Tag Archives for coronavirus.
Facing an unprecedented downturn, hotels are struggling to stay afloat. Some are turning to unconventional means to fill rooms, like providing luxury quarantine services or serving the homeless at risk for infection.
One furnished apartment chain based in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo is taking a different route: they’re marketing themselves as an escape for spouses at wits end with their partners during the lockdown and the perfect antidote to ‘corona-divorce’.
Business travel and international travel may take awhile to recover. Domestic travel, not just in the U.S. but elsewhere, should come back faster.
Without borders to navigate, and with blocked middle seats and deep cleaning of planes to give customers confidence, low fares should bring back passengers according to one airline CEO.
The plan is to do testing on all passengers prior to boarding flights to countries that require COVID-19 test certificates for entry. For the first time a finger prick test was used prior to today’s Dubai – Tunis, Tunisia flight.
If this is feasible at scale, then expect it to be a practice that spreads (and makes it easier for countries to require such a practice). Expect it to add to the time, hassle, and expense of travel, but also to open up borders faster.
The coronavirus crisis will have long-lasting effects on travel. I don’t think travel companies have internalized this reality yet, with many still projecting a bounce back in the summer and fall and a return to 2019 levels of travel next year or at least by the year after. That’s unlikely.
Hotel bank partners are funding rooms for hospital workers to sleep in otherwise-empty hotels. Another source of revenue for hoteliers right now is housing the homeless who need a place to quarantine during the coronavirus crisis.
Here’s the scale of the project, which sorts of hotels are participating, and how much they can make – at least in California.
On April 1 the President said that “they’re doing tests on airlines – very strong tests – for getting on, getting off.” It’s possible he was referring to taking passenger temperatures rather than administering COVID-19 tests. However even that isn’t happening broadly either.
Frontier doesn’t plan to start. Instead they’re making passengers promise to take their own temperatures and to wash their hands. And they’re asking flight crew to do the same.
Delta Air Lines has instructed flight attendants testing positive for COVID-19 to “refrain from notifying” people they’ve worked with, and not to post to social media about it. Now they say they won’t punish anyone who violates their directive.
Meanwhile American Airlines flight attendants are reportedly resorting to raiding catering carts and emergency kits for masks and gloves.
On January 14 the World Health Organization parroted China that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. The next day the U.S. had its first identified case but we wouldn’t know it for six more days. New York didn’t confirm it had a case until the end of February.
Vaughn Cordle was a United Airlines Boeing 787 pilot, flying out of Beijing several times a month. He noticed an uptick in sick passengers on his flights between China and Washington Dulles as far back as December, including a co-pilot making Beijing roundtrips. He fell ill in mid-January.
The impressions and beliefs we’re forming through this crisis are going to carry forward, and that will have long-lasting effects on travel brands. Here’s an early stab at brands that rise in status based on how they’re handling the crisis, and those that fall in status as well.
New hotel occupancy and room rate data shows that things got even worse for hotels last week than they were the week before when hotels hit what was then their lowest occupancy rate – ever.
It seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, and then last week happened.
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 »
