The Savvy Traveler

Within a year I may not be able to fly anymore.

A dramatic statement, I realize.  And not one that I take lightly.  I've always hated the ham-fisted, Keystone Cops tactics of the TSA, but their actions in recent weeks have upped the ante for travelers to a simple choice: a strip search or a sexual assault.  Hyperbole?  Read on and be the judge.

I assume by now we all know about TSA's new scanners that show your detailed, naked image to a pervert in a booth screener.  I'll get into details of why I hate these things later, but suffice it to say that I think a strip search without cause is completely unconstitutional, to the point that it's basically the TSA taking a piss on the fourth amendment.  Travelers do have the right to decline to be scanned if they are selected, but must undergo a secondary search with a patdown instead.  Until now this has been an unpleasant but generally acceptable trade off.  When these scanners first appeared I made the decision that I would never subject myself to one.  At least not without some singles being tucked in my belt on the way through.

Thanks to some great investigative reporting by the Boston Herald, it came to light over the weekend that TSA is field testing a new patdown method to use on those of us who exercise our right to decline their strip search.  The standard procedure now is for the screener to use the back of his hand and avoid contact with sensitive areas.  This revised patdown, currently being tested at the Boston and Las Vegas airports, has screeners performing a complete body grope using the front of their hands, including detailed touching of the genitals. 

The obvious rationale is that TSA wants to make the alternative to the scanners so unpleasant that no one will opt-out.  Despite numerous public statements to the contrary, their endgame is to make a strip search the primary method of screening for all travelers.  This new policy and the purchase of hundreds of new scanners make that a fairly obvious conclusion.

Needless to say this is a bridge too far.  Since 9/11 the American traveling public has shown a frightening propensity to accept restrictions that do very little to promote security.  We have suffered the indignities of loudmouthed, condescending TSA employees, trekked shoeless on filthy floors and quietly accepted ludicrous limits on our liquids.  You really only have to ask one question: how many terrorists has the TSA intercepted?  The answer is none.  Not a single terrorist after eight years and nearly a hundred billion dollars.  And yet this arrogant, unaccountable organization continues to impose liberty-eroding dictates on us.  And we continue to accept them, put our heads down, and acquiesce to their demands.  No more.  The line must be drawn somewhere, and right here looks pretty damn good to me.

Aren't you tired of being treated like a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay every time you board an airplane?  It's time to start telling these power-hungry authoritarians NO and time to fight to bring back sanity to our airports.  Write your congressman, complain every time TSA crosses the line, and most importantly tell them NO on the naked scanners and sexual assaults.

I will continue to decline the scanner, and will decline this new patdown procedure if it is rolled out nationwide.  I encourage you to do the same, even if it means being grounded until this repulsive policy is repealed.  And if you're okay with the scans, you might want to work on those abs.

This week saw the introduction of yet another new airline fee, this time from American.  But the question is: does this really matter?  Let's dissect exactly what's causing AA to get such bad PR.

American's new fee is for non-elite fliers who want to reserve a seat in the first few rows of coach.  It also enables takers to board in the first group, which virtually guarantees space for carry-on bags.  Sold as "Express Seats", the fees depend on flight length and range between $19 and $39 each way.

Since AA announced this a few days ago, people have been going apoplectic on blogs and news sites all around the country, decrying yet another airline fee.  At the risk of being labeled a defender of airlines and fees, here are three things that have been missing from the virtual shouting match:

1. These fees are totally optional.  AA isn't charging anyone who wants a seat assignment, just those who decide that a seat near the front and priority boarding are important.  If you don't want to pay, reserve a seat a few rows back for free.

2. AA isn't the first airline to charge for certain seats in coach.  In fact, it's one of the last.  Off the top of my head, I can tell you that United, jetBlue, Continental and Northwest (now Delta) have been charging for "premium" coach seats for years.  And Southwest charges its highest fare for priority boarding, which for them is effectively priority seating.  Where's the outrage for them?

3. You might actually want to use this service one day.  Whether you have a tight connection or just want off the plane as soon as possible, sitting right by the exit has its advantages.  Why should you get something of value for free?

I'd be upset if AA were charging to reserve any seat.  But a couple rows in the front of coach?  Couldn't care less.  And let's not forget that AA's elites are exempt from these fees and can reserve these seats anytime.  That's pretty much anyone who flies AA like twice a year (ok not really).  So quit yer whinin'!

I’ve spent years mastering the ins-and-outs of frequent flier programs.  I’ll save the details for another day, but I earn miles at $.02 or less and spend them at five-to-ten cents a piece. 

But that system only works if you can actually spend the miles.

We all know the game.  Airlines make some seats - by no means all, or even most - available for frequent flier mileage redemption.  We accept that airlines are in business to make money, and our free tickets take a back seat to actual ticket sales.  So far, so good.  Airlines have sophisticated computer modeling that enables them to predict bookings on any given flight.  These programs also tell the airline how many seats to offer as mileage awards on each flight.  But as long as we know the rules of the game, we can still try our luck at getting that elusive first class seat on Singapore Airlines, since we know that we’re not chasing a ghost: there are seats out there available for mileage redemption.

But what if an airline changed the rules of the game and didn’t tell you?  What if that same airline lied to its own agents in order to further deceive customers?

Sound outrageous?  It is.  And it’s exactly what United Airlines does to its Mileage Plus program members who try to redeem their miles for flights on Star Alliance partner airlines.

The short version: United’s alliance partners make their frequent flier seats available to every partner program in the Star Alliance.  Remember, these seats are limited to begin with.  United then applies an additional filter to prevent United’s own Mileage Plus members from using their miles with their partners.

Why does United do this?  And what can you do about it?  Read on for the full details.

Since there are so many more Mileage Plus members than there are members in their partners’ programs, there are more United fliers redeeming on, say Air New Zealand than there are NZ fliers redeeming on United.  This imbalance has to be addressed, which ends in United making a payment to its partners.  This financial pain is even more acute when United members redeem for expensive business and first-class tickets.  United’s solution to keep these costs down?  Make less partner seats available to its own loyal customers.

This is called Starnet filtering.  Starnet is the program used by all Star Alliance airlines to book flights on their alliance partners.  The filtering refers to the additional filter United puts on top of the already-limited award seats released by the other airlines.  Here’s an example:

Your blogger wanted to fly to Zurich on Swiss this past April.  Swiss had released several award seats in business class on the flight in question.  These seats could have been booked with miles from any program in Star Alliance, from Air Canada’s Aeroplan to Singapore Air’s KrisFlyer.  But when I called United to make a booking, they claimed the flight was not available as an award.  Why?  Because their program filtered this flight out to save United money.

This is not a story that I’m breaking.  It’s been documented in a couple of excellent pieces by Nicholas Kralev at the Washington Times.  It’s also been discussed quite a bit in the blogosphere and at FlyerTalk.  I think it’s important to keep the pressure up on United over this.  One of the key benefits of United’s program is supposed to be that members can redeem awards on any of its partners.  Now that United is making it increasingly difficult to do so, this amounts to nothing more than a bait-and-switch.  We’re promised destinations like Bali, Paris and Singapore, but when it comes time to make a booking, United’s penny-pinching policy stands between us frequent fliers and our hard-earned award tickets.

To add insult to injury, United lies to its own reservations agents about this.  Experts like me have ways to find out if an airline has released award seats on a given flight.  So when I call in, I know exactly what I’m talking about (”I” class in the case of that Swiss flight I was trying to book).  Reservations agents are told that - even though I can see “I” class available - they haven’t released that seat to United.  This is patently false.  I have confirmed with sources at Swiss that when they release award seats, every program in Star Alliance has equal access to those seats.

So what do we do about this?  Arguing with United reservations agents is pointless.  They have been lied to by their management and likely won’t believe you.  The most important thing you can do is to make other United fliers aware of this issue.  Reference this blog post and the articles linked herein.  You could also write the United executive offices and tell them you know exactly what they’re doing, and that you won’t be flying United again until they put a halt to these shenanigans.

Most importantly, be sure to stop posting those credit card, car rental and grocery miles to your United Mileage Plus account.  Since those companies have to pay United to buy the miles to give to you, that's money in United's pocket every time you choose to earn Mileage Plus miles with a partner.  Hit them where it hurts.

I think there's a strong argument to the idea that organizations with a strong customer service culture are going to be more plugged in to social media than those without.  And to prove this point, I have my own, highly unscientific, recent experiences with Avis and Starwood.

Avis at LAX is a giant fail.  I've been a fan and customer of Avis for many years, and rent from them on an almost exclusive basis when traveling domestically.  On the whole they have good service, make few mistakes and often upgrade me.  I like.  But the branch at LAX has been a disaster each of the many times I've rented there.  From infrequent shuttles to understaffed counters, that place throws off my travel mojo worse than a July thunderstorm at ORD.

The icing on the cake was two recent rentals where I had specifically reserved "Cool Cars", a Pontiac Solstice convertible and a Cadillac SRX sport utility, for special occasions.  Each time I was told that the LAX location didn't carry the vehicle I had reserved.  Fed up with the lies of the Avis website and LAX staff, I hastily tweeted my dissatisfaction into cyberspace.  Avis never bothered to respond or apologize.

By contrast, Starwood has been on the cutting edge of the social media world since before the term was invented.  The "Starwood Lurker" on the Flyertalk.com forums has been providing assistance and interacting with customers for about a decade.  This was such a hit with Flyertalkers that other chains have followed suit, assigning people to help customers well before the first tweet or status update took place.

So when I was recently locked out of my room, drunk, at 2:30 in the morning at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park, my hate tweets to the Ritz were as follows:

Drunk hate tweet #1: HELLO RITZ CARLTON: it is 3am, I'm drunk and want in my room. MAKE THE FUCKING DOOR WORK NOW. kthamks. #TBEX

And #2: I should never have strayed from #Starwood. Miss you W Union Squae. F- you and your defective door at 3am Ritz Carlton

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I'm a peach when I'm wasted and want to crash.  Clearly.  I woke up the next morning to a ridiculous hangover, near deadly dehydration, and this tweet at me from @StarwoodBuzz:

@savvytravelblog Saw your post from early this morning. Looking forward to to seeing you back at one of our properties soon!

Now that's what I call a proactive use of social media.

I'm a lucky travel consultant.  A few of my clients spend a lot of money on some very upscale hotels, with the result that I'm viewed as a decision manager for a lot of travel spending.  That has its perks, most recently back-to-back weekends at Ritz-Carlton properties in New York and San Francisco.

The Ritz-Carlton Battery Park


The worst time for the electronic lock on your hotel door to die is when you're drunk and done at 3:30am.  And that's exactly when mine gave up the ghost my second night at the Ritz Battery Park.

After trying and failing to stumble walk from the Lower East Side back to Battery Park at 2:30 in the morning, the last thing I was in the mood for was twenty minutes hanging out in the hallway while half the maintenance staff worked on my door.  To their credit, they were completely professional despite the late hour and my bad attitude, and resolved the problem relatively quickly.  Sorry for the drunk hate tweets, Ritz.  No hard feelings?

Less pretentious than its sister just off Madison Avenue, this Ritz is a modern, welcoming property tucked away in a quiet corner of southwest Manhattan in a modern, mid-rise tower.  From the casually sophisticated lobby to my quiet and roomy one bedroom suite, this hotel had the right mix of elegance, luxury and class for this travel blogger.

Verdict: Recommended if you can swing the price tag.  Convenient to downtown, Battery Park (duh) and the Lex Ave subway line.


The Ritz-Carlton San Francisco

Far more self-important and geriatric than its New York cousin, the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco gave off a vibe that only your wealthy, east coast grandparents would love.  The property is as beautiful and opulent as you'd expect a Ritz to be, and the staff lovely and accommodating, but there was something about this hotel that left me unimpressed.  Granted, my tastes are best summed up by Westin and W Hotels: sleek, modern and too-cool-for-school (not unlike myself).



Whether it was the dated decor or the Easter colors adorning every wall in sight, I was left with the impression that the property is several years overdue for a thorough update.  Small televisions and am ambiance of 1978 in the room didn't help.  And while the gentlemen in the top hats out front were lovely fellows, the whole show was a bit over-the-top and cartoonish.  Even I had a hard time taking that level of swank seriously.

Verdict: Great place for your grandparents to stay, but if you're a luxury hound under 60 head down to SoMa and get a room at the St. Regis.

Welcome to my meltdown Monday.  As my fellow travel addicts know, traveling all the time just isn’t possible.  And during those in-between phases, when you’re stuck in a fluorescent-lit cubicle working for The Man or The Woman, every once in a while a day comes along that saps you of all productivity as your brain rationalizes the merits of leaving it all behind.

Today is that day.  All I can think about is getting to LAX in time to catch the 11:50pm Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong (it’s $777 one-way, same day purchase.  Yes, I actually checked).

So in honor of my travel meltdown today, I thought about what drives me, and what tells me that I have a dark passenger of travel.  Here are the seven deadly signs of travel addiction:

1. When friends call you their first question is always, “Where are you?”
2. You’ve added extra pages to your passport several times.  To the point that it can’t stay closed when you set it down.
3. Driving by the airport, the sight of four Qantas jumbos lined up in a row can move you to tears.
4. Your life is going perfectly well – good friends, good job, etc., but some days all you can think about is a one-way ticket the hell out of town.  And the longer you go between trips, the more frequent those days become.
5. Friends with spouses and children live vicariously through your tweets and Facebook updates.
6. You start looking for any excuse to get out of town: “Hey, I haven’t had lunch with Bill in a while.”  You live in New York.  Bill lives in San Francisco.
7. You start to wonder just how much damage it would do to your life to spontaneously pick up and disappear for three-to-six months.

What do you think?  Do you feel that same burning desire to keep moving at all costs?

Tourists to the US from countries in the visa-waiver program now need… a visa?

This isn’t breaking news.  About a year ago the post-9/11 security hysteria led to a new requirement for visitors from even the friendliest of friendly countries: pre-registration under a new program called Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA, in acronym loving Fed-parlance).  In essence this is a visa-lite for travelers who aren’t required to have visas.  The US government theoretically checks the names of the applicants against its many bad people lists in order to screen out anyone with ill intent.

What’s new is that starting September 9 (North Korea’s birthday, incidentally) visitors who don’t need visas will now to have pay for this, well, pseudo-visa.  The fee will be $14.  That means that tourists from known terror havens like Switzerland and Japan will need to pony up, so get those Francs and Yen ready.

What is this money going to be used for, you rightly ask?  Why, promoting tourism to the United States, of course!

If that sounds Orwellian and Kafka-esque to you, give a single finger salute to the Ministry of Motherland Security next time you’re in Washington, DC.

And topping off our roundup of travel weird for the last week is a story courtesy of the Sun-Sentinel:

Embarrassed by full-body TSA scanners at airports?  Then try some "privacy pasties"



Yes, these are exactly what they sound like: pasties to cover your sensitive bits while a perv in a booth TSA agent eyeball rapes your every curve and crevice.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the manufacturer if they make them in lead and extra large.

In the dating world, if a girl doesn't take your call repeatedly it's a pretty sure bet that she's just not that into you.  In the airline world, not taking a call means that your priorities are way out of line with reality.

Apparently Continental Airlines has so much business right now that their phones are completely jammed up with callers throwing money at them.  At least three times in the last week I've had to call them to sort out issues for clients and received the following message each time:

"Thank you for calling Continental Airlines.  Due to heavy call volume, your call cannot be answered at this time.  Please try your call again later or go to www.continental.com."

Como. Say. What?

The first time I was sure I misheard.  But then - click - Continental hung up on me.  Could this be right?  Are they really so busy they can't even let me hold for a ridiculous amount of time like usual?

This is emblematic of a larger problem with the US airline industry: a complete and total failure of customer service.  Airlines used to at least try to help average passengers, and would go out of their way to help elite members of their frequent flier program.  But in the last decade a mentality of "no waivers, no favors" has set in.  Combined with ruthless cost cutting we now have airlines making billions in losses while hanging up on customers.

A rational business response to increased demand is to hire more staff to handle it.  But in the perverse logic of the airline industry, customers are pushed toward automated systems that don't really solve problems, or handed off to overseas call centers that can barely handle reading a script, much less take care of endorsing a ticket over to another airline during irregular operations.

It's past time for US airlines to realize that skimping on front line customer service does nothing but turn people off.  And some won't be calling back.

The following originally appeared on the malcontentist blog last summer.  I've always loved this post, so it seemed like a fitting way to launch The Savvy Traveler.

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Dear Mr. Kim:

Thanks for releasing Laura Ling and Euna Lee.  It appears they did in fact commit a crime and cross into your country illegally, but I understand your pardon in exchange for a visit from fellow international playboy Bill Clinton.  I’m sure you two had lots to discuss on the topics of sleeping with staff members, lying to your people and drinking excessively.  You’re two peas in a pod!

Mr. Kim, I’ve visited your Stalinist dystopia utopia once already, and I’m thinking about visiting again.  I guess I just can’t get enough of Karaoke Tuesdays in Pyongyang.  I’m writing to ask if you could kidnap me as well?  Maybe hold me in a villa for a few months, let me receive mail and make phone calls, then release me to whichever international supermodel they send to pick me up in a Gulfstream V.

You see, in our capitalist system Laura and Euna are going to be paid a shitload of money to tell the story of their experience in your country.  And frankly I’ve done far more interesting things than either of them and I think it’s bullshit that these idiots broke the law and are going to get a huge payday out of it.

So yeah- an extended vacation in Pyongyang is exactly what I need.  I’ll be there soon; just have your guards grab me at the airport and take me to my bungalow cell.  After I’m rescued and get my seven-figure book deal I’ll send you a bottle of your favorite XO Hennessy to say thanks.

Warm regards,

The Savvy Traveler