David J. Danto

Business travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

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

Quick Notes From The Road

As I write this I’m in the middle of a business and personal trip. This is the kind of trip I’ve taken hundreds of times before – to Orlando for a conference then joining my family for a couple of days at Disney. I’ll prepare a detailed blog when I make it home, but for now I wanted to post some brief notes of my observations so far.

· I flew a 777-300 from EWR to MCO. It was a United Polaris configured triple seven between Newark and Orlando. I’ve already done a number of double-takes of that statement / reality. A high-end international bird being used to shuttle leisure travelers to Disneyworld – with each seat filled. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the state of business vs. personal travel than nothing will.

· The airports are full of people all complying with the mask mandate. Once you get out of the airport however, maybe 5% of people are still wearing masks. Everyone at the conference I attended had them with them, but chose not to wear them because no one else was. Lord help us all.

· I’ll still never understand how the Gaylord Palms gets away with charging what they do in a city where cheap hotels are plentiful. I won’t even go into the room charge plus resort fee plus taxes plus, plus, plus, but I will point out that to valet part it’s an additional $40 per night – a bargain considering that to self-park its $30 per night.

· Don’t tell anyone, but there is a car-rental office on the Disney property. If you go to the gate at the Magic Kingdom TTC and tell them you are going to handle a car-rental issue there, they just wave you in. No one should use this trick to avoid paying for parking at the Magic Kingdom – that’d be wrong.

· Now that many of the Hilton chain properties no longer give free breakfasts, but instead give you a daily credit per person (that almost pays for breakfast) suddenly it’s important that you have the right number of guests in your party in the reservation. My Honors Diamond VIP profile has always only had me listed for all my reservations. My wife was with me this time, and the Doubletree we went to explained I’d only get one daily credit of $15 because I only had one person on my reservation. When I asked the front desk clerk to change it to two people the rate went up about $50 per day. When I told him that would be the subject of my blog this week he suddenly managed to get us the additional $15 daily credit without changing the rate. But no matter what he thought of the publicity, he couldn’t change the fact that this property somehow lives in an alternate reality where housekeepers only work every other day. That was a new one on me.

· Finally, I strongly suggest everyone take a practice travel run (or the pretend preparation for one) as soon as possible. We’ve apparently lost our muscle-memory on packing, preparing and dodging issues. I’ve not yet decided if I’m going to ‘work-out’ to get back into travel shape, or just resign myself to not traveling as much anymore, but here is your warning that we’re all pandemic rusty at this stuff.

Here’s hoping the next variant is mild and not as bad as the last, because – as I said – lord help us if it’s not. Too many of us are not taking it seriously.

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.

++++++++

As always, feel free to write and comment, question or disagree. Hearing from the traveling community is always a highlight for me. Thanks!