This back-to-back ticketing debate is starting to resemble a game of ping-pong. It must end eventually, and I can think of no better person to conclude the discussion than the same person who started it – the infamous Joe Luehrmann. Here he is with the final word on ticketing tricks: Q: I have had travel [...]
1999
Will 2000 be the year of the traveler? The industry’s talking heads are predicting virtually no price increases and steadily improving service across the board – a veritable passenger nirvana. But I’m not buying it. While almost anything would be better than a repeat of 1999, which saw a series of broken promises, thoughtless service cutbacks and unparalleled industry greed, I think the worst may be yet to come.
“Be Direct,” computer gazillionaire Michael Dell says in those omnipresent ads splattered on the insides of every other business magazine. So I gotdirect. I called the Round Rock, Texas, company to order my next desktop. Part of my motivation was curiosity: I had bought a Dell PC last year as a backup unit, and I couldn’t imagine the experience being any smoother than it had been. I also noted that Dell surpassed Compaq as the biggest seller of personal computers in the United States during the latest quarter, meaning that it had to be doing something right.
Thanks a lot, Mr. Luehrmann. Last week’s column, which featured our cybercontrarian’s views on back-to-back ticketing – a controversial but common booking trick – drew so many irate e-mails that I couldn’t answer them all. Here are just a few of the letters: Q: Your comments about back-to-back ticketing and the agent’s role in the [...]
He knows every inch of every ship in the fleet. He has logged 1,110 days at sea on 114 tours, including a few dozen trips through the Panama Canal and a couple of global crossings. And Chuck Wideen is not in the Navy. “I like cruising,” the Las Vegas retiree says. “I mean, I really like it. You board the ship, you unpack, and there’s nothing left to do. Everything else is taken care of.” Wideen, who began vacationing at sea in 1977 and has taken an average of five trips a year on Princess Cruises ships, has developed a bit of a cruising habit. And he’s not alone.
Greg Jones is the co-founder and chief executive of WorldRes.com, the San Mateo, CA-based company that distributes hotel information and reservations booking capability to leisure travelers through a network of Web sites and call centers. Columnist Christopher Elliott recently asked him for his year 2000 predictions.
Q: Sure, the airlines want to “outlaw” back-to-back ticketing. That’s because it cuts into the profit margins earned on business travel. In my previous position as a corporate auditor, I traveled from St. Louis to the West Coast each week for 4 to 12 weeks at a time. As my travel plans nearly never changed [...]
It’s that time of year again – time to unwrap and expose the season’s most ridiculous travel gifts. This year, the competition is tighter than ever. Here are the four finalists. Check them out and cast your vote.
I can’t think of any other business that lies to its customers -and itself – more often than the travel industry. It has only become worse with the Internet, where postings spread faster than an oil slick, regardless of whether they’re fact or fiction. Consider: So-called “improvements” to economy class. United Airlines recently touted a new class of steerage on its site that created seats with “36 inches of pitch compared to the standard 31 inches.” But it’s not as much an improvement as a reversion to the amount of legroom that was standard a few years ago.
I’m often asked where I find all the information that goes into my columns. The assumption behind the question is that every reporter can access a secret database containing every byte of data on the planet. I wish it were so. In researching the answer for this week, I’ve discovered that the kind of information travelers look for and travel writers look for aren’t that dissimilar. We both want timely, relevant data about a destination delivered painlessly to our laptops. How hard can that be? Very hard, if you’re online.
The cruise industry is one of the last places where things are done the old-fashioned way. Suppliers list their inventory in a reservation system and agents sell the product. The retailers also pocket a very generous commission: 12%, versus a capped 5% for air reservations, plus overrides ranging anywhere from 10% to 20%. By most counts, an astounding 96% of all cruises are sold like this. It’s a goldmine for travel agents but a drain on cruise lines, whose distribution costs are among the highest in the travel industry, if not for any other consumer product or service.
Note: Last week’s column about buying tickets from an airline site drew a ton of e-mail – some from agents upset about my suggestion that they book illegal tickets, others from travelers who supported the emerging Internet reservations tools. So this week, I’ve opened the mailbag to answer a few of the letters. Q: I [...]
As a frequent traveler, I never cease to be amazed how annoying technology can be. Case in point: the comedy of errors surrounding my attempted review of the Hewlett Packard M820e during the last few weeks. The nifty readable/writeable CD-ROM drive isn’t a new product – it’s been around since mid-summer. But what is noteworthy, the company assures me, is that more and more travelers are buying the palm-sized device. About 88,500 travelers are using the M820e at the moment; in 24 months, HP expects that number to more than double.
Q: I bought four airline tickets for myself and my family from an airline Internet site. The next day I canceled them and the airline will only give me credit, not a refund, and is demanding a $50 a ticket cancellation fee. Is there no time period at all for changing flight plans? – Norman [...]
The possibility that a kamikaze co-pilot intentionally sent EgyptAir Flight 990 to its watery grave has fanned the flames of aerophobia. It doesn’t help that my colleagues in the media are piling on with accounts of pilots becoming increasingly unstable and unpredictable. Never mind that there are no officially confirmed incidents of pilot suicide on commercial carriers. And never mind that people have been killing themselves since there have been, well, people.
All of those ridiculously positive articles extolling the merits of new high-speed Internet connections like ADSL, ISDN and broadband cable were bound to get to me eventually, and a few days ago, they finally did. I decided to trade in my trusty dial-up connection for a whiz-bang one megabyte-per-second ADSL connection with Bell Atlantic. All my colleagues assured me: Once you’re on a high-speed connection, you’ll never want to go back. But my migration from copper to fiber had a higher purpose.
Content, community or commerce? If you’re in the online travel business, the question needs no introduction, no context, no explanation. These are the three infamous “Cs” of our industry. It’s a problem we mull almost every day in our effort to strike a balance between making our travel sites compelling and, at the same time, commercial. Instead of recycling the same old arguments for and against — and rather than weighing in on the merits of a commerce-heavy model (the prevailing trend in today’s travel business) — let me introduce Bonjour Paris, a site that’s managed to achieve a contrarian combination of all three elements.
Q: My friend and I are planning to travel from Tampa, Fla., to Manchester England this winter. I am going to be bringing back a very small dog to be traveling with me in the cabin. Some of the discount airlines such as Virgin Atlantic do not allow animals in the cabin. The cheapest fare [...]
With the busiest of all travel holidays looming, spare a thought for those of us who will be trapped in the maze of fast-food joints and pricey gas pumps that prey on travelers. Spare a thought for those of us stuck at one of the strategically placed, impossible-to-ignore highway rest stops this Thanksgiving. Horror stories about the way stations abound. Let’s start with the gasoline prices. Depending on where you are, they can be seriously inflated. At a “Last Chance for Gas!” rest area in West Texas, I once paid nearly 20 cents a gallon more than the going rate.
Break out the shovels and pickaxes, because hell just froze over. This columnist got a story wrong – and he’s about to ‘fess up. A couple of weeks ago I pooh-poohed the idea of a PC in every room, criticizing the amenity as too little, too late for the weary road warrior. Almost the moment the column posted, I had a note from one of my sources. “Interesting story,” remarked Anne Curtis of Choice Hotels. “Although I don’t believe ‘we’re smart people around here’ is in my vernacular. True though it may be, I’m quite certain I didn’t phrase my comment that way.”
