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Upgraded, finally: Lufthansa economy-class entertainment
Lufthansa’s calculus has always seemed to be, “Should we give placate people in economy class with decent in-seat entertainment, or should we liquor them up for free? Let’s go with the liquor!” (Other airlines, say, Virgin Atlantic, have managed to do both, but let’s set that aside…) They’re finally reconsidering the entertainment options, if only on three routes. Still: Thank the heavens. My favorite real-world example of bad Lufthansa inflight video, broadcast on those overhead screens: A decade-old episode of the German crime drama “Derrick,” with an episode title that translated to “Rose on a Dump.” I’m not making this up. (Couldn’t they have shown the episode “Pornocchio” instead?)

Upgraded: Airbus A380 delivery dates
Singapore Airlines, the first airline to take delivery of its Airbus A380 mega-jumbo, is officially taking delivery of the plane on October 15, 2007. The first flight, from Singapore to Sydney, is scheduled for October 25.

Downgraded: The real Virgin America story
Virgin America knows how to play the PR game. No news there. But when the chips are down, they still need to figure out their schedule and customer service. But hey, the entertainment is decent. Mark Johnson of Jaunted flew a PR-free flight with Virgin America last week, and has the full report.

Downgraded: Charlotte security
Upgraded: Charlotte’s ability to bounce back
Charlotte Airport TSA agents let someone through security without screening. Flights delayed, passengers inconvenienced, etc., etc. But one thing I can tell you: The delays weren’t long-lasting. Later that same day, I caught a flight from Charlotte to LaGuardia, and it was all fine.

Downgraded: Hotel bathroom amenities
The China recalls keep rolling in. And now, hotel amenities are due for the seemingly inevitable report of poison. Gilchrist and Soames toothpaste is conveniently flavored with antifreeze. (I’ve seen G&C products, but never their toothpaste. My loss.) Better check that bag or box of mini-soaps, shampoos, etc. that the frequent traveler inevitably has stashed in their home. Toss the ‘paste.

Downgraded: Bellsouth/AT&T
It’s hard to blog without an internet connection. The BellSouth idiots first mistakenly shut down our dial tone but kept the DSL running. We called for service. They came, turned on dial tone, and shut down the DSL. Thanks. Great. Not once — not once — has BellSouth (now merged and rebranded AT&T) gotten one thing right on this phone line on the first try.

Last week, my wife and I stayed at a Hyatt Place, the Hyatt chain’s new upscale suite hotel brand. I was really looking forward to the stay, since the early reviews were good. After actually staying at one, I hope that the absurd number of problems we experienced were isolated, and that we simply were unlucky. This was a stay that I’ll never forget.

As background: Hyatt Place hotels are few and far between at this point, but they’re revamping old AmeriSuites properties and swankifying them to include the Hyatt bed, plasma televisions, etc. The lobbies are completely redesigned, with warm, contemporary design and some interesting sitting areas. Overall, the feel of the hotel is very upscale, at a midscale price. (Disclosure: We got our room through Priceline.com at a very deep discount.)

As part of an 800 mile drive last week, we spent a night at the Louisville location. We had left Chicago in the midst of flash flooding, making our escape nearly impossible. By the time we reached Louisville, it was 3:00 in the morning. Late, yes, but we had called ahead to ensure that our prepaid reservation was still there, and not given away to someone else. Our timeline follows:

3:00 a.m.
When we arrived, the well-meaning but hapless front desk clerk was unable to check us in, though our reservation was in the system. Why the problem? The calendar day had changed from Tuesday into Wednesday, he said, and our room was reserved by someone else for Wednesday night. The hotel was full, so there were no other rooms to give us, so he was wrestling with the computer to get a key. Watching him shuffle between computers, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, knowing that something was going very, very wrong.

3:15 a.m.
After fifteen minutes of wrangling with the keyboards, he finally got two keys issued for room 508. We headed to the elevator, up to the fifth floor, and to the room. The keys didn’t work. Instead of the green light, we kept getting orange. So back downstairs I went.

3:25 a.m.
After another few minutes of computer struggle, new keys popped out. Up to the top floor again, where my wife was sagged together in a heap of exhaustion in front of the door. The newest keys didn’t work either. Back downstairs I went.

3:30 a.m.
The front desk person was confused as to why this latest set of keys didn’t do the trick, so he called a technical support person… and got voicemail. He declared in his message that this was an emergency, but at that hour, who would get the message? So he sent me back upstairs, saying he’d figure it out and take care of it. “We’ll take care of you,” a phrase he repeated several times throughout the festivities. I went back upstairs and dozed off in the hallway outside our room. I was getting flashbacks to college, but thinking I was getting too old for this.

3:55 a.m.
The front desk person arrived at “our” room, but instead of keys, he had a luggage cart in tow. He was unable to get us keys, but he “found” another room on the first floor for us to check into. (Weren’t they sold out?) This new room was “never sold,” since the room dimensions were slightly off: The bathroom door would bump into the bed. Fine, no problem, we said, we weren’t about to quibble over a door, as long as we found a bed to sleep in.

4:00 a.m.
My wife opted for a shower and hopped right in. Once in there, she noticed a half-dissolved bar of soap and a pair of used washcloths. Uh oh. Bad sign. Time for a room inspection. And that room that was “never sold” was certainly used, if not sold. Short hairs on the pillows (someone had a haircut that day…) and longer, curlier hairs between the sheets … in a made bed! Used coffee cups on the counter. Several slices of pizza in the refrigerator. Bottom line: A dirty room that had bizarrely been tidied up to look superficially clean. Was this the manager’s secret hideaway where he napped or enjoyed some extracurricular activities? Ring ring, phone call to our man at the front desk…

4:15 a.m.
The exasperated front desk clerk delivered fresh pillows and sheets to our door, again with the statement that he would “take care of us.” I asked for two things: A very late checkout, and that breakfast would be delivered to us. (Their breakfast bar closed up shop at 9:30am.) He wholeheartedly agreed to both, apologized profusely, and left us to make our beds. After a long night of driving, there we were, stripping our hotel bed of its dirty sheets, and putting on the fresh ones. A surreal end to a long day.

When we checked out (very, very late) the next day, a different clerk asked us if our stay had been pleasant. In unison, we blurted out, “No,” to his shock and bemusement. “It’s a long story.”

This would have all been somewhat funny if we hadn’t been so spent. It was the end of a really rough few days, and we really, really, really just wanted to relax and unwind. Instead, we found ourselves sleeping in hallways and making our own hotel beds.

“I’m sorry, Mark, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

All of this could have been prevented if Hyatt’s computer systems aided their employees instead of limiting them. Had the front desk person been able to issue a key, we would have been in a (presumably) clean room and in bed. But no, the computer wouldn’t let the staff get us what we reserved. Technology got in the way of hospitality, and of customer service.

Hotel staff needs to be empowered to help the customer. When the computer can’t be trumped by a human being, then the customer loses. And when the customer loses, the hotel eventually loses even more.

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Postscript:
As far as the Hyatt Place itself, I liked what I saw. Admittedly, I had an unusual room, and I didn’t experience the full amenities, but the hotel design and styling were great, the bed was comfortable (even with our half-assed bedmaking), and it was remarkably quiet for a fully-booked hotel. The promo photos that Hyatt puts up on their website are actually pretty close to reality (see below), though our room didn’t have that screen/room divider, and the room lighting wasn’t quite this photogenic…

I’d gladly try them out again, but I’d cross my fingers that I could actually get into a room.

Downgraded: Odds of seeing pole-dancer art on London-Gatwick approach
First it was the Kentucky Fried Chicken ad featuring a Colonel Sanders image visible from space. Now, a website’s advertisement featuring a giant chalk outline of a poledancing stripper is causing controversy in the UK. The image, in a field below a common approach path for flights to London’s Gatwick Airport, is only visible from the air, but is still causing an affront. It’s likely to be removed soon. But thanks to news reports and posts like this one far more people will see it online than ever would see it from a plane. (Yes, I’m guilty of supporting their marketing machine… I know…)

Upgraded: Kayak.com introduces alliance-based search
Aggregator Kayak.com tweaked its search tools ever so slightly, allowing you to sort by alliance (Star, oneworld, Skyteam) and not just by airline. But you can only sort it that way AFTER you’ve the basic search. (You can search preferred airlines up front, so why not alliances? Meh.) Orbitz has allowed alliance search for some time, but this is the first aggregator that I’m aware of that’s doing this.

Upgraded: Hertz’s environmentalist credibility
Last September, Hertz rolled out its “Green Collection” of rental cars and I was thoroughly unimpressed. Buick LaCrosse? Come on. Where were the hybrids? Well, it took nine months, but Hertz finally got around to buying more genuinely eco-friendly vehicles, with a purchase of 3,400 Toyota Priuses (or is that Prii?). That’s more like it.

Upgraded: Wine in coach. Viva jetBlue!
JetBlue is serving up some slightly more interesting wines than usual the usual coach fare. Thanks to a partnership with Best Cellars, the airline is giving their all-economy class passengers a slightly better guzzle. Choosing wine for coach can be challenging, since it has to be a) cheap, b) in tiny ready-for-sale bottles, unlike in premium cabins, and c) pair-able with a wider range of foods. I hadn’t thought about that last one before: After all, the wine in business and first can presumably be paired with the menu (though that’s not always obvious). But in coach, a wine demands “versatility in pairing with a wide assortment of airport meals people bring on planes, including pan pizzas from Pizza Hut and Taco Bell burritos with chicken and mole sauce.” (Taco Bell has a mole sauce? Really?) Either way, good for jetBlue, and good for their wine-imbibing passengers. (Thanks Tyler!)

Downgraded: US Airways right to serve any wine
Unlike jetBlue… US Airways, which got into trouble for selling booze without a license in New Mexico a few months ago, and which has been serving the sauce with a temporary scrip since then, was denied an extension of its license this past week. Tough break. BYOB, anyone?

Upgraded: Marriott; Downgraded: Ian Schrager (or is it the other way around?)
Look, I happen to like Marriott hotels for what they are: Consistent, clean, competent, and overall comfortable spaces to spend the night. (4 C’s!) They usually don’t have too much bling or pizazz, though some of their big-city properties have that 1980s glitz that has an odd appeal to my mid-to-late-30s, graying-gracefully, receding-hairline self. So when I hear that they’re teaming up with Ian Schrager, king of the boutique hotel, to create a new boutique-y brand, I’m skeptical. It seems like a late-to-the-game attempt to create a “W” chain within a chain. If it adds a little funk to the Marriott decor, great. (Bye bye brass fixtures, please!) But it also smacks of desperation. And isn’t Ian Schrager past this? Seems like he’s here to cash in while the cashin’ in is good.

Upgraded: WestJet’s honesty; Downgraded: Little old ladies’ pensions
Canada’s WestJet (hearts) little old ladies. Not because they’re nice grandmas, but because they’re walking piggy banks, and the airline’s got a hammer. Consider this nugget from the airline’s president:

“There would be a little old lady coming up and she’d have a table and she’d have a chair and she’d have six or seven bags and we’d say ‘Yeah, take it on the plane. No problem.’ Now we’re actually going to charge a little bit of money for taking that table and chair and those extra bags on board. And that incremental revenue that we extract from that little old lady is very, very profitable to us. Some 85% goes to the bottom line.”

Good for him, for saying publicly what other airline executives discuss privately. So I guess the business traveler isn’t the company profit center; the rarely-traveled senior citizen is. Bank it.

Upgraded: Amputees and their TSA experience
Got a prosthetic? The TSA wants to make your security checkpoint experience kinder and gentler. Good! On the other hand…

Downgraded: Sippy cups, and TSA cinema verité
A former Secret Service agent reports that she was harassed when she accidentally carried her child’s sippy cup of water through security. Stupid enough, but it gets more absurd: The TSA actually released a silent security tape of the incident, labeled “Mythbusters,” in their own defense. Feel free to view the videos, read the incident report, review the embarrassed mother’s story, and decide for yourself.

Upgraded: Demolition
Let me make myself perfectly clear: I want to help destroy this hotel. I’ve never been to it, but I want to help Spanish hotel chain NH Hoteles wreck the Alcala Hotel in Madrid. The company is holding a contest to see who can take a sledgehammer to the joint. Only 30 lucky few will get to play rockstar-cum-wrecking ball. Let the spirit of Keith Moon guide you.

Getting paid to eat airline food?
Malaysia Airlines had to pay the equivalent of US$5,700 to a vegetarian who ended up eating chicken on board one of the airline’s flights. The payment covers “depression, shock, mental anguish and humiliation” that the man, an Indian Brahmin, suffered. Insert airline food joke here.

Flight attendants pan United’s “bill of rights”
United Airlines’ pathetic attempt at warding off the passengers’ bill of rights was slammed last week by its own flight attendants. No surprises there. After all, they’ll bear the brunt of the policy: Upset passengers tend to take their anger at the company out on the staff.

Resort fees revealed
One of my longtime pet peeves has been resort fees — the generally unadvertised yet mandatory surcharges on top of published hotel room rates. They’re the definition of customer-unfriendly. They’re usually unadvertised. They’re often mandatory. They’re sneaky, in that they make rates look cheaper than they actually are in online searches. And they charge you money for amenities that should either be standard to the room, or that you should be allowed to opt into. Grr… Anyway… Some destinations are more infested with the plague of resort fees than others. Hawaii is one such place. Now, via SmarterTravel.com, comes this handy list of resort fees in the 50th state. You’ll see the cost, what’s included, and whether or not it’s mandatory. Check it before you book.

Who’s on the No-Fly List?
CBS’ “60 Minutes” obtained a copy of what is allegedly the entire consolidated No-Fly List, and found numerous errors, including long-deceased revolutionaries, the 9/11 hijackers, and the president of Bolivia. The list contains 44,000 names, plus an additional 75,000 names of people who are required to undergo secondary screening. Honestly, I assumed the list would be even longer, especially when you consider that some people appear several times, with spelling variations (e.g., Usama and Osama bin Laden). (via Benet Wilson, whose blog just moved to new digs and got a new title)

Spend a day in Jamaica for $179
I get peppered with e-mails promoting all sorts of travel-related products and services, but this one struck me as sufficiently bizarre to warrant a post. Sandals Resorts is luring honeymooners by offering one-day trips to their Royal Caribbean Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica as a “test-drive.” For $179, you fly down in the morning, get their sales pitch (with lunch and a spa treatment seemingly included), and fly back in the evening. Mileage run on Air Jamaica, anyone? Have fun explaining that one to the passport control on your return.

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Every travel magazine seems to relish in their hotel rankings, and Consumer Reports is no exception. But the CR ratings aren’t “top five,” “top ten,” or “top 100″ lists. Instead, they’re overall quality and value ratings, based on a survey of 35,000 readers who actually plant their heads on hotel pillows every year, and not the musings of magazine editors creating an aspirational fantasy narrative for their subscribers. After all, how many people really will stay at the finest hotels in Bora Bora and Monte Carlo, anyway? Far more likely, the bulk of travelers (and travel magazine readers) will be staying at a chain hotel.

So which chains came out on top in their survey? Consumer Reports keeps their full report behind a subscriber wall (click here for a summary and a link to the full report), but the folks at ConsumerAffairs.com have created a synopsis:

Consumer Reports rated hotels based on five categories: Fanciest, Luxury, Upscale, Moderate, and Budget, as well as the typical nightly rate readers paid. Per category, the highest-rated choices are:

• Fanciest: Price between $130 and $350. Simply the best according to readers, the opulent Ritz-Carlton, which earned top marks for value, service, upkeep, and low reported problems.
• Luxury: Price between $89 and $218. Scores were consistently good with slight differences separating the best from the pack. Among the best: Renaissance, Embassy Suites, Westin, Courtyard by Marriott, Omni, and Hyatt. Upkeep and service scored generally high for this group.
• Upscale: Price between $70 and $235. CR readers found this group to provide the best bang for the buck. Homewood Suites and SpringHill Suites were among the best. Residence Inn by Marriott, an all-suite chain also scored well. Walt Disney Resorts in Orlando and in California offered stellar service.
• Moderate: Price between $58 and $100. Drury Inn/Suites, Hampton Inn and Wingate Inn were top choices in this category. The Drury Inn and Wingate Inn showed much better than average scores for value.
• Budget: Priced between $40 and $85. Microtel was the star of the budget bunch, scoring as well or better than more well-appointed chains. It typically builds new hotels rather than converting older properties from other brands.

“Fanciest” makes me chuckle. While positive, it’s sort of old-fashioned, and doesn’t use the marketers’ narrative of luxury lifestyle branding. And the “luxury” category doesn’t really strike me as all that luxurious. I mean, Embassy Suites are generally nice, and they have that manager’s cocktail hour, but “luxury”?

And some chains didn’t make the top of their group, which surprised me. (No Holiday Inn Express in the “moderate” category?)

Added bonus in the report:

Making matters worse, some hotels are tacking on fees for everything from maid service ($5 to $18 a day) to the *chance* to use a tennis court, hiking trail, golf course and other resort amenities ($12 and up). That’s right — guests will pay even if they don’t play.

I’ve heard of resort fees, but maid service fees??! Classy.

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Upgraded: Onboard pizza delivery
If you’re stuck on a plane for eight hours, the pizza is free! (While supplies last.) Yes, another airline incident, again on American Airlines, with passengers trapped on board the plane for hours on end. Been there, done that. It happened on April 24th, when a Dallas-bound 757 was diverted to Midland, Texas, but it took weeks for the news to trickle out, not even making real headlines anymore. (So when is that Passengers’ Bill of Rights making its way to the Congressional floor for a vote?…) But the reporting of the story contained this nugget that demonstrates the absurdity of the event: “Pizza was delivered, but only 50 to 70 slices, along with 30 bags of chips.” People weren’t allowed off the plane, but it was okay to order takeout?! And whom do we blame for messing up the order? Were they taking requests? If I were onboard and called in an order for barbeque, could I have had that delivered as well?

Upgraded: Ryanair’s pricing
Euroskinflint Ryanair took a consumer-friendly step in the right direction this week: The airline started quoting their prices inclusive of taxes. Considering the number of mandatory fees and taxes that are added on, that’s a significant change in policy. Good for them!

Downgraded: jetBlue’s CEO and his many apologies
JetBlue founder and CEO David Neeleman, who took a beating for the way his airline kept passengers stuck on board its planes for hours on end back in February, may have won some sympathy for his incessant apologizing after the incident, but his board of directors fired him anyway. “Sorry” doesn’t pay the bills, I guess.

Upgraded: Hotel wi-fi…for hotel management, not you
Next time you check in to a hotel, your minibar may get better internet access than you. Hotel managers are rolling out new features that link their back office to your room via wi-fi, as well as creating in-house wi-fi powered walkie-talkie systems for staff members. In other words, yes, they’ll use wi-fi to keep tabs on your minibar, but they’ll continue to charge you $10.95 a day for you to access your e-mail from your room. Lovely.

Upgraded: Deodorant
If your armpits have that certain je-ne-sais-quoi after you lug your rollaboard around for a few hours, then the TSA may soon try to register you in a database of travelers’ odors. I’m not entirely kidding. Wired reports that the federal government’s Technical Support Working Group is soliciting proposals for a system designed to collect human scents and record them in a database “for future use to track a specified target.” For civil libertarians seeking to avoid detection, the solution is simple: Start dousing yourself with other people’s sweat. “Freedom sweat,” anyone?

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Last week, I spent a night at a Four Points Sheraton. It’s been little over a year since I’d been in one of their hotels, so I wasn’t mentally prepared for what awaited me. As I walked into the lobby and toward the front desk, I was accosted with a phony smelling scent of apple pie.

It was then that I remembered that pie was the chain’s schtick. (Sheraton-branded pies are even being served up in US Airways’ first class. Maybe that comes with an ad on the tray table, too.)

It was just about a year ago when I posted this:

And joining the trend of hotels pumping scents into the air, [Four Points] will start misting their public spaces with the scent of baking apple pie. Why apple pie? They did a survey, and found that it “will spur thoughts of childhood (27 percent), home (39 percent) and holidays (48 percent).” As much as I like apple pie, do you really think it’s a good idea to make road-weary business travelers think longingly of home and carefree youth?

I assure you, I thought of none of those things. Rather, I tried to pinpoint what it was that I was actually smelling.

I thought, “What’s that fake-smelling odor? Cinnamon?” As I waited, I recalled the press releases and e-mails promoting the scents. But apple pie? Not a chance. It was too phony-smelling.

I don’t know how the staff can handle being surrounded by that scented air for extended periods. (Much like I wonder how anyone can work at a Yankee Candle store, but that’s another matter.)

A fresh and clean smelling lobby is one thing. But the stifling, phony smell that the Four Points was pumping into the lobby gets the thumbs down. Consider a clothespin for your nose.

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Reader Kim writes:

I just got back from a trip which included an extended stay hotel. The rule at this place was “no housekeeping for stays under one week.” If you wanted fresh towels, you could go to the office and ask for them. (This was Crossland Studios, fyi.) So when I checked out, and it was time to leave the tip for the housekeeper, I wasn’t sure what to do. What’s a fair tip for a room that’s never serviced during your stay? The room was clean at the time of check-in. I left one dollar. My question: Am I being a cheap-ass? Or is this fair?

No housekeeping… classy! The hotel equivalent of the buffet restaurant.

I feel sorry for housekeepers at extended-stay hotels. The tips must suck. But for that sort of non-service, I’d only tip whatever you leave for a one-night stay in a “real” hotel. If it’s a really cheap room, like a Motel 6, a dollar might be okay. If it’s a decent place, two bucks and up.

What say you, gentle readers? How much of a tip is enough?

Two hotel-related research items to point you toward:

First, HotelChatter rounds up the best hotel brands for wi-fi access. It’s not always free access, but preference is given to those brands that make the wi-fi gratis, especially in the rooms, and not just the lobbies. Check it out.

Second, Chris Elliott digs deep into the numbers of Hilton’s recent sleep survey. While the press release touts the 93% of guests who say they slept well on the road, 96% of guests report sleeping better at home. With all those pillow-top mattresses, fluffy duvets, and more pillows than any person could ever need, what’s keeping the hotel bed from besting the bed at home? What makes or breaks a good night’s sleep?

A third of respondents mentioned noise. Regular readers know what’s coming. My longstanding pet peeve: Loudly clicking and slamming hotel doors that let in 80% of the sound from the hallway. The bed wars may be over, but the door wars have yet to be fought.

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Mileage and point addicts, rejoice! There’s a great new site to add to your toolbox.

PointMaven launched recently, designed to help travelers find the best point-earning offers for hotel stays. It’s the sister site of MileMaven, which has a similar mission for airline frequent flyer miles.

(I’ve mentioned MileMaven before in passing, and I’ve had it in my Useful Tools pulldown menu at right for some time, but I just realized I had not ever given it the attention it deserves.)

Both sites effectively start their search with a similar question: Where are you going?

The service providers who get you there or take care of you at your destination are, perhaps ironically, of secondary importance in the phrasing of your search.

If you’re not handcuffed to a specific brand, either by corporate contract or a preponderance of loyalty points, and if you’re a member of multiple loyalty programs, then these sites are for you.

For PointMaven, enter a city or airport code, and a “map” of the different hotel chains’ point offers appears. Hovering over each box will bring up information about specific properties, promos, etc. Clicking through gives you details of the bonuses, and lets you book your room accordingly. (Some bonus offers require registration, or are targeted but a subset of the chain’s clientele.)

For MileMaven, enter the cities you are traveling between. A grid of airlines and their point offers appears. You may need to register for some offers, and some offers are targeted.

What the sites don’t do is give you the rates or fares up front. But that’s okay. It’s not their mission. Points first, prices later.

Your newspaper smells delicious, did you stay at an Omni?
Hotels’ “scent programs” and aromatherapy trends may have just jumped the shark. In a cross-promotional marketers’ fantasy come true, Omni Hotels have started slapping berry-scented stickers advertising Starbucks muffins on copies of USA Today. And the Wall Street Journal is considering adding scents to their advertising pages. Hopefully these odors won’t interfere with the whiff of lemongrass and green tea that’s being pumped into lobby spaces at the chain. What’s next, pay-per-view Smellovision?

Predict the next threat? A TSA-inspired contest
Bruce Schneier is running a contest to conceive of an absurd, fictional terrorist plot that would cause the TSA to start banning yet another product from airports. The more ludicrous the product, yet oddly plausible the threat, the better. Why? “The purpose of this contest is absurd humor, but I hope it also makes a point. Terrorism is a real threat, but we’re not any safer through security measures that require us to correctly guess what the terrorists are going to do next.” Partially-digested food, tooth-fillings, and zippers are front-runners in my book.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car buys Alamo and National
Enterprise is buying Vanguard Car Rental, the parent company of Alamo and National. The combined company would have over a million cars on its lots. Will rentals at Enterprise become more automated, like at Alamo/National? Will Alamo/National start doing the long walkarounds, hard-sells on CDWs, and secretly-negotiable rates?

Wi-fly
After the shutdown of Boeing’s Connexion satellite-based inflight internet service, other companies have been slow to start up service, which was promised nearly a year ago. Scott McCartney checks in with possible providers, and we’re still not there. But it’s coming “early next year.” And rest assured, Skype calls won’t go through. They’ll be blocked, so your fears of cellphone conversations can be kept at bay. Onboard wi-fi — which is already approved for service by both the FCC and FAA — will cost around $10 per day, and packages that link with existing services like T-Mobile HotSpot, Boingo, and iPass will be available. No word on which airlines will be the first to bite.

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Airlines do first class and coach. Rental car companies offer luxury and economy models. And hotels offer oceanview suites and dumpster-view doubles. But some resorts are cordoning off facilities for their highest-paying customers, like separate pools, separate restaurants, and separate services. A backlash is beginning.

The Wall Street Journal has an exposé on the increasingly two-class society at already high-end luxury hotels. Some folks are willing to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars on top of their expensive base rates, to have special treatment with already-luxurious resorts. But hotels aren’t keeping this subtle. Instead of keeping the two-class treatment quiet, it’s becoming more and more obvious. There are some who are growing resentful.

Example:

Jacob and Susan Rooksby got a peek at the subtle class distinctions during their January honeymoon at the Paradisus Playa Conchal in Costa Rica, where they paid $800 a night for a junior suite. […] Two days later, they stumbled on a quieter pool, where an attendant was circling with cold towels among the 14 or so guests. But as soon as the couple set down their towels, the attendant asked them to leave. “He said, ‘Oh. I’m sorry but this pool is only for Royal Service guests,’” says Mr. Rooksby, a 25-year- old law student at the University of Virginia. “You don’t expect, for that kind of money, to be treated like a second-class citizen.”

Higher-paying guests are identifiable by color-coded bracelets (eww!) or towels with a special stripe of color.

If you didn’t pay the big bucks to get the ultra-elite treatment up front, you might be invited to do so at check-in if you carry the proper air: “hotel staff will ask “refined” customers — for example, those who arrive on a private plane or who have an American Express black card — or those who look like they have been to the Caribbean if they want to upgrade at check-in.” Umm, would you know which stamps are in my passport, just by looking at me? I hope not! (And yes, I’ve been to the Caribbean.)

If paying $800 for a resort room doesn’t get you into the kool pool, then that’s not a hotel I’d really want to stay at.

So now some guests are just violating the rules, and hoping they don’t get caught. Some hotels worry that their fences around the exclusive pools are too short. Sounds like a lovely environment for a vacation.

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(Thanks, Dr. Vino!)