David J. Danto

Business travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD

A Holiday Fantasy

Fantasyland is a great place to live and work all year round, but when one gets to the end of the year all the stops are pulled out. Here in Fantasyland, the holidays are a special time for business travelers. We’ve spent a large part of the year on the road, and the transportation and hospitality firms we’ve used all year are so appreciative of our business that they go out of their way to make us feel welcome and appreciated on the road at the end of the year.

The airlines go over the top with their holiday service. Senior executives man the TSA security lines at the airports, personally greeting us and thanking us for our business. Special, all-first-class aircraft are rolled-out so that everyone’s upgrades will always clear. Standby aircraft and crews are readied to handle the overflow if anyone gets misconnected or delayed. Extra crewmembers are added to each flight so that the onboard experience will be extra special.

The hotel chains go over the top as well. They roll-back prices for the entire month. Every room is stocked with a mini-fridge full of complimentary snacks and drinks. All requests for room upgrades are honored at no additional cost. The bed-pillows are all new and firm.

As far as entertainment on the road is concerned, year-round in Fantasyland, all airline seats have high-definition video screens with first run movies – all for free. All hotels offer first run, on-demand movies for their valued guests as a way of making them know how appreciated they are, and to help them feel less sad about being away from their families. In the odd case that business travelers can’t find a movie they want to see in the air or in the hotel room, there are still many options.

Fantasyland’s largest entertainment firm for streaming movies and DVD rentals – FlixNet – loves to make it easy for their customers to get copies of the latest movies and take them on the road. All one has to do is order DVDs by mail, make a courtesy copy for personal use once they arrive, and return the disk once done. FlixNet never gets upset about this personal time-shifting in Fantasyland. They understand that people just want to watch the content they’ve rented and paid for when it is more convenient for them. The firms that make software which allows this easy copying are stalwarts of the retail community and have moved off-shore only because they prefer the views from their overseas offices. Business travelers in Fantasyland walk around with a large flash drive of the latest movies they’ve copied and used other software to convert to MP4s, and in the unlikely event that they can’t find anything of interest from the many hotel and airline choices offered, they can just pop this drive into an iPad or Surface and watch the perfectly legally time-shifted content wherever they happen to be. Of course they carry their preferred Active Noise Cancelling headphones to ensure the sound is as good as the video, even though it never comes close to the super high quality offered by the airlines for their content.

In Fantasyland however, most business travelers never get around to watching their time-shifted content in-flight. They’re usually either watching the free, HD, first-run movies, spreading out their PCs and documents on their spacious seatback desk to complete a work assignment, stretching out and grabbing a nap in the luxurious, super-comfortable seats, or chatting with a super-friendly crewmember that is genuinely interested in making the in-flight experience the best it can be.

What’s that you say? You don’t live in Fantasyland. I’m sorry to hear. Try to have a happy holiday season anyway.

This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.

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