When it comes to a theme-park vacation, timing is everything. Take it from me. I lived in Southern California for four years and South Florida for another three before understanding that. I’ve covered the travel industry for more than a decade – and conducted my fair share of interviews with park publicists who insist there isn’t an off-season for amusement parks – and you have to believe me. Timing is everything. And folks, the time is now.
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Last April, this column profiled a new company called the Celles Maritime Adventures Club that was three months away from launching. But the Key West, Fla., start-up’s plan to sell customized trips on luxury yachts through an exclusive network of travel agencies hit a snag this summer. Seems the retailers weren’t very keen on peddling the high-end cruises. “Nothing happened,” says David Koontz, who together with business partner Michael Kilgore had banked on the agency distribution channel. Now, two months after setting sail, Celles is changing course.
How does Cellular One become Cellular Two? Ask Kent Withrow, and he’ll tell you the unbelievable story of multiplying carrier contracts. The Austin, Texas, software designer recently inked a one-year agreement for wireless service in Chicago with Cellular One – or so he thought. “I’d been on the plan about 14 months when I decided to move away from Chicago and cancel my cell phone there,” he remembers. “So I called up customer service they said, ‘Oh, you’re on a two-year contract so that’ll be $300 to get out of it.’”
To understand the implications of new technology, it helps sometimes to start with the end-user. Peter Miller, who runs a market research company in Boca Raton, FL, recently logged on to the beta version of a hotel Web site for The Ocean Villas at the Westin Rio Mar Beach in Puerto Rico, new property owned by the Orlando-based Tishman Hotel Corp. The resort’s Internet-based virtual “concierge” allowed him to plan everything from his restaurant reservations to tee times online.
Q: We had a problem with a diving shop in Maui that charged us more money to bring back our gear. We had rented masks, snorkels and flippers for a weekly rental – all prepaid. I left earlier than the rest of my family and they returned the gear to the shop. Even though the [...]
My stomach still churns at the thought of the ham-and-cheese sandwich I ate on a recent flight between Atlanta and Baltimore. The meat was embalmed in a generous layer of mayonnaise. The too-salty potato crisps soaked in a puddle of oil. The soggy lettuce was limp and flavorless. A man named Willie served it with all the enthusiasm of a baggage handler loading a heavy trunk onto a conveyor belt. And that was before I boarded the flight.
I owe a lot to Joe Brancatelli. “The Brancatelli File” practically defined the online consumer travel advocacy column. Joe never stops pushing the envelope of travel commentary, challenging us to think critically about this industry and inspiring me to create features like “The Crabby Traveler.” He’s also responsible for my return to biztravel.com five long years after I helped start this site.
It used to be one of the best-kept travel secrets: Use an alternate airport and save money, time and headaches. Jim Mayo, a sales manager from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, thinks nothing of driving two hours south to use Baltimore/Washington International Airport, where he says fares are “dramatically lower” than in Philadelphia. Carolyn Waterman, an Oklahoma City college professor, prefers flying to Ontario International Airport near San Bernardino, California, over Los Angeles International Airport, even though drive times back to LA can be excruciatingly long in traffic.
This week’s launch of Delta Air Lines’ new Internet domain name caps a messy four-year feud that involved the Atlanta carrier, a New York consumer finance company and a Cary, NC, Internet service provider. Since going online almost five years ago, the airline had been using the cumbersome delta-air.com as its homepage. It said Delta.com would offer “a quicker, direct connection for its existing Internet customers.” Apparently it wasn’t the only company that felt that way.
Talk is cheap – unless you’re at 36,000 feet. Then it can be very costly. I just spent 4 ½ hours on a flight between Los Angeles and Baltimore staring at the graphic display on my seatback phone. With nothing better to do than add up the rates being flashed by at regular intervals, I soon reached the same troubling conclusion that many other travelers have: this phone is a rip-off. Start with a $2.99 connection fee. Then add a $3.28 per-minute airtime charge (these rates are for market-leading Airfone which are installed on US Airways, United, Continental and TWA aircraft, among others) and a five-minute domestic call from the friendly skies can set you back $19.39.
Travelers of all sizes, take heart: Continental Airlines is considering a policy change that could affect everyone, whether they’re overweight or just the hapless passengers stuck between two plus-sized tourists. According to sources at the airline, the carrier’s reservationists would be directed to block off available seats next to extra-large travelers at no additional cost. If an unused seat isn’t available, the airline would let them take the next flight without incurring a penalty. Portly passengers could also expect some price breaks from Continental if they couldn’t take a standby flight and needed to book a new ticket.
Paper is dead. Long live paper. It’s one of the curious contradictions of the 21st Century and one on which EncrypTix is capitalizing. The El Segundo, CA, startup bankrolled by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen promises to put heavy-duty encryption technology in the hands of travelers, letting them print airline tickets, car rental vouchers and even boarding passes before they leave home. If the thought of not having to stand in line while a ticket agent hunts-and-pecks her way through your itinerary sounds appealing, then here’s some good news: Your wait is nearly over.
Q: I am flying to Honolulu and staying at the Hilton Turtle Bay Resort in Kahuku to get away for a few days in early September. However, my company informed me just the other day that I will need to study up for an upcoming project. I asked the hotel if I could rent a [...]
Q: Is it possible to change the name of the passenger on a nonrefundable ticket? My friend and I were going on a trip and and he is unable to go. I found someone else to take his place, but airline says that they can’t change the name on the ticket. – William Oliver A: [...]
Looks as if airlines aren’t the only carriers whose business practices leave something to be desired. Now it seems they’ve got competition from cellular phone companies. I reached this conclusion after a series of columns about the wireless woes of travelers. Each story drew an increasingly hostile response from readers – aimed mostly at the telecommunications providers. At first the volume and vehemence of the reactions stunned me. The only other time I’d seen that kind of rage was when I wrote about the airline industry.
Q: I checked into the Royal National Hotel as part of the Arts Boston tour group on Aug. 2. The following day, I asked to change rooms because of the street noise. Later that day I realized my nightshirt was missing. The hotel gave me the key to my old room, but it was already [...]
When the airlines talk about “hidden cities,” they’re not referring Shangri-La, El Dorado, Atlantis or some other far-off, mythical place. No, hidden cities may be places like Philadelphia, Denver or Charlotte, North Carolina. And carriers view them with the same fondness they reserve for unruly passengers and carry-ons the size of St. Bernards. Scheduling a hidden city is sort of like booking a back-to-back itinerary that circumvents a Saturday night stayover: It’s a bit of subterfuge that costs the flier less money and angers the carriers.
EncrypTix, the El Segundo, CA, venture founded by SunAmerica veteran Jim Rowan and bankrolled by Microsoft’s Paul Allen to the tune of $36 million, is one of the contrarian success stories of the year. How else do you explain partnerships with American Express, Sabre and GetThere.com to work with what is essentially a 1,900-year-old technology – paper? EncrypTix is developing technology to deliver tickets, vouchers, certificates and other forms of value-bearing instruments to printers, smart cards, Personal Digital Assistants and wireless devices.
A moment of silence, please, for the victims of dropped wireless calls. They are travelers like John Edward Hasse of Alexandria, Va., who can’t seem to ever finish a conversation on their cell phone. “I’ve had my calls dropped on the 14th Street Bridge, at the National Mall area around the Smithsonian, and in parts of Alexandria, including around the 4000 block of Duke Street, the city’s major east-west corridor,” he complains. Hasse, whose cellular provider is Sprint PCS, says the company knows he’s getting cut off.
Now that summer’s almost over, it’s time to start thinking about a vacation. I mean a real vacation. Not one of those prepackaged, all-inclusive getaways that have to be endured instead of enjoyed. Not to one of those places where a gazillion other tourists are clamoring to see the same sights or standing in line at the same overpriced restaurants every evening. In short, a perfect vacation.
