David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
NOT Traveling Blog, 4th
Week Of April 2021
David Danto’s ongoing list of disjointed and occasionally random
observations and thoughts as we wait-out the pandemic – mostly NOT traveling
like we used to.
I have a trip coming-up – my first
Air-Car-Hotel trip in over a year. As
the travel date gets closer I’ve been discovering how much has changed in the
last year, both due to the pandemic and for other reasons. I’m frankly a bit anxious about the
whole trip, so the changes I’m running into are not helping with that.
Hotel: Today I changed my reservation to
another hotel. The first one we reserved
a month ago – in Hilton’s “Curio Collection” had a note on its website that
basically indicated it has stopped providing all services. (That’s more curious then curio.) No breakfast, no restaurant, no room service
– squat. The place looked cute and it
was in the exact area we wanted to stay, but between the ‘we’re offering 
nothing’ statement and the reviews (linked to
on its own website) that said they weren’t doing a good job cleaning rooms, it
was enough to set-off some red flags for us.
We switched from a “Curio” to an on-brand Hilton resort. I mean, we have fears there too – with
overcrowding, capacity limitations, etc. – but at least with the Hilton brand
they are (at least in theory) following some guidelines more strictly –
especially for cleaning things. (And the
few complaining reviews I read about that property were at least answered by
someone in their general manager’s office.) Do I feel comfortable about the
change and choice? Honestly, no. But I think it was a wise decision to at least
slightly minimize the risk of a poor stay.
Car: We booked our rental car as soon as
we knew about the trip, and we got a decent (if not fabulous) price for a
week. What was the change here you
ask? Well, the decent rate was for the
luxury level vehicle, not for the compact or economy. Those were more expensive to choose.
Clearly this is a supply and demand situation gone haywire. I’m a top tier at National, so my expectation
is that I’m going to be able to choose any car on their lot, but there have
been times I’ve flown to California before and found –zero– cars on rental firm lots, so I am a little bit
concerned. It’s just another situation
where I’ll have to wait and see.
Flight: And then of course there is the
airline – my old nemesis United. When we
booked an itinerary that went EWR-LAX-SAN-EWR for an unheard-of $200 a ticket we were shocked. I’ve NEVER flown that multi-city itinerary
without a significant penalty for flying back from SAN instead of the round
trip. We reserved good aircraft at
great times for us to leave and arrive.
Then, of course, United cancelled the outbound flight to LAX. Our choices now were an icky Dreamliner that
would force us to get to the airport before dawn, or a 757 that would land too
late in the day to be comfortable for what we wanted to do. We switched to the crack-of-dawn Dreamliner,
and paid for an upgrade to the Premium Economy seats so as not to be
squeezed-into the coach seats that I hate on this aircraft. It doubled the cost of each ticket, but as
that was still less expensive than the usual price on the route we figured it was
the right thing to do.
Another change from my past typical flights will be that
we’re likely going to check a bag. I
can’t see how I can travel with all the new things I need to be comfortable
when leaving my home during COVID times (my hotel
room / restaurant UV air purifier, my personal mini coffee maker, etc.) and
still be the carry-on-only traveler I usually swear by.
I’ll of course be completing a full trip report for JoeSentMe readers when
I get back, so we’ll all know if any of these adjustments to the changes
helped, and what curveballs we find that we didn’t anticipate. (I always told my project managers to set
aside an extra week in their plan for the expected-unexpected issues, and then
an additional two weeks for the unexpected-unexpected issues.)
Kudos to the New York Times for
publishing an awesome, detailed, explained animation on how COVID
may travel on an aircraft. Click
this link or the picture to see it and scroll-down on that page to watch
the animations and explanations at your own speed. This one is MUCH, MUCH more accurate than the
BS
study published late last year and touted by all the airlines as proof that
an inherently dangerous situation is according to them, not dangerous. (If you haven’t done so yet, feel free to
read my
blog from last October debunking the stupidity of that study.) In my opinion, the bottom line about flying
during the pandemic is simple and clear.
If you’re not vaccinated, just don’t.
If you are vaccinated, and you wear a KN95 or N95 mask for the entire
flight, it’s probably an OK risk to take.
(There are good KN95
and N95
disposable masks easily available on Amazon and other places – click the
classification to see them. If you want
to be smart about things, travel with a bunch of them.) However, keep in mind that as soon as someone
takes their mask off on the plane to eat or drink – even for a minute – the
airplane becomes a closed-in, indoor restaurant with very low ceilings and no
social distancing. If you wouldn’t take
your mask off to eat in one of those, DON’T take it off on the airplane.
Passport Update / Good News:
My new passport arrived by priority mail last week. Just about seven weeks after sending in the
renewal application and paying for expediting, and just about three weeks after
sending in new photos because they rejected the first set (for an inexplicable
reason.) Now I’ll be able to use my
passport at my (nearly impossible to get) appointment to renew my NJ Driver’s
license (which is now Real ID compatible.)
Bad News: The Trusted Traveler program website would not let me
update the passport information on-line.
Each time I tried I received an error message. I’ve submitted an escalation message, but I
suspect this will be as difficult to fix as the passport and the NJ Driver’s
License were. As we’ve learned over and
over again this last year, systems and processes that were difficult to
navigate pre-pandemic are just impossible to manage now.
As always, please feel
free to write to me with comments or items I should add to a future Not
Traveling blog (or if you just need someone to write to.) Stay safe, be well, hug those you’re
sheltering with (but no one else) and do your best to stay positive. We’re going to be in this for a while
longer.
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.
++++++++
The Explanation
for my Not Traveling blogs: In 2014 I was voted
by USA Today readers as one of the top ten business travel bloggers in the
USA. Now mind you,
I turned out to be number ten on the list of ten, but I did make it on (with my
thanks to all those who voted.) Now
that we’re all stuck at home and not traveling, I had to think about what to do
with my blogs. I could stop writing them
entirely – waiting till we all get through the current COVID19 pandemic / crisis. I could wax nostalgic and/or complain about
past trips. Or, I could focus all of my
efforts on my day job – growing the use of collaboration technologies –
especially in light of how many people are now forced to use those tools for
the first time. In reflecting upon those
choices, what I decided to do is compile an ongoing list of observations during
the crisis. Some of these may amuse,
some may inform, some may sadden and others may help. My goal will be for you to have seen
something in a different light than you did before you stopped to read the
blog. I was going to apologize for how
disjointed these thoughts may seem when put together, but then it dawned on me
that feeling disjointed is our new normal – at least for a little while.