DoT Caves to Big Airline

Continuing its policy of serving the industry - the US DoT has approved a broad brush of alliance requests. In doing so it has set the standard for a world of an oligopoly of airlines.

I have long argued that while alliances are very positive from a business perspective for the airlines they are distinctly un-consumer friendly and will ultimately result in higher cost of travel to the customer.

The evidence of this can be found in viewing the average fare revenue cents per mile. Over the last year in 12 months the revenue has shot up for the US airlines by an average of 18%. By any measure that is astounding. And that was with the loss of only one player.

With now CO and UA merging we are going to see more. So the oligopoly is in effect here. What used to be the big 10 is now the fab five.

And if no one else is listening I hope the DoJ and the DoC are.

Cheers

Are Passengers Happy?

I travel a lot... regular readers know that about me. I therefore get to enjoy the best and the worst of travel. I have one rule for travel. The destination is the goal not the journey.

So its often interesting to overhear people who are griping about travel and its problems. I think Americans complain more than other nationalities. I have always attributed it to the time squeeze of the US passenger.

Just lately I have noticed an increase in unhappy people. More people griping more shouting at desks. I think this is in part due to the reduction in the number of customer service people and their replacement by machines. Its rather hard to shout at a machine. So what do you do? With the significant reduction in manpower over the last year the human has to go somewhere. Well since the US DOT who overseas the services of the US carriers made it a little easier to file a complaint - indeed they are up a lot.

However the Wall Street Journal could not quite fathom the answer. In my view its obvious. Less people to resolve, More machines and more avenues to complain results in more complaints.

Check out the WSJ article.

Cheers

Vote NOW. Best Road Warrior Selections

OK chaps time to get your votes out.

Vote for your fave airline and experience as a road warrior.

The Flyertalk awards can be accessed here.

http://vote.ftawards.com/ballot.php

Public Mea Culpas. How Not To Do It

I love baseball. For no other reason that going to a game and just hanging out. This season I didn't attend one single game. And with good reason. My local team - the Seattle Mariners sucked badly.

Yesterday they ended the season with a record breaking loss. 105 games. But don't worry folks there is always next year.

Except to rub the noses of the fans in it the organization pushed out a kind of apologia. I reprint it here so you can see what is probably not the right way to do that.

This is the point where the more noble of people would have fallen on their swords. Not these guys.

Oh yes and the final score yesterday in Seattle? Yup they lost again 4-3.

Cheers

The Professor



October 4, 2010
A Message from Mariners Chairman Howard Lincoln and Executive Vice President-General Manager Jack Zduriencik

I've been a naval officer, an attorney and a business executive in my life. But before any of these, I was a baseball fan.

I was born and raised in Oakland, California. As a kid, I sat in the bleachers and rooted for the Pacific Coast League Oakland Oaks. Casey Stengel was the manager and a young Billy Martin played second base. When the Giants came to the Bay Area, I spent a lot of sunny days and foggy nights at Seals Stadium and then Candlestick Park watching the Willies - Mays and McCovey.

I'm still a baseball fan and, like you, I was very disappointed with the performance of the 2010 Seattle Mariners. It was a frustrating season and, yes, we made some mistakes on and off the field. Good organizations learn from setbacks and make themselves better - that's the mindset we're taking into 2011.

I have asked GM Jack Zduriencik to give you an end-of-the-season report on our baseball operations. You'll see that despite our struggles at the Major League level, Jack's plan to build through scouting and player development is working well at the minor league level. I trust Jack. I believe in his plan and I see progress. He has the full support of our ownership group, Chuck Armstrong and me, along with the resources to be successful.

Will it take some time? Yes. Do you have the patience to see this through with us? I hope so. Our number one goal remains to bring championship baseball to Safeco Field. I'm sure we'll get there.

Before you hear from Jack, I want to say something straight from the heart, from one fan to another: Thanks for sticking with this team, thanks for caring as much as you do, thanks for wearing the Mariners "S."

Sincerely,

________________________________________
October 4, 2010
Jack's Report to the Fans

Some of you may remember an old-time player named Rocky Bridges, a colorful middle infielder who went on to manage in the minor leagues for many years. Rocky once said, "Well, there are three things that the average person thinks he can do better than anybody else. Build a fire, run a hotel and run a baseball team."

After the 2010 season, I'm sure a lot of you are ready to step up and tell me how to run our ballclub. And I'm always willing to listen.

But despite our poor performance at the Major League level in 2010, there are plenty of reasons to believe that our long-term plan is working. In fact, looking at the big picture, our organization actually took a step forward last year.

Before you click away from this e-mail, give me a chance to explain.

Let's start with the cornerstone strategy established when I came to Seattle in October, 2008: We will build a winning franchise through talent that we draft, acquire and develop in our farm system. This is the key to long-term, sustained success in baseball.

The good news is, you gotta like what you see down on the farm.

• Eight of our nine minor league teams made it to post-season play in 2010.
• The AAA Rainiers, Class A Lumber Kings and Northwest League AquaSox all played in their leagues' championship series.
Two won league titles.
• As a group, Mariners minor league hitters ranked #1 in home runs, runs, slugging percentage and on-base percentage.
• The cumulative won-loss record of our minor league teams was 489-410, a .544 winning percentage. Only one organization
did better - the Cardinals at .549.

Does this mean that we should start printing 2011 World Series tickets? Unfortunately, no, not yet. But it does mean that we've got talent at every level of the organization - talent that's developing, scoring runs and learning how to win.

Let's talk about some of these kids.

We've got a flock of top-rated prospects on their way to the big club. These include position players Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak, Carlos Peguero, Nick Franklin, Kyle Seager, Johermyn Chavez, Greg Halman and Matt Mangini, along with hard-throwing pitchers like Michael Pineda, Blake Beavan, Dan Cortes, Mauricio Robles, Maikel Cleto and Anthony Varvaro. Many of our best prospects are headed for winter ball and the fall instructional league - they're driven to improve and play at the next level.

Some of these youngsters will develop faster than others, but we've got a rich pipeline of talent. Impressive, considering how thin our minor league system was just a couple of years ago. Plus there are more top prospects coming: We have the #2 pick in the 2011 June draft and we continue to scout and sign top international players.

At the big league level, Mariners pitchers tied for the third best ERA in the American League in 2010. Felix Hernandez has fulfilled his potential as a perennial Cy Young candidate. Jason Vargas, Doug Fister and Luke French made major strides in 2010. We like our pitching; our staff is young, developing and hungry.

Two young players, catcher Adam Moore and outfielder Michael Saunders, got valuable playing time and impressed scouts around the league. Meanwhile, our four core players - Ichiro, Felix, Guti and Chone Figgins - are signed to long-term deals.

I'm a baseball man. I'm not trying to sell you on the idea that we're at the top of the baseball world. We still have work to do, lots of it. My first job is to hire our field manager - and I'm already hard at work identifying and reviewing candidates. Obviously, we need to score more runs by adding to the middle of our lineup. And, for much of the past season, our team didn't play the fundamentally sound baseball that I want to see. I'm addressing all our team's needs and I'll keep you posted throughout the winter.

But there's one thing you need to know about the Seattle Mariners organization:

Everybody wants to win - from Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong to the clubhouse attendant in Everett. We have a plan in place and we're working days, nights and weekends to make it successful.

But as a fan, you want results, not promises. We know that. So we're doing everything we can to make it happen sooner rather than later.

I love the people of this city and this region. I love the energy you bring to the ballpark and the loyalty you've shown to the organization. We owe you a winner. It's coming. Stick with us, there's a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you.

Sincerely,

© 2010 MLB Advanced Media, L.P. All rights reserved. All Major League Baseball trademarks and service marks used herein are the property of the applicable MLB entity. All other marks used herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

You received this message because you registered to receive commercial e-mail messages from Mariners.com.
If you no longer wish to receive commercial e-mail messages from Mariners.com, please unsubscribe.

Postal Address: Mariners.com, c/o MLB Advanced Media, L.P., 75 Ninth Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10011.

Blondes Are More Fun?

OK this is one of the few times when I can honestly say this story deserves much better coverage than I can ever hope to give it.

The Lithuanian company Olialia Group have come up with an idea to show how Blonds are better than other people.

As part of their brugeoning empire - they want to enter the travel space with a resort in the Indian Ocean Island Paradise of the Maldives.

I got this story from TTG. by Sofie Griffiths - herself a blond it would appear from another story in TTG - click here for her picture (she is the one in the middle).

I was very tempted to put in a few of the pictures from the company's website but I think this is a family oriented blog and the only potty mouth or potty brained ideas we really follow usually come from Michael O'Leary.

Anyway - enjoy this story... I did.

Cheers

is Blogging Important?

I have been pondering Blogging as a subject recently and even posted on the subject of late. Where I have some issues is the amount of junk out there. Last week I posed a question and thanks to all of you who gave me encouraging responses, privately.

It does seem that many people do not like to post comments on blogs. Given the ease with which this can be done I find that surprising. However then I looked at the amount of re-tweets.

Taking a sample of TNooz - and using Tweetdeck to follow a few stories, I found that Tweets and re-tweets amounted to an average of several hundred times the number of comments. I took stories by one poster on TNooz and then counted the number of Tweets appearing on the story vs the number of comments.

But this is just my little counting in an unscientific way.

Interestingly when we look at larger scale - our friends over at eMarketer did some more in depth study entitled: “The Blogosphere: Colliding with Social and Mainstream Media.”

It seems that on average about half the web users in the USA will read at least one blog each month. I suspect that the numbers are far greater.

Blogging has become a media form and an outlet for commentary - both quality and frankly crap.

But there is no qualitative measurement. The social blogsphere applies its own rules based largely on popularity rather than quality as there is little to provide a qualitative measurement in the Social Sphere.

That bother's me. There are clearly a lot of people who are upright citizens who blog and blog responsively. There are those who don't care. Journalists - particularly traditional players in a broad generalization turn up their noses at bloggers. In many cases that is understandable. Given the growth and the impact of blogging - particularly to the detriment of the traditional media outlets for journalism - perhaps we need to set standards for blogging.

I hope that we can do that and self regulate rather than have all blogging classified as junk by such esteemed bodies as the US Supreme Court.

With Special Thanks to the Phillipines Blogging Idol Contest for the image.

http://wordpressphilippines.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/blogging-idol.jpg

Would the Real Low Cost Carrier Please Stand Up

The model for LCC airlines has changed over the past few years. At last week's World Low Cost Airline Congress, that question kept popping up.

Ralf Anker of Anna.Aero does a good job of keeping things in perspective. I really like the website and recommend people who are interested in the model to read it on a regular basis.

He gave a spirited presentation last week on the subject comparing the top real LCCs. The interesting thing is that he has so far not taken into consideration the GCC carriers such as Fly Dubai. Nor does he rate Vueling as a LCC - which is understandable as they have become more like a full service airline.

The emergence also of long haul airlines is beginning to show. Feel Air CEO Kai Holmberg was on one of the panels.

Clearly across the board the adoption of some of the successful LCC characteristics are paying off. You see the unbundling of the product occurring in almost all instances. At the same time you also see the hybridization by the LCCs of things like - offering a frequent flyer program, participating in the GDS and moving to regular airports. But the core principles seem to stick. Focus on costs and simplicity of product.

As was said several times during the conference - the big boys are coming to the LCC model. Few are going the other way.

Cheers

Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

New data from the US TIA shows that those long wilting violets - the US traveller has finally woken up and started travelling outside of the USA again.

With good numbers showing 11% growth in June - we could think that there is a mini-boomlet going on.

Not so fast.

The market characteristics are showing a high degree of fragility.

The bright spots are Latam (Mexico exempted though in this report they are showing good numbers - but this was before Mexicana tanked). The astonishing growth is coming going to the Middle East.

Here are the hightlights:


• Overseas markets increased 11 percent in June and increased four percent year to date.
• Europe increased 11 percent for the month but decreased one percent for the year.
• Asia grew 14 percent for the month and was up ten percent year to date.
• Canada increased nine percent for the month and grew six percent for the year.
• The Caribbean increased six percent in June and increased four percent year to date.
• For the month, air traffic to Mexico increased 15 percent. For the year, air traffic to Mexico increased eight percent.
• South America was up five percent for the month and grew one percent year to date.
• Central America increased five percent for the month but was down three percent year to date.
• The Middle East was up 24 percent in June and up 30 percent for the year.
• Oceania increased 34 percent for the month and grew 18 percent year to date.
• Africa increased 20 percent for the month and increased 17 percent for the year.

For the latest stats go here:

http://www.tinet.ita.doc.gov/view/m-2010-O-001/index.html

Cheers

Rich Folk Don't Have Time To Shop....

I always thought the concept of a personal shopper was complete BS. But it seems that there are quite a few of these people out there. Real professional shoppers who use OPM to do the dirty deed.

I find that I spend less and less time in a store. About the only time I visit a real Retail Outlet is at airports. Especially as I seem to spend so much of my time there. Indeed I was trying to think when was the last time I actually was in a shopping mall. I can't honestly remember.

But I do shop online. I also when I have a moment do go to a particular store to look at some things. For example I am looking to acquire a new PC so will likely go to the real store and buy or examine there and then buy online.

I don't consider myself by any stretch of imagination to be an affluent person. I would describe myself as "comfortable" but like just about everyone else I am a working stiff. Probably more so than I should be at my advanced years. They say that teaching doesn't pay very well and I can attest to that fact.

One thing I find just abysmal in shopping both online and offline is customer service. The ultimate oxymoron in my view. In the retail stores - the amount of useless sales people who dont know their products is legendary. I am however very happily surprised when I come across an individual who does know his product and is prepared to help address my questions and interact with me accordingly. For that I have time and respect.

So what of the affluent. How are they handled and what is their value? eMarketer did a nice piece on this.

I once visited a well known travel attorney who had this poster on his office wall. I thought that a little tacky. I wonder if its still there.

One critical factor for anyone dealing with servicing these folks is the ability to be 100% comprehensive. In my view that is essential and so my advice is to offer live chat and/or telephone support right there. Otherwise these people will not wait and will go elsewhere.

Enjoy that glass of champers

Corporate Bloggers Off Point - Me Too?

As a blogger - I sometimes wonder if I am doing the right thing or bad thing for the world. Am I contributing for the benefit of the travel community or simply spouting a load of BS that no one is interested in?

Well wonder no more Professor has some answer.

Firstly I guess I have to answer my own charge. There are quite a few unique visitors to the blog every day. Counting the RSS and the email subscribers we are looking at more than 1000 per week. So that is a reasonable number in my view. The make up is interesting but also is how they come. Consistently over one third arrive from google searches. So I thank you for reading and am humbled by your attention to this little blog.

As I am not a corporate blogger and (well most of the time) do not use the blog to promote my company or my clients I find it interesting to read other people's blogs. In general Corporate Blogs fulfill a useful purpose of getting a story out. By definition they are self serving as one would expect. I think everyone is fine with that. Not if however a private blog is used to push a corporate agenda.

eMarketer just did a report on the subject. What is astonishing in my view is how off point people are on the subject of not being true to the corporate need.



In the report there is a great statement. "Distorted messages are not a new phenomenon; they have been a problem in mainstream media as well. Still, the message gap between companies and the traditional media is significantly smaller: Less than half of all messages in mainstream media failed to reflect company messages, and here the US performed above average."

So are blogs in corporates therefore mostly a personal vehicle for commentary by the blogger.

That is an interesting question

You Just GOTTA Go To This

Are you a left or a right brain person?

Most conferences are somewhat dry and focused on the functional set of industry issues.

For the past 5 years I have been going to the WIT - Web In Travel Conference in Singapore. By far it is the best conference going. What makes it different? apart from being the only real representative of what is going on in Asia, it is the context of the content that makes the difference.

If you want to stimulate your right side hemisphere and still satisfy your need for left hand side knowledge acquisition - then this is for you.

Check out their video. The talent assembled is pretty darn good.

Cheers