David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
Our New Travel
Realities
As I mentioned last week, I’m not
just dipping my toes into being back on the road, I dove in head-first. This last
one was the kind of trip I’d taken hundreds of times before – to a conference
for work, bringing my family along, then, after the conference, joining them
for a couple of days of leisure. Yes, I
had traveled during the pandemic (and a few times when we stupidly thought it
was over) but this was the first week-long, compound-goals trip that I’ve
attempted since 2019. Oh boy, did I
learn a few things during the experience.
What I didn’t realize untill last week is that
it’s not just us travelers that are not used to the new realities – it’s
everyone.
· The
airlines have no idea how to operate in this new reality. As I mentioned last week I took a 777-300 on
a route that would never see such an enormous aircraft before the
pandemic. Airlines are continuously
rejiggering their routes, staff and plans.
Business travel is still way down and international travel is also way
down. If you do manage to book a route
that works for you, pray that everything goes perfectly. Irrops were
nightmares for the airlines before the pandemic, but they are stunningly even
worse now. An industry colleague told me
his flight from Oslo to Orlando was cancelled, and he was re-routed from Oslo
to Newark to Washington to Orlando. He
made it to the three day event with only hours to spare, but his luggage didn’t
make it until the conference was over.
The commercial airline system simply doesn’t have the capacity to absorb
issues now – not even as poorly as it did before.
· If you
haven’t heard, there is a distinct shortage of taxi and ride-share
drivers. It is harder and harder to get
a car when you need one. We booked a
Lyft-XL (for four people and luggage) for an early morning ride to the
airport. Lyft always required a big
window for scheduled, early rides, but this time it had a 25 minute window for
a ride at 6:30am. It could have arrived
at 6:30 or at 6:55 or anywhere in-between.
We had three cars accept then reject the route before the one that
finally came to take us to the airport, with the driver complaining the whole
way. My ‘old dad’ rule of getting to the airport two hours before flight
needs to change to three hours before the flight until this shakes-out.
· Many hotels
are claiming they’re ‘back’ but
they’re really not. While rooms may be
available, many restaurants on properties are not, and many other services are
not back either. For part of this trip
we stayed at a Doubletree on the WDW campus
(Doubletree Suites by Hilton Orlando - Disney Springs™ Area.) At this property, the word “valet” on the
parking sign has had a white sticker placed over it – it’s simply not being
offered anymore. The housekeeping
services are stunningly only available every other day. (Don’t use your garbage can except on
housekeeping days.) The only restaurant
available during the middle of the day is poolside service – as the indoor one
is closed. (In addition to all that,
this is the first Doubletree I’ve ever stayed at that I could swear was a
Homewood Suites from the layout inside the hotel room. It was very weird.) One key sign that hotel properties are
unprepared is the random nature of their omissions and mistakes – especially
when they go both ways. For an example,
when we checked out of the first resort we were at at
3pm – fully intending to pay for the reserved 4th night because we
were well past check-out time – we were never billed for it. For another example, when we tried to call
the property and do the right thing, we learned that Marriott now makes it
nearly impossible to call a property.
All calls are routed to a central contact center no matter what number
is dialed. Everyone is scrambling to
figure out how to cope in the new reality.
· Also in
this new reality – the one with the politicization of COVID mitigation – the
airlines hate you even more than they did before. They’re even getting Grandma to try to shame
you (as you can see from these pre-boarding digital signs for my flight home):
·
And, as long as I’m on the topic of evil airlines, United
definitely doesn’t want to lose its status as one of the leaders of that
pack. Their latest smart-device app
update now shows little check-marks on the upgrade screen. The checks indicate that a person is
checked-in for the flight, not that they’ve received the scarce miracle of an
upgrade. At a quick glance however your
mind sees upgrade and checks and sub-consciously thinks there have been loads
of upgrades (just not you of course.)
Pure evil.
·
Finally, I’d comment about how unprepared Newark
Airport is to get checked-bags back to passengers in anything resembling a
timely manner, but that is not a commentary on the new reality. EWR had hit
rock-bottom in that category well before the pandemic. But, I will point-out that after being
covered for construction for months, the few seats around the columns that one
can sit on while waiting the hours for bags to come out were actually not removed. Only the soft carpeting covering them has
been removed. United / PANYNJ figures that if you’re going to sit through the
interminable wait for your bags to come out you might as well not be
comfortable. They wouldn’t want you to
get the wrong idea that they care about you.
Our new reality is that everything
about traveling – just like those seats – is harder and less enjoyable than it
was before. We frequent travelers need
to prepare and over-plan for curve-balls even more than we did before.
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.
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As always, feel free to write and comment, question or
disagree. Hearing from the traveling
community is always a highlight for me.
Thanks!