On the Road

Knoxville, Tennessee. Quite a pleasant place to spend a few days. Lots of nice mountains, lakes and woods to get away for an hour or a day if your schedule permits. I come here fairly often and like it as a place to come for business.

One drawback is the relatively sparse options for flights. Other than that, the airport here is small, and getting in and out is a breeze. I often stay at the airport Hilton, which is where I am tonight. Not too bad for a small town. There are also some good restauraunts her in Knoxville. tonight we ate at the Orangery which is one of the best. Great atmosphere and consistently good food. It's in some sort of an old converted mansion with some neat woodworking and furniture.

A colleague of mine lives out in the Telico village area outside town. This is a beautiful area of lakes, islands and rolling hills leading into the mountains. This is the same area as "Rarity Bay" an upscale community advertised in the Wall Street Journal all the time. It really is quite a fabulous place for a boat ride after work which i have been lucky enough to do on several occasions.
I guess the upside to regular travel to an area is that you get to gradually know the people and the area and get a flavor for the local lifestyle. That is my deal here in eastern Tennessee.

Random Thoughts

Loyalty. For alot of businesses, it's all about loyalty. Certainly in the travel business, loyalty programs from airlines and hotels and credit cards generate lots of loyalty. Despite my rantings in my last post, I've been very loyal to Delta for the last 4 or 5 years. Same thing with Hilton and it's associated hotels.

Outside of the world of travel, loyalty can come from things other than perks. The user experience, consistency and familiarity are powerful draws when they are positive. Personally, for many of these reasons, I am a big fan of Carrabbas, Snapple and Dunkin Donuts to name a few.

In the world of online auctions, I used to be the same way about ebay. However, the ebay experience and familiarity have faded and changed as the site has grown to enormous proportions. They have gotten away from the focus on the small user and moved to the corporate giants. The small fry like you and me got left in the dust.

My family has had similar experiences. a few years ago, my brother actually lost a fair amount of money to a fraudulent seller. Ebay was less than helpful. This led my brothers and other family members to spend many hours and days coming up with a way to build a better auction site. Their site started up in June and is called iToucan.com. There is a link at the top of this page. I encourage you to check it out. It has some neat features...

*A loyalty program - with cash back - called Toucan Tokens
*Transaction protection on all auctions
*Support for Charities
*An active community, with a site that ACTUALLY LISTENS

Check out the site when you get a chance at www.itoucan.com. You may become a loyal fan of the unique experience like I am!

On the Road

Back in Columbus, OH. Unfortunately a few hours late. I'm a heavy flier with Delta Airlines and have been at the top (platinum) of their frequent flier program for 3 years now. Delta's finances have been well documented to be spiraling the drain, and they've cut everything but the kitchen sink.

If today was any indication, they've started to cut too far. Usually in Atlanta, the Delta folks seem to be well informed and armed with the latest info on flight status, delays, equipment etc. Even if the news isn't good they at least give it to you straight. Well today, the operation in Atlanta seemend to be a major mess....and no one seemed to have enough info to give us anything straight.

My flight was delayed 1 1/2 hours with no explanation. It was pushed back an hour originally and the plane actually pulled into tthe gate at the new scheduled departure time. Apparently the single gate agent felt the deplaning passengers would be blinked off the plane like "i dream of jeannie" and we'd all be blinked on in the same fashion. The agent realized that we may actually be further dalayed just as the plane pulled in and she stammered out a hurried excuse for the further delay.

The strange thing was that every gate in earshot seemed to be similarly delayed and confused. One group on their way to KC was told they would suffer a 15 to 25 minute delay while they "fixed a little lever on the pilot's seat". Two minutes later without any clarification, she said the fight would be changed momentrily to a different plane and gate. When I was boarding (20 minutes later), the passengers were wandering aimlessly around wondering what surprise was next. Other groups had a variety of delays for an assortment of reasons.

Now this was only one day and it certainly is a complex business to coordinate all of these flights. Nonetheless,it is a bit of a concern that after a week of headlines of restructuring for bankruptcy and working out issues with creditors, this is my first experience. Coincidence, or a sign of things to come??

Flashback to Fun

A last minute cancellation leaves me back home in steamy FL instead of running around Missouri. I guess that's a pretty good tradeoff. It gives me a chance to get reorganized in the office after being out of town for the better part of 2 months. Also a chance to remember another fine hotel from earlier this summer.

Spending a week in Italy is always a good thing. Mrs Traveler and I did that (no kids!) in June. We went to Florence, Rome and Como. All great, but Rome stood out because of the outstanding hotel we enjoyed.

The Rome Cavilieri Hilton stands on one of the 7 hills of Rome and enjoys a panoramic view of the city. As a Hhonors diamond member, we got the red carpet treatment, VIP checkin and an amazing room on the top floor with that same panoramic view .... only higher. The Hhonors lounge had excellent food and seemed to be open around the clock. The pool and spa were great and the one meal we had at the hotel was quite good as well. The only drawback I found was it took around 20 minutes to get into the heart of the city.

Although we only stayed there 2 nights, we both said we would happily go back for a week. There's certainly no shortage of things to do (and places to eat!) in Rome, and at least in our experience, this hotel made it all the more wonderful. I guess it sort of balances out all of those dull nights in hotels around the US all year that it takes to earn Diamond status in Hilton. I think you need 28 stays at Hilton properties within a rolling 12 month period to get that status. When you're staying on the top floor overlooking Rome, it all seems so worth it!

Flashback to Fun

Ahh, a week without business travel. A rare treat. It gives me a chance to think back on some past travel for nothing but fun. This morning has me thinking about some of the real outstanding hotels I've stayed at over the years. There are so many it's hard to remember them all, but now I'll talk about one that stands out. It stands out for a combination of service, room quality, setting and access to great sights and sightseeing.

Chateau Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. I have had the opportunity to stay at a number of the hotels in the superb Fairmont Hotel chain, but this one stands out. Around 5 summers ago, we booked a trip on the AMEX Platinum card which has some arrangement with a bunch of top tier hotels for upgrades and perks. Well, the room we got at the Chateau was the mother of all upgrades. The suite must have been 2000 square feet with 2 bedrooms, a living and dining area. The kicker though was the panoramic windows with a birds eye view of Lake Louise. The lake is glacial in origin and is indescribably blue, with a backdrop of a steep mountain terrain capped by a glacial thread of ice. Impossible to describe from ground level, even more so from the top floor of a hotel in a ultra luxury room.

Service was excellent, hotel employees and other guests were friendly, perhaps put at ease by the magnificent lobby and it's ever present views. We ate at several of the hotel restauraunts and each I recall being dazzled by the splendor. Of course the hiking was amazing as would be expected. One that stands out in my mind was to the "Tea House" which was up in the mountains behind the hotel. Our 2 nights at the hotel went by too quickly, but thankfully are etched in my memory as the pictures we took don't seem to do it justice.

For anyone looking for a great spot to get away from it all, I highly suggest checking out the Chateau. It's a quiet mountian area, but the views of nature can't be beat. Of course, it doesn't hurt to get the mother of all upgrades either...

On The Road

Still in San Diego. Tonight is at a Hampton Inn on Kearny Mesa Road. I usually spend only 1 or 2 nights in a given hotel on my typical trips. For those types of trips, I find the lower priced hotels to be quite good options. I spend most of my nights in members of the Hilton family of hotels. Hampton, Hilton, Homewood, Embassy Suites and Doubletree are in this group. I sometimes stay in the Marriott family including Courtyard, Residence Inns, TowneSuites, Fairfield Inn and Marriott.

I find the hotels at the low end of these brands (Hampton and Fairfield),to be fine for a night or 2. Of the 2, I find Hampton to be far more consistent and cleaner than Fairfield. Therefore, I much prefer Hampton. Fairfield also seems to have a tendency to reserve a non-smoking room and then give you a smoking one.....with no rooms to change too. That's really a big turnoff to me.

I'm at the highest level of the Hilton rewards program (hilton hhonors). Like the airlines, all of the major hotel chains have pretty good reward programs with free rooms, perks etc. The perks are best at the high end hotels with upgrades to suites and special lounges. In the major cities, Hilton has excellent service, locations, and treats it's top clients like royalty.

At Marriott, I'm a silver level which is their lowest elite group. I don't stay at this group of hotels as much so I don't have as good a sense of the amenities, although the high end properties are quite nice. It seems as if the Marriott program has a slightly more generous award program in that it has a tiered reward system. So if a certain type of hotel would be 40,000 points for 1 night, it may be 150,000 for 5 nights (30K/night). At hilton, the rewards are essentially flat. So for instance in the example above, if 1 night is 40,000 points, 5 nights at the same property may be 200,000 points (40K/night).

Even so, for me, the Hilton family is generally my choice.

On The Road

San Diego, CA. One of the nicest spots around to go for a business trip. From the flight into the middle of town to the ride out of the airport along the beautiful harbor, there is no better place to enjoy the local flair than SD. Today, the sailboats were out in force on the harbor basking in another perfect S. California day.

When here on business, I sometimes get to sneak off for a late afternoon at Torrey Pines. Either the golf club or the national park will do just fine. Spectacular Pacific views and the rugged coast. No better spot to watch the sunset. I'm also a big fan of La Jolla Cove for the surf, seals and people watching. If you are off for a business dinner, the top of the market is a great spot with excellent seafood and great views over the harbor. I could go on and on about great things to see and do here, but that's enough for now.

Top of the Market is right next to the aircraft carrier "Midway". Many times we eat there, a co-worker of mine (ex fighter pilot) goes on with the same basket of about 5 old war stories. Interesting the first few times, but after a while....

Overall, no complaints about this short 2 day trip. All the better this time since it's only a short 1 1/2 hour hop from SLC.