In March Hawaii started asking tourists not to visit the state. And then they got so serious about keeping outsiders away, who might bring a virus, that they started paying for plane tickets so tourists would leave.
Now the State of Hawaii – with fewer than 700 confirmed coronavirus cases and just 16 deaths – is making its success containing coronavirus part of a new tourism marketing campaign that’s in the works.
Warren Buffett owned about 10% each of Delta, Southwest Airlines, American and a little bit less of United. He wound up with a bit over 10% of Delta – his biggest airline position – by accident when he was buying as Delta was buying back shares. It was rumored a year ago he was going to acquire Southwest Airlines in its entirety.
Buffett has now unwinded them all and walked away from the industry.
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I’m starting to want to plan travel, even if it’s not clear when I’ll be able to travel abroad. I’m really hungry for sushi in Tokyo, laksa in Singapore, and prawn mee soup in Malaysia. I want a Asia trip, and there’s great business class award availability to Asia for January – March, 2021 right now. It’s available for four passengers, and far enough out that I’m willing to make some bookings.
In this new pandemic world Atlanta no longer has the busiest airport. That title actually goes to Anchorage.
While U.S. airlines are required to retain some service there as a condition of receiving federal bailout money, that’s not what’s fueling Anchorage’s rise to prominence.
I’ve mostly written about how coronavirus will change travel. But how will it change tourism – where we go, who will go, and what they’ll do while there – at least initially, as lockdowns being to lift?
United has realized they can switch employees from full time to part time and pay them less. That’s not a furlough, and while it reduces pay it does this through reduced hours not reduced pay rate.
The intention of the federal bailout was that the money would go to employees, whose pay would not be reduced. And United is reducing the amount they’re paying employees and using the savings to bolster the position of their shareholders. The airline’s argument is that they need the money which is the same argument they deployed trying to deny refunds to customers for flights they cancelled.
Marriott emphasized that they have 3300 hotels active with mobile room keys and more being added. This means not having to check in at the front desk with an employee, or having the employee handle your room key. Instead you check in with your phone, and use your phone as a room key.
That’s great, and Marriott is proud of how widespread this feature is (though not yet at half of their hotels). What they didn’t tell you, it turns out, is that they’ve actually pushed back the roll out of this technology at hotels which don’t currently offer it in order to save money.
The U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico are closed to non-essential travel, but agents on the border processing immigration say they haven’t received guidance on what that means and they’re left to make up the rules themselves.
Immigration officers further resent the number of people coming into the U.S., viewing them as physical threats to their health.
Airlines are still refunding as many third party sales as they are generating new sales. However overall it does appear that the number of cancellations is no longer greater than new bookings. That’s mostly because the trips that were booked before the pandemic have already been cancelled, but it’s a way of thinking about having truly hit bottom already. Now there’s nowhere to go but up.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
