Category: Air Travel

Getting Ready

Getting Ready

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It will probably be three to four years before the effects of the virus stop impacting travelers to distant lands. Efficacy of the vaccines, mayhem in airline schedules, widely differing and radical airport rules for transfers and most importantly, the hugely damaged vendor communities are all just now being recognized as the travelers’ principle hurdles.

There’s little good evidence yet on the last three hurdles for a good prediction into 2021, although I venture some speculation below. On the vaccine issue, however, some things are coming into focus.

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Corona Crests

Corona Crests

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This blog is about travel prospects to sub-Saharan Africa, but in preparing it my jaw dropped.

South Africa has a sixth the population of the United States but has tested a million of its people. Comparatively that’s two to three times better than the U.S.

The U.S. handling of the pandemic is a chaotic mess. South Africa and other countries know this, and it’s why the prospects for Americans traveling to Africa is getting worse and worse.

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Calculating Corona – I

Calculating Corona – I

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American’s travel dollars are at greater risk than likely any other investments they hold. This is the first of three blogs explaining why and what to do in the era of Covid-19.

I’m going out on a limb, here, so it’s important that you follow my reasoning so that you can perceive its weaknesses and let me know. I’m as anxious as any traveler to find the looking-glass.

This first blog explains why these dollars are at such a risk and always have been. Tomorrow’s blog does my best at projecting when travel might be possible, again, and what other parts of the world – particularly Africa – will look like. And Wednesday’s blog will give my recommendations on what to do.

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Corona Insured

Corona Insured

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Travelers generally come from privileged classes so it pains me to talk about the unexpected suffering attending travelers, today. But that’s my job. It’s where my life’s been anchored.

Airlines and travel insurance companies are screwing travelers royally. In fact, they’re abusing them. Most larger non-American airlines unbound here by the stricter regulations constraining them on their home turf are exploiting the disastrous incompetence of our government to wave American passengers off with the finger. It’s turned our industry into a pack of thugs.

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Too Much Trump

Too Much Trump

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lovetrumpAfrican leaders scramble while their citizens shout and scream, terrified that they will be added to Trump’s ban list.

On America’s most watched morning political show today one of the regulars asked why Trump’s travel ban didn’t include “Kenya?” This is a show that we know Trump and much of the Senate watch. The commentator finally brought into the open what everyone is secretly worried about.

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You Can Take it With You

You Can Take it With You

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residentinskyWhy are air fares going up so fast? Because travelers are rich.

Air fares have been used by all of us in all areas of the travel industry as predictors or leading indicators of travel in general. That’s because they are bought more through reactive responses to instant offers than the considered thinking of some measure that usually goes into planning a vacation.

That type of reactionary buying reveals the nature of you, the consumer, better than anything.

“Air fares are high, because planes are full,” reports a frequent flying expert.

Fuel prices are at historic lows, but air fares are up 17% over last year according to the LA Times and there’s absolutely no indication they’re going to go down anytime soon.

Why? Didn’t you recently hear from your favorite media pundit that the “recovery” isn’t widespread? What about Europe’s “new recession?” Isn’t China in a muddle?

Yes to all the above, but planes are full, because flying is expensive, and the rich are doing just fine thank you.

This is capitalism at its sweetest. What it illustrates is a turf war between the bullies. American Airlines versus GE Capital. Cathy versus the Chinese Communist Party. There are a lot of very rich people in the world, and air travel and vacations are becoming their exclusive purvey.

The reaction is widespread in all the industries that make vacations. In the one I know the best, East African safaris, prices are going up after a ridiculous dip caused by the now widely accepted irrational fear of ebola.

Before the ebola scare our industry prices hit a new high. That wasn’t because there weren’t good deals, there were and still are. But just fewer of them. The excellent mid-market companies like Sopa and Serena in East Africa and the Drifters and Kwandos and lower end Sun Internationals and Proteas in the south are still offering excellent prices.

But there’s many fewer of those than there used to be. Fewer in capitalism means less capacity and less capacity in a balanced market means higher prices, but that isn’t happening to the lower ends of the travel market in Africa.

Rather, there are more and more luxury, high-end properties whose prices are moving upwards.

The low and midmarkets are struggling.

If you’re a budget consumer looking to go on safari, you better move fast, because your choices are diminishing and in the current climate might not even exist in a few years!

But if you’re one of those Etihad Airlines passengers who just spent $20,000 (one way) for a 3-room suite on a flight from London to Dubai … no worry. You really don’t have to know how to work your personal wide-screen TV or microwave: you get a butler, too.

Bad Ebola Cancellation Policy

Bad Ebola Cancellation Policy

by Arusha ♥ 5 Comments

badvacationThings are calmly down, slides in travel are reversing, and African tour companies are once again shooting themselves in the foot.

In the last ten days a wave of African travel companies have issued new cancellation policies addressing a perceived fear by potential travelers of ebola, which does absolutely nothing except increase fears.

As far as I can tell it began with one of southern Africa’s most reputable and larger companies, Wilderness Safaris.

Wilderness is a holdover from archaic marketing days and still doesn’t sell directly to the consumer, so it sent a rather petulant email to agents worldwide that began by deriding the notion that ebola in West Africa could effect holidays as far away as East and southern Africa.

But then sighing through the internet, the company issued a new policy that said it would cover any difference in lost cancellation fees from nonrefundable payments not refunded by the travelers own insurance company.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It didn’t take long for a whole bunch of companies throughout the continent to follow suit.

It’s meaningless – at least for Americans – and in my opinion is totally counterproductive.

First, why it’s meaningless:

Read the revised policy’s fine print. (1) WHO must declare an “outbreak” in the country in which the safari is scheduled. (2) The traveler must then apply first to his own travel insurance company for refunds of monies on deposit. (3) Whatever the insurance company doesn’t cover, this widely adopted policy will not refund cash but rather a credit for future travel, which is limited by time and other conditions depending upon the specific company.

(1) There is currently much more ebola in the United States then in any sub-Saharan country. WHO has not declared an “outbreak” of ebola in the United States. That is a strategic-specific term that precedes an actual “epidemic” and it requires multiple cases in multiple locations. So to begin with, a single case say in a game park in South Africa will not trigger this policy.

(2) I’m not completely knowledgeable about the travel insurance available to other than Americans, but in the United States there is not a single travel insurance company that covers a travelers’ decision to abort their trip because of ebola or any other public health emergency. In the U.S. normal travel insurance provides benefits strictly for accidents and other health conditions befalling the traveler him/herself.

(A few very expensive policies cover terrorism, and consumers can spend an enormous amount of money for “cancel for any reason” but for most travelers these rare policies are prohibitively expensive.)

In other words, normal travel insurance bought in the U.S. will not provide benefits for a public health emergency in the country scheduled to be visited.

Refunds of part of your deposited trip, and not others, essentially mute out the first refund: Few Americans traveling to Africa will deposit on a trip there without also buying their air fare. There is no indication whatever that any airline will issue any refund for a travelers’ decision to cancel because of a public health emergency.

(3) As most established travel agents and operators worldwide know, most local African companies are quite liberal in extending nonrefundable date-specific services for almost any reason. In other words, most travelers are able to reschedule their previously deposited trip to a later date with no penalty for any reason, much less ebola.

For Americans, then, there is absolutely no benefit whatever from the newly expressed policies.

Most American consumers are a bit more savvy than Africans believe their geography quotient may be. I think most consumers will see this for what it is: a marketing gimmick. Gimmicks don’t help sales.

Consumers who consider the policy more substantial than a gimmick will actually be further deterred: Creating policies that on their surface seem beneficial to the potential traveler only if an outbreak actually occurs suggests that company is conceding that an outbreak is possible.

When the risk is nil. Consider that several of the last ebola outbreaks occurred in Uganda, a popular East African safari country. It never turned into an epidemic, and Uganda’s health-care system countrywide is below average compared to most other sub-Saharan countries.

Consumers – especially in America where two of its largest cities now have had locally developed ebola (Dallas and New York) – are recognizing however slowly that sub-Saharan Africa is actually less risky to visit than the Cowboys’ new stadium or the Statue of Liberty.

African travel companies have always been a little bit behind the times. This stupid policy does nothing but reignite irrational fears.

Quarantine Texas

Quarantine Texas

by Arusha ♥ 12 Comments

ebolaThe behavior of Americans is contributing to the spread of ebola in war-torn Africa. We’ve got to change.

Inbound airport screening is useless. Reactionary raising of funds “for ebola victims” in schools or churches is abject nonsense.

One of the world’s best virologists said today, “I know that President Obama has raised the whole issue about screening at the airport. It has not worked in the past. It has not worked with influenza, it’s not worked with SARS, MERS. You know, all you do is cause confusion and upset.”

These kinds of knee-jerk responses foil real efforts that could stop the epidemic in parts of West Africa.

First, it distracts real and necessary aid of the sort Obama has sent with our military, so that later an idiotic Congressman can vote against raising the deficit to build hospitals in Liberia because their home-town middle school is already doing something.

Second, it gives all those fear loving Americans a quick fix. Quick fixes don’t work. Even gorilla glue doesn’t live up to its reputation.

Quick fix mentality is why Americans are in such a horrible state, today, socially and morally. It’s why there’s jihadism in the Middle East, and so much poverty and disease in America compared to other industrialized nations.

We are the head of the snake that bites our own tail: Our own regular lives become disrupted by irrational fears.

This is squarely, and clearly, because of individual American reactionism. It all begins at home, not with your Congressperson, so don’t blame her. She’s just reflecting your own irrational fears:

The first warnings about AIDS, the nuclear air raid drills I undertook as a young teenager in remote northwest Arkansas, the police cars guarding the East Dubuque bridge after 9/11, the thousands of people certain that at midnight, December 31, 1999, either their whole world or at least their hard drive would stop.

It doesn’t even have to remind. Americans at this very instant are reacting against themselves: A majority want to bomb Syria and Iraq but that same majority doesn’t believe it will work.

There’s no doubt that irrational ebola fear can be found anywhere in the world where the media has sensationalized it, and that’s where it all begins. Americans, though, believe in their choice of media more than anywhere else in the world, despite their lavish protestations to the contrary.

We Americans tout ourselves for being so generous, but so much of “our giving” is senseless and ultimately useless. Is that really generosity?

It’s likely that now that every American knows that ebola is less of a threat to herself and his community than this year’s flu epidemic ready to begin. It’s likely right now that almost all Americans intellectually accept that their chances of getting ebola are nil.

That it is not very contagious. That it is pretty easily contained in a community with even a half efficient public health system.

Much more importantly, I think most Americans know that if we isolate those three countries in western Africa by stopping air service, for example, that we will not give ourselves more protection yet we will manifestly increase the misery there.

Yet: click here.

Or here.

Or here, of course:

It’s hard for me to not panic against the panic, but I’m trying. Take a deep breath as I’m doing. Let’s remove the exclamation points and get on with our lives. Send your kid to school. Let the airplanes fly to Liberia. Take that vacation as planned.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how you can do good. Let’s just start today by stopping doing bad.

Memory Track

Memory Track

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

MemoryTrackSafari travelers thirty years ago paid only a little bit less for air fare but only about a fifth as much for their safari!

Recently my good friend, the Cleveland Zoo Director Emeritus, Steve Taylor, sent me a copy of the brochure for the safari that my company, EWT, operated for him when he was director of the Sacramento Zoo thirty years ago!

The 15-day Kenyan safari roundtrip Sacramento in July, 1984, cost $2935 per person and from what I can tell there was no supplement for traveling as a single. Back then people were afraid to travel as singles! I remember that one of the services our zoos and other not-for-profit associations provided was teaming up single bookings.

The itinerary was similiar to what a 15-day land program would do, today, although today the average time travelers take on safaris is only 11 days.

And back then there was no flying … it was all driving. And the driving wasn’t so bad, really, because the roads were OK and the traffic was minimal.

Today, travel for example between the Mara and Nairobi is more often by air than road.

To book the safari you had to make a deposit of $300, about the same percentage as you would today. But the deposit was refundable! For this program, which began on July 10, 1984, you could cancel up to May 12 for only a $35 penalty!

Holy Smokes! That would kill us tour companies, today! For one thing back then we held the deposit in the U.S. We rarely paid our African vendors until shortly before arrival, and sometimes not even then. As our reputations grew more reliable, we would be invoiced after the trip for the costs.

So we could extend that refundability advantage to our customers. Today most safari vendors in Africa require up-front payments which are nonrefundable.

1984 was a critical year, as I remember. It was the year that airline deregulation started to be implemented, so when airlines began to become more competitive. But it hadn’t translated into prices, yet. That wouldn’t happen until around 1986 when prices began to drop steeply.

And as those of you who regularly read me, I don’t think that was a good thing. As Steve and many other veteran travelers will tell you, airline travel back then was a dream. Bigger seats, easy check-in, all the luggage you could muster, fantastic attendants, excellent food and wine … not today.

So airline services are reduced so much, today, that they’re almost intolerable … but the price is the same. Safari services, on the other hand, have grown better and better … and it costs you five times as much.

There are, in fact, still some downmarket tented camps that look like the best we had in 1984, but their prices are about twice as much as what we paid for the only (and then, best) accommodation in 1984. And the best accommodation is astronomically higher today than then.

Because .. not only does everyone have flush toilets, today, but in the better camps both an indoor and outdoor shower. Hot water is available 24 hours, not just a few hours during the day. Tents are giant size compared to before, with beautiful furniture and rugs and wonderful, massive beds. There’s electricity! Not just kerosene lanterns. And the food today at the better camps rivals any good restaurant in a big American city. Quite different from our beans and rice and occasional stick of boiled chicken of days gone bye.

And the animals? Well, actually, there are more of them today than in 1984 with the notable exceptions of the lion and a group of smaller animals like duikers that have been sacrificed to the felling of so many forests. But all the animals that thrive on the plains are in greater numbers today, than in 1984.

Which I’ve often written about poses one of the greatest challenges to East African development. If you’re a student or venture capitalist in Nairobi, you don’t want a lion disrupting your morning commute or an elephant traipsing through your garden, and if you’re a farmer – believe me – you’re not going to like tourism.
84JulSMFzoosafari001
But there were definitely things back thirty years that made a safari more wonderful than today: the many fewer vehicles, to begin with. Friendly and safe “little” Nairobi and Mombasa. “Safe” and “secure” weren’t even terms we applied to anything other than wild animals.

And call it nostalgia if you will, but the “wildness” of those endless plains thirty years ago was a thrill hard to recreate, today. At least in the same way. No cell phones. No internet. No Flying Doctors. No way of “checking in” back home meant that you were really stepping onto a landscape where no one but your fellow travelers would know where you were.

And people were willing and anxious to do that back then. Today the safari traveler is infinitely more cautious and I think less inspired by the potential differentness of Africa to alternate vacation spots. It’s one of the reasons prices have gone through the roof even while the average income of a middle class traveler hasn’t.

The ecologically correct shampoo, feather bed and pillows, well delivered ginger snaps with early morning tea and of course a charging station for your smartphone are now essentials.

Times have changed.

Nairobi Fire – Is It Terrorism?

Nairobi Fire – Is It Terrorism?

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IsNBOfireterrorismIs this terrorism? What should stranded passengers do?

An incredibly massive and fast moving fire destroyed Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta’s international arrivals area early this morning.

Stranded passengers should contact their airline; there’s no alternative. If you’re on the ground in East Africa your ground operator will assist you.

Passengers planning to travel soon to East Africa via Nairobi might consider quickly rebooking to another airport. My best guess is that near normal international traffic into Nairobi will begin in about a week.

Then, from a week to two weeks out, it’s likely some flights will be canceled to reduce the load, it’s likely that some flights will be diverted as they were last night to (first) Mombasa, (second) Kilimanjaro and (third) Entebbe. Nevertheless, your ground operator will easily work around this alteration of arrival.

After 15 days or so, normal traffic will resume, although the airport arrival and departure procedures in Nairobi will likely be delayed. For this reason if you hold a short connecting time connection in Nairobi, consider rebooking now for at least the next several months.

TERRORISM?

There are frightening signs that this is terrorism. First, today is the 15th anniversary of the Nairobi embassy bombing. Second, had the suddenly erupting fire been 2 hours later, the terminals would have been full of arriving passengers.

Jomo Kenyatta Airport is one of the least secure airports in the world. Passengers often notice multiple secure checks, because the individual airlines don’t trust the government personnel, so they follow the normal airport security with their own.

Monday’s short airport closure, we were told, was because of a sudden loss of jet fuel. That’s incredibly suspicious. Major airports do not run out of gas.

If – and this is a very big IF – this is the reason the western world went into lockdown this last week, then we have another example of botched terrorism. That doesn’t mean it’s not scarey, just that if this is the best they can do, thank goodness.

Another Black Day in Kenya

Another Black Day in Kenya

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Visitors and citizens alike were horribly killed in Kenya yesterday reflecting a very strained society.

As of this morning four tourists are reported dead with several others still in critical condition after a scheduled flight aboard of Mombasa Air Safari LET aircraft from the Maasai Mara to Mombasa crashed on take-off.

Forty-eight Kenyans were killed in ethnic clashes near the town of Mandera in the arid Tana River region far east of Nairobi.

The two quite different incidents both reflect Kenya’s growing strain as it prepares for critical elections next March.

The Mombasa Air Safari crash was of a Czechoslovakian made, Soviet-styled LET aircraft. LET aircraft (of a variety of different sizes and types) has a horrible safety record with twelve accidents and 424 fatalities just this year alone. It was a cheap aircraft to begin with that became even cheaper with the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Almost like bad weaponry, LET aircraft have been showing up more and more in Africa as lax aircraft regulation mixes with strained economies.

The ethnic clashes which have been mostly reported in the world press as revenge killings by one ethnic group against another for disputes over water resources and range rights is actually only the tip of the story.

Kenya has redistricted itself in preparation for next year’s elections under the new constitution. Multiple smaller districts have been consolidated – as I believe they should – to create a truly more representative parliament.

And one logical outcome pits former established politicians as competitors for a single representative seat. It isn’t just coincidence that this is the case where the ethnic clashes occurred yesterday.

Police have confirmed that villagers have been incited to violence by local politicians vying for a consolidated district under the new constitution.

To a certain extent both these tragedies are isolated. Kenya tourism – indeed more and more of East African tourism as a whole and almost all of southern African tourism – depends upon small aircraft. I’d estimate in East Africa that more than half the tourists take at least one such flight, and likely a quarter take two or more.

The overall safety record for such a massive industry is pretty good. LET aircraft represent a very small proportion of the tourist aircraft, which are predominantly very safe Cessnas. (Unfortunately, there are no actual statistics, although the data is there to compile. So my statements are not evidential, but I believe accurate enough.)

And the ethnic clashes in Mandera which have been picked up in the world press as evidence of Kenya’s overall ethnic strife is nonsense. The new constitution, some pretty harsh laws, four prominent citizens on trial in The Hague for causing ethnic violence in 2007 all point to a Kenyan society righting itself masterfully.

But dead is dead. Another few hurdles for this tough and struggling society.