December 4, 2007

Right after Thanksgiving I was in Los Angeles after we broadcast a segment for the Today show at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, the world’s busiest airport.

The next day I flew to Cairo for one day. Then I traveled to Washington D.C., New York, San Francisco, and Aventura, Florida.

Am I a glutton for punishment? You bet.

Did you survive your dysfunctional family get together known as Thanksgiving? Well that’s good, but listen to this survey.

The guys at Hotels.com asked U.S. adults which relatives, if any, they would most want to stay in a hotel when visiting for the holidays. Overwhelmingly, 87 percent said they would want their relatives to stay in a hotel. Got to love that.

That proves the point about what I said about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Come and visit me, just don’t stay with me.

SELLING REGIONAL CARRIERS WILL HIKE FARES

Now, more seriously, we’ve got a situation going that I actually predicted about six months ago. And it’s going to get worse.

American Airlines announced this week that they were actually planning to sell American Eagle. Regional carriers, like American Airlines’ American Eagle and Delta’s Comair, have been costing the airlines money when, in fact, they are supposed to feed their service to different hubs and different international gateway cites.

So once American Airlines announces they’re going to sell or divest American Eagle, guess who’s next? Watch Delta dump Comair.

What does this mean to you in the short term? Not much.

What does this mean to you in the long term?

I’ll make you a bet: Higher airfares on point-to-point service on the regional carriers because the regional carriers don’t want you to fly from point to point. They want to connect you to longer flights.

If you want to go from Austin to Dallas on American Eagle, it’s going to cost you $700. But if you wanted to fly from Austin to Tokyo through Dallas, it would cost you $900. Airlines want to hold that ticket open for the Tokyo flier—not for the Austin-to-Dallas flier. So for people in small communities just trying to get to one other community, get ready for airfares to go up once these divestitures take place.

TWO KINDS OF BAGS: CARRY-ON AND LOST

You always hear me say that there are only two kinds of bags: carry-on and lost. And everybody knows that I do not check bags. I ship my bags, and if I could figure out how to ship myself, I would on domestic flights.

So Anna Crowley, reporter at the NBC affiliate at WCNC in Charlotte, interviewed me about it. I said I absolutely believe that you should FedEx, or UPS, or DHL your bags. So she decided to put it to the test, and she did it herself from Charlotte to New York City.

She used UPS, and guess what? It only cost her about $18 with UPS on a two-day advance. And when she got to her hotel in New York, guess where her bag was? In her room!

WIN A MEDAL FOR TRAVELING

Here’s a story I think is hysterical, and it comes out of Indonesia. The Indonesian government will present medals to foreign tourists who have visited the country at least 20 times. You get a medal if you show up.

I think the government should be giving me medals just for getting through airports in the United States. I think everybody should get medals just for getting through detectors. Ready? Medal detectors? Get it?

I can’t wait to see the presentation ceremony when they hand out medals just for people who show up. This is what we are getting to in the world of travel, where they actually are giving out real medals for showing up. Crazy stuff.

AIRLINES MATCHING LOWER FARES

Now, crazier than that is how we’re changing our flying habits. Given the choice between taking a U.S. carrier for X dollars to go somewhere, and a foreign carrier for X plus to go somewhere, would you fly the U.S. carrier? More and more Americans are choosing foreign carriers and spending more money, rather than saving money on a U.S. carrier—because they just don’t think they’re getting the service.

What about foreign brands of carriers in this country? Interesting story. About two-and-a-half months ago, Virgin America started a limited number of flights: Los Angeles to New York, San Francisco to New York, Los Vegas to San Francisco, and Los Vegas to Los Angeles.

You know about the “Southwest Syndrome”—which, by the way, is a good thing: Anytime Southwest comes into a market, not to mention a local market like in Fort Lauderdale, airfares drop. And they drop significantly.

Recently, I punched up on the computer available fares from Los Angeles to New York– just one-way tickets. Every airline except one was about $200-$220 each way. Virgin America was $129.

So you’re going to start seeing a lot of matching, especially in these weeks following Christmas, otherwise known as the dead weeks, You’re going to start seeing airfare sales all across the board matching those Virgin America fares on the transcontinental flights and in other selected markets.

What’s interesting though is although airlines are matching the fares, it doesn’t mean they’re matching them on every available seat. They’re doing it in a limited capacity, which is a sneaky way to be competitive on paper.

That doesn’t mean you’re going to get that fare. But every seat on Virgin America that’s advertised right now is advertised at that fare. So it’s going to be interesting to see how low they’ll go because I don’t know how anybody makes any money at $129 each way from Los Angeles to New York. Pretty soon they’ll be paying you to go.

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