Opinion
Within a recent five-day period, I addressed two industry groups. The first was a sales meeting for a well-known supplier. The second was the steering committee for a major travel agency group. Each seemed very interested in -- and unsure about -- the future of the supplier-agency relationship.
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The year has more than nine months to go, but we're going to go out on a limb and award the trophy for the 2010 Bonehead Marketing Award to iTrek, a purveyor of travel insurance in Australia. The company's singular achievement was to sponsor a contest asking Australian consumers to submit homemade video commercials illustrating that "The Travel Agent Is Dead."
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Q: A group of 500 conventioneers contacted us to obtain a block of hotel rooms in a major convention city. We obtained detailed, commissionable group quotes from three properties, and the group picked one of them. We proceeded with travel arrangements, but the group suddenly stopped doing business with us and might be working with the chosen hotel directly. Are we still entitled to our commissions? What if the rate quotes we obtained were noncommissionable and we planned to make money by marking up the hotel?
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So I'm sitting at home last night, watching this chef deconstruct a chicken pot pie on the Food Network, while balancing my 4-year-old on my lap and going through some files from work. By the time I got up, I knew what I wanted to talk about this week.
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When Southwest kicked "Clerks" director Kevin Smith, best known for his "Silent Bob" character, off a flight for being too big for his britches -- or at least for a single airline seat -- the battle quickly moved to cyberspace, where it was played out in Twitter and YouTube postings.
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One of the more stressful things about travel -- after flying, of course -- can often be insecurity about tipping. The confusion surrounding this subject was underscored last year when a Yahoo blog titled "Confessions of a Housekeeper" sparked a discussion about whether and how much to tip a hotel maid. I was surprised to see that tipping the housekeeper was not as standard as I had assumed. And the opinions on whether or not to tip every day and how much varied widely.
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The travel industry responded generously to the recent earthquake in Haiti. However, the outpouring of support from around the world presents our industry with a great opportunity to do more: If we make it easy and attractive for customers to give, they will respond, especially those who consider themselves citizens of the world.
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In December, Travel Weekly reported that, effective Jan. 1, Carnival Cruise Lines would include new language in the sales contracts it offers to agencies selling its products. Certain large producers were given contracts that included the new language, which would prohibit agencies that wished to sell Carnival products from using any of its trademarked words, phrases or content without permission....
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