On the road again: Pandemic travel experiences - Part 1

Many executives I talk to complain of the fatigue from all-day Teams and Zoom calls. They cannot wait to get on the road again. So, I thought I would share our family's recent experience - 3 airports, 5 flights, 9 hotels, 2 rental cars, plenty of restaurants. I had described our journey across the US states of Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming in this note here. 

Accenture's design agency Fjord, coined a term "liquid expectations" — "when you experience a service in one industry, it raises the bar for what you expect from other industries." I like the term and additionally like to benchmark against my experiences from competitors within an industry. I also benchmark against past experiences with a company.

Marriott tells me I have slept over 4 years in their hotels. Avis told me a couple of years ago some similarly crazy number of times we have rented from them. I have qualified for Southwest's highest level - Companion Pass - for nearly a decade. I am a Delta 3 million miler. Been to 75 countries. I have plenty to benchmark against.

This time I broadened the benchmark even further. I ran a survey of fellow analysts and business execs who have done multiple trips in the last few months. I will share that in Part 2.

Long and short - there is a noticeable decline in service across all travel categories I list below. While some of that is explained by labor shortages/supply chain issues plaguing the economy, there is also what I call "COVID copouts" - using the pandemic as an excuse for lowered service

Airports

All 3 of us (my wife, Margaret daughter, Rita and I) flew on different Southwest flights from Tampa (TPA) to Denver (DEN) and back. In addition I had a weather diversion on the way back and we had to land in Orlando (MCO) for a couple of hours.

With TSA Precheck, both Margaret and I found TPA and DEN security lines actually friendlier and quicker than before the pandemic. My daughter does not have it, and found her lines chaotic.

All 3 airports required masks, but the Southwest terminals were overcrowded. I tried to listen to a vendor presentation at DEN airport and it was so noisy I gave up.  The food outlets at their terminals also had long lines.

Southwest at DEN took inordinate amount of time delivering bags - almost 45 minutes both for our flight and for Rita's

Southwest at TPA did not have curbside baggage check-in (when we asked they said "COVID"). DEN did. Southwest had kiosks in both airports which generate tags which speed up the luggage check in process somewhat - however, many first time users find the UX confusing.

TPA usually has a taxi dispatcher. I waited 20 minutes - his handheld radio was crackling at the booth but he was nowhere in sight. One taxi asked for my destination and said it was not on his way home and he drove off. The next one tried to force me to ride share. A taxi! I refused. Even though the car showed the official United Cab logo, he appeared to be a gypsy driver. There was no identification, no fare meter - he quoted me a "take it or leave it" fare. He would not take a credit card or provide a receipt. As we were exiting the airport he nearly had an accident. At that moment, I briefly panicked and was about to call 911 to have him arrested. I have heard that in some cities, taxicabs have used the pandemic to clean up their cars and their acts to regain market share from Uber and Lyft. Clearly, not my experience at TPA, which in other ways still is one of the best airports in the country.

Airlines

Southwest reservations (including a call to upgrade), check-in, wifi on board all worked smoothly. Other than my weather diversion, flights were on time.

The in-flight experience was disappointing. They have quit serving alcohol because of unruly behavior on flights. No problem, but their COVID copout has been to reduce the choice in drinks down to only Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Coffee or Water. I had told some kids while boarding they had could have a treat onboard - Hot Chocolate. Before the pandemic, I have ordered that on many Southwest flights. I had to walk back and apologize to them. No hot tea - if you had a tea bag, they could offer you hot water, With the extra time from simpler orders, the flight attendants appear to have more time for monitoring for mask compliance. If you had it off for more than a few seconds while you were eating or drinking you would feel a tap on your shoulder. In contrast, I was surprised that the announcements made no mention of the HEPA filters, the electrostatic disinfectant and daily deep cleaning the planes go through. To me, making passengers relax is far better than tapping them on their shoulders.

More positively, the upgrade to Business Select was much more affordable than it used to be before the pandemic.   

Hotels

We stayed at 4 different Marriott brands - Gaylord, Residence Inn, Springhill Suites, Fairfield Inn, a Xanterra property (Old Faithful Inn), a Best Western and independent properties in smaller towns. Each had their good and bad but using the liquid expectations thinking you wonder why the Gaylord and the Best Western had superb buffets, but the Residence Inn and Springhill Suites had excuses why they could not host breakfast buffets. Old Faithful Inn had NO hot food at all. Across all the hotels we saw insufficient staff - my wife has a bad back and we would have appreciated some help with the bags.  Our worst experience was at the Old Faithful Inn. Margaret was looking forward to the historic property and we were paying Four Seasons type prices. She is not one to complain but was so disappointed that she went with a long list of issues to the manager who, without hesitation, knocked 50% off our bill. 

Rental Cars

I rented a SUV from Avis at DEN at an average rate $75 a day (we got a break for a week long rental). Not bad considering someone told us when we were in Jackson, WY the rates there were $500 a day. But ours had 45,000 miles, was all scratched up, did not have a toll tag (so we will see what that means in tolls and Avis add-ons). The Avis bus drivers at DEN airport were like the Southwest flight attendants - more eager to bark about masks than help people with bags. So bags were rolling all over the buses. Unsafe experience. On the positive side, the reservation online, the Express checkin and checkout were pretty smooth.

Rita rented a car from Thrifty at DEN and the checkin line was an hour long. She paid $100 a day for a compact car.   

Uber/Taxis

My taxi experience described above was scary. Rita used Uber/Lyft and found them fine. I have heard from others of long waits and that surge pricing is increasingly the norm for both services.

Dining

The best advice we picked up - ask locals. Some of the best meals we had on the trip came courtesy of our son, Tommy who works in the Denver area, and knows what is open, how long a wait etc. Thanks to COVID copouts at Starbucks and McDonalds we discovered that in smaller towns some of the gas stations have decent comfort food. We asked each if we could use their restroom and they pointed us to the gas stations :)

Mobile service

T-Mobile claims to have largest, fastest, and most reliable 5G network in the country. I would say in 1,800 out of the 2,000 miles we drove across the 3 states there was no 5G coverage. In fact, in half the distance there was NO coverage at all. I am glad we had backup AAA paper maps. The most shocking was at the Old Faithful geyser that we stayed near. It is estimated to get 4 million visitors a year and the best we could do was text each other. 

Bottom Line

While GE has adopted a new tag line "Building a World that Works", I don't get the same sense from travel executives that there is a focus on the "world that works" part. They are looking for sympathy because they had a crappy 2020. They conveniently ignore all the bailouts and PPP loans they got.

As the new CEO of Marriott recently said "I’ve described this phenomenon as the friction that exists between the short memory of our guests and the long memory of our owners.” Translation - "we need to take care of our investors/franchisees, sure customers will put up with the lowered service"

I am afraid the travel industry is the one with the short memory. They appear to have forgotten they desperately need to bring business customers back in droves. These executives may initially be excited to hit the road but after a couple of trips come to the conclusion "this is not really a better alternative to the digital fatigue". I heard some really interesting adjustments executives are already making. Will discuss them in Part 2 next week.

Ironically, Whole Foods opened a 48,000 square foot store in my town last week. It has a salad bar with 15 soups and 50 salads (not just individual items, specialty salads). They have gloves, disposable plates and cutlery for patrons, so the hygiene concerns are lowered. They have a decent sized sitting area where you can reasonably distance. Think of the chain of liquid expectations that is setting in motion. If they can do it, why not you, Mr. Hotel or Restaurant operator?