David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
Proper Planning
Prevents…Nothing
As I’m sure I’ve written many times
before, savvy travelers do their research. We check fares, determine back-up travel
plans, hunt for bargains and deals, reserve hard to get slots at venues and
restaurants, and ensure we have an edge over those who don’t do their travel
homework, Well, for now, in the words of
Emily
Litella, “never mind.” These
last three years of COVID have taken a wrecking ball to any semblance of proper
planning.
With the start of any new year I’d
always have been meticulously making reservations for the many industry
conferences I planned to attend. This
includes buying airfare before all the bearable seats on planes are taken,
booking hotels and ground transportation, making dining reservations,
pre-purchasing access to any high-demand venues I wanted to visit, and all the
rest. Sadly, COVID-19 has forced me (and
likely many other ‘planners’) to be constantly pivoting.
First of all, just the fact that an
event or conference has been announced doesn’t mean it will actually happen. We are living through an era where hundreds
of concerts, shows, conferences and events of all types are subject to
unexpected changes. (I wanted to post a picture here listing some examples but
it would have been longer than this entire blog.) All of Broadway closed, reopened, and then
have experienced rolling closures. Some of the world’s biggest business
conferences have been outright cancelled in some cases, postponed in other
cases, and then the postponements have sometimes been further postponed or
cancelled.
For one example, people bought
tickets to see a Broadway show over the holidays, flew to New York to see it,
showed their required proof of vaccination to get in, took their seats, and only
then were told that the show had to be cancelled. Yes, the theater probably refunded the ticket
price, but what about the costs for the flights and hotels? For another example, one of my industry’s
international conferences that was due to take place in Barcelona on February 1st
announced
(only on January 11th) that it would be postponed until May. I’m sure there were exhibitor displays and
other freight already on their way to Barcelona at the time. The attendees hopefully had time to cancel
their travel arrangements without penalty, but that’s certainly not
guaranteed. (This is especially true now
that many hotel websites have begun prominently listing their least-expensive,
non-cancelable, non-refundable rates at the top of their list.)
Then, even beyond entire event
cancellations, we honestly can no longer have any faith that advance research
will yield useful results. Are you
looking for a restaurant to reserve at your destination? Google and other websites may still show a
place that has long since closed, or one that used to offer outdoor dining in
2021 but no longer does so in 2022. When
my wife and I traveled to San Diego last year, we walked up and down 5th
Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter and found some of the venues open, some
temporarily closed and some permanently closed – all with no rhyme or
reason. In San Diego alone over 100
restaurants have permanently closed – and the
list isn’t just little mom and pop establishments. Fortune
Magazine estimates about 90,000 restaurants have permanently closed in the US. The problem isn’t limited to permanent
closures either. At the recent CES
conference I attended I walked back from the day’s press events at one
hotel/casino only to find their 24/7 restaurant was closed – either because
they did not have enough healthy people to staff it, or because they just
assumed the lower demand would not warrant opening it. Just because you’ve done all the needed
research correctly doesn’t mean you’ll be successful if there has been one of
the much more common last-minute changes.
Then of course, I haven’t even
mentioned air travel. The Omicron
variant has wreaked havoc on air travel, causing staff shortages of flight
and ground staff at all the world’s airports.
We had the usual cancellations due to weather… and we can now add to
that list of reasons for havoc the threatened
cancellations due to the US telecom companies imminent 5G rollout. If you’ve never trusted airlines (like me)
you sadly have even less reason to trust them now.
All of this means that my personal
advance planning activities are on hold for who knows how long. Will I go to the business conference in
March? Will I add a few days and have my
family join me and make it a business and pleasure trip. Who knows?
Heck, I don’t even know if I can find a restaurant with a safe outdoor
dining area to eat in in my own neighborhood next week. Who suffers because of this? Well, we all do. Businesses don’t get revenue, they can’t plan
on expected loads, and travelers like me just continue to get frustrated.
Now, mind you, frustrated is better
than dead from COVID, but it’s still…..well…..frustrating.
The CDC
recently took the time to announce what I’ve been advising everyone since
the start of COVID – wear a damn N95
or KN95
mask, as cloth masks don’t do squat. Um,
duh. I’ve even taken it one step
further, wearing a disposable surgical mask over the N95. It doesn’t really protect me any more than
the one mask, but the cheap disposable one protects the N95, keeping it tighter
to my face and allowing me to use it longer. Mask-up people. Stay alive.
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!