Cruising 101: The How To Guide

By Robert McGarvey

Horrors, the horrors. I read the recent JoeSentMe “first cruise” column by David Danto – “More Bruisin’ Than Cruisin’” – and my sympathy is profound. He says of his ship that it was “well – honestly – a toilet.  I use that term not only because of how bad the ship’s condition was, but because of the constant smell everywhere.  Our teeny, tiny cabin was so small that you could only get out of the bed on one side. It had worn and water-damaged walls, inoperable lights, and its one electrical outlet was as far away from the bed as you could get.”

Ouch.

There are ways to avoid such a fate – we’ll get into that momentarily – but, first, know that for around a dozen years I wrote an Ombudsman column for Porthole Cruise Magazine and my email box overflowed with complaints that often ran similar to Danto’s.

It happens on cruises.

It happens way too often and it costs people both money and vacation days.

I have been lucky. It has never happened to me and I’ve been on a lot of cruises, at all price points, everything from ultra luxury to an old ship that operated as a “semester at sea” vessel for a non descript college and when school wasn’t in session they ran cruises on it.  (It was dated but actually quite pleasant.) I’ve also sailed a little known Chilean small ship down the Chile coast to Patagonia, a superyacht up the Napa River (it was supposed to also go into the Petaluma River but there wasn’t enough water), and just recently an ultra luxury vessel (roughly $1000 per head per night) from Montreal to New York, in late October and, yes, it snowed in Quebec City, hit freezing in Montreal, and rained torrentially in Bar Harbor.

How to avoid an unpleasant cruise? Here’s the advice I gave Porthole readers. It’s what I do when planning a cruise.

Start by researching, in some depth, the ship you will sail on.  We all think, oh, the ship doesn’t matter, we’ll spend all our time in ports. The ship matters.  Crucially. You will eat most meals on it. You will sleep on it. You will shower in it. You may use the fitness center, get a spa treatment, possibly play blackjack for money (I never have on a ship but I have seen many who do). You may also get sea sick (I also have never done this but I have an abnormal constitution in that regard).

How does price impact ship accomodations? More expensive ships have bigger cabins – usually much bigger bathrooms – and much more attentive staffs (who are better trained and often speak better English).  But I’ve had a pleasant cruise on a budget priced Carnival ship. I can’t promise that spending more insures a better cruise, just as I won’t say a cheaper cruise is worse. Go back, read the reviews and keep reading.  Ships do vary in character every bit as much as hotels do, even hotels under the same marque. Research before booking pays dividends.

Afraid of sea sickness?  Danto vividly related his personal sufferings and that’s a terrible thing.  But there are steps to take to possibly avoid it.

Research the ship and sea sickness. Small vessels generally have more of it.  Cabins in midship generally suffer less. Newer ships generally have better stabilizers. But if sea sickness is a personal problem, buy OTC meds and/or wrist bands. If it’s really an issue, get a prescription from a doc at home before sailing.  All cruise ships have on board physicians by the way but office hours generally are limited and while some freely dispense anti nausea meds, others don’t.  I recommend dealing with this at home before sailing.

If you don’t know your susceptibility to sea sickness, bring a box of the OTC pills and/or a wrist band. Just in case.

Also research the ports – and be aware that port calls do get cancelled, typically because of bad weather. I was on a Panama Canal cruise where three port calls – including Nicaragua, which I really wanted to see and I guessed this was going to be my only chance –  were cancelled due to bad weather. On my recent Montreal cruise two port calls were cancelled. It happens. Never count on a particular port call. Never.

Weather, as you’ve guessed, is the wild card on any cruise.  That’s why port calls are cancelled – probably because the ship cannot safely dock or, sometimes, because it can’t safely deploy tenders which are little ships that can sail into tiny ports that don’t accept big vessels.  Weather is also the why of sea sickness.

Me, I’ve learned to accept the weather, whatever turns up.  You can’t fight what you can’t control.

Follow my advice – mainly to do research and more of it – and is a good cruise guaranteed? Of course not.  But, as I said, I’ve never had a bad cruise and, curiously, my favorite is a cruise I took maybe 18 years ago aboard Renaissance in the eastern Med.  It went belly up in 2001 and probably was on life support when I cruised with them.

But it was a damn fun cruise anyway.  Even though I probably wouldn’t have taken it if I’d researched the line’s financial condition.

Let’s hope your next cruise is likewise.

Make Mine an E-Book: How I Travel in 2018

By Robert McGarvey

A contributor to JoeSentMe.com, for business travelers

Used to be – as recently as a decade ago – I’d always lug a book with me on every trip and, usually, it was a book I wanted to read but hadn’t for lack of time, I thought. And where do I have time? On flights – a x-country jaunt is good for 5 to 6 hours of interrupted reading.

I don’t do that heavy lifting of analog books anymore but I still subscribe to the belief that perhaps the best use of a flight is as a reading session.

Picture me in 2009 – into the carry-on would go maybe Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, a thick book, at least a pound. Or maybe Finnegans Wake.

I carried the latter a lot and, you know what, I still have not read it.

What I learned is that in packing for a trip my reading ambitions generally outstripped my realities. That’s why I often found myself popping into an airport newsstand and buying, say, a Parker (Spenser long has been a favorite) or a Tartan noir novel or any noir set in Los Angeles.

After a long day in meetings or at a conference I just did not have the intellectual energy to plunge into Sartre’s meandering thoughts – not even Kierkegaard’s, whose writing I sometimes packed. A nasty bit of noir was just the ticket however. And a lot of same can be read in full even on, say, a Chicago to LA flight and, absolutely, on anything x-country.

But now when I fly I have it both ways, the heady intellectual stuff and the lighter weight reading are both available to me and I do it without paying any sort of weight penalty.

E-books are the answer.

In my case that mainly means Kindle – which I have on a Nexus 9 slate, a Pixel 3XL phone, a Kindle Fire, and an iPad Air tablet. I have a few books downloaded to Google books and that app is on those same devices. I’m not a fan of Apple’s iBooks mainly because I only have the app on an iPad and have no interest in buying more iOS devices.  Apple’s walled garden approach doesn’t work for my reading. Kindle, which seemingly runs on everything, is just the ticket.

On Kindle, Amazon tells me, I have 1087 books that run a gamut from Heidegger’s Being and Time and Clifford Rosenthal’s Democratizing Finance, a history of the community development credit union movement, through probably a dozen Spenser novels, a like number of Nero Wolfe mysteries, and a large number of Graham Greene novels. Mixed in there is T. S. Eliot’s Complete Plays, Milkman (the Booker winner this year), and Gangland Boston, a romp through the history of organized crime in Beantown.

Of the 1087 probably I have not read one third.  Probably there’s another 100 that I read but no longer recall the plot (early Spenser novels, some Chandler, some Hammett). And there are some I couldn’t tell you why I bought (“The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning”).

I have another 30 or so in Google Books, including Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (!) and Joyce’s Ulysses.  There’s also Marx’s Capital, Moliere’s plays (in English), and a Morimoto cookbook I have no recollection buying but I’m glad I noticed it and will remember to flip through it on an upcoming flight.  But, no, I can’t explain what’s in the Google library. Much of it probably predates my decision to standardize around Kindle because that makes it all simpler for me to read what I want no matter what device I have with me.

The bigger point is: no matter my mood, or energy level, there are books that I have that will amuse and entertain and quite possibly inform me on a plane ride.

A word of warning: you have to actually download the book to the device to read it. E-books require a little advance planning. It doesn’t matter if I downloaded a book I want to read to my Nexus slate. If I brought the iPad on this flight it has to be there. If I’ve forgotten, I remedy with a download via a cellular hotspot at the airport before boarding. (I don’t recall ever downloading an e-book via GoGo but I try to use that service sparingly, not so much to save money as to be kind to my blood pressure.)

Oh, and if I’ve forgotten my reading glasses I can just toggle a bigger font to read. How cool is that?

Nope, I don’t have nostalgia for the years I brought analog paper books. Nope.

Centurion Lounge Coming to PHX?

 

by Robert McGarvey

 

Big news is that just maybe Amex is bringing a Centurion Lounge to Phoenix Sky Harbor – which also happens to be losing its Priority Pass club.

Color me excited.  I am a fan of Sky Harbor – which some call the nation’s best airport – but I have never gushed about the club situation.  At PHX the Priority Pass club was tucked in a tiny (2985 sq ft), out of the way club – built to serve BA passengers but that meant much of the day it was empty so enter Priority Pass. The Arizona Republic reported on the pending closure of the Priority Pass lounge, apparently as the City Council juggled its club options. According to the Republic, “Priority Pass had notified its members via its website that they could not use the lounge after Dec.1. Now, the company says Priority Pass members can access The Club until the new operator takes over.”

If I had to guess, I’d guess Priority Pass will work a deal with a restaurant or two at Sky Harbor to accommodate cardholders.  If the restaurants are the right picks, there may be little grumbling among cardholders who may see it as a step up. I would.

Meantime, according to the AZ Republic, “Delta plans to open a 7,500-square-foot Sky Club lounge in Terminal 3 in early 2019. The lounge will have design inspired by the desert landscape’ as well as food offerings like the Sky Bowl. Guests can ‘build their own bowl choosing from grains, vegetables and proteins,’ according to Delta’s press announcement.” I’ve only flown Delta once in the past six years so no biggie to me…but for Delta regulars this is a big step forward.

United has made noises about building a new club when it moves to Terminal 3 but no timeline has been announced. You have to believe they will if they want to keep pace.

All that is prelude. The big news is Centurion which still counts as the best domestic airport lounge in my book.

The AZ Republic broke the news that apparently Centurion figures into a new lounge that will open at Sky Harbor.

Then the Points Guy dug into this and reported that Amex replied to his inquiry with this statement: “We are always looking at opportunities to bring our premium Centurion Lounges to more airports across the globe and are working closely with the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport as this location is certainly of interest for both us and our Card Members. We hope to have plans to announce soon.”

That is not a flat out commitment to opening in Phoenix – but it comes close. It is a definite statement of keen interest.

This would be terrific news for PHX passengers.

According to the Points Guy, “The [City Council] minutes revealed more details about how the space would be designed and included Amex’s signature wall of foliage, a ‘chef’s table’ and an area that could be closed off for private events. The plans suggested a December 2019 or January 2020 opening date.”

On the official Amex opening list for Centurion Lounges in 2019 are LAX, JFK and Denver. No PHX.

But apparently if the right opportunity arises, Amex will pounce on it – and Sky Harbor just could be that opportunity. It’s been kind of a club desert and, no, we may live in a desert but that does not mean we want our airport to be similarly barren.

It would be a small Centurion – second smallest after Seattle per View From the Wing – but we’ll take it.

The drum beats keep getting louder. According to AwardWallet, in a round up of what’s known about Centurion plans, “There is also a strong possibility that a Phoenix Sky Harbor (PHX) location will be announced soon.

Many in Phoenix have puffed with pride as Sky Harbor has notched high praise in various airport rankings – 3 in a Wall Street Journal and 7 in a Conde Nast Traveler ranking.  Add in #1 with the Points Guy and things are looking good – and then there is the club situation which has been downright mediocre.

Which only gets worse when Priority Pass shuts probably soon.

A Centurion would change all that.

 

 

After the Marriott Breach, What Now? Can You Protect Yourself?

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Another day, another hotel breach. Face reality. Hoteliers suck at protecting your data. There is no gentle way to put that. They really, really stink.

Hotel News Now has a piece that explores the many hotel data breaches over the last decade. Read it and weep because it is your data that now is in play on the dark web.  

Can you in fact stay in hotels and protect yourself? Maybe, we offer tips below. But, first, feast on how inept hoteliers are at data security.

Hotels treat your personal data – name, address, credit card numbers, passport info – the way a deadbeat treats yet another bill collection notice.  

HNN traces the history back to 2010 when there was a big Wyndham data breach. That prompted an FTC suit against Wyndham that eventually was settled. I covered this and, honestly, I find it increasingly tiresome to write about the hotel industry’s cluelessness, or maybe just indifference, to guest data security.

Along the way White Lodging, a management company, had data breaches. So did Trump. Mandarin Oriental.  Hilton. Hard Rock. Kimpton. Noble House. IHC. Sabre.Hyatt. Radisson. Many more.

And now there’s Marriott where maybe 500 million guests were compromised. Apparently because of Starwood data insecurities.

Marriott has not been forthcoming about specific details pertaining to the breach.  It has said it is notifying customers who have fallen victim – so expect a phone call, or email, if you’ve stayed at a  Starwood in memory. (For the record here’s the company statement on the breach.)

Word of immediate advice: right now go and check any rewards accounts you maintain at Marriott.  There are suggestions that maybe these crooks were after those points – there is no confirmation on that front – but it is believable because there’s increasing evidence that hackers are hungry for points and miles that are fairly easy to convert into cash or cash equivalents (like an iPad or iPhone). Make sure all is copacetic and if it’s not, raise a loud yell at the nearest Marriott rep.  

Should you in fact expect meaningful compensation? Nah. That rarely is on offer. If points were stolen, almost certainly they can be restored. But beyond that I suggest never holding one’s breath in expectation of real compensation for pains suffered in a data breach.

The usual compensation is a year or two of monitoring of credit and dark web activity by a namebrand cybersecurity outfit. My favorite such is when T-Mobile revealed some 15 million applicants for credit – yours truly among them – had their data compromised when a server maintained by Experian was hacked. Victims were offered free credit monitoring by, you guessed it, Experian.

What can you do to protect yourself?

Do make it a practice to get free activity reports from such as MasterCard. Closely monitor credit activity and do stay on top of accrued rewards points. If offered free credit monitoring by Marriott, sure, take it.

Accept that by now bad guys know all your private data, from Social Security to your health insurance number (yes, there’s brisk trade in health insurance documents).

So what more can we do to protect our data security? Personally,  I cannot recall the last time I booked directly with a hotel, despite their massive push for that. I use OTAs and many of them have tech company roots and, as an industry, tech has fared a lot better in regard to data privacy than have hotels. OTAs aren’t perfect but I’ll bet on them before a hotel company. In that regard I’ve liked Expedia and will soon start using Google.

But what about the nasty business of check-in where the desk clerk asks for a photo ID and credit card? I am increasingly tempted to buy a fake (“novelty) Nova Scotia driver’s license – on sale for $89 or maybe an Irish driver’s permit for 30 quid.  Use a fake name – maybe Michael Collins – a fake address and I have a good ID to flash at check in at a hotel.

Then I can ask an issuer of a credit card that I already have to issue a supplementary card in Mr. Collins’ name.  Bills continue to go to me and I would make monitoring the account a prime task because there really is no trusting the hotel.

Isn’t this extreme? Of course.  But if hoteliers refuse to take the proper precautions to safeguard our data we have to take our own precautions. And traveling under a false flag may be just the answer.

Have different suggestions on staying safe? Have at it in the comments box below. I’m at wit’s end myself, forced to cogitate on forgeries. Better ideas are welcome.

Is Sky Harbor the Nation’s Best Airport?

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

I need to count myself lucky.  The Points Guy has again annointed Phoenix- Sky Harbor Airport as the nation’s best and, because I live in Phoenix, I am in and out of it with some frequency.

I still remember when I first saw it – 1974 on a business trip – and I was a north Jersey kid who had lived in Boston and moved to Washington DC for a job.  I just did not understand that at Sky Harbor the way to exit was that they pushed some kind of stairway out to the plane. Back then, it seemed so, well, hick.

A lot has changed at Sky Harbor as Phoenix has grown to be the nation’s fifth biggest city.

Understand, I moved to Phoenix six years ago, after a stint in Jersey City where my regular was EWR, just a few miles away from my home. I actually grew to like Newark Airport, mainly out of familiarity, but you could also call it a product of the Stockholm syndrome. EWR, per the Points Guy, is in a race for the bottom rank against its Port Authority brethren, LGA and JFK. Okay, they all suck. But when you live there, you get used to them.

When I moved to Phoenix I saw – vividly – what a better airport really looks like.

What made Sky Harbor number one in this ranking? According to the Points Guy: “What’s Sky Harbor doing right? Like last time, it didn’t come in first in any one category but made strong showings in nearly all of them, including being easily reached by car or bus, having cheap parking, negligible wait times at security compared to other airports and respectably low delay and cancellation rates (though it could use more lounges for its size).”

Yep.  I get there via Light Rail -$2 for a one way fare – that takes maybe 20 minutes from my door.  Inside, I remember only once encountering a daunting security line – I stupidly was flying on the Monday of a three-day weekend in the spring and Phoenix had filled up with students on break as well as Cactus League devotees.  My bad. I still made my plane. But it was not the fast stroll that security usually is at Phx, even without TSA Pre (which I acquired only a year or so ago).

With Pre, by the way, security is in the blink of an eye.  Painless, no friction, pleasant TSA staff.

Flights don’t often get cancelled at Sky Harbor.  The most common reason is heat.  But that’s rare.  A big plus for Phoenix.

As for lounges, I usually head to the Priority Pass lounge in Terminal 4.  It’s okay but I would not write home about it. I’ve been in various airline lounges at Phx and they too are okay (if rather overcrowded).  Put a Centurion Lounge in Sky Harbor and I’d do cartwheels but I don’t see that on the Amex roadmap. Pity.

If you get into a lounge free at PHX, do it.  (I have access via Priority Pass, also Diner’s Club.) But I wouldn’t part with a sawbuck to buy entry into any of them.

Another grumble: Sky Harbor is not a truly international airport. Sure, it has flights to Canada and Mexico.  Also Frankfurt and London. There’s a flight to Costa Rica. That’s about it.  Sorry. If you are going to Paris or Singapore or Helsinki you are going to fly to Heathrow or Atlanta or JFK or Lax first.

To me, this is a bummer. I lived most of my adult life in cities where international flights were plentiful (Washington DC, LAX, and EWR).  

The restaurant situation could be better – but it at least has put an emphasis on local joints, not only big chains.  Barrio Cafe, La Grande Orange, Cartel Coffee, Matt’s Big Breakfast are all Phoenix local staples that I can recommend.

So PHX isn’t a culinary wasteland. Even if it doesn’t hit foodie home runs.

But you adjust.  And you accept that PHX still does lots of things very well indeed.

Incidentally, it’s not just the Points Guy who showers love on Sky Harbor. It placed third in a Wall Street Journal ranking.  It placed in the top 10 in a Conde Nast Traveler ranking (number 7 to be exact).

Is it simply that Sky Harbor is good because it is small?  That occurred to me and, no, it’s not that small. PHX ranks as the 9th busiest airport in the U.S.  O’Hare, DFW, JFK, Atlanta of course are much bigger.  But Phoenix can’t be dismissed as tiny.

So why is it good? Maybe it’s because it strives to be the friendliest airport and, in many ways, it succeeds.  It also is clean and when it has a failure – bed bugs for instance – it attacks the problem with the aim of fixing it.

And Sky Harbor also simply seems to believe it can be good and efficient.

Generally it succeeds.

Know Your Hotel’s Cancellation Policy

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Going, going, gone are the days when a business traveler can call a hotel and cancel a room for that night without penalty if the call is made by 6 p.m. Hoteliers have figured out they can monetize your booking even if you don’t want it by imposing arbitrary deadlines for cost free cancellation.

Worse, the policies are all over the map. Most hotels want 24 to 72 hours notice. I have seen some that insist on a week’s advance cancellation. There is no consistency or uniformity, often none even within a specific chain.

That has to be a major worry for many business travelers.

How often do you have a business trip cancelled the day before departure?  It happens. I’ve even have had cancellations on the day of! Not often but sometimes and, until now, I have been able to cancel hotel rooms without any penalties. (I also have always been able to cancel flights without penalty because I insist on booking fares that allow for that.)

Know that, below, we provide you with a cheat sheet that will help you know when your hotel’s deadline is for fee free cancellation.  Sometimes.  Not always because, again, there’s no real consistency. This isn’t a game rigged in our favor.

For starters, however, why have hotels overturned long established policy that allowed that fee free cancellation up to 6 p.m. the day of arrival? Hoteliers will tell you they can’t book rooms cancelled at the last minute. They also say a cancelled booking costs them money.

Rubbish.

A good travel agent, by the way, often can cancel a room with little notice and no penalty for a client. Meeting planners almost always can.

Why can they do it and you can’t?  Again: the hotelier wants to grab your dough whether you want the room or not.

The blunt fact is that – with or without your unwanted room – the typical hotel will have lots of empty rooms that night. The average hotel occupancy rate in the United States is 68%. On any given night one in three rooms goes unsold.

A different data set claims that in 2018 hotel occupancy hit a 30 year high when it reached 66.1%.

Anybody who tells you that if you had only cancelled your room earlier, then they could have sold it to another guest but your late cancellation costs them money is blowing smoke.

They don’t want to let you cancel scot-free because they hope to be able to shake some coins from your pockets.

Don’t let them.

A starting point is knowing what you are up against. Here is a chain by chain breakdown compiled by Travelmarket report:

  • Marriott – 48 hours. If you want to cancel a room for Wednesday night, do it by mid-day Monday to be safe.
  • Hilton – 48 hours. Some resorts impose a 72 hour cancellation policy. Always check when reserving.
  • Hyatt – 48 hours – except “some” ask for more notice. Again, always ask.
  • IHG – 24 hours at Holiday Inn, Candlewood Suites. Kimpton wants 48 hour notice.
  • Ritz-Carlton – 7 days notice of cancellation. That’s right. A week.
  • Fairmont – no set policy. Varies by property.

Frustrating? You bet. The bottomline is that it is incumbent on you to ask when booking.

Plenty more hotels now want cancellation penalties too. NYU professor Bjorn Hanson, who tracks hotel fee income, has said he sees many more hotels climbing on the cancellation fee bandwagon.  For the hotel this is essentially expense free income. An unccupied room that is paid for is pure profit.

No wonder hoteliers love this fee.

What’s a traveler to do?

My advice has been and remains: don’t book until the same day of travel.  No, you won’t have to sleep on a park bench. I have often checked availability in prime cities – Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, New York – and always find availability at the last minute.

Always.

The HotelTonight app is your friend. Use it.

Or TripAdvisor. I just looked for a room in Chicago tonight and TripAdvisor said about 75% of its hotel inventory had availability.

Don’t some hotels sell out? You bet.  Very occasionally and not very often but some hotels do sell out. Many resorts definitely sell out for prime dates (good luck booking a July 4th stay in desirable Cape Cod even this early – many of the swankiest joints already have solid books of business).  And I don’t think I have ever found availability at Marriott Marquis adjacent to McCormick Place in Chicago so, sure, sometimes even meetings hotels fill up.

But I have always found rooms in Chicago. Just not in walking distance to McCormick Place.

Ditto San Francisco.

Etc.

So the prevailing rule is that if you hunt and if you have some flexibility, you will find a room and probably it will be convenient.

Paranoid? A day before travel – when that trip looks to be solid – check for rooms. If you fear scarcity, book then.  You will probably travel the next day and not have to worry about cancellation fees.

But to be really safe here’s the three part rule book: Just say no to hotel cancellation fees. Book on the day of travel.  Never pay a cancellation fee again.

 

The Priority Pass Restaurant Play

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

I like it. That’s my verdict on the Priority Pass  expansion into airport restaurants. Necessity doubtless mothered this invention and I’d had a healthy skepticism about it. But after a lunch stop at terminal 8 at JFK, where Bobby Van’s was my only club option, I’d give this gambit a qualified thumbs up.

Priority Pass comes as part of my Platinum card perks via Amex.  I don’t mentally calculate it as costing me anything. And at participating restaurants it antes up $28 ($56 with a covered guest).

The one hesitation about the Bobby Van’s stop: lunch cost me around $55 for two but that included a couple glasses of decent red apiece – a Rosenblum Zin along with a turkey club, a veggie burger, fries and finishing with coffees. Total tab, with tax and tip, around  $112. Priority pass ponied up $56, I covered the rest.

Yes, a typical visit to an airport club costs me nothing but I also rarely see anything worth eating and I typically drink only coffee because, again, there’s nothing I want and the coffee isn’t any good either.

This way I got a pleasant lunch, in a quiet venue.  It made me forget that I’ve avoided JFK  for over 20 years because I find everything about it painful.  I still don’t like going to JFK but at least in terminal 8 I’ve found an option I like.

Of course I also could have cut my out of pocket to around zero with more frugal ordering.  But it was noon, I was in pricey New York, so why not eat well before a cross country flight where I could skip the inflight food without listening to my stomach growl.  

So I am okay with the Bobby Van’s deal.  

And the restaurant got a visit from a first time customer who may well return.  It also presumably gets a few bucks from Priority Pass.

Will I always want to drop $50 on a lunch for two, or $25 just for me? Probably no. But, again, I don’t have to.  Doing this just with the $28 per head credit is possible. Just order accordingly.

Buy a burger, a beer, and toss down $5 in cash as a tip and you are good with this deal even at JFK.

Meantime,  back at the standard airport club, mainly I am seeing crowds. Just getting seated is a hassle.

That’s true also at the Amex Centurion lounge which still ranks as my airport fave if I can get in.

But overcrowding has become a staple at Centurion.  Sigh. Amex is also putting restrictions on entry. A perfect airline club is becoming less so.

Even when I can get into an airport club I often wonder why I bother. Last week at the Priority Pass club lounge at Phoenix terminal 4 I got in at no charge and managed to get the last seats but there was nothing worth eating.

Free is not always the best deal.

Priority Pass, apparently confronting a lack of available club spaces at airports, has decided to hunt for restaurant partners and I am hoping it works for all – Priority Pass, the restaurants, and of course the travelers.  Want more info about Priority Pass, its challenges and opportunities? Read Joe Brancatelli’s column on this – it gives the full scoop.

Face it, we need more options at airports. I had become so cynical, I had even begun extolling the virtue of scorning clubs and sitting amid the ordinary passengers, with a Starbucks latte in hand.  But maybe things aren’t quite so desperate.

Looking at the Priority Pass restaurant options, there are around two dozen, with more to come, they say.

Many are modest – Johnny Rockets at Syracuse airport, for instance. In those joints the Priority Pass credit should go far indeed.

At Barneys Beanery at LAX, $28 should get you the chili sampler and a beer. Add a$5 in cash for the tip and you are good.

Bottom line: check the Priority Pass app because you just may find fresh options at the airports you find yourself in.

 

Politics and Your Travels

 

By Robert Mcgarvey 

New research from the Chief Marketing Officer Council’s GeoBranding Center and AIG Travel slaps me in the face with the unexpected. Just 8% of us take politics, ethics, human rights, and prejudices into account when choosing a destination.

92% do not apparently give a fig about ethics or decency when picking a destination.

Color me shocked.

About one fourth of the planet consists of places I would not go due to politics – Tibet, Burma, Sudan, Syria, Honduras, Saudi Arabia among them.

Nor would I stay at a Trump hotel. I would not even go to a meeting in one.

I do not seek to impose my views on others. But they are my views and I try to live them.

Part of living them is knowing where I won’t go.

Where won’t you go?

My list doesn’t have to be yours. But we all need a list of where we won’t go. And we need to know why we won’t.

Some years ago, much of the world united in boycotting South Africa. That included travel.  And when the country changed, the boycott ceased.

Some need similar today, Why isn’t it happening?

Ethics are not the province of a political party or creed or nation. But ethics also are quite clear cut. There usually isn’t much doubt or indecision. Some place or somebody is good, or bad, and that is that.

As Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living and core to living an examined life has to be integrating ethics into our decisions.

There are some countries and places that just are wrong. And I don’t want to support them with my time, presence, or money.

Security, stability and friendliness of a location rank as important to 36% of us in making travel choices, although I admit to some puzzlement how so many more say they value stability and security than ethics.  

Safety matters, absolutely. I would not go to Pakistan not because it is too lacking in ethics but because it just is too dangerous for me.  Its ethics are borderline but I don’t want to go there because of the lack of safety. If it were safer I’d have to give a harder think to ethics. But I don’t have to.

More puzzlement is that many in this poll cited anxieties about dangers as a top detractor to travel.

But maybe dangers to others – because of ethnic, religious or political differences – just aren’t a worry to some.

Nearly 50% of travelers told the pollsters that the internet and device connectivity make travel better and I agree but part of that better, in my mind, is more knowledge.  Including knowledge about ethics and local conditions. 

34% say that loyalty programs and perks matter when making travel decisions and that suggests a cruel dictatorship with a lavish loyalty program just might be fine for many of us.

Socrates never said ethical decision making would be easy. And of course he died because of his stubborn determination to hold to an ethical code.

Plato, Socrates’ student, enumerated four virtues- wisdom, temperance, courage and justice. When it comes to judging a place, justice has to be a paramount factor. Countries without justice are not places I want to visit.

Good news may be found on the generational front. Many millennials are keenly set on doing travel that is more responsible, more environmentally sound and, yes, more ethical. There is plenty of evidence to support the belief that millennials are rewriting the travel rules for the better, for all of us.  Just look at the wave of resorts that have banned plastic straws, for instance, and there is no good reason to insist on plastic straws. But it is millennials to whom we owe thanks for getting them banned.

Maybe millennials will succeed too in bringing us all to a higher state of ethical travel.

We can all hope. 

How Much Free Time Is There on A Business Trip?

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

A survey from Jos. A. Bank, the clothier, offers up some of the most insightful data about business travel that I can recall seeing – starting with how little free time we have on a trip.

Per Jos. A. Bank we get about two hours a day of free time – and we log 14 hour work days.  Which is pretty much my personal reality on business trips.

As for the free time it amounts to one hour, fifty-five minutes daily for exploring the city, networking, etc. The rest of the day is prescribed – meetings, meals, and the other activities that fill days on the road.

It’s a bleak picture.  But also spot on.

Color me surprised by the accuracy of this portrait and, no, I’ve never shopped at Jos. A. Bank.

But I devour data about business travel and most of it, much of the time seems fictitious.

Yes, Jos. A. Bank is shilling suits – the survey even served up silliness such as this quote attributed to company president Mary Beth Blake: “While traveling for business can yield some unexpected obstacles, the one thing you should be able to rely on is your suit.”

It also noted that we fret about our clothes on road. 57% of us, said Jos. A. Bank, “have trouble keeping their clothes and suits tidy and unwrinkled while on a trip.”

Uh, okay, sure. (And, nope, I can’t recall worrying about wrinkles on the road. But maybe I’m just a slob.)

Let’s move on because there are lots of other insights that are quite to the point.

46% of us complain about the hassles of dealing with airports.

39% worry about how to stay fit and healthy while traveling.

36% say living out of a suitcase is a challenge.

And 34% say they work longer/harder on the road.

All sounds smart to me. Especially the observation that we work longer/harder when we travel.  When I first started to travel on business, decades ago, business travel was a cake walk – and often we took off the day after we returned home, just to catch up with life on the homefront and nobody complained.  Today is a very different environment. We fly out Sunday night (on our own time!) and basically are on the move from 8 a.m. Monday until we get home, typically late at night. It’s a grind and it’s tiring.

Why do we put up with it?

Partly because it may be mandatory. Also because there are benefits, tangible plusses to going on the road.

As for the benefits of business travel, Jos. A. Bank reports that we said we like air miles (48%) and hotel loyalty points (53%).

But the biggest single benefit – 56% of us say so – is seeing a new place.

And 55% like meeting people face to face.

49% say they enjoy good food and drink on the road. They must travel in different company than I because to me the best meal I get on the road often is an egg sandwich at Starbucks.  I cannot recall the last good meal I had on a business trip and I am not complaining, just reporting reality. But, no, I don’t count hotel meeting food as “good.”

24% also said it “feels like a paid vacation” – and I really have to question that.  Or, maybe, these poor souls go on really miserable vacations.

As for what we do with the limited free time we have on the road, 77% of us say we try out local restaurants. 67% say they explore the city.

Sift the data and a take-away is that, indeed, business travel is every bit as rugged as we believe it to be.  Glamorous? Don’t jest.

But, somehow, when it’s done we have that sense of accomplishment. And it is deserved.  Very much so.  The data prove it.

Do You Know Where Your Travel Data Are?

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

You are your data. That is today’s reality and, increasingly, travel and hospitality providers want your data by the bushel, in order, they suggest, to deliver better, more personalized services.

Do you trust them with your data?  

Of course we already do.  They have our credit card info, airlines have our Known Traveler Number or similar, airlines and hotels alike often have our passport numbers.

But they want more, lots more.

Some travelers are pushing back.  The 2018 IATA Global Passenger Survey found mounting unease on our parts.   Reported IATA: “65% of passengers are willing to share additional personal information (e.g. address of destination, travel purpose, picture) to speed up their processing at the airport vs 70% in 2017.”

Reported TNOOZ: “A drop of five percentage points in consumer confidence when it comes to how airlines and airports  manage their information is notable, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that the majority of respondents still wanted to benefit from personalization.”

That is the reality. Fewer passengers today are eager to part with their personal data – but still a majority are ready to do so.

But when provoked we will pull the data plug. Facebook is a glaring case in point.  Pew elaborated: “Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone. All told, some 74% of Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these three actions in the past year.”

So users are striking back.

Sort of. 

But we are not necessarily targeting all users of our data.

That vagary arises in a reading of an Eater report on a coffee shop called Shiru that trades a free cup of java when a user tells a lot about him-or  herself. Said Eater: “The cafe, an offshoot of a Japanese chain now open in Providence, Rhode Island, mainly serves students from nearby Brown University. For each transaction, a cashier asks for customers’ names, birthdays, phone numbers, email addresses, majors, and professional interests before serving them their caffeine fix — no U.S. currency accepted (professors are allowed to pay for their drinks with cold hard cash, however).”

Eater elaborated: “Restaurants, be they independent fine dining restaurants or quick-service chains, have long tracked customer preferences via various methods (think of a savvy maitre’d who remembers a VIP customer’s birthday, or a server who automatically brings a patron’s favorite cocktail). But as the restaurant industry grows more competitive and sales growth has slowed, restaurants are resorting to new ways to remain competitive, and obsessively tracking data to figure out what exactly their customers want is a big part of that.”

We are complicit in this. Often.

There’s lots of confusion in the mix.  Reported TNOOZ: “A survey of over 2,000 British travelers, conducted by YouGov for Pegasystems, revealed that 73% of consumers would not be willing to give airlines more personal data for personalized services, while 43% wanted airlines to remember their personal interests and preferences when they travel.”

It’s hard to reconcile that divide.  Except to believe many of us are baffled about how our data are used.

Clarity comes down to simple questions.

How much data are you willing to part with?

In return for what?

There are more questions such as can you trust the company you are turning data over to, will they protect it? With whom will they share it?

My personal belief is that the data I share is no longer in my control and it may wind up in places I wish it hadn’t.

So I usually fill out loyalty program enrollment – which I may well want for the discounts – with bogus info, a bad phone number, for instance, and possibly an errant name.  

Lie to grocers and restaurants is my advice. If you can get the perks you want but part with no real data, what’s to lose?

I can’t do that on airline info, however, because I have to show ID to fly.

Really we are in a bind with airlines and, typically, too hotels which ask for a driver’s license or similar on check in.  

I’ve thought about buying a “novelty” driver’s license.  I’d need a credit card in that fake name too so the hassles mount. That could throw hotels off the scet however.

But we can – and should – limit what data we offer beyond the bare basics needed for a flight and a room.

And I will do that.

Will you?