Wednesday, April 26, 2006

It seemed my day of travel to Chicago would be flawless. I took BART from Concord to SFO without incident. My flight on United boarded on time and, because my upgrade cleared, I had a seat in the last first-class row on a Boeing 757 (my favorite plane for 3-4-hour flights). I got my meal choice. The flight went without incident (I was even able to write an entire chapter of the book I’m working on) and landed exactly on time. I took the Blue Line from O’Hare into the City and it took only 20 minutes to walk to my hotel, the Hyatt Regency, from the Clark/Lake station.

But trouble awaited. After standing in a fairly long check-in line, I was greeted by the front desk clerk, LeRon, who spent a few minutes looking me up on the system only to inform me my reservation had been canceled—and the hotel was sold out.

I explained that I had not canceled my reservation, that I was a keynote speaker at a conference at the hotel the next morning. LeRon vanished into the offices behind the front desk. I called my contact with the organization hosting the conference, who said she would call the hotel conference manager with whom she was working. It wasn’t necessary. LeRon came back with a room—a junior suite. I’m not sure if that was a gesture to make up for the inconvenience of the cancelation that should not have happened or if it was the only room available. It turns out somebody had mis-entered my name (I was Sheila Holt), and when no such name matched the list of conference attendees, the reservation was dumped. But the hotel made it right quickly, and LeRon was a model of front-desk efficiency and graciousness. It should be so at all hotels.

Technorati Tags: Hyatt

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Note: This post contains some material that appeared in the last post!

Somebody needs to be fired. No; firing isn’t enough. Somebody needs to be hurt.

I’m writing from the Bloomington Marriott Hotel (across the street from the Mall of the Americas, but I’m not here to shop; I have a meeting down the road with a client tomorrow.) I booked my flight here on Orbitz; the ticket was booked by USAir. The trip involved a connection in Vegas. So far, so good.

I was unable to get my boarding pass online; the system told me to check in at the airport at the terminal of the airline operating the flight to Vegas. That was United (actually Ted, which I’m surprised is still flying); it was a codeshare flight with USAir. I got to the United terminal and used the kiosk to print my boarding passes. I should have known what kind of day I was in for when only one boarding pass printed out—the one for the SFO-Vegas leg.

I visited the Red Carpet Club, where a concierge made a heroic effort to get my Vegas-Minneapolis boarding pass, but he was thwarted at every turn. I shrugged and figured it would be a minor hassle to get the boarding pass at the gate in Vegas. I should’ve known better. We arrived in Vegas at the D gates. The only way to the B gates, where I needed to be to make my connecting flight, was to exit into the concourse. In other words, I had to get my boarding pass at the ticket counter and go through security a second time.

The kicker: I had less than an hour to make my connection.

The kicker to the kicker: None of the kiosks were working at the USAir/AmericaWest counter. I had to stand in line. By the time I got to the counter, the ticket agent was pessimistic about my chances of making the flight. “My flight was not late,” I said. “Somebody authorized this as a legal connection.”

The ticket agent’s response was to shrug. She did call the gate and let me talk to the gate agent, who suggested I run. If I didn’t make it, the next flight was four hours later, and it connected through Phoenix. Oh, and by the way, she said, we only have middle seats left.

I booked this flight some time ago. I wasn’t assigned a seat then? And even if, for some mysterious reason, that wasn’t possible, if I could have gotten my boarding pass online last night or at SFO this morning, I probably could have avoided the middle seat.

I grabbed my boarding pass and ran. Of course, my suspenders that did not set off the alarm in San Francisco did in Vegas, so I had to go through the whole wand/pat-down scene. From there, I ran to the gate. According to my watch, I had missed the flight. When I got there, I found the door hadn’t even been opened yet. Turns out the maintenance crew was running late cleaning the plane!

Somebody might tell me that this whole scenario happened because of the United codeshare leg of the flight. However, a few weeks ago I had the exact same situation: I flew from College Station, Texas to Houston on American (a codeshare with USAir), then flew USAir to Philadelphia. In College Station, the American Airlines kiosk printed both my boarding passes.

Somebody might also tell me that this only happens in Vegas. (More than one official at the airport told me that.) But whoever authorized the 58-minute connection knew I’d be in Vegas and kniew I’d have to get from the D gates to the B gates in under an hour. Whoever authorized the connection, that’s the person who needs to suffer.

I wish I knew whom to blame. My money’s on United. Whoever’s actually at fault, though, I am still furious seven hours later. 

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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I’m flying this morning from SFO to Minneapolis, connecting in Las Vegas. I booked it all through Orbitz and am flying on a USAir ticket. The first leg is a codeshare on United’s TED to Vegas, and the Orbitz documentation told me to check in at the United terminal (specifically, the terminal where the carrier of the airline flying the first leg is located). So I did—and got only one boarding pass for the first leg. At the Red Carpet Club, the concierge tried valiantly to get me the second boarding pass, but the system wouldn’t let him. So with an hour to connect to a flight in a different terminal, I have to stand in line at the counter and get a second boarding pass.

A few weeks ago, I had the same situation, flying American from College Station and connecting to a USAir flight in Houston. At College Station, I was able to get both boarding passes, even though it was an American terminal printing out a USAir boarding pass. Not today. Just another example of how the paying traveler just doesn’t matter to the travel industry as long as they get your money.

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Friday, March 24, 2006

As I mentioned, I’m on a flight from Philly to Los Angeles. I thought I was lucky, getting a seat in the exit row. Sadly, I’m just across the aisle from a guy in a suit who has removed his shoes and socks and propped his feet on the magazine pocket on back of seat in front of him. Every time he yawns, he groans at decibels that overwhelm my iPod and the Shure earbuds jammed into my ears.

This year, I will surpass 1 million true miles on United, and United is hardly the only airline I fly. Yet I have simply not grown accustomed to the notion that there are people who don’t give a damn about the impact of their inappropriate behavior on the fellow passengers who are forced to spend hours in close quarters with them.

The guy in the middle seat next to me (I’m in the aisle) is huge and snores, but he’s done everything possible to leave me room. I don’t mind him. But Mr. Noisy Smellyfeet across the aisle? That’s another story.

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I’m on a United flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, the final leg of my current week-long business trip. (I’m meeting my wife in LA; we’ll attend the wedding of a friend’s son on Sunday, then drive back to the Bay Area on Monday.) This 5-1/2-hour flight is my first opportunity to make a few notes about the trip.

Wednesday was the hellish day. I awoke at 3:45 a.m. Mountain Time in Denver to make a 6 a.m. flight to Dallas, connecting from there to College Station, Texas (home of Texas A&M University). I was delivering a talk from 2:45 to 4 p.m. and then catching a 4:50 a.m. flight from College Station to Houston and then from there to Philadelphia. By the time I got to Philadelphia and my hotel room, I’d been awake 22 hours and taken four flights for a total of about eight hours.

Most of it was uneventful, but the flight on American Eagle from Dallas to College Station included an incident that concerns me. I’ve been through it before, and it has always concerned me, but this is the first time it happened since I’ve started this blog.

We were about to take off when an American Airlines mechanic boarded the plane, took the microphone, and announced that the plane was overweight. Four passengers would have to get off. This on a Saab commuter jet that was not completely full. There was one volunteer with “flexible travel plans” who was willing to take a later flight and earn a $200 travel voucher, but everybody else had to be in College Station. Their need to be there was the reason, after all, they had bought a ticket on this flight. American sold them the ticket without overselling the flight.

Since three more people had to deplane in order to bring the plane down to its required weight, the mechanic came back on and read off three names. These three were forced to get off with no consideration for the hardship they might face by not getting to their destination. One of the trio was on the plane with two colleagues who all had to be at a meeting at the same time. The other two opted to get off the plane and rent a car. By that time, the check-in process, security screening, and boarding cost them two hours they could have spent on the road. I wonder if they made it.

Of course, if weather or mechanical issues led to a delay or a cancellation, none of us would have gotten there. That’s the risk we all take when we fly. But that wasn’t the case. Fortunately, I wasn’t one of the three. But what would it have meant if I had been? I would have missed my speaking engagement, which would have cost me my speaking fee and my reputation as I put the conference organizers—who charged for the session—in a bind. I would have missed my flight to Houston connecting to Philadelphia, and if that kept me from Philadelphia, it would have cost me a consulting engagement. Would American have compensated me for the hardship? Hardly.

I understand the plane couldn’t take off at its original weight, but why couldn’t the airline know that in advance and deal with it by limiting the number of tickets available, leaving those who couldn’t get tickets to find alternative transportation well in advance? At the very least, they should have chartered a bus to get those passengers to College Station in the 3-1/2 hours it takes to drive from Dallas. They didn’t, as far as I know.

I despise the airlines, a troubling situation considering how much business I give them.

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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Tuesday, March 21, 2006

I’m in Denver on the first leg of a five-day trip. I fly tomorrow morning to College Station, Texas, then tomorrow evening from there to Philadelphia. On Friday, I was scheduled to fly home to San Francisco. However, it turns out I need to go to Los Angeles instead, where my mother and other family live (and where I lived until 11 years ago); some family demands arose that require my presence back in LA.

I booked this entire series of flights on Travelocity, so I started there. I talked to two people—and was put on hold twice—before I was told I could make the change. To do so, though, I had to be transferred to the Reissue Desk. It was while I was reading my trip ID number to the Reissue Desk rep that the call was cut off. I had to start over. This time I was told by the Reissue Desk rep that I couldn’t make the change because I was already on the trip. He offered no advice about what I could do to accommodate my need to get to LA.

The flight to LA is on US Airways. It took three transfers at US Air to get to somebody who spent 20 minutes looking at my reservation before telling me United had booked the reservation so they would need to make the change. So I called United (where I have Premier Exec status). That was a 25-minute call. Fortunately, they were able to get me onto a United flight to LA and use the money I’d spent on the original ticket to pay for the new one. In fact, the United-LAX flight was $137 less than the US Air-SFO flight, so after the $100 change fee was factored in, I’m still getting a $37 refund.

So in the end, after nearly two hours on the phone, I was able to change my final destination. But it shouldn’t have been that hard. If my plans change, why can’t the people who shuttle you (supposedly) to where you want to go accommodate that need? I came this close to arriving in SFO at 10 p.m., going home, getting up at 6 a.m. and going back to the airport for a Southwest flight to Burbank.  Even though the outcome was what I wanted, it was aggravating getting there.

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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Thursday, March 09, 2006

Among the airlines I fly a lot, Southwest is near the top. For jaunts up and down the west coast, as well as trips to Phoenix and Vegas, Southwest’s schedule and prices are hard to beat. Because I stand in the Southwest boarding queue so frequently, I can state with certainty that the gate agent always reminds passengers before starting the boarding process that Southwest has open seating.

So yesterday I take a window seat on a flight from Portland back to Oakland. Moments later, another passenger takes the aisle seat. We’re both sitting comfortably, relaxing, when somebody else boarding the plane stops at our row, looks down at his boarding pass, and says to the guy in the aisle seat: “You’re in my seat.”

“What?” my rowmate says.

“Right here,” he says, tapping his ticket. “I’m in 14C.”

The seated passenger is befuddled. Behind us, another passenger says, “Our gate is C14. On Southwest, you just sit anywhere.”

The guy holding the boarding pass appears dazed for a couple seconds, then says, “Really? Cool!” and bounces on toward the back of the plane.

I only note this because it was a first: A Southwest passenger insisting that somebody was in his seat.

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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Monday, February 27, 2006

I haven’t experienced this one personally, but I know people who have. Two people check into a hotel room—husband and wife, business colleagues sharing a room, whatever—and each has his or her own laptop. One jacks in, signs up for the $9.95-per-day service, does his work, logs off. Then the second person jacks in and is asked to pay again. Each computer has a different MAC address and the hotel—many of which would charge for each flush of the toilet if they could—takes advantage of that to get double broadband fees for one room.

Dan Gillmor writes about this and notes that savvy Macintosh users can network their Macs to share a connection. As for me, I carry an Airport Express, the Apple WiFi device that’s about the size of a wallet. I’ve probably provided wireless broadband to a dozen or so people in rooms near mine. It works with a Mac or a Windows machine, given that the WiFi specification is a standard.

Hat tip to Geek News Central.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Friday, February 24, 2006

I started “Road Weary” as a means of getting the rigors of business travel off my chest. I used to let my irritation with insensitive and clueless travel and hospitality providers fester. The blog provided an outlet. Get to the hotel, hammer out a few paragraphs, feel better. I never expected much of anybody would actually read it.

People, as it turns out, are reading it. In fact, it came as something of a shock to me when Bizrate offered to pay me to run an ad for luggage on the site! Other road warrior blogs are linking to me.

So I’ve decided it’s time to get more serious about Road Weary. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to clean up the sidebar, add a blogroll, post more regularly (including more tips I’ve picked up in my years on the road), and generally make enhancements wherever I can think of them. As long as people are reading this, I might as well make it more useful and usable. My only caveat is that I won’t work so much on Road Weary that I forsake my primary blog. But I do promise to pay a lot more attention to this one than I have.

I hope the effort proves useful to my fellow travelers.

Posted by Shel in • General
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In San Francisco, if you dial 511 from your cell phone, you can get traffic reports. Nifty idea. Too bad it doesn’t work.

I was driving home from San Francisco International Airport this morning. I was already later than I had anticipated; flight delays at O’Hare. (Just imagine; flight delays at O’Hare!) I was also already aggravated. I had run from gate C4 at O’Hare with only minutes before my connecting flight was due to depart at 10:10 p.m.—that’s what it said on the monitor. When I got to gate C23, there wasn’t even a plane at the gate. I asked one of my fellow travelers what the United gate agent had announced. His voice dripping with sarcasm, he said, “They’ve been uncharacteristically quiet.”

It was more than an hour before we left. So I was in fine mood when we landed at 1:02 a.m. I took the shuttle to Park ‘N Fly. That’s another story. I called from inside the terminal for a pickup. “I’ll be there in five to six minutes,” the driver told me. Fifteen minutes later, I called again. “I’m four minutes away,” he said. I watched the shuttles of every off-airport parking service swing by before Park ‘N Fly showed up. It seems this happens every time I park with them. Why don’t I park elsewhere? Hell, that’s where all my affinity points are.

Anyway, it’s nearly 2 a.m. before I get out of the parking lot. I dial 511 and ask for traffic between SFO and the East Bay. “Driving time is 32 minutes,” the 511 voice told me. “There are no delays.”

Great! I drive toward the Bay Bridge, get to Fourth Street and am diverted off the freeway. The skyway is closed for repairs. The delay is an hour long as we snake along surface streets to get back on Highway 80 at First Street. How can 511 miss planned construction? Beats me, but it’s the last time I use this worthless service. Sure, I could have listened to the radio—which I will do henceforth—but with the 511 service in effect, I figured I could relax to some music and take advantage of the service to plot my route home. Fool me once…

Posted by Shel in • General • Planes
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Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Join my crusade. We shall write our legislators. We shall march on hotel corporate headquarters. We shall prevail in our mission to rid the world’s hotels of tabletop ironing boards.

Do hotels really save enough money on these despicable alternatives to justify the misery through which they put their guests? These atrocities slide all over the desk that you had to clear of your laptop and other belongings just to make room for it. One pant leg bunches up under the board while the other is being ironed. Your back aches as you lean over the contraption.

I call for an end to these abominations! Road warriors unit for full-sized ironing boards!

Oh, and coffee makers in the rooms, too.

(I’m at the Fogelman Executive Conference Center & “Hotel” at the university of Memphis, Tennessee. Across the street is the Holiday Inn, which manages the fourth floor of the Fogelman, where the hotel rooms are. The quotes around “hotel” are mine.)

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

I arrived in Des Moines and took a cab to my hotel, the Hotel Fort Des Moines. I checked in, got my key, and went to my room. I opened the door and found a room that had not yet been visited by housekeeping. The bed was unmade. Towels littered the bathroom floor. The quick checkout paperwork was on the desk.

I called the front desk and told them what I’d found. “Come on down and we’ll get you another room.” Fine. I went back down and waited while the front desk clerk tapped away at her computer. They had no other rooms. “I’ll send housekeeping up to clean it. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

I hadn’t had lunch, so I went next door. I had a Coke. I had a salad. I nibbled on some nachos. I read the Des Moines Register. I killed 45 minutes. I went back to the front desk.

“The computer says they’re still cleaning your room,” a different clerk said. “Have a seat. It could be 30 minutes.”

I sat in a chair directly in the clerk’s line of sight and listened to podcasts on my Nano. After half an hour, I went to check on my room. “How long ago did you first check in?” a third desk clerk asked.

“About an hour and a half ago,” the second desk clerk said.

“It shouldn’t take that long to clean a room,” said desk clerk #3. She called housekeeping. “They’re running down to check the room now.”

I waited at the desk. While I waited, desk clerk #2 got a call from a desk who wanted to know the outbound email address that worked with the hotel’s Internet connection. She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. I helped out, explaining that the guest probably had a dedicated IP set up on his laptop and that he needed to change to dynamic addressing. She passed the information along.

Finally, clerk #2 pointed to her computer. “Does that ‘I’ mean the room is ready?” Clerk #3 said it did.

I got a key, retrieved my bags, and finally got to my room. If I kept a list, I’d cross the Fort Des Moines hotel off of it.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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I’m sorely tempted to stop making an effort to get to the airport early. Today’s experience at Edmonton International is the source of that temptation.

I had a 7:09 a.m. flight from Edmonton to Chicago O’Hare, connecting at O’Hare to Des Moines, Iowa. It’s about a 30-minute drive from my Edmonton Hotel to the airport, so I did some rough calculations and decided to get up at 3:40 a.m. to pick up a cab at 4:30 and be at the airport by 5 a.m., leaving me better than two hours to get my boarding pass, clear customs, and get through security. Plenty of time.

My time was perfect. The cab pulled up to the curb at the American Departures terminal at 5 a.m. on the nose. I exchanged my Canadian currency for American dollars and got into the United line. And there I stood. Chicago-bound passengers waited and waited without moving as three ticket agents brought Denver-bound passengers to the front of the line. The Denver flight was leaving at around 6:30 and these passengers—I counted about 30 of them in all—had all arrived late, as late as 40 minutes before flight time. It took nearly 40 minutes to clear the Denver passengers, who seemed to just keep trickling in. They were so late that, ultimately, the Denver flight was delayed. The plane for my Chicago flight couldn’t even leave the hangar until after the Denver flight had left; consequently (a highly appropriate word), the Chicago flight was also delayed. I barely made my connection.

I don’t wish a missed flight on anybody. And if a handful of people show up late and get moved to the front of the line, that’s fine, too. Cars don’t start, alarms don’t go off, there are legitimate excuses. That wasn’t the case this morning, when 30 people showed up 40 minutes before an international flight. So I ask you: What’s the motivation to be at the airport on time when you know you can sleep in, arrive late, and be accommodated at the expense of other passengers who did get there on time? If more late arrivers had to wait their turn and missed flights, perhaps more people would get to the airport on time.

Posted by Shel in • Airports
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Monday, February 13, 2006

On Sunday night in Calgary, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, a budget hotel if ever there was one. High-speed Internet access was free. Tonight I checked into the Coast Hotel in Edmonton. It’s a classier place. I got into my room. No high speed. So I called the front desk. High speed connections are available only in higher-priced rooms. I was moved to a room that cost CDN $15 more per night. I also got a refrigetator. (Big wow.)

This is a trend I’ve noticed in general. The classier the hotel, the more likely it is that they’ll charge for high speed access. Sooner or later the hospitality industry will wake up and realize business travelers need and expect pervasive high speed wireless access throughout the hotel. We’ll start giving our business to those that provide it, leaving those who don’t with more and more empty rooms. Take heed; I’m not kidding.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Sunday, February 12, 2006

A power strip is one of the most indispensable items I pack in my suitcases. Here in the Holiday Inn Express in Calgary, there is one (count ‘em: one) AC outlet anywhere near the desk. But I have six because I bring a basic power strip wherever I go. With cell phones, iPods, laptops and a host of other items that need charging, why hotels think one or two outlets is adequate is just beyond me. But with my trusty power strip, it’s no longer a problem.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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