10 travel stories we missed

December 28, 2001

Terrorist attacks, attempted bombings and a travel industry in freefall have headlined one of the most unforgettable years in memory.

But some transportation-related stories slipped between the metaphorical cracks. These events – almost equally significant – were glossed over by the mainstream media, buried on the inside of newspapers, relegated to minor mentions at the end of TV and radio broadcasts, or ignored altogether.

Here are the ten most overlooked travel stories of 2001:

1. Cruise Industry Sinks. With the exception of the trade press and a few observant Florida newspapers, no one paid much attention to the bankruptcies of American Classic Voyages and Renaissance Cruises. The media yawned when P&O Princess Cruises announced plans to merge with Royal Caribbean in a $3 billion transaction. Hardly a soul observed that a glut of new berths had forced cruise lines to dramatically cut prices and that if the cruise industry wasn’t circling the drain yet, it would be in 2002. After all, in the minds of most editors, big ships belong in the Sunday travel section – not in news.

2. Amtrak Derailed. In 2001, the government admitted what anyone who has followed our beleaguered national rail system knew all along. Amtrak probably isn’t going to make it. But when the Amtrak Reform Council reached the obvious conclusion that Amtrak’s “financial performance is worsening” and that it wouldn’t achieve its government-mandated operational self-sufficiency by next year, the presses didn’t exactly grind to a halt. Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, the news came at about the same time the travel press was fixated on whether security guards should become government employees. And the media herd moved as one – away from the story with far-reaching consequences and toward the more trivial one.

3. Business Travel Boycott. Frequent travelers, disillusioned by a travel industry that overcharged them, got them to their destination perpetually late and took them for granted, said “Enough!” Corporate travel managers were sympathetic to their road warriors and acted as co-conspirators in what can only be described as a nationwide boycott of the travel business by its best customers. The most affected sector, airlines, began hemorrhaging money late last winter, almost a full year before the terrorists struck. Back then, the National Business Travel Association reported that these high-revenue customers were staying put. Why did it go all but unreported by the mainstream press?

4. Airline Re-regulation Fizzles. The year began with the introduction of several important Congressional bills designed to improve air travel for consumers. However, few news outlets bothered to notice them, instead focusing travel coverage on the best Spring Break destinations and recycling articles about how to pack for your vacation. By overlooking the attempt to re-regulate the ailing airline industry, the Fourth Estate became a silent accomplice in an airline lobby effort to destroy our last, best chance to reform an ailing airline business.

5. Security Meltdown. In the post Sept. 11 frenzy, even the most astute travel reporters completely disregarded a troubling development: from almost the moment that the first plane slammed into the World Trade Center, the airline industry has tried to thwart any government efforts to increase security. It quietly lobbied against efforts to increase training for security personnel, resisted moves to implement baggage-matching programs and pooh-poohed efforts to step up profiling activity. If anyone is to blame for the Richard Reid shoe-bombing incident in late December, it is an airline industry that has run a chilling cost-benefit analysis and written off the victims of any future terrorist attack as an acceptable loss. Never mind the journalists and editors who were in the know and looked the other way.

6. Lodging Industry Implodes. What looked like a slump in 2001 turned into slide, and before long the hotel business found itself in a freefall. Did anyone notice? Not really. Yes, the business press breathlessly reported PricewaterhouseCoopers’ prediction that hotel occupancy rates would plummet to their worst levels in three decades. But those same reporters had failed to note the crystal clear signs earlier in the year that the lodging industry was crumbling. Among the signals were an inordinate number of surcharges, odd and counterintuitive pricing patterns, and growing disenchantment from core customers. However, since this kind of news can’t be conveyed in simple sound bites or summed up in a tidy headline, it was simply ignored.

7. Agents’ Allegiance Shifts. This was the year in which travel agents collectively realized that they topped the industry’s most endangered species list and that neither suppliers nor customers would come to their rescue. As airlines inched closer to zero commission levels (a development that may come as soon as next year) travel retailers focused on how to make more money by hitting still-profitable niches such as selling cruise packages and corporate travel. If they helped customers in the process, fine. But agents knew they were essentially on their own. Many outright refused to serve travelers by booking airline tickets, referring them to the Internet instead. It’s a story that evolved so gradually in 2001 – actually, it’s been in the works for several years – that only the trade press acknowledged it (and diplomatically, for fear of offending its constituents).

8. Online Travel Troubles. When the interactive travel industry’s loudest cheerleaders can’t bring themselves to an enthusiastic rallying cry, you know dot-com travel is in trouble. When no one reports it, you know that our travel journalists are snoozing at the keyboard. But that’s exactly what happened when industry analysts at PhoCusWright described online travel as “a very battered market” this fall and issued an uncharacteristically ho-hum forecast for the business. (The growth curve, it admitted, had begun flattening out.) Did anyone pay attention? No, because only a handful of trade reporters bothered to attend PhoCusWright’s Miami conference and of those, only a few wrote stories that acknowledged it was the most downbeat conference about online travel in the relatively brief history of online travel. Instead, online travel reporters were distracted by the meteoric rise of Orbitz and the overperforming stock values of online travel agencies Expedia and Travelocity.

9. Carriers Go On Welfare. The fact that the airline industry is helping itself to $15 billion in federal subsidies has been reported. The fact that they may never be able to pay that money back – and that the bailout is the most misguided kind of corporate welfare imaginable – didn’t make headlines. Why not? Maybe our travel press corps didn’t want to be perceived as unpatriotic. Then again, maybe there’s an unspoken agreement among the newsmagazines, newspapers and TV networks that you don’t kick the airlines when they’re down, even when they’re essentially stealing taxpayer money.

10. Car Rental Crash. It lacked the drama of the airline industry’s near-death experience, but as with cruises and hotels, the car rental industry’s problems garnered very little media attention. When ANC Rental Corporation, the parent company of Alamo Rent A Car and National Car Rental, filed for bankruptcy protection this fall, it promised a “seamless” transition to profitability. And the travel media, accustomed to moving in lockstep, took ANC’s word for it. When ANC’s stock was delisted from the NASDAQ exchange in late November, we heard nothing from our media watchdog friends. Let’s hope they’re more alert when rental franchisees start shutting down and their own car rental reservations aren’t honored.

Terrorist attacks, attempted bombings and a travel industry in freefall have headlined one of the most unforgettable years in memory.

But some transportation-related stories slipped between the metaphorical cracks. These events – almost equally significant – were glossed over by the mainstream media, buried on the inside of newspapers, relegated to minor mentions at the end of TV and radio broadcasts, or ignored altogether.

Here are the ten most overlooked travel stories of 2001:

1. Cruise Industry Sinks. With the exception of the trade press and a few observant Florida newspapers, no one paid much attention to the bankruptcies of American Classic Voyages and Renaissance Cruises. The media yawned when P&O Princess Cruises announced plans to merge with Royal Caribbean in a $3 billion transaction. Hardly a soul observed that a glut of new berths had forced cruise lines to dramatically cut prices and that if the cruise industry wasn’t circling the drain yet, it would be in 2002. After all, in the minds of most editors, big ships belong in the Sunday travel section – not in news.

2. Amtrak Derailed. In 2001, the government admitted what anyone who has followed our beleaguered national rail system knew all along. Amtrak probably isn’t going to make it. But when the Amtrak Reform Council reached the obvious conclusion that Amtrak’s “financial performance is worsening” and that it wouldn’t achieve its government-mandated operational self-sufficiency by next year, the presses didn’t exactly grind to a halt. Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, the news came at about the same time the travel press was fixated on whether security guards should become government employees. And the media herd moved as one – away from the story with far-reaching consequences and toward the more trivial one.

3. Business Travel Boycott. Frequent travelers, disillusioned by a travel industry that overcharged them, got them to their destination perpetually late and took them for granted, said “Enough!” Corporate travel managers were sympathetic to their road warriors and acted as co-conspirators in what can only be described as a nationwide boycott of the travel business by its best customers. The most affected sector, airlines, began hemorrhaging money late last winter, almost a full year before the terrorists struck. Back then, the National Business Travel Association reported that these high-revenue customers were staying put. Why did it go all but unreported by the mainstream press?

4. Airline Re-regulation Fizzles. The year began with the introduction of several important Congressional bills designed to improve air travel for consumers. However, few news outlets bothered to notice them, instead focusing travel coverage on the best Spring Break destinations and recycling articles about how to pack for your vacation. By overlooking the attempt to re-regulate the ailing airline industry, the Fourth Estate became a silent accomplice in an airline lobby effort to destroy our last, best chance to reform an ailing airline business.

5. Security Meltdown. In the post Sept. 11 frenzy, even the most astute travel reporters completely disregarded a troubling development: from almost the moment that the first plane slammed into the World Trade Center, the airline industry has tried to thwart any government efforts to increase security. It quietly lobbied against efforts to increase training for security personnel, resisted moves to implement baggage-matching programs and pooh-poohed efforts to step up profiling activity. If anyone is to blame for the Richard Reid shoe-bombing incident in late December, it is an airline industry that has run a chilling cost-benefit analysis and written off the victims of any future terrorist attack as an acceptable loss. Never mind the journalists and editors who were in the know and looked the other way.

6. Lodging Industry Implodes. What looked like a slump in 2001 turned into slide, and before long the hotel business found itself in a freefall. Did anyone notice? Not really. Yes, the business press breathlessly reported PricewaterhouseCoopers’ prediction that hotel occupancy rates would plummet to their worst levels in three decades. But those same reporters had failed to note the crystal clear signs earlier in the year that the lodging industry was crumbling. Among the signals were an inordinate number of surcharges, odd and counterintuitive pricing patterns, and growing disenchantment from core customers. However, since this kind of news can’t be conveyed in simple sound bites or summed up in a tidy headline, it was simply ignored.

7. Agents’ Allegiance Shifts. This was the year in which travel agents collectively realized that they topped the industry’s most endangered species list and that neither suppliers nor customers would come to their rescue. As airlines inched closer to zero commission levels (a development that may come as soon as next year) travel retailers focused on how to make more money by hitting still-profitable niches such as selling cruise packages and corporate travel. If they helped customers in the process, fine. But agents knew they were essentially on their own. Many outright refused to serve travelers by booking airline tickets, referring them to the Internet instead. It’s a story that evolved so gradually in 2001 – actually, it’s been in the works for several years – that only the trade press acknowledged it (and diplomatically, for fear of offending its constituents).

8. Online Travel Troubles. When the interactive travel industry’s loudest cheerleaders can’t bring themselves to an enthusiastic rallying cry, you know dot-com travel is in trouble. When no one reports it, you know that our travel journalists are snoozing at the keyboard. But that’s exactly what happened when industry analysts at PhoCusWright described online travel as “a very battered market” this fall and issued an uncharacteristically ho-hum forecast for the business. (The growth curve, it admitted, had begun flattening out.) Did anyone pay attention? No, because only a handful of trade reporters bothered to attend PhoCusWright’s Miami conference and of those, only a few wrote stories that acknowledged it was the most downbeat conference about online travel in the relatively brief history of online travel. Instead, online travel reporters were distracted by the meteoric rise of Orbitz and the overperforming stock values of online travel agencies Expedia and Travelocity.

9. Carriers Go On Welfare. The fact that the airline industry is helping itself to $15 billion in federal subsidies has been reported. The fact that they may never be able to pay that money back – and that the bailout is the most misguided kind of corporate welfare imaginable – didn’t make headlines. Why not? Maybe our travel press corps didn’t want to be perceived as unpatriotic. Then again, maybe there’s an unspoken agreement among the newsmagazines, newspapers and TV networks that you don’t kick the airlines when they’re down, even when they’re essentially stealing taxpayer money.

10. Car Rental Crash. It lacked the drama of the airline industry’s near-death experience, but as with cruises and hotels, the car rental industry’s problems garnered very little media attention. When ANC Rental Corporation, the parent company of Alamo Rent A Car and National Car Rental, filed for bankruptcy protection this fall, it promised a “seamless” transition to profitability. And the travel media, accustomed to moving in lockstep, took ANC’s word for it. When ANC’s stock was delisted from the NASDAQ exchange in late November, we heard nothing from our media watchdog friends. Let’s hope they’re more alert when rental franchisees start shutting down and their own car rental reservations aren’t honored.

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