David J. Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
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Traveling
In The Face Of Dumb
I don’t like to throw around
words like ‘stupid’ and ‘dumb’ very often, but sometimes there are no other
accurate choices. Frequent travelers are
facing down way too much ‘dumb’ lately. I just
completed my last Las Vegas business trip before the big CES conference in
January, and the experience included assaults from one dumb decision after
another. One wants to hang signs that
say “Really? What were you thinking?” on
so many of them that it would probably be cost effective to print small
stickers to carry around just for that purpose.
Of
course, United Airlines is one of the biggest culprits of not thinking things
out. When arriving at the airport and
getting through the sheer insanity of the TSA, the United Club is meant to be a
place for paid members to relax for a short while and get ready for a
flight. Not anymore. Early in November club members received the
following email:
Huh? If I read this right – to paraphrase – ‘the club experience I’ve paid for is being
redesigned so that the new locations will have less room for regular members
and more room for paid business and first class travelers. Temporarily though, all travelers will have
less room. If that bothers me then I can
avoid going to the clubs I paid for and instead visit a restaurant I have to
pay for again.’ Huh? Someone approved that message to send to
members? Not even discussing the topics
I covered in the past of offering club passes then not accepting them, and how
awful many of the new concessions are for travelers, this
is a statement that says ‘we’re offering less of the service you paid for now
and going forward’ but then doesn’t offer a refund for this lesser
service. Huh? Either they’re team is really, really dumb,
or they think their customers are. As
you can imagine (if you have any sense at all) the Terminal C Newark club
that’s still open is now a zoo, with – in the words of the check-in agent
there, “270 seats added but you would
hardly notice” – meaning there is nowhere to sit down and
eat/work/rest. Soft seating was removed,
and smaller hard chairs and tables have been put everywhere. What was already a crowded, inadequate
experience is now doubly so – and it’s anything but relaxing. One would think that the people who run the
clubs would understand how crazy this is – especially in light of their crack
ability to recognize and label bananas for the .000000000001% of people who
might think they are possibly thick, cold spaghetti or flat and long tennis
balls. (See this picture actually taken
from the SFO club last week.) However,
they apparently don’t recognize how dumb it is to reduce services for paid
members without offering any refunds. At
least this time they bothered to contact their customers. Last year they pulled this
stupidity without even letting anyone know in advance.
My trip
continued when I boarded one of the very rare aircraft that actually still had
an IFE system. (Most domestic United flights now have entertainment available only on
personal devices.) In this instance
however, some of the screens were not working properly, so the FAs rebooted the
system. This resulted in the following
screen:
“Please
Wait?” Um, what the heck else am I going
to do – walk off the plane? I’d love to
meet the Einstein that though this message was either necessary or
appropriate. It is another tiny example
of people not thinking things through.
If any message was needed at all a simple “system rebooting” notice
would have done the job without reminding passengers how much of air travel is
a barrage of having to wait.
Upon
landing in Las Vegas I discovered another act of genius. I can just imagine the conversation that led
to this plan:
‘Hey boss, you know that big rotunda we have
in the airport?’
‘You mean
the one where tens of thousands of passengers walk through every day to get to
the shuttles, or from the shuttles to their gates?’
‘Yeah
that one. Why don’t we block the whole
area with upscale stores selling electronics at double their value, leaving
only small corridors that the passengers have to pass through.”
“That’s
a great idea! We can clog-up a major
point of passenger flow and at the same time make more money selling overpriced
junk!”
Yup,
that’s right. Here is another airport
trying to monetize open space at the expense of passengers that need to get to
where they’re going. We’ll never see the
end of these until someone stands up and explains that we the public own these
airports, and we should stop letting bean-counters find new ways of making
money at our expense.
I wish
the “dumb” was just limited to the airlines.
Unfortunately it of course extends to the hotel and casino properties
here. As I’ve detailed before, these
are the companies that charge upwards of $40 per day on resort fees that they
claim are ‘a convenience to guests’ which bundle together all the individual
services that used to be charged for – like internet, local calls, newspapers,
water, etc. Then – with a straight face
– they decide they are now going to charge you for parking in their garages. Anyone with half a brain asks ‘if I’m paying
the resort fee already why isn’t this included?’ They can’t say it’s because not every guest
uses the garage, because not every guest uses local calls or internet. It’s simply another way to gouge the
guests.
On this
trip though we had a new candidate for ‘brainless decision of the year.’ I discovered this when I met some friends for
brunch at the Bellagio buffet.
The Bellagio – if you don’t know -
is a resort casino conceived by Steve Wynn and built by his company at the time
(Mirage Resorts) for an original construction cost of $1.6 billion. It opened in 1998 with a ceremony that itself
was reported to cost $88 million. While
the property is notable for many reasons (opulence, iconic fountains, art
gallery, etc.) its place in history is assured because it was the first Las
Vegas property that made more than half its revenue on non-gaming
activities. It is the instigator of the
current high-priced Las Vegas experience, because before it arrived almost
everything in Vegas was inexpensive (except for the gambling.)
So what
myopic decision was thrust upon us at this prestigious $40 per person
brunch? We now have to get our own soft
drinks like we’re eating at a McDonalds.
That’s right – the most expensive property on the strip thinks it’s wise
to eliminate beverage servers, joining a handful of others in this town that
think bean-counting is the proper image for an upscale property. It’s no big deal to get our own drinks, but
the loss of dignity that the property suffers as a result – and the apology
from the staff that each returning guest is presented with – is surely not
worth the minimal savings MGM Resorts is gaining. There couldn’t be a better example of the ‘what were they thinking’ poor
decision-making.
So if
you work in the travel and/or hospitality industry – or really any other
industry – here’s a bit of good, free advice.
Before you implement a new plan, get some outside opinions of how it
will go over. Ask some typical
customers; bring in a consultant to set-up a focus group; ask your mom; do
anything to get another person’s perspective – all before thrusting your act of
genius onto the public. Other
perspectives can often help people see aspects of a situation that they’re too
close to pick-up-on. In addition, when
faced with a cost-saving or revenue generating opportunity, never forget the
advice of the English scholar Robert Burton – avoid
being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
This article was written by David Danto and
contains solely his own, personal opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.