HOTELS

Roger Hill

Combatting The Air Travel Blues
August 4, 2008

I am usually a pretty positive guy. But I can’t mince words here. Last week I experienced what turned out to be one of the worst airline travel experiences of life.

I was traveling to New York City for a conference sponsored by Google and planned to return to Chicago in time for a late dinner with my family. Upon arriving at O’Hare, I learned that my flight had been canceled. After my consent to fly into Newark, I was able to find a different airline to bring me to the Big Apple in time for my conference.

The conference was incredibly informative. I enjoyed my day a great deal and was glad to have made the jaunt--until I arrived at LaGuardia.

I will spare you the blow by blow lest this blog become a novella, but in short, my flight was canceled and reassigned, and canceled and reassigned, and then canceled again (Note: It wasn’t raining).

Even my maneuver to take my efforts to a different airport--Newark, again--came up short this time. When it became clear that I would be spending the wee hours of the morning in New Jersey, the only hotel room that I could book was in Parsippany. That’s right, Parsippany.

At 10:30 the next morning, when I was finally on a plane headed back to my family and business, the thought occurred to me: Is this what our travelers are going through before they arrive at our hotels?

A regular feature in the business column these days is stories detailing the direct correlation between available airline seats and hotel room demand. The less inventory the airlines provide, the more of a challenge hoteliers will face. Check out these recent articles in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that speak to the issue:

New York Times Article

Wall Street Journal Article

As we find ourselves at a crossroads, we have a chance to innovate as a means to protect our profitability.

How can we greet our travel-weary guests with a more comforting experience? How can we help them navigate the trip to us and then back home?

Where sleek, stark, sexy lobbies have been the rage for some time now, perhaps the next lobby design trend will be a modern take on homey and soothing?

The comfortable bed revolutionized the hotel stay within the past decade. As travel becomes more and more harried, conceivably, the next revolution should occur at check-in. What if hotels allowed returning guests to keep a key with them that could be activated remotely, thereby sidestepping check-in all together?

PDAs could certainly be programmed to automatically send messages to the hotel when we land; notifying them that a guest’s arrival is approaching and allowing them to ready themselves so that late guests could side-step the lines.

Another thought: What if hotels made it a policy to offer to check on the status of guests' flight the next morning? I was so very impressed that the hotel in Parsippany called the airport to check on my flight when I was checking out of the hotel. When the hotel employee couldn’t get through right away, he followed up with me on my cell phone 20 minutes later to let me know my flight was confirmed. This thoughtful gesture was mightily appreciated after my travel trials of the past 36 hours.

Our ability to soften the harsh edges of airline travel today will be our secret to our survival in this tough travel climate. I believe that people want and need to travel. It’s a deep-rooted part of our culture. That likely won’t change if we do our jobs well as hoteliers and begin to design experiences that very deliberately soothe the stress of traveling.

Infusing a little comfort and caring on our part will help our guests swallow the jagged pill of airline travel, making it a little easier for our guests and, ultimately, benefitting our bottom line.

Posted by Roger Hill on August 4, 2008 | Comments (1)