25 percent, per the latest results. More than half (56 percent) are now eyeing the first half of 2021 as the earliest time frame for rescheduled meetings, while 17 percent are pushing dates into the latter half of 2021 or beyond.”

The logistics of shoving out hundreds of millions of doses of a new vaccine just in the US – billions worldwide – are daunting. Smart money is betting that Q3 2021 is when vaccines will be plentiful. Sooner may happen but it just is not a realistic prediction.

The big, ugly fly in this ointment is that unknown but probably large numbers of us will refuse to get vaccinated.  The anti-vaxxer movement has not taken a holiday in the age of corona virus.  A recent poll found that 70% of us said sure, they’d get vaccinated.  15% said definitely not. Another 12% said probably not. And 2% had no opinion.

An AP poll produced an even more disconcerting number: just 1 in 2 of us said sign me up for a vaccine. The AP added: “The new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found 31% simply weren’t sure if they’d get vaccinated. Another 1 in 5 said they’d refuse.”

Either way, there are a lot of hardcore anti-vaxxers: 1 in every 4 or 5 of us. That means one in every four or five people on the plane you climb aboard may have abstained, one in four or five around the convention lunch table may have said no thanks, one in four or five at the happy hour may be ready to swill free wine but unwilling to get vaccinated.

And you will have no way of knowing because I’d say it is highly unlikely that we will see airlines and meeting organizers and conference hosts requiring a vaccination certificate before granting entry.

In a country that cannot mandate wearing face masks in indoor public setting such as stores there is no reason to expect a federal mandate that thou shall get vaccinated unless there is a compelling and provable health reason not to. There will be no mandate.

Which means 20 to 25% of us just won’t bother with the vaccine, which will keep the disease flourishing for some time and, again, nobody presently knows what immunity the vaccine will in fact deliver just as nobody knows what immunity having had the disease and survived is gained.  

One third of the world’s population fell ill in the 1918-19 flu pandemic, about 500 million people. Maybe 50 million died.

We have many millions of sicknesses ahead of us, many tens of thousands of additional deaths in the US alone.

Whatever slim optimism I once had that business travel would rebound soon is on hold.  Ask me in Q3 2021 if you should start thinking about business travel in general and large meetings in particular. Until then, put the carryon bag in storage, stop checking loyalty status in travel programs, and learn to love Zoom because it is how we will be getting around for many more months to come.

By Robert McGarvey

New research from MIT statistics professor Arnold Barnett makes a powerful argument that flying with an empty middle seat just about halves the risk of contracting Covid-19 inflight.

Frequent flyers on American and United, neither of which commits to keeping middle seats empty, might want to send an FYI link to the study to the CEOs of those airlines.

Or maybe just fly Delta or Southwest, both of which are keeping middle seats empty, which is what my plan is.  Ditto JetBlue. Yes, I have historically given most of my traffic to United (nee Continental) and next most to American but no more. Fly carriers that understand your health is a priority.

As for why American and United give us the proverbial finger, I have no idea. They are not exactly flying at full capacity these days. Delta, for instance, said in a July earnings call that “For the September quarter, we expect our seats available for sale, which accounts for 60% load factor cap, will be 20% to 25% of last year’s level, up from 10% in the June quarter.”

Other carriers are recording similarly anemic numbers.

Which makes it all the more puzzling that American, United, et. al. are saying they won’t commit to blocking middle seats even though they have to know that it is health concerns (fears) that are keeping us out of the Unhealthy Skies.

And an empty middle seat dramatically ups our chances of staying healthy on a flight, per Barnett.

Here are Professor Barnett’s findings:”Recent research results and data generate the approximation that, when all coach seats are full on a US jet aircraft, the risk of contracting Covid-19 from a nearby passenger is about 1 in 4,300 as of early July 2020. Under the ‘middle seat empty’ policy, that risk falls to about 1 in 7,700.”

Barnett also tells us how likely we are to die from Covid-19 if we fly: “These estimates imply Covid-19 mortality risks to uninfected air travelers are considerably higher than those associated with plane crashes but probably less than one in 500,000.”

The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 34 million, said Barnett.

Right now, the only effective tools we have in fighting Covid-19 are social distancing and masks or shields.  That’s why the empty middle seat matters.

When a person is crammed in the middle seat next to you (or you are the one crammed into the middle seat). You are literally, not figuratively, cheek by jowl and elbow to elbow with the next passenger.  Their breath will envelop you and yours will envelop them.

The risks are obvious.

Understand, by the way, that Barnett’s math presupposes that all passengers wear face masks.  He explains why this matters: “a meta-analysis in The Lancet estimated that mask wearing cuts transmission risk given contagiousness from 17.4% to 3.1%, a reduction of 82%.”  Not everybody wears a mask, of course, so remember that stat to throw out at any self-focused bozos on planes who want to go maskless.

A foundation for Barnett’s calculation is this: “transmission risk given contagion is about 13% assuming direct physical contact and drops by ½ for each meter further apart.”

Distance apart matters on a plane. Social distancing, say it loud, say it proud.

By the way, Barnett also notes there is a way for carriers to drive risk to zero even in coach: “If there were (say) a layer of plexiglass between the two [passengers], then transmission risk would essentially drop to zero.”

That’s right: nil.

While you are emailing carrier CEOs you might ask what their plans are for installing plexiglas shields.   Sure, there has been talk in the frequent flyer universe of plexiglas in coach but I am unaware of any serious discussion at the carrier level.  Have they tossed around the idea in strategy sessions, sure.  But with as much seriousness as college kids in a dorm smoking pot in 1970 seriously contemplated trying to occupy the White House. Talk is cheap. In dorms and corporate HQs.

Barnett admits to a glitch in his calculations: There’s no easy way to factor in flight duration as a magnifier of risk.  The professor noted: “One might expect that the risk of infection would vary with the duration of the Flight, perhaps in proportion to the time spent with a contagious person. Unfortunately, it is unclear how to incorporate flight time into the risk analysis.”

He’s right though: intuitively, it seems probable that duration matters and longer flights heighten risks of infection.  But we just don’t know how to do the math to quantify that.

Back up a few steps, however, you may be thinking: aren’t the odds of 1 in 7700 pretty low – and therefore why am I afraid of flying?  You bet it’s low.

But you don’t want to get Covid-19.  About 580,000 people worldwide are estimated to have died from it.  This is a disease that will go down in history with the Spanish flu of 1918 (not 1917, by the way).  It’s big, it’s bad.

I’ve had it, I survived, but I know you don’t want to risk it.

The difference between 1 in 4300 and 1 in 7700 is enormous.

Don’t fly American or United. Play the odds. That’s the smarter, safer bet.