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| Volume 5, Issue 23, June 5, 2007 |    |
In an exhaustive survey, J.D. Power and Associates spend a year asking more than 10,200 passengers 28 questions about their departure and arrival airports in North America. The results of the 17,400 completed evaluations, broken down into eight categories of airport facilities and services, show the lowest levels of customer satisfaction in five years. Of 61 airports rated, only seven got the top (five dots) overall rating: Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW), Detroit Metropolitan (DTW), Hartsfield Atlanta (ATL), Kansas City (MCI), Houston Hobby (HOU), Dallas Love (DAL), and San Antonio (SAT).
The airports rated were broken into three categories: 17 large airports (30 million or more passengers a year), 25 medium airports (10 million to 30 million) and 19 small ones (fewer than 10 million). The lowest rated were San Francisco (SFO), Calgary (YYC), and Austin-Bergstrom (AUS).
What makes passengers most unhappy? According to the survey, 15 percent more passengers are checking baggage than they did in 2004-2005, and while they’re actually happier about the overall check-in process, including baggage check, satisfaction with baggage claim has declined markedly. Ratings dropped 12 points for every five minutes of wait time (on a scale of 1–1,000).
The other category where delays strongly affect ratings is security checks. Travelers tolerate on average 17 minutes of wait time before their ratings drop at a rate of 21 points for every five additional minutes of standing on line.
Surprisingly, the biggest decline in satisfaction came in regard to retail services (not including food and beverage). Passengers — who spend on average $25.54 per airport — are unhappier with the cost and variety of products available to buy at airports than they were last year. That could be because they have more time to shop—one in five travelers experienced a flight delay, which is a 12 percent increase over the previous year. When it comes to food, the average traveler spends $11.91 at large or medium airports, $14.72 at small airports.
You can see the detailed results for any of the airports at JDPower.com, but here’s a quick breakdown of the top-rated airports in significant categories:
Best security check: Dallas-Ft. Worth, Las Vegas (LAS), Kansas City, Houston Hobby
Best baggage claim: Dallas-Ft. Worth, Newark (EWR), Sacramento (SMF), Dallas Love
Best Customs/immigration: Las Vegas, Kansas City, Raleigh-Durham (RDU)
Best food and beverage: Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston Intercontinental (IAH), New York (JFK), Philadelphia (PHL), Kansas City, Boise (BOI), Tulsa (TUS) 
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the co-branded Citi/AAdvantage credit card, and to celebrate, the two companies are running an exclusive online auction for 20 high-end life experiences. Ten of the auctions are for bid in dollars charged to the card; the other 10 required bidding in AAdvantage miles. Part of the proceeds of the latter auction will be divided among three charities. Items up for bid include a private guitar lesson with BB King, a private cooking lesson with chef Daniel Bouley, a Ferrari ride through Tuscany, box suites for a Dallas Mavericks or Miami Heat game, and lifetime AAdvantage Gold Elite status. Bidding starts at www.aa.com/20 on June 8. You must be a cardholder to bid; sign up for a new card and you can earn up to 40,000 bonus miles.
You may soon need less encouragement to “put your tray tables in the upright and locked position.” That’s because US Airways has signed a deal with Brand Connections Sky Media to put ads on the serving surface of the tray tables of all its coach seats, as soon as possible. Softening the blow is Brand Connections’s deal with BusinessWeek magazine to run one of the magazine’s columns alongside every ad. Popular columnists such as Jack Welch, Robert Parker and Maria Bartiromo will be featured, with different columns for aisle, middle and window seats. Lest you think the airline’s main concern is your reading pleasure, the descriptions call for ads that are about the size of a two-page spread, which means that the columns will be about one column wide. And Brand Connections proudly promotes the airplanes’ “captive audiences” in their sales pitch. Why the editorial content? Surveys show that the ads get 3.4 times more exposure when accompanied by editorial, and that passengers preferred the tray tables with the BusinessWeek columns to those that were ad-only by almost a 3 to 1 margin. US Airways has had some tray-table ads on 350 aircraft since its 2005 merger with America West. Next up: Brand Connections says it expects to have the tray-table ads, which can be changed monthly, on more than 50,000 US Airways first-class seats a month by the end of the year.
Air Canada is the latest airline to offer passengers the option to contribute to carbon offset for their flights. The program is in partnership with Zerofootprint, a nonprofit that runs carbon offset programs. Passengers booking travel on Air Canada, Air Canada Jazz or their regional partners through www.aircanada.com will see an option to compute the amount of carbon offset required for their trip. They can choose to pay the offset costs at the time of booking, or file away the info for a later date and pay Zerofootprint directly. For example, the cost to offset the amount of carbon dioxide generated by a round trip between Montreal and Vancouver is about $12.
Just opened: the first international five-star hotel in Guangzhou’s Tian He central business district. The Westin Guangzhou’s guestrooms are all at least 500 square feet, with flat-screen LCD TVs, cordless phones and high-speed Internet. Its 28 signature Renewal Rooms are about 650 square feet and include an executive work area, oversized desk and Bose radio. The hotel has a gym, sauna, spa, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, Jacuzzis, a 24-hour business center, and five restaurants and bars, including Prego, the rooftop restaurant with stunning city views. Introductory rates start at $157 a night.
If you’re in Melbourne or Adelaide, love wine and can wrap up your business during daytime hours, you can take advantage of two new evening programs. In Melbourne, Hidden Secrets Tours, walking tour specialists, will be introducing an early-evening Sommeliers City Walk, including stops at three restaurants to meet the sommeliers, taste wine and sample the menus. Prices have not yet been announced, but Hidden Secrets’ other walking tours range from $33 to $80. For info, email tours@hiddensecretstours.com. Fifteen minutes outside Adelaide is the famous Penfolds Magill Estate. The new Twilight Tour and Dinner includes a personalized tour of the winery, a tasting of four premium wines, and a five-course tasting menu in the award-winning restaurant, beginning at 6 p.m.; $124 per person.
Hotel Bel-Air
701 Stone Canyon Rd.
Los Angeles, CA 90077
tel 310 472 1211
www.hotelbelair.com
There is no question in my mind that when the readers of Global Traveler voted the Hotel Bel-Air the best hotel in the United States, they were right. I’m living proof. From arrival to departure, I found the hotel to be magnificent and the staff ready to please (in a friendly, not phony, way).
I arrived at about 3 p.m. and pulled up to the valet parking, where one of the parking attendants — all of whom are cheerful and collegiate in appearance — took my car (no ticket needed) and greeted me by name. I turned to my wife and said, “I never met this guy, he’s new; how does he know I am Mr. Gallagher? This was before he popped the trunk to get the bags, so he hadn’t checked the luggage tags. It’s all part of the Bel-Air experience; the staff had been alerted to my arrival and were able to deduce it was me.
Check-in was swift, courteous, and above all, friendly. We were shown to our suite by Maria, the front desk manager. We were booked into one of the two Spa Suites, which each have a very large living room connected to a large bedroom with a king-size bed — I truly think the Bel-Air beds are the most comfortable in the industry. What struck me, as it always does, is how clean the rooms are — bathrooms are spotless, floor immaculate, mini-bar is full stocked, and 90 percent of the time ice is waiting in your ice bucket (this time it wasn’t).
The main draws of this particular suite are the spacious patio — I felt I could easily hold a cocktail reception for 20 — and the totally private, extremely comfortable built-in spa. It’s rumored that this is Angelina Jolie’s favorite room at the Bel-Air.
Although the Spa Suite is a bit pricey for many budgets at $1,350 a night, the standard rooms start at about $365. All rooms come with the Bel-Air bed, plasma TVs, free wireless Internet, and the use of the most beautiful hotel grounds you’re ever likely to see. The restaurant and bar are equally famous, and you’re bound to see a notable face in one of them from time to time.
Score: ••••• Francis X. Gallagher
Here’s a way to come home from Las Vegas with twice as much money in your pocket: Take the Las Vegas Monorail. For the summer, it’s discounting its one-day pass by almost half. Now you can travel the full length of the Strip in 15 minutes or less, with seven stations located at the MGM Grand, Bally’s/Paris, Flamingo/Caesar’s Palace, Harrah’s/Imperial Palace, Convention Center, Hilton, and Sahara. Instead of the normal $15 day-pass rate, the summer discount promotion cuts the price to $8. That’s less than the price of two single-ride tickets, which cost $5 each. Full information about the Las Vegas monorail system is at LVMonorail.com. Starting at 7 a.m., the monorail operates 19 hours a day during the week, 20 hours a day on weekends.
Two airlines offering new service are throwing in some special deals to go along with them. LAN Airlines just began nonstop flights from both New York (JFK) and Los Angeles (LAX) to Santiago (SCL), continuing on to Buenos Aires (BUE) and other destinations in Argentina, three times a week from JFK and five times a week from LAX. Buy tickets by June 10 to get introductory fares of $799 round-trip to Santiago from either LAX or JFK, or from LAX to Buenos Aires; the New York-Buenos Aires promotional fare is $729. Travel can be either before July 7 or between Aug. 10 and Oct. 30. And United Airlines, which begins new nonstop flights between San Francisco (SFO) and Taipei (TPE) on June 7, is offering an Experience Taipei sale between June 7 and Aug. 15 from any of its U.S. gateways, starting at $1,248 round-trip from the West Coast. Mileage Plus members flying on the SFO-TPE route will earn 10,000 bonus miles in first or business class, 7,500 bonus miles in coach.
Cruise West thinks its short-notice discounts are such a good deal, it's calling them the Stowaway Program. To "stow away" on one of Cruise West's nine small ships (accommodating from 78 to 138 passengers), you request an itinerary within 60 days of departure and specify a 30-day window in which you can travel. At least 30 days before departure, Cruise West will confirm or deny. The program is available on most Cruise West cruises including those of Asia, the South Pacific, the Sea of Cortes, Costa Rica/Panama, Alaska, and the East and West Coasts. Normally, the cruises cost anywhere from under $3,000 to over $15,000 per person, depending upon length of itinerary and type of cabin; "stowaways" get 25 percent off.
Until June 30, you can enter a sweepstakes being run to promote FedEx Kinko’s NoMoreAllNighters.com service (you email them a document, they print, collate and ship) via a link that nicely lets you skip the promo and go straight to the entry info. You have until June 30 to enter for a chance to win a seven-day, six-night trip for two to Hawaii including airfare and hotel. Enter by June 14 to also have a chance in the daily drawings for an HP Pavillion dv2000z Entertainment Notebook, valued at $700. One entry per person and per email address per day is allowed (we understand that to mean that the same person can’t enter twice in the same day using two email addresses, nor can two people use the same email address to enter in the same day).
Silverjet, the all-business-class British airline, is celebrating its first 100 days in flight by offering a $100 discount off each leg of your trip — but you must book by June 10. Travel between New York (EWR) and London (LTN) can be anytime between July 1 and Sept. 15. Normal fares start at $899 each way, before the $100 off, so that’s a better than 11 percent discount.
