New York -- The travel industry checked in with a resounding Y2-OK
following the long-awaited rollover from 1999 to 2000.
Were there glitches? Yes, but just a few.
Six U.S. airports -- Atlanta, Denver, O'Hare, Orlando, St. Louis
and Tampa -- experienced a short-lived blackout of low-level
wind-shear alert systems.
A couple of air conditioners conked out at the Miami
headquarters of Royal Caribbean Cruises.
The British Airways London Eye ferris wheel failed to turn on
schedule. Thrifty encountered a brief problem with its Web site's
server, but the glitch was fixed early on Jan. 1.
And a fake bomb threat was called into Epcot's Mexican pavilion
-- reportedly by an employee who didn't want to work on New Year's
Eve.
Aside from these incidents, the millennium bug appeared to have
been squashed across the globe.
In Europe, Russia had garnered the most negative publicity about
Y2K unreadiness. But publicity was all it turned out to be.
A spokesman for Exeter International in Tampa, Fla., said the
firm's New Year's program in St. Petersburg, which features the
Tsar's Ball, went smoothly. "We had reserved a motorcoach to
[transport our clients to] Helsinki, Finland, as a precaution, in
case there were any serious problems."
He added, however, that one of the city's top hotels sent Exeter
a "bizarre Y2K fax" in early December. "It warned us that
electronic bank payments to the hotel should be discontinued from
Dec. 27 through Jan. 5 because the [Russian] bank will be closed
for Y2K preparations and if we send money, it will be lost. We
didn't make any payments during this time, of course, but we
thought this warning was pretty strange."
Veteran operator Bob Drumm, president of General Tours, said
Russia's lack of technological prowess probably was a help, and not
a hindrance. "In Russia, computers are often used as a back-up, but
most transactions are still done in the most rudimentary way. In
much of the country, no one would notice if the computers weren't
working because they depend on handwritten accounts," he said.
Other international operators reported no out-of-the-ordinary
events. New York-based Absolute Asia said its ground operator in
Vietnam, Travel Indo China, reported things were "running smoothly"
for the two dozen or so clients on customized tours in Vietnam
during the rollover.
Mark Campbell, director of marketing for Mountain Travel Sobek
in El Cerrito, Calif., said, "Across the world, every one of our
millennium trips went off without a hitch." The company had
operated about two dozen such trips.
Similarly, New York-based Trafalgar Tours, The Mark Travel Group
in Milwaukee and Littleton, Colo.-based Globus & Cosmos
reported smooth sailing.
On the high seas, major cruise operators said they experienced
no significant technical problems or operational disruptions aboard
cruise ships or at land-based headquarters facilities.
The Year 2000 rollover was a nonevent for travel agents, too,
according to ASTA and ARTA. Executives at mega-agencies like
Minneapolis-based Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Denver-based Navigant
International said they had no Y2K- related problems on the
business or leisure sides.
Ditto for the consortiums. At Vacation.com, the 9,400 member Washington-based
consortium, chairman and chief information officer Andrew Mckee
said, "We have seen absolutely no problems coming from any
direction."
As the first business week of the new century got under way,
retailers were expecting no problems with CRSs. Each of the major
vendors had command centers in place to monitor the transition and
reported problem-free rollovers.
Jeff Harmon, senior vice president of product marketing at
Sabre, described activities there as "business as usual."
The only issues to be dealt with were routine year-to-year
transitions, like expiring credit card numbers, he said.
On the Web, Wal-Mart made good on the planned launch of its
revamped Web site during the New Year's weekend. The site, www.wal-mart.com, has
a new on-line travel service, Wal-Mart Travel, which uses the
Amadeus CRS.
Given the number of third parties involved in an on-line travel
site, Expedia.com suspended booking services for a brief
period over New Year's Eve, but "things went perfectly," a
spokesman said.
Clients on Amtrak trains Dec. 31 may have noticed the railway
held trains at various stations during the midnight rollover as a
"precaution" against possible difficulties.
The rail network in Europe operated without a hitch, the
17-country Eurail committee said. Rail Europe spent $1.5 million
preparing for Y2K and "had people working around the clock on the
New Year's weekend," said a spokeswoman.
U.S. hotel companies and car rental firms said they avoided the
millennium bug, too.
And at the nation's theme parks, the rides kept twirling amid
the surreal atmosphere of futuristic visions. Vacationers at
Orlando's Universal Studios on New Year's Eve might have caught a
glimpse of one person bound to be remembered for his role in the
20th century: O.J. Simpson.
Surrounded by his security guards, Simpson commented that he
traveled to Florida for his holiday celebration because "it's safer
than California."
Dinah A. Spritzer, Carla Clark, Henry Magenheim, Jorge
Sidron, Gay Myers, Grant Flowers, Jennifer Dorsey, Brian Major,
Joseph Kornik, David Jones, Claudette Covey, David Wilkening, Laura
del Rosso, Michael Milligan and Andrew Compart contributed to this
report.