Here’s what I think if the most challenging thing with each of the largest airlines and hotel chains, a simple statement influenced by my idiosyncratic preferences — but I think they stand up:
Airlines:
- American Airlines: Cabin configurations. They’ve committed to a domestic seat configuration that’s simply passenger unfriendly and committed to removing seat back screens from domestic flights. There’s less legroom across the board, even in extra legroom and first class seats. In other words they’re going out of their way to make themselves less pleasant to fly. Meanwhile they’re removing business class seats from planes, there just aren’t enough premium seats in their international fleet and soon Boeing 787-8s will have just 20 of them.
Alongside this is how unhappy so many employees seem to be. Mechanics haven’t gotten a joint contract and still operate as separate work groups, and have seemed to be slowing down the airline intentionally. The carrier’s operations have suffered. Meanwhile flight attendants are unhappy they’re paid less than peers at Delta, feel the airline’s new sick ‘points’ system is punitive, and are frustrated that despite seniority they get placed on reserve duty and don’t know when they’re flying.
- Delta: They run a good airline operation, and have friendly and helpful staff overall, but they’re only 80% as good as they think they are. They play hardball with everyone — politicians, competitors, customers and constantly seem to be spinning. As a result I just don’t know how much of what they say to believe, even though I know to believe very little of what’s said about SkyMiles.
- United: Even when they finally roll out their new business class seats to most of their fleet — still too far away — their business class product will lag American’s (better seat) and Delta’s (suites with doors). So it makes no sense to be cutting the soft product and staffing the way they have been. Meanwhile the lack of consistent functional internet across their fleet drags down the productivity of their customers.
- Southwest Airlines: Without assigned seating you have to line up to board and the seat you get is based on when you board. That means you need to board first, and not last, which makes less effective use of your time — arriving at the airport later, grabbing food, working in the terminal.
Hotel chains:
- Hyatt: Though they’ve made real strides fixing some of the pain points introduced with the World of Hyatt elite program, their mid-tier elite status remains less rewarding than Hilton Gold or Marriott Platinum, and comparatively tough to get. Meanwhile the overall biggest issue faced by Hyatt is scale. They need to continue with partnerships and acquisitions in order to offer hotels where customers who want to remain loyal need to stay.
- Marriott: They simply need to be able to execute on their promises, whether it’s hotels that aren’t offering award availability when searching multiple nights or systems that go down or don’t properly cancel reservations, the chain that lost 300 million customer records and had credit card and passport information stolen needs to get the basics right. They also need to ensure hotels actually deliver on promised benefits, not unilaterally imposing surcharges on award nights, getting creating with the definition of elite breakfast, or pulling club lounge access from Platinums.
- Hilton: They have the scale to compete with Marriott, but their loyalty program is attractive to people signing up for credit cards to get status and not to those who actually put their heads in beds to earn benefits. The test offering confirmed suite upgrades needs to be rolled out in a big and generous way and elites need guaranteed late check-out.
- IHG: They talk a good game about loyalty but don’t offer substantive benefits like consistent suite upgrades, club lounge access, breakfast or guaranteed late check-out. Hotels don’t have to honor most elite benefits on redemption stays. And there are no redemption choices to secure better than a base room. In other words the elite program needs to do more than change, it needs to exist and they need to make redemption more attractive not feel like a punishment. And as they fold additional acquired brands into their portfolio they need to not chase away customers like they did with Kimpton, ruining the uniqueness of the loyalty offering (and sticking it to members converting points).
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Gary,
Give this, is chasing status and loyalty with it?
Southwest – No GD in-seat power.
Gary: I think your analysis is spot on. Having been at the highest loyalty status with most of the majors, I have settled on Delta and Hyatt. I’m glad to have given up on United after flying 2 million miles with them. However, as good as Delta is, the SkyMiles program lags. Only four global upgrade certificates after flying 125,000 miles/year irks me. If you can achieve Globalist status with Hyatt, the program is fantastic. I agree with you that lesser status is lacking in benefits. You might consider Omni as another alternative. They pay a lot of attention to those with the highest reward status, Black. Terrific arrival amenities and I consider it a true luxury hotels at a price more often in line with the lesser hotels.
Last week was a microcosm of my travel on AA this year, 38 segments so far. Last week went like this flying CRW-CLT-ORD-SLC
CRW- CLT – went fine
CLT-ORD – delayed over an hour because some latch in the rear lav was broken.
ORD-SLC – delayed over 2 hours comedy of errors
1. First was a mechanical problem, a fuse kept tripping.
2. At the gate they asked for 6 volunteers to take another flight because of weight/balance issues, they ended up getting 4 and then called 2 people to the desk and told them they were being off loaded. Then all the volunteers actually got on the plane, then after about 45 mins – we were still waiting for the fuse thing to get fixed – they reattach the bridge and call the 4 people off again.
3. Well now we need to off load fuel, pilot comes on and says they only have 1 defuel truck at ORD, like really ?? We wait and wait then pilot comes back on and says he asked for the truck over 90 mins ago and it is still not on the way so we are going to go somewhere and just rev the engines to burn fuel, which is what we did for about 15 mins. Then we finally took off.
I tried to divorce AA but I can’t because DL is so freaking expensive compared to AA, sample fare I need to fly CRW-BUF the week of March 24th, DL is over $900 and AA is $360, our customers are not going to pay for DL. I avoid ORD if possible so UA is out.
Pretty spot on here, Gary. Thanks!
I have found UA’s internet fine for my needs but I know a lot of others have problems. I do think it’s priced better than AA’s if you buy it for individual flights.
I don’t understand your point about Southwest. You get your boarding position when you check in, whether an hour in advance or 24 hours in advance, or even earlier if you buy Early Bird check-in. It doesn’t matter how early you get to the gate, you’ll have the same position in line. If you have #60 you could get to the gate 3 hours early and you’ll still have # 60.
Minor points…
AIRLINES:
Without trying to be a broken record, I *do* try to avoid the USL3 as much as possible, for reasons you outline above. With SFO/OAK as my home airports, clearly I have the most opportunity to fly UA, but I don’t like to; next is AA, with some presence to be sure, but too many connecting flights. As for DL — yes — I can’t trust them either, and their routes from SFO are weak at best (IMHO, obviously).
In re: Southwest — yes, you need to line up to board…HOWEVER, what you *really* need to do is check-in 23 hours and 59 seconds before your scheduled departure time so as to obtain a high[er] number (e.g.: A40, versus C12). In my experience, *everyone* in line is willing to line up in numerical order prior to boarding…the individual with A41 will permit the person with A40 to line up ahead of him/her. As long as you are in line prior to the boarding process begins for your group, there’s never as issue. And for short hops (say 1.5-2 hours or less), I would much rather be on WN than any of the USL3 carriers. (Though I prefer AS, but they too certainly have their problems¹.)
HOTELS:
In re: Hyatt/Marriott/Hilton…I agree Hyatt needs to be larger, and benefits more rewarding. Marriott remains the best at shooting themselves in the foot. So far, as a Hilton Diamond (yes, via cc, not nights), I will say I’ve been treated very well both here in abroad — a definite improvement over Gold, where I was treated *much* better overseas than in the US. As for IHG, they are for me a non-factor².
_______________
¹ And yes, I still miss VX.
² And yes, I still miss SPG.
It’s interesting to think about the spin on some of these points. AA mechanics are 5 years in negotiations but no mention of the 5+ years of negotiations for mechanics at Southwest and no mention of the severe operational problems they have allegedly caused in the last couple of weeks.
I am not sure I understand “despite seniority [the flight attendants] get placed on reserve duty.” It is definitely seniority based. The problem is the number of reserves required post integration, has greatly increased which in turn, has caused very senior flight attendants (30+ years in some cases) to fall back into reserve rotation.
Alaska needs to fix its award search engine!
American needs to stop devaluing!
Hyatt Globalist is too difficult to achieve.
Marriott needs uniformity in program benefits across all brands.
UA is okay, but I find the gap between their Polaris marketing and the reality to be really annoying. And the food, beverage and service on board and. heir domestic lounges are really at the bottom.
Pls let’s be a little more positive…
IHG would be a good program if they either a) bought back Pointsbreaks or b) matched Hilton’s benefits for Golds and Plats(Diamonds)
Hyatt was an excellent program until the devaluation – they can’t be serious with their Elite nights requirements, given the paucity of hotels
Hilton’s program is quite acceptable as long as you don’t visit the wayward US properties
Don’t mention Marriott
It’s interesting to me that in Gary’s list, for all 4 hotel companies, the issues cited focus on the loyalty programs. Even for Marriott’s “failure to execute”, besides the hack, the rest of the problems are loyalty related. Yet for the airlines, the opposite is true. Gary cites cabin configurations, boarding processes, employee attitude, but not a single mention of loyalty programs, elite treatment, or award availability or pricing.
If I’m a one time customer, and not a loyalty program member, every single one of the airline frustrations still applies to me. But as a one time hotel guest, virtually nothing on the hotel list would concern me.
Not sure what it means, but it’s interesting.
Before our air major airlines abandoned any sense of marketing as a needless cost, advertising generated a sense of excitement, and branding positioned the product in the mind of the consumer; now all of this has gone the way of the Pan Am round-the-world flight.
Today, the US3 legacy airlines have given up on any pretension of branding to differentiate and position their product, given they no longer face competition between each other. Just pray that Alaska and Jet Blue hold their ground, and actually expand, without succumbing to being bought out.
Their was a time that branding created American as the businessman’s airline, TWA served the stars, and United was the family carrier. Who could forget how flashy Braniff was with its colors and uniforms; how National more than held its own against Delta and Eastern? On the West Coast, PSA offered a superior, frequent, and cheap flight serving the major cities in California. Now, all we have is a study in Socialism #101–what happens when we allow the competitive marketplace to be destroyed by combines under the guise of cutting costs.
What our railroads once exemplified as successful branding to compete against each other has also gone the way of the Dodo Bird. Perhaps the greatest competition was between Chicago-New York City between the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads. With the active support of The Pullman Company, these carriers proudly defined how passenger rail was the only all weather mode of transport; even advertising how the train would get through snow, rain, etc.
Today, Congress created a protected monopoly in Amtrak that no longer pretends to operate luxury trains, serving opulent meals, and crafted cocktails. Even worse, what sadly defines Amtrak today is how it can barely field one train between Pittsburgh-Philadelphia, when it was almost an hourly corridor under the Pennsy. Pathetically, even this one train is annulled by Amtrak due to snow today; yet, the Norfolk Southern, which owns the track infrastructure, continues to dispatch its freight trains in both directions.
Perhaps that’s the difference between a protected monopoly and a firm that must still compete everyday on service and price..?
Marriott shows me Platinum one day (mid-year), then not. Then needing 25 more stays to Platinum, changing to 10
the next with no reason. Points changing 500k +/- with no activity. In all my life, no legit program has been so messed up. Errors & mistakes, on & on, a time-comsuming mess. Scarriott.
I’ll add a few just for fun.
Spirit. Seat pitch and lack of enough Big Front seats.
Frontier. Delays, delays delays.
Alaska. Lack of a Midwest hub. Shocking that I don’t want to fly MCI-SEA-everywhere else.
Jet Blue. They want to serve Europe with planes not designed for long haul but yet can’t even serve most of the USA so far.
Iceland Air. Lack of real business class seats.
BA =YQ
Air France/KLM. Revenue based awards paired with crappy calendar search engine.
Marriott charges resort fees on point redemption stays.
Hyatt has devalued program with category changes and trying to reach higher status seems impossible.
You consistently understate the weakness of skypesos. Almost always I can find saver awards on UA or its partners for 2-3x less than DL. Is DL vaunted service and product 2-3x better than UA? I think not.
Great article. I am glad to see that I am not the only one who believes that DL isn’t as great as they think they are. My experience with them last summer sucked to the point of being missed not once but twice for beverage service and I was AWAKE. AA and DL are my go to carriers because the others truly do suck. I have a love hate relationship with seatback IFE though. I love them on long flights, but hate them domestically( 2-4 hours) . The boxes take up way too much space (the tablet version should help), but seems like everyone except DL and Jet Blue are moving away from them. I rather have a power source, fast WIFI and live TV and a reasonable fare then paying double domestically for a seat back screen.
Thanks for the comparison and the balance of the article.