Closing Your Deal

Closing Your Deal

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Consumers, too, must be fair.

Recently we were enjoying a Saturday evening out with friends when the subject of their upcoming trip to Argentina came up. They know I’m a sub-Saharan mostly East African expert, not an Argentinian one, but they had already asked me to review their communications with the companies they had been working with for some general advice, and arrangements were moving to something final. So the question came up, “Should I ask them for a better deal?”

Asking for a better deal towards the end of an vendor-consumer relationship is a recipe for disaster. The consumer is asking the vendor to reduce his profit, since if the details are presumably fixed, there’s nothing else to reduce. The answer to my very good friend was, “No.”

The travel industry is sick. It’s as sick as the economy as a whole, because it doesn’t get adequately compensated. Except for the top executives of a few big airlines or hotel companies, travel industry employees are suffering terribly, and as a result, the products they produce, maintain and sell are deteriorating. This long-term illness is caused by consumers forcing increased productivity, which in travel means decreased unit profits.

It didn’t use to be that way. Anyone who has traveled for only 10 or 15 years may actually not have experienced the gilded age of travel. But those of us who were traveling 40 years ago are drowning in nostalgia.

Buying travel today is a mixture of a poker game and a stock market.

It’s pretty easy to determine the cost of most source travel products, and this is precisely because they’re pretty simple. An overnight at a BnB, a guide to take you fishing, joining others for a bus tour down the Champs Elysees – it’s not rocket science to add up all the things that make these work and then, add a reasonable profit. And for more complicated things, like a flight from JFK to Buenos Aires, that too in the scheme of worldwide business isn’t all that difficult. Sure, as things get more complicated, there are more variables (like fuel), but that’s exactly why airline prices fluctuate. Determining the net cost is pretty straight-forward.

That’s why the government was able to set prices so fairly until the 1980s. Yes, that’s right youngsters, there was no priceline back then! It was Big Daddy who figured out the cost of your airline ticket from Chicago to New York. And He was really very good at it. Airlines prospered, employees prospered, even the technology prospered so wonderfully and quickly that we even traveled to the moon! And back! That’s more than happens to many travelers’ Thanksgiving vacations these days.

And guess what? It was fun. And it was easy. And above all, it was fair.

What happened? Read Robert Reich’s excellent little cheat sheet, Supercapitalism. There are many references to travel. Deregulation was fast and scarey, and suddenly pricing was left entirely to the market. No longer did you add up bolts, paint, engines, and variables like fuel, and come up with a cost, because there was now a horrible new variable that never existed before, one that loomed above every sale – whether it was a big sale like an airplane ride or a small sale like a ticket to a play. It became such an important super component that it overshadowed all else. That new Super variable disallowed during the wonderful years of regulation was : “And so, how much are you’re willing to pay?”

Advantage, Consumer.

There are lots more consumers than there are crepes stands on the Boule Mich. And without any government to manage this interaction it grew really ugly. Prices tumbled. Fist fights broke out on rue St. Germain. (Well, I’m not exactly sure about that.) But competition was so intensified, so out of control, that suddenly our seats in the airplane began to shrink, our meals on tour began to look like they were on the wrong end of a telescope, and the people trying to “help” us on the phone were in the witness protection program and spoke perfect Urdu. We sit for 14 hours squashed into containers smaller than my guitar case, starve, miss many days of vacation trying to get there and back. Many times, we’re never really sure what we’ll be doing even after we’re on our way home. But, hell, did we get a good deal!

That’s the stock market of tourism. Bargaining down to nothing, with nobody to stop our self-destruction.

Do you know how many airlines and travel companies went bankrupt in the last 20 years, and are now doing business, again? More than not. Yet we still give them money. We still risk losing everything in order to get a better deal. In the late 1980s and early 1990s more than $200 million travel dollars was lost by consumers. Most of this was with big airlines like Eastern, Braniff and yes, United and Northwest. But there was also a lot of money lost with big tour companies like Hemphill Harris, Lindblad, Far & Wide; hotel chains and car companies like National. But, but.. but… you say, aren’t some of those companies still around? Yep. And you’re still giving them money. But boy, what a deal they give!

Oh, Big Daddy, where art thou?

That’s the poker game of tourism. Bluff till your out.

OK, so you’re still going to Argentina, and it’s unlikely Big Daddy will help us out before you’d like to tango. So what do you do, right now?

As the consumer, we’re mostly to blame for this mess, so it’s mostly up to us to play fair. Don’t start something implying you’re going to finish it, when you have little intention of doing so. Don’t tease a sale for information. Don’t broadcast your request to a dozen hotels or tour companies without letting them know that’s exactly what you’re doing. When 5 reply with an offer, thank them and let everyone that replied know exactly how you chose and at what price.

Way too often, today, consumers engage a travel supplier in a back-and-forth that they imply from the start is an exclusive relationship. Then, after weeks of fine tuning a vacation, and in the absence of any hanky panky, the consumer still remarks, “You know times are really hard. We’re not sure we can do this, now.” That’s terribly unfair. It’s an obvious ploy to “get a better deal.” And you know what’s going to happen?

You’re going to get a “better deal.” And all sorts of corners you never imagined existed will suddenly be clipped away. Without any way of you knowing, a great vacation idea will become a horror tale. But boy, what a great deal you’ll get!

Until Big Daddy comes to our rescue, as surely he must in travel as he must with Citibank and Ford, we’ve got to be civil, transparent and honest from the getgo. There’s nothing wrong with beginning a conversation with a vendor by with telling him outright that you’re “just starting” and most importantly, “you’re not the only one we’re asking.” This is the way to go when you know pretty much what you want to do.

And there’s also nothing wrong with vetting vendors, first, and then querying one exclusively. This is obviously the way to go when you aren’t so sure what you want to do. Instead of asking multiple vendors for a price, you spend your time and energy finding someone you decide you can trust to decide those things for you. This could be a travel agent, or a wholesaler, or an inbound operator, or your mother-in-law. But once you’ve vetted your vendor, trust him!

I’d say the vast, vast majority of travelers in the “old days” trusted Big Daddy, and it worked beautifully. I expect we’ll some day return to that model. But to recover that gilded age of travel, each and everyone of us travelers is going to have to contribute to the act of rebuilding trust with our vendors: transparency and bidding in the beginning; or a trusted, forged relationship from the start. You can’t have it both ways.

Airline Woes

Airline Woes

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Changing a name of your airline ticket is not easy.

In my long list of travel absurdities, changing airline tickets ranks right up there at the top. It’s difficult to do even when you have a fully refundable ticket. The volumes of rules confuse even the most senior of airline employees, and above all, it proves my contention that the airline industry requires massive new government regulation.

Like everything else in the ridiculously volatile deregulated airline industry, changing a ticket is a lot easier in good times than it is bad. Because when the airline industry is doing well, it’s flush with cash, its employees are happy, and airline employees are empowered to do most anything they want with any customer. So long as an employee has the password code to a certain level of authority, he can alter or adjust a passenger record virtually in any way. So in good times when everyone feels properly compensated and secure, generosity rules. Forget about the rules. Just talk to a happy person.

But in bad times, beware! When staff has been cut, when the person who finally answers your call is doing double duty with no overtime pay, they aren’t likely to be generous to what they can believe is the very cause of their own misery: you… or the lack of enough of “you.” And even more onerously, the executives trying to squeeze every penny they can out of a hostile market write new rules on top of old rules until the whole mess is so damn convoluted, that you’ll probably be charged just for starting the phone call.

This has nothing to do with fairness or logic. It has to do with survival. If you bought a ticket and the airline has your money, by God don’t disturb them for anything or you’re going to pay!

Recently, we ticketed a family of five traveling from Los Angeles to Nairobi, via London, on British Airways. British Airways is one of the giants in the market, no better or worse than any of the other big guys, and it provides a good example of what would likely happen no matter which big airline company was involved.

The family wanted to fly first class. Hold onto your hats when you hear the prices that are involved, but I felt it important to use this example, because these are the airlines’ most revered customers, to be sure. An unrestricted first class ticket averages about 15-20 times the cost of the least expensive ticket available. Looking at it another way, for every first class ticket the airline sells it has to sell 15-20 regular tickets to get the same revenue.

For this single sale family of five, the combined revenue equaled about a third of the entire backside economy section of the airplane.

But because the airlines have become so immersed in their own complicated rule-making directed mostly at getting every last penny they can out of the vast majority of their penny-pinching back cabin customers (of which I am proudly one), this family got pretty screwed. British Airways got a black eye and probably lost important future business, and the destructive cycle continued.

Admittedly, it was the mother’s fault to begin with. She had changed her name, and thus, her passport. But she gave us a copy of the passport with the old name. It was a photocopy she had on file before the actual passport had had “CANCELED” written across the first page and a triangular portion cut out of the entire book. So one of the five original tickets for the family was written with a name that no longer existed.

Innocent error, right? In the old days it was easily remedied. Just call anyone – anyone, from a phone agent to a sales rep, and with no more than a simple if embarrassed explanation, nobody wanted to have a $17,000 airline ticket written for someone who didn’t exist. Get a live body associated with that coupon! And sorry to put you through that anxiety, ma’am. Don’t worry. What’s your new name? Great! Click. It’s fixed.

That was 30 years ago. When airlines were fun to fly, when employees were well educated and polite, aircraft were safe and spacious, and being up there with the clouds really felt sublime. Twenty years ago when the industry was just deregulated, things were a bit more difficult, but a name change “if properly documented” was no problem provided you weren’t flying Braniff, Ozark or any of the other airlines about to bite the dust because of deregulation. Ten years ago, as security problems were besetting so much of the world, “proper documentation” became laborious.

This laborious documentation – now created by the airlines – costs money to create, so there is now a $20 name change fee. That is one-twentieth of one percent of the cost of the airline ticket. It doesn’t exactly impose financial difficulties on the ticket holder, and it isn’t going to save British Airways from default. So why do it? The reason is sneaky.

It isn’t really a “name change.” The consumer signed laborious documentation acknowledges the absurd new rules: cancel the old ticket for no one who exists, request a refund for everything that was paid less the $20 fee, but immediately buy a new ticket with your real name or risk losing the seat. Hmm. The refund might take a while for that non-existent person. Buying the new ticket must be instantaneous or the airline will give your seat away to the next buyer who comes along before you. So debit your credit card, again, for the same seat. You can’t use the refund, because that’s going to take a while. Doesn’t matter that there will in the interim before the old ticket is refunded, be two bodies technically given the same seat on the same aircraft. And that British Airways will be holding $34,000 for one $17,000 seat. The refund has to be “examined.” No examining needed to buy the duplicate ticket, but British Airways has to personally and not through any contracted bank, credit card service or airline consortium, refund the money. Maybe, it’s a fraud! How long might this take? Oh, can’t say for sure. A week. Ten days. Two months. All depends upon how fast someone gets to it.

All depends upon how happy the employees are; whether we’re in a good time or a bad one. Well, at the moment we’re in a bad one, and British Airways is doing everything in their power to make it much, much worse.

Great Wildebeest Migration

Great Wildebeest Migration

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THE GREATEST WILDLIFE SPECTACLE ON EARTH
by Jim Heck, June, 2008

The greatest wildlife spectacle on earth is the migration of about 1½ million white-bearded gnu (wildebeest) through the Serengeti/Mara/Ngorongoro ecosystem. Wildebeest are joined by another half million zebra and gazelle.

The easiest time to see the migration is when it’s most concentrated, December-April on the southern grassland plains of the Serengeti and NCA. At no other time, anywhere during the year, are the animals as concentrated. The most dramatic times — including river crossings — are in May-July, but this period requires a lot of luck and usually more time for the effort. A large portion of the herds reaches the Mara by August and lingers there through October. The herds are usually most dispersed July-November.

Weather significantly effects these patterns.

********

Nothing in the wild is ever guaranteed. But during more than a half century of tourism to East Africa, few seekers of the “Great Migration” have been disappointed if they did their homework and looked in the right places at the right time of the year. This is because the migration is very predictable, as predictable as long-term weather has been. The advent of global warming may be set to confuse things a bit, but so far the effect has not been substantial.

The migration follows the new growth of nutrient grasses, which is governed by rain. The wilde need large amounts of grass to eat. Where and when the grass grows is normally easy to predict, presuming the weather is normal.

The best nutrient grasses grow on sunlit plains after it rains. There are three choice areas for this in the massive 7,000 sq. mile Serengeti/Mara/NCA ecosystem. They are (a) the southern third of the Serengeti, widely referred to as the “southern grassland plains”; (b) sections of the Serengeti’s western corridor just above and below the Grumeti River; and (c) Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

The historical rain data is very misunderstood. There is a huge myth about East African rains that confuses the issue. Parts of Kenya and smaller parts of eastern Tanzania have two rainy seasons: the Long Rains (March-May) and the Short Rains (end of the year). Because these were the areas settled by colonial farmers, this weather dynamic was presumed very incorrectly to be true of all of East Africa. East Africa lies astride the equator, an area of one of the most complex weather systems on earth. Tiny microclimates in relatively small areas differ wildly from one another.

For the most part, the wildebeest migration area does not have two rainy seasons. It has a single rainy season from the end of the year through May, and the rest of the year is dry. (The Mara is a small but important exception to this very true, general rule. It can rain in the Mara, at least a small bit, almost every day of the year except in October.) The rain begins in the south and recedes north towards Lake Victoria. And the wilde follow it.

We generally think of the beginning of the migration starting at the end of the year, when all the wilde are gathered on the southern grassland plains. The rain has just begun. The grasses that emerge after the long half-year dry season of dust and debris are the most nutrient of the year. The herds stay here until the rains end sometime in May or June, eating the nutrient grasses and calving early enough that the young wilde can grow strong before they have to move north. This is the best time to experience the grandeur of the migration, because it is the only time during the year that the largest congregation of animals occur in a single area.

During this time large sections of the herds will move to and fro, usually east and west, traveling in migratory files and in migratory behavior from one area of good grass to the next. They aren’t really migrating, but moving around an area that is about 1500 sq. miles, because this is a large enough area that parts become dry and grassless while other parts get heavy rains and blossom with grass. In the equatorial regions weather doesn’t move like it does in the temperate zones. There aren’t fronts that carry massive storms across big areas. Massive thunderstorms do occur and they are impressive, but they simply form, drop their rain, and then dissipate. This can lead to very spotty areas that are quite wet next to near drought areas. The wilde have to continually navigate these areas on the plains.

But come May, the rains begin to end in the south and recede relatively quickly towards Lake Victoria to the north. The veld everywhere dries up and the wilde quickly consume all the last grasses. The young are normally about 4 months old and ready to undertake a frantic movement north.

Almost suddenly, the herds start to run north. Unlike their less focused to-and-fro on the southern plains, now they form large, thick lines, 3 or 4 abreast, and run crazily north, sometimes for hours without stopping. This is the time that wildlife films are made, because when the herds reach rivers or lakes, they often stampede drowning each other. This is the time crocodiles feast. Mothers are separated from their calves and turn back, and sometimes in a river or lake there will be several files going north and several files going south at the same time!

But seeing this is much more difficult than seeing the congregation of animals on the southern plains earlier in the year. This is because it’s hard to predict in the time most visitors give to a vacation, exactly when the rains will stop. Moreover, the wilde run fast and furious at this time, and figuring out when and where the tight, concentrated migratory files are going to be, is not easy. This is a huge area they are running into, 3 to 4 times bigger than the southern grassland plains. So unless you have a month and unlimited resources to follow the herds, it’s a poorer bet trying to see the migration at this time of the year, rather than earlier or later in the year.

As the herds move north, they generally split into several or more large groups. These partial herds may move in completely different directions. The largest tends to move into the Serengeti’s western corridor by May and June, following the rain trends. This doesn’t last very long, though — maybe a month at most. The rains continue to diminish towards Lake Victoria, moving outside the park. When it dries in the western corridor, the herds tend to stop following the northwest movement of the rain, because that would be through heavily human populated areas. So they turn back on themselves slightly, moving east through the corridor and the adjacent Grumeti Reserve. The frantic racing that began a few months previously tempers down a little, but the herds still move quickly. If they could they would move north, but that too is an area with high human habitation. So they continue moving east until they reach the left edge of the northern Serengeti. As soon as the borders between human populated areas and protected wilderness allow, they turn north, and usually it’s raining in this direction. Lake Victoria stretches out a bit towards this area, and the rain dynamic is sustained. This area — just north of where the western corridor meets the northern finger of the Serengeti — is mostly thick woodlands. This makes game viewing difficult if not impossible, and does not provide large areas for grazing grass, so the wilde generally move quickly through this area. About 25k before the border with Kenya, the Serengeti’s top-most ecosystem turns back into savanna grasslands which continue into Kenya’s Mara and is the dominant feature of the Mara. So this is an excellent area for migration viewing for a late season migration experience in Tanzania. But it usually lasts for a very short time in July.

Sometime in late June through mid-August, a huge portion of the herd, maybe a million, reaches Kenya’s Maasai Mara. This is the furthest north and rainiest protected grassland plain in East Africa. That’s why they’re here. It rains in the Mara practically every day in the year, except in October and the first part of November.

The wilde remain in the Mara, unable to follow the rains right into Lake Victoria because of the human populated areas, there. So they remain in these furthest northern areas eating whatever grass they can find, grass which until October is continually regrowing with the new rains.

The Mara has a number of relatively big rivers. So there are many opportunities for “river crossings” as the wilde — unable to constrain their migratory urges — race back and forth all around the Mara and over and back over its several big rivers. The scene may not be as expansive or dramatic as the May/June filings in the south, but it is often easier to plan on seeing, because it lasts for a much longer time (August-October) in the much smaller area of the Mara.

So what happens when the rain stops, everywhere? That is truly the marvel of the migration. Without a cloud or smell of water to be guided by, the wilde know where to go. They dare not run, because there’s no food now to fuel them, and half are pregnant. So they return — often in very small packs or even individually — usually walking slowly southwards through the now parched and dismal veld of November and early December. And at the end of this laborious trek they arrive, again, upon the great southern grassland plains … just as the new rains start anew.

copyrighted © 1997, 2003 and 2004, by Explorers World Travel, Inc. (EWT)

JIM’s BIO

JIM’s BIO

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Jim Heck has worked and lived in Africa since the early 1970s, has owned and headed several companies promoting and selling African travel and has several guide books. His companies have organized safaris into East Africa for more than 10,000 visitors including most of the country’s major zoos and conservation organizations. He has personally guided more than 150 safaris for more than 3,000 customers throughout Africa.

Jim began his career with the United Nations, working in several capacities for UNESCO, the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 1976 he and his wife formed Morgan Tours, Inc., which in 1979 became Explorers World Travel (EWT).

Since the mid 1980s, Jim has specialized in East Africa and probably knows more about the Serengeti and other wilderness touring in the area than any man alive. But his career in Africa spans a wide area: he has been kidnaped in Nigeria, jailed in Guinea-Bisseau, snuck out of the last Rwandan war; was the first westerner allowed to leave Addis after the Red Terror; had canoes overturn among crocs and hippos on the Zambezi; been charged by an elephant that he hit with a plate of waldorf salad; been lost in the jungles of Cameroun; been marooned in the Ituri Forest and rescued by Rhodesian sanction busters; and was among the few outsiders to travel through Uganda during the time of Idi Amin; and has never lost a client or fired a gun.