Travel Blog

There is something really satisfying about zooming in from outer space to your house. The detail in Johannesburg, South Africa is not really much to speak of yet, but I can easily imagine the possibilities once the detail is added in. I just zoomed in on Las Vegas and the detail available is absolutely incredible.

The resort we were staying at, The Holiday Inn , was amazing, to say the least. The food was ummm…delicious, a well laid out buffet with the yummiest desserts I have ever had occasion of helping myself to. And boy! Did I help myself, gorging up in 3 days what would otherwise have been a week’s diet.

You’ve got one dollar to spend on improving your business. Do you spend it on:

1. a new logo
2. an ad campaign
3. improving your customer’s relationship with your company

Cliff Notes Version of our UK Adventure: Last night we were in Brugge, dude, and decided to drive to France, perhaps to visit the West coast…By serendipity, found a Holiday Inn on the outskirts of Calais in a town called Coquelles. They had a pool. SOLD!

Samedi, marche des fiertés elgébétés. Pas mal de beaux mecs, mais je suis plus habitué à marcher pendant une Gay Pride, moi, pfff, que c’est fatiguant ! J’ai beaucoup aimé le char des LGBT d’Air France, avec l’amusante chorégraphie des steward, inspirée de la désignation des issues de secours “à l’avant, au milieu et à l’arrière de l’appareil". Et j’ai beauuuuuucoup aimé l’un des stews, holala, miam miam…

On our way home from Las Vegas, my wife and I had a flight out of Las Vegas on American West and a connection in Orange County to San Jose on American. The American West flight was delayed an hour, so we would have missed our American flight. The obvious thing for anyone to do in that situation is to call their travel agent. So, I called Expedia and they were just as useful as tits on a bull. Basically, the guy told me that he couldn’t do anything for me, but was happy to “sell us tickets” if we could not get home. Now that is just plain bad customer service. I approached the America West counter and they were more than happy to help my wife and me out. They went out of their way to get us on new flights home — the flights eventually were delayed also, so they again helped us get a new flight into San Francisco with a shuttle back to San Jose. I applaud America West’s commitment to their customers (even when they have connecting flights with other airlines). I criticize and denounce Expedia for their terrible customer service — sure they are a low-cost travel agency, but they should do much better when their customers are stranded. Next time, my wife and I will try Yahoo! Travel, Travelocity or one of the other travel sites.

At LA last night I had plenty of time to kill. I'd checked in at United Airlines and had 3 and a half hours to wait. So I crossed the car park to terminal 2 where Starbucks lurks and enjoyed a Grande Hot Chocolate. The only place I've managed to break a one hundred dollar bill without being regarded by the clerk with deep suspicion. He didn't even blink at the bill! Hot choccy consumed it was back to terminal 7 with three hours to kill. Since you can't smoke inside I spent most of the time outside watching the sun set and the traffic swirl by. Hundreds of airport shuttles, hotel shuttles, limousines and cabs.

Since then, the service has undergone a revamp at Amtrak. I’ve never encountered friendlier, more attentive, and funny people working in a service industry. And not even just the dining car attendants or the porters. It’s one thing to wait tables at a restaurant on the mainland, but when you have to wait tables and work with people and sleep with people for a period of 3-4 days, as some of the trains are long, then keeping a smile on your face and not wanting to knock a passenger off the caboose has got to be the hardest thing on earth!

I’m leaving the SF area after the Computers and Writing conference, which was surprisingly productive for me (in relation to the conference and my own projects…). The thing about taking the Amtrak after conferences is the cool-down period. I mean, I get 18 hours (on this leg, 12 of which I will be awake) to do nothing but think. No email, no phone, no disruptions, except for when I have to eat meals.

So my trip has almost ended. I’m sitting in the United Airlines premiere lounge at Tokyo Narita airport on the way back to Chicago. This Lounge is the biggest I’ve seen, it must be able to sit at least 300 people and has 2 floors. The premiere exec status has really helped out a lot this trip, I feel like a king at every airport I stop at. Did you know that the Singapore airport has a swimming pool?

A note to people that need to travel by air: check Expedia.com or Southwest Airlines’ site for tickets exactly one week to the day before you want to fly. I found that Southwest and Expedia both offer CHEAP fares on a 7-day advance purchase. Note, also, that it depends on how full the flights are on the day you want to leave. My cost was $118.10 for a one-way ticket from CC, TX to Baltimore, MD, with only one layover. The same exact ticket, if I would have purchased it the day before, would have cost me $316.

What’s the take home? Southwest Airlines needs to get a better site. I mean, I need to concentrate when money’s invovled. Or I shouldn’t do two things at once? I can’t decide. Too many ideas are running in my head now.

In January, Cohen boarded an Amtrak bound from New York to DC. Along the way, he attempted to shoot the passing scenery. (Note to Homeland Security: “Shoot” has multiple meanings.) But when the train stopped in Philly, four armed cops boarded the train and demanded that Cohen turn over his film.

Travel search engines Farechase, Kayak, Mobissimo, and Cheapflights showed big spikes in traffic in the last six months, Hitwise reported in MediaPost. Kayak visits were up more than 6,000% from October 2004 through April 2005. Farechase showed a 659% increase. Mobissimo grew 350% gain, and Cheapflights was up 56%. The travel market share of visits to those four meta search engines picked up 304% in the first half of 2005, while that of the top five online travel agencies (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Yahoo! Travel, and CheapTickets) increased by just 11%. blogs.zdnet.com

Ellen Saracini lost her husband, United Airlines Capt. Victor J. Saracini, when his Flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Now she stands to lose more than half of her widow’s pension in a very different kind of crash—United’s default of its $9 billion pension obligations.

Riders on Amtrak may think that the $3.25 hot dog and the $1.50 bag of chips in the cafe car are no bargain. Neither does Amtrak. It is spending just over $2 for each dollar of food it sells on its trains, according to auditors.

Airline groups have condemned plans by the world’s richest countries to impose a tax on airline tickets to fund extra money for poor African countries - and make a gesture towards fighting climate change.

Northwest Airlines Corp. complained the loudest when Delta Air Lines Inc. capped many of its one-way fares at $499 in January. And on Friday, Northwest was the one to try to push those fares higher, tacking $50 each-way onto fares aimed at business travelers.

Air France has won the rights to the domain name AirFranceSucks.com from a Florida company that held it since 1999. Earlier this year the airline brought the case before the World Intellectual Property Organization, which ruled that adding " 'sucks' to a trademark will generally be confusingly similar to that trademark."

Well, the first set of airline livery started to appear shortly after the Second World War – with the same intention that continues to this day - to identify the corporation/airline flying the plane. At the outset, European airlines -like BOAC and Air France- took up the mantel. However, never ones to see a good marketing ploy pass them by, American airlines soon followed suit.

It has been a day full of outrages and lies by the left.

First of all we found out that George Soros and the ACLU plan to ignore the victims of 9/11 and make a political statement because someone gave them a section of the 9/11 memorial, where the World Trade Center used to be. Deborah Burlingame, the sister of the pilot of American Airlines fight 77 Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III whose plane was flown into the World Trade Center reveals the treachery of the far left who plan to desecrate the memories of those who were murdered by terrorists.

For some unknown reason (not that I'm complaining!), the train-enthusiast website TrainWeb -- which has a buried link somewhere to my old cross-country train trip page -- decided to post that link prominently on its "What's New" page over the weekend, under the headline "Revisiting a 2002 trip on the Amtrak Sunset Limited."

United Airlines finally is giving up on its expensive, ill-functioning automated baggage system at Denver International Airport.

I have just enjoyed a couple of days in San Francisco, after arriving there on the California Zephyr, Amtrak’s long distance train from Chicago.

According to an article in the International Herald Tribune the U.S. regulators approved United Airlines proposal to offer wireless internet networks on domestic flights. Passengers will be able to check email, send instant messages and surf the web while in flight by mid-to-late 2006.

The DMN letters to the editor from a few days ago address the proposal to remove the Wright amendment, both for and against. One of the other strange claims laid out by Wright supporters is voiced by Mike Luckock, who writes:

This is not about flying anywhere we want; this is about Southwest Airlines' refusal to move to D/FW, where it has been offered a year's free lease.

Sorry, Mike. Southwest is under no obligation to move from where it is. You need to be asking yourself why you're so afraid of Southwest actually being able to compete with American.

With my Singaporean friends traveling back and forth this summer, Andy alerted me to a great deal where Singaporean travelers could get a free iMac G5 or an iPod mini just for booking a flight to places like New York. Check out the details as seen from the official Northwest Airline promo page.

I'm in Chicago at a really nice hotel by the airport--a Holiday Inn that was taken over by a private owner a couple of years ago and has been really turned around. This owner obviously "gets" customer service--I can hardly remember a nicer experience at a hotel, even those much more expensive. Plus, spacious roosm, handsome comfortable furniture, wireless connections in every room, quite good hotel restaurant/lounge, etc. But the really special feature is the 24-hour shuttle that will take guests back and forth to the airport, local businesses, the grocery, the train to downtown, etc.--which means you don't really need to rent a car! Oh, and they deliver a package of ice along with the chocolate mints each evening. Very cool.

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one (1) olive from each salad served in first-class.

Another friend, yesterday, told me of sitting next to a flight attendant in the waiting lounge waiting to get on an American Airlines plane. Her comment was to the lax standards for maintenance. If the plan will fly, they go. She said that it used to be they would fix broken things before taking off. Not any more. As long as it will take off, they fly.

Here are the amazing numbers: the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the government agency that is supposed to protect the private pension system, recently estimated that the amount of money currently owed to cover pension liabilities is $450 billion; 851 pension plans are underfunded by at least $50 million. United Airlines may have been the biggest pension default ever but we’re looking at a looming financial catastrophe: The PBGC, which takes over defaulted plans, had a $23 billion deficit in 2004 and that’s just the proverbial...

We spent Thursday looking at four different apartments. We then got to our "hotel", the Howard Johnson. I do not believe we could have found a worse place that was rated "3 stars" on Travelocity. I won't go into details, but I never expected to find a bullet hole in a window where I stayed at. Let's just say that we are no longer staying there and got a refund from Travelocity and the Best Western that we are staying in now is actually cheaper (go figure). I took some pics of the room which I can post later when back in Minnesota.

Northwest Airlines passengers who said goodbye to free meals in February at least got free pretzels to console them. Now the airline is taking the pretzels away, too.

Amtrack run a service between Montreal and New York. I knew of this, but couldn’t actually locate the service in a casual search because I wasn’t specifically requesting Montreal as a starting point (it’s annoying that information about much of those possibilities offered by North American rail transportation seems to be only available if you know roughly what you will be looking for in advance).

Seth Godin has a couple of great posts on his recent bad customer service experiences with American Airlines and Avis, juxtaposed with his great experience with the W Hotel in SF.

Today I’m scheduled on United Airlines 7688 (Operated by UNITED EXPRESS/CHAUTAUQUA), DFW to IAD, seat 2A (got the regional upgrade).

UPDATE: I was able to make it back to San Francisco without incident. United Airlines was able to locate the originator of the WMD. Winona Ryder is now being held for shoplifting the WMD from a dealer in Morocco. A full investigation is underway… and…

Yesterday I returned from my second trip to Las Vegas, NV. Five of our six man group flew to Sin City via Southwest Airlines. I always hear people saying "flights to Vegas are dirt cheap" but the last two times I've gone my ticket has been at least $350 and that seems like a lot, especially for an airline that bills itself as a low cost carrier. Granted, it was Memorial Day weekend, but we bought the tickets well in advance and for the hell ride Southwest gives you, it seems like a bit much.

If people are so upset at the idea of cell phones on flights, wouldn’t this problem sort itself out if left to the market? After all, I’m already willing to pay more for a flight if it’s direct, or if it’s to a closer airport where I’m going than a major international airport, and fly American Airlines when possible for their added legroom. If I had a choice between an airline which does and which does not allow cell phones, I would voluntarily choose the one which does not. And if there are enough customers like...

Rewards programs, sometimes called loyalty programs, are old hat to marketers. However, here's a new twist to that game...a program for staying healthy that gives you lower health insurance premiums and airline tickets as incentives. Divas this gives exercise a whole new meaning and as a small biz owner, whose health insurance takes a huge bite from the ole budget, I could get into this one!

Based on Rick’s feedback, Travelocity is now examining implementing a program in the spirit of Customer Champions that will take the guess work out of following up and will also provide feedback to the customer on their issue, problem, or suggestion.

If you've been following along, you'll recall that I blogged about Travelocity in the hopes of giving you some suggestions on customer service following. The lesson/observation was that it is not enough to just answer email fast or respond with yes we ... [Read More]

To add to the problem, many travel sites such as Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity claim to search all available airfare and hotel deals out there, but here's the hidden, ugly truth: these sites often make exclusive "deals" with travel providers, exclude many of the lower-cost airlines from searches, or favor one airline over another in their search results.

Just heard on the radio that LastMinute.com are being bought for something like 850 million by Travelocity. Couldn’t find it on /. or the Register but maybe it’s too new…

In theory, the train ride from Detroit to Chicago is "relaxing" and "easy". Fans will rant on about Amtrak's many virtues, saying things like, "you can read a book, or take a nap - and there's no traffic!". You get the picture.

In practice, it's a relatively long (7-hour) trip in pseudo-comfortable seating with way too many stops in random-ass cities. As I type this, I'm feeling guilty for sounding like such a transportation snob - and I'm not, really - I've happily slept on trains next to live chickens and pigs (Vietnam) and made it through countless cross-country trips in the wood-paneled family wagon, even without possession of the coveted "way-way-back seat". The problem with the Amtrak version of the Detroit to Chicago trek is that there's just nothing outstanding...

Until this year however, the demand for flights was far below their 2001 peak. Now that flights are back up, airlines want to add capacity. Things get more complicated though, since Mayor Daley is now using the flight increase to push for his long-desired O'Hare expansion plans, smaller airlines operating at O'Hare are upset that United and American Airlines already own 88% of the flight slots and many northwest suburban village elections turned on support for or against O'Hare expansion.

Airbus has told Air France that deliveries of the A380 superjumbo which the airline has ordered will be delayed, a spokeswoman for Air France said on Wednesday.