Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

Notes FromThe Road: There's No Free Lunch

  Until 8:30 last night when my server brought in my room service order, I was feeling like the poster child for bargain traveling.

Airline ticket on Sun Country - round-trip from Minneapolis to Dulles $163.00.

You name your price  on Priceline and  I ended up with a room at the Hyatt Regency in Reston   for $100.

All that joy was squashed when I looked at my room service bill. Here's the order for myself and my 17- year- old daughter, Berit.

1 Fruit plate
1 Apple Cobbler
1 Sauteed Calamari
1 Loaded potato
1 Stinson  Merlot

Now this bill had two items that seemed redundant. A delivery charge and a room service charge.
If you take away the delivery charge and the service charge it's about  $40. With those two items it's  $50.14

When I called the front desk to explain the difference between the delivery charge and the service charge  I was asked, " were you happy with your server?"

Calling the woman who knocked on my door and brought in the tra, is a lot like calling the Dominos pizza guy a server,." Do you mean did she do a good job of putting the tray on the end of my bed? Sure, she did that just fine."
If a hotel wants to call delivery people servers then bring in a table, tablecloth and a lovely flower would be nice as well.

I'm not the only person who feels like this service charge/delivery charge is double dipping. A couple of months ago, Bill McGee,writing for USA TODAY shared his frustration over the extra charges.

A "service charge" includes the tip. But a tip is not included in a "room service charge" or the more commonly used "delivery fee" or "delivery charge." So in the case of my burger, the $3.00 delivery charge was not a tip but the $3.78 service charge was (calculated as 18% of $21.00). Then the tax was added. Throw in my additional $3.00 tip, and this server was well compensated for the ten minutes spent carrying that tray to my room.

That is the same explanation they gave me last night. I still don't understand it. Aren't they charging for the exact same thing? Is this just a Washington, D.C. custom? Being a frequent room service orderer I think this is the first time I have seen this creative billing arrangement.

Is it new? Is it widespread? Are the hotels just trying to make up revenue because we no longer use the phones in the room?

Credit Image: Niemette

Notes From The Road -- Passengers Tell You The Darndest Things

  It wasn't until we began our descent  into the Twin Cities that I learned the passenger sitting next me was a prosecuting attorney on his way to interview a defense witness in a very high profile case.

Despite the fact that I shared I was a freelance journalist, he chatted with me about the case and the witness who by now has undergone his interrogation.

The case involves the death of an infant back in the 90s. A man was convicted of the murder and spent 10 years in jail before a higher court reversed his sentence on grounds that his defense had not provided proper counsel. He has been out of jail for nearly 5 years.

The county has recently reopened that case and my seat-mate is part of the prosecution team. The defense witness he was interviewing is a pathologist. Evidently the state maintains there is no way that the head injuries that caused the baby's death could have occurred from her falling out of her high chair.

The defense pathologist says those injuries could have occurred that way. So it is  a professional he said-she said. The prosecution's strategy is to attack the credibility of the pathologist. That is what my seatmate was hoping to do.

He indicated that her resume had some questionable entries and it was on those points that he was hoping to put into question her integrity as a witness.

I have no idea whether he succeeded or whether the pathologist was able to explain away the discrepencies.
He did tell me her name and gave me her website.

I will be checking in with her next week.

Notes from the Road NYC: Is there a new, new math?

It's early. I'm in a lovely hotel room in NYC. It has a kitchen and a coffee maker-something that is a rarity in New York hotels.

So when did they change the definition of a cup? All this time I've been working under the misguided impression that there were 8 oz to a cup.

According to Krups, I'm wrong. A cup of coffee is 5 oz.

Has anyone ever seen a 5 oz coffee mug?
If you have one, please send a picture.

                                                                                                

On The Road at Blogher06 -- Signal Strength Low

If you can get over the fact that the hotel doesn't have an elevator and you have to drag your oversized suitcase up the stairs (yes, I could have asked the bellman for help), the rooms are fine. In fact, they are lovely.  The bed is comfy. I have a bathrobe and slippers. There's a  balcony.The air conditioning works. It's San Jose. It's delightful.

The price is definitely right .Since I am here to attend Blogher 06, I am paying the conference room rates. They are very reasonable. I'm happy  with everything--except the one thing that really matters -- THE SIGNAL STRENGTH..

At times very low , at others non-existent, this is the most unreliable Internet  access that I have experienced in years.

Did I mention that there are 700 women bloggers attending this conference--that would be 700 women with laptops who expect to use them  on a regular and frequent basis?

I wouldn't call it a disaster-- people are having way to much fun to allow a little thing like technology ruin the conference, but it's definitely a strain particularly for the women who are trying to "live blog" the conference.

Signal Strength Matters.

Even before the random access, I was less than pleased with the wireless setup at the hotel. They still charge for Internet access.  I am  not amused .My expectation is that free Internet  access is an amenity. I am not alone in my expectations.

 Last October, Wi-Fi NEWS reported on the situation, sharing links to articles in both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. The two papers had different takes on the situation. While the WSJ ( subscription required -when will they ever learn?) reported on the trend to offer this as a free service.....

"Robert Mandelbaum of PKF Hospitality Research, an industry adviser, estimates that from 2000 to 2004, hotels lost 55% of the revenue they used to make from telecommunications. One of the only areas where they're turning profits on in-room technology is from Internet fees.

In an attempt to win and retain customers, hotels have recently pushed hard to upgrade their rooms with everything from flat-screen television sets to pillow-topped mattresses and 350-thread-count sheets. Complimentary high-speed Internet access is just the latest move in the hotel industry's amenities arms race.

The NY Times (subscription required --when will they learn?)  business columnist Joe Sharkey wrote about the tendency for the "big hotels" to charge for wireless access.

...the pricier the hotel, the more likely you are to pay an extra fee to check your e-mail from your room, said Bjorn Hanson, the head of the hospitality and leisure division at PricewaterhouseCoopers. That is because three-star chains like Hilton's Garden Inn, Hampton Inn and Homewood Suites and Marriott's Courtyard, Residence Inn and Fairfield Inn cater to price-conscious travelers, while the swankier names figure you won't much care about the extra few bucks.

Corporate travel managers are now trying to negotiate with four-star and five-star hotel brands to include Internet access in the room charge in future contracts, Mr. Hanson said

If the hotels are smart, they will concede the point. While baby boomers still outnumber them, Generation Xers spend more per capita on business travel, and have little patience for either dial-up connections or the general idea of paying for high-speed Internet access, which they have been accustomed to having free since college.

Moreover, with two-thirds of business travelers now using computers in their hotel rooms and with those in sales and training jobs often juggling big download files, the fees are becoming more of an irritant to just about everybody.

After a day of getting kicked off the Internet at the most inopportune times, I went to the front desk to discuss the fees. The women at the front desk indicated that they could not remove the charge from my room because it's billed to an outside service. She agreed to leave a message for the manager.

This morning, living by the motto that "hope runs eternal"  and thinking that the hotel technical staff had to have spent the entire night figuring out what was wrong, I again paid my $9.95 for a day of access. I was just getting ready to hit the submit button for my reservations at the Metropolitan Doubletree in NYC for a trip next week when I lost signal strength--again.

So instead of making my reservations on line, I called and talked to a very friendly reservation assistant Parochial for sure, but it worked.

 Oh, and it looks like I will have to pay $10.77 for Internet  access in New York....unless I go to a coffee shop or park--it seems like you can get free access just about anywhere you want--except where you need it.

Powered by QumanaTags: Hyatt, Blogher, Wi-Fi, Internet, Blogher06, business, travel

On The Road To BlogHer-First Stop Atlanta aka What's with all these supersized electrical plugs?

On any given business trip there are a certain amount of electronics that accompany me. Can anyone explain why we have to have such big honking plugs? Unless you travel with a power strip ( which didn't occur to me until this very second)   you have to use a divide and conquer strategy for plugging in all your stuff in the hotel room because  these plugs --or are they adapters ( and what is the difference?)won't share a standard two plug outlet...they're TOO BIG.

A few months ago I purchased this iGo adapter.    I use it for my blackberry. The idea is that you you can use I adapter and then change the tip for your various electronic devices.Which is a great concept except when you need to charge two devices at the same time. Say when you need to charge your blackberry at the same time you want to listen to your iPod.

Along for the trip is my adapter for my Sony mini recorder. I detest this adapter/plug. It will only fit in the bottom outlet. The prongs fold when its not in use.I guess the idea is for easy packing but it takes a tool to pry out the prongs from their resting position and then when you think you have it good to go, it snaps back into the resting position. Who has time for this?

And, then there is the  plug for my RAZR(so I could take these pictures). I can charge my blackberry with this charger but I can't  charge my RAZR with  my Blackberry  plug.

Last but not least the plug/adapter for my laptop. It has stuff coming and going from both ends.

If I hadn't lost the plug to my portable speakers to listen to my iPod  when I moved in October I would have brought that along as well.

In the short-term since hotels can't offer more outlets,  I want hotels to offer powerstrips.  In the near future I want everything to go wireless. No more plugs. No more long cords.  I want to take one standard Bluetooth mega charging thing ( that is small and cute and easy to pack) and then I want to be able to charge everything from that one source.

Where are the Jetsons when you need them?

Notes From The Road- Planes, Buses, Cars & Trains

The gate agent explained that the new boarding procedure saves 10 minutes --After years of boarding from the back to the plane to the front, NWA is now practicing the CHAOS theory of boarding. As soon as all their ELITE passengers are save and sound in their primo seasts, the rest of us board en mass.  While it may save money it doesn't feel right--yet.

Monday was "Spare The Air Day" in San Francisco-- all BART and muni rides were free.Monday was my third day riding the BART-- a system I found confusing at best. 

They don't make it easy for out of towners. The signage is awful. The confusion starts from the gitgo and doesn't leave until you get off the train

After purchasing my ticket, I looked for a sign telling me which platform I should take to get downtown. There was no sign.--that I could see. There were a lot of people on one side of the track and so that's where I decided to go but if there hadn't been people around I certainly wouldn't have known.

It doesn't get better on the train --the sound system was so poor on the car that there was no way of hearing which stop was approaching and a few of the stops had signage so understated that it would have been easy to miss the name of the stop unless you were really looking for it. Net Net-- if you are traveling on the BART take a map-- you'll need it.

As to the MUNI -- the one I was supposed to take to 3200 California Ave  broke down  by the Embarcadero. The driver had no idea how long it would take for the next bus to get there. So instead of Sparing The Air-- I got to spend  $15 dollar for a taxi cab.

Finally, the next time I need to rent a car ,the chances of  getting lost will be greatly reduced-- just saw a commercial that I can now upload Verizon's  VZ NAVIGATOR on my phone. For those of us directionally challenged, the $9 month fee ( plus airtime) will be well worth avoiding the wrong turns, stops to gas stations and that pit in your stomach that you are lost--again.

Image Credit:  Flickr Member The Emersons

Notes From The Road- San Francisco

First Impressions .When you think of the impression that a group of Irish students have about  the place where they are working in America  for the summer, what would you hope their take-away would be ?

That we are fair? Hard-working? Welcoming?

At least for the students I met on the BART going from the San Francisco Airport into the city, their impression is this:
 

Costco sells caskets.

The Irish students are working as food samplers at Costco.  They were quick to tell me they were not working for Costco but in Costco.  We started chatting because they had noticed me on the transit platform asking another passenger whether I was in the right place for the train into San Francisco. They asked me where I was going ,double checked their map ,and  then advised me that I should get off two stops after them.

They have been in San Francisco three weeks.   They are living in Berkley for the summer,staying at a Frat house with 25 Irish Students and a handful of Americans.They work Thurs-Sunday and each week  are sent to different Costco's to feature different food.While there is a lot that amazes them about the  Costco -- "It's so cheap and everything is in bulk,"The  thing that amazed them the most was the caskets.

Speaking to her compatriots, one of the four said in the freshest of fresh Irish Brogues,"Did you know you can buy caskets in Costco?"

They all acknowledged they were aware of this oddity and went into fits of laughter over the fact they were handing out food samples at a place where you can also shop for your casket.

They were also a bit impatient with Americans who tried to guess where they were from and either guessed Scotland or England. Their retort, " You Canadians are so funny."

Just moments before they started dissing Americans who couldn't tell an Irish brogue from a Scottish accent, I had fortunately guessed Irish , asking, " Are you from Ireland?" I made a mental note to self,"Don't guess about accents  anymore, you could be insulting someone without knowing it."

According to the students, Ireland doesn't have anything like a Costco. "We have supermarkets," explained one of the girls, but we have separate stores for food, tires, computers and  of course,caskets."

"So what food were you sampling today?"

I didn't get a chance to ask them if this All -American Snack food was popular in Ireland because they shared that after a day of handing out chips & salsa they never wanted to look at it again.

The conversation ended there. They got off the BART but they left me their map.

On another note today is the second anniversary of this blog. One of my earliest posts,Open -Toed Shoes is still the most popular, but Tattoo Lady is also a favorite.

To everyone who stops by, reads a post or two and shares some thoughts, thank you. I'm still having fun.

Credit Image: Flickr member cjanebuy

Notes From The Road -Seattle Airport Friendly Shoes

It's like throwing a party and no one shows up. Airport Friendly Shoes should have become the next  TravelPro, instead they are a product without a market.

Alas and alack, airport friendly shoes have not gotten the traction they deserve, and they don't seem to be on anyone's radar screen. If wearing airport friendly shoes would guarantee that I wouldn't have to remove my shoes going through security, I'd buy a pair in a heart beat.

It's a pet peeve. I hate taking off my shoes to go through security. It's not terrible in the winter when I have socks, but when you have to go barefoot, it's disgusting. At least the airport  could supply foot wipes after they've made you walk on a floor that is obviously filthy.But, of course they don't.

Standing in line to go through security yesterday in Seattle,the gentlemen with the British accent was telling his companion that he had just been to a store where they had a section called, "airplane friendly shoes"-- the concept is that these shoes don't have the metal shanks in the sole  and can allow you to go through security without taking your shoes off.

I was making a mental note--go shoe shopping.

As the man was getting ready to disrobe, he was lamenting he had not purchased this item which held the promise of a hassle-free  excursion through the metal detectors.

As people are wont to do when standing in line, the gentlemen in front of the British couple held up his high tech red running shoes and said, " it doesn't matter, they still make you take your shoes off."

With that the red shoe guy bent his shoes, demonstrated that the bottoms were clear so you see right through them. He shook his head sadly again saying, ' you still have to take them off."

The airport friendly shoes are a product that should have become as successful as rolling suitcases: they solve a consumer problem, they save everyone time, aggravation, embarrassment, and hopefully they are incredibly comfortable..

However, airport friendly shoes seem to be grounded before they've had a chance to take off. In order to find their market, they have to deliver on their promise. And to do that, the security people have to allow people to decide for themselves whether they want ot risk having their shoes set off the alarms.

They allow me to decide whether to keep on my jewelry --sometimes I set off the alarm and have to go through the system twice, sometimes I don't-- so why not reward folks who go through the effort of purchasing metal-free shoes and allow them to keep their shoes on?

If that policy existed, I would almost guarantee that we would see sales of the airport friendly shoes soar.

Notes from the Road-Seattle Day 2 aka who kidnapped my Google?

If someone can just explain how one minute your Google Toolbar is at the top of your screen and then with the speed of a click, it's gone. Not hidden. Not tucked away. It's gone.  Where did it go? When I left my hotel room yesterday morning, the Google Toolbar was safely ensconced along with  toolbar icons for my.del.icio.us, pluck, furl, skype etc.

It's as if my Google is a victim on an online kidnapping. Here's what I realized. I'm a Google girl.I have enormous brand loyalty.  Having to rely on Yahoo! for my searches is unsettling,

None of this would be a big deal if I didn't run into a problem re-installing the Toolbar. Right now Spy Sweeper is doing a total system sweep and hopefully within the hour Google will be back in my browser smiling down on me.

Smiling is something that definitely didn't occur in the Used Book Store I visited on Sunday. The first thing I noticed was this sign:

BEWARE OF CAT

Petra, our orange and white cat, will sometimes scratch with little warning.

The human serving as the information guru, check out guy and one and only person working the shop was not the kind of person that made you want to return on a regular basis. Also Petra was sitting in the chair right next to him-- kind of like a guard cat.

I was hoping to find a copy of Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated and ventured up to the counter, keeping a watchful eye on the unpredictable Petra.

The human didn't bother to get  out of his chair but decided to share his view on Mr. Foer's writing ability. It was a rapid fire discourse on how bad the book was --he didn't actually finish the book but instead burned it because it represented "everything wrong with the American society and it was completely solipsistic."

Later he added that no American in the past 15 years had written anything worth reading. He shared that he reads poetry.

Knowing that I would never go into this establishment again, I confessed that I had no idea what solipsistic meant (and I struggled to pronounce it)

The human spelled it for me and then said it meant self-centered.

Not exactly, if you trust Merriam-Webster vs "I only read poetry guy"  Solipsism actually means  "a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing"

When I looked for synonyms, Merriam Webster Thesaurus replied, " No entries found that match solipsism."

Here's  my shout out.  I now feel invested in the word  and would very much like to add it to my patois. Afterall, since I have now taken the time to learn how to spell and say it, I'd like to drop it into casual conversations...often. But the definition provided by Merriam Webster doesn't give me the confidence to use it as if I really own it. I want to own this word. So, I'd like to see it used in a sentence that I can understand. Perhaps there's a character in a book, movie or maybe a politician who has solipsistic characteristics. I look forward to your shares.

If I am successful with adding solipsism to my patois it will be my second new word  for 2006...the first being Schadenfreude-- a word I'm absolutely delighted to know and one that seems to have caught the imagination of media pundits.

In case you are not familiar with schadenfreude it means taking delight in other's miseries.Listen up, I predict it could become as beloved by the media as their absolute love affair with "gravitas."

-

Notes From The Road -Seattle Day 1 aka 1 Degree of Separation

I was 27D. She was E and the snorer was F. As is my tradition when I get on a plane, I had started reading this week's PEOPLE in the hopes that the battle between Nick and Jessica and that the news that Vili Fualaau, husband of Mary Kay Letourneau, could face a year in prison for drunk driving,would carry me through lift off and to the comfortable cruising altitude of 30 thousand feet.

I really didn't intent to chat with the lady in E ,I had work to do, a knitting project, and a book club book to read. But,  when F let out a particularly thunderous snore, she asked, " Should I nudge him?"

"Is he yours?" I asked.

Since he wasn't, we let him be. But we bonded,and  talked our way to Seattle amidst the intermittent  bursts of stertor from our aisle partner.

It was early on in the conversation that I learned she was headed to Vancouver to attend a conference on Commencements.

Commencements are something I know absolutely nothing about. I've never attended one--choosing to skip my own. So until that very second, it never occurred to me that  that there could be trends,styles, and news that could take up a 3 day conference on a college graduation. 

She has agreed to share what she learns at the conference.

As a preview, I did learn that the University of Texas has fireworks, that Columbia and Harvard have over 100,000 people attending their ceremonies, and that the mom's at Pepperdine are expected to wear a straw hat.

However, it was probably 2 hours into the flight when we learned that we had business associates in common. First there was her PR firm, Kohnstamm Communications-- Kohnstamm's president Josh serves as the head of a marketing committee for the St.Paul JCC, nonprofit agency  that hired me to help with their branding. Josh and I see each other on a monthly basis.

If that wasn't curious enough, she pulled out a copy of  Northwest Airlines Magazine and showed me the ad for her institution. That's when I found out a former co-worker, Chas Porter,who I haven't seen for 10 years, is handling her branding/advertising. He is now blogging and sharing his views on branding,

"While anyone can build brand buzz if they know how to leverage the Internet's mercurial network dynamics, building brand loyalty is not so easy: the never-off Internet requires that you must continually share your value with the market. In the words of Neil Young, rust never sleeps.

But there is a solution: create content that shares your expertise and knowledge with consumers and you'll build both brand buzz and brand loyalty.

Sharing your expertise is direct selling. It's an inexpensive and very effective link back to your product or service."

Two connections with just one degree of separation.Not bad for a 3hr 40 minute plane ride.