Marriott has laid off several members of their Ambassador customer service team, and will no longer provided dedicated agents to their best customers until “returning to business as usual.” Instead, Marriott tells me, the remaining group of their best customer service agents will be “dedicated to Ambassador Elites.”
With American Airlines planes parked across many of their destinations, the airline is downsizing. Even operating a limited schedule nearly 80% of seats have been empty.
In addition to smaller groundings, American’s aircraft are currently on the ground in four primary clusters. Here are where their fleets are sitting, and what it looks like on the ground.
On Thursday the ‘association’ of two unions representing mechanics and fleet service workers announced that the contract was ratified. And the deal was overwhelmingly ratified, because their members aren’t morons. Going back tot he bargaining table now would mean a deal close to what they received was off the table. Signing bonuses? Now? Are you crazy?
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has 1.5 million N95 masks sitting in an Indiana warehouse.
And after discussions about what to do with the masks on Wednesday, it was concluded that “CBP has no plans to offer the masks to hard-hit hospitals, or hand them over to the Federal Emergency Management Agency…” Instead those will be given to the TSA. And CBP will acquire 1.5 million masks to replace those, competing with orders placed by hosptials.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Texas has become the latest state to impose restrictions on arriving airline passengers. And the Governor says that mandatory quarantine for passengers arriving from the New York area and New Orleans will be enforced by some of the state’s troopers.
For the week ending March 21, U.S. hotel occupancy fell to its lowest level ever recorded. Occupancy fell by 56% and average room rates fell 30%. Group (event) occupancy was down to 1%. And occupancy rates are likely even lower right now – we’ll just have to wait about a week to learn just how low.
If there’s one thing consumers thought they could trust it’s that if an airline flight doesn’t operate they can get their money back. Many have refused and now Canada is backing up its airlines against consumers.
The problem for airlines is that this tactic (1) erodes what little trust consumers had, and (2) incentivizes customers not to buy airline tickets now for travel far in the future because they now know they might get stuck without travel or money.
Air travel isn’t going to open back up all at once, or evenly everywhere. It won’t be uniform even domestically, and it’ll happen in waves across the world. People will be afraid to fly. Some businesses will have gotten used to online meetings and won’t fly as much. The world of air travel is going to be very different as we (eventually) transition back into the air.
Creating a mechanism for the money provided to airlines to be paid back is better than not, however it’s important for politicians not to meddle in the industry, forcing airlines to make decisions to please legislative constituencies rather than customers.
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 »
