Travel: It beats the alternatives
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Noise, emissions and jets qua jets

I came looking to get some context for Porter‘s proposal to bring jets to Billy Bishop airport.

The Air Transport Action Group gathered experts and representatives from all over the Globe in Montreal last week to talk about air travel and the environment. Those gathered in the basement of the Hilton Bonaventure learned from Boeing’s Darrin Morgan that there was already 100 billion litres of biofuels being created each year, and though not all of it was jet-ready, as well as one of the reasons this is important to aviation: The US military, for all its globe-bestriding might, uses the rough equivalent in jet fuel as one mid-sized commercial airline. In other words, there’s a lot of this stuff being burnt, and since planes will remain liquid fuel dependent (at least for the next 50 years, according to British Airways’ Jonathon Counsell), biofuels — especially the sort made from waste rather than new crops — will continue to be a major issue and potential fix to aviation’s ills.

But it’s noise that people are pre-emptively complaining about at Billy Bishop. Jets are noisier than propeller planes, and more planes are noisier than fewer planes, so it’s all a very bad idea.

Like most Torontonians, I don’t live by the waterfront, but also like most Torontonians, I do spend time there. The planes are not bothersome as they are, though the mere fact that even the Q400 propeller planes fly out of there is a slap in the face to some who opposed the airport wholesale. But though I came to Montreal in favour — in principle — of adding jets to the downtown mix, I of course, like everyone else participating in the Deluce‘s debate, didn’t know just how noisy that would make things.

It turns out, noise is a slipper thing, more relative than absolute, less a thing of decibels than of something called Perceived Noise Decibels. It makes the discussion about planes in cities a lot more complex, anda good deal more interesting.

Stay tuned for “Noise, emissions and jets qua jets, part deux”, where we’ll talk about noise, noise complaints, and some of the world’s other city centre airports.

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Virtuous tourism

If I were to tell you it was better to book a vacation than to write a cheque to your favourite global charity, what would you say?

You’re on vacation. You go to a market to browse some local knick-knacks to bring back for friends and family. You ask the price. It seems high, but when you convert it into Canadian dollars, it’s actually pretty reasonable. Do you haggle? Or is haggling over a dollar or two inhumane when it’s someone who clearly has less money than you, in a country with fewer blessings than your own?

You’re on the beach in the Thailand. Someone brings you the beer you ordered. All you’ve got for a tip is a 100 baht note that’s roughly equivalent of $3.50. Do you say, “What the heck, I’m on vacation”? Or do you ask for change?

Whether you’re in Bhutan or Germany, questions like these pose themselves every day. Most of us don’t give too much thought for them, wining it based on our moods, or our theories of economic beneficence.

But like a single vote, each of these decisions is extraordinarily important. When you travel, you become part of the greatest voluntary redistribution of wealth on the planet. You’re one of a billion people spending a trillion dollars every year on tourism. Though some of us like to think we take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints, the money we spend when we travel can do a world of good. But it can also be disruptive, damaging and sometimes effectively flattening local economies.

Over my years as a travel journalist for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the National Post, En Route, the Washington Post, the Toronto Standard and Hazlitt, I’ve run into more of these questions than average, and after supplementing these trips with some reading and interviews, I think I’ve come up with a few answers. I’d like to share them with you.

Because I believe tourists can be forces for good in the world, that if you keep a few simple rules in mind, you can have the vacation you want, active or leisurely, all-inclusive or back-packing, and do more good than you do staying at home, even if you spend that time at your writing cheques to international charities.

If you like to travel, and like the idea of making the world a better place for having passed through it, please consider joining me for my class, The Virtuous Tourist, on Sunday, April 21. It runs from 11am to 4pm, with an hour break for lunch, and it’s being held at The Academy of the Impossible at 231 Wallace Avenue, just north of Bloor and Lansdowne in Toronto. The price is $150 ($200 for two if you bring a travel companion).

To register, please send an email with “The Virtuous Tourist” in the subject line to bertstravel@gmail.com.

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Air Canada: 18 minutes of ads before every in-flight movie

Air Canada has long had one of the best in-flight entertainment systems in the industry. They were one of the first to have seatback screens, and remain one of the only airlines to offer access to its extensive library from the moment you sit down to the moment you get up after landing.

But they’re threatening to undo that industry leadership these days with a truly ludicrous amount of advertising. We all know how small profit margins are for airlines, how much trouble they apparently have just keeping their noses above the financial clouds. So, we’ve more or less come to terms with what in the business are called ancilliary charges, the money they make us pay for extra weight extra bags, food, drinks, earphones, and in some instances, pillows and blankets.
But I was dumbfounded last time I punched in a movie on flight AC847 from Munich to Toronto. It took almost 18 minutes of ads to get to the movie.

Picture yourself, sitting in a tiny chair, the seat pocket in front of you brushing your knees, forced to watch advertising for banks, the airline and what seemed like an endless parade of that clown-haired Boomer cinema executive telling us about Taylor Lautner’s filmic insights. You can fast-forward through them, thankfully (though it took me a couple of movies and almost 40 minutes of being sold at to figure that out), but even then, you have to fast-forward each individually, and there are about a dozen of them.

Ads before movies is nothing new, of course, but the longest stream I’ve ever timed before a movie in the theatres is eight minutes, less than half what Air Canada’s subjecting its paying customers to.

Flying long-haul in economy class is already pushing the boundaries of tolerable. These barrages of hucksters selling us their goods and services, when added to that absurd duty-free cart that flight attendants are forced to flog now makes me feel like a cow in a pen with milking tubes fastened to my udders. As unpleasant as that image is, the feeling is at least as bad.

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When in Munich…

… stick to the blue buses. I didn’t. I went with the red and yellow ones, because they were branded CitySightseeing, which is the worldwide company that operates red double deckers in 60 or so cities. I’d taken them in Dublin and Berlin, and they did what they did well.

It didn’t take long to realize Munich was a different story. After I complained (freezing buses, patched-together taped narration, ear buds not easily forthcoming), asked for my money back, was refused, and wrote a few emails, I learned a couple of things.

Here’s what I got from CitySightseeing:

Dear Bert,

First and foremost I am very sorry to hear of your experience in Munich.

However, although the branding is very similar, we no longer operate a Munich tour and City Sightseeing is no longer in association with Munich.

This has been the case since the start of 2012.

I have attached the contact details below for Munich however they may have changed.

http://www.munich-info.de/travel/stadtfuehrungen/yellow-cab/welcome_de.html

Kind Regards

Adam

Adam Richardson
Sales & Marketing & Customer Service Support
Tel: +44 1789 299123
www.city-sightseeing.com

And here’s what the Munich tourism board said:

Dear Mr Archer,

we are sorry to learn from your email that you had such a bad experience during your stay in Munich.

To our regret we have to inform you that we consistently receive complaints about this company.

The manager however is not willing to offer a better service. On the opposite he has refused any contact with München Tourismus regarding complaints. For this reason we as München Tourismus do not recommend this company. We also do not hand out any Flyer or other advertising material about this company to our clients.

We hope you can forget this negative experience soon and maybe you will have the opportunity to visit our city once more.

Kind regards

Edith Biebel

Landeshauptstadt München
Referat für Arbeit und Wirtschaft
München Tourismus
Beschwerdemanagement
Sendlinger Str. 1
80331 München

Tel: +49(0)89 233-30104
Fax: +49(0)89 233-30285
tourismus.beschwerden@muenchen.de

The company is unfortunately intentionally misleading folks about being part of a reputable global tourism business. I’ve left the contact info in with the notes I got just in case anyone feels moved to write a quick note to either of them to urge them to force a more transparent distinction.

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New iPad Mini good news for travellers

Up until now, I’d say –indeed, I have said — that the Samsung Galaxy 7-inch tablet was the best tablet for travelling. It can fit in a pocket and does everything you need a tablet to do on the road. THe iPad, on the other hand, for all its qualities, was just too big. When I tested it, I felt I was in constant danger of leaving it behind somewhere; I couldn’t easily stow it, so I was carrying it around in my hand all the time and setting it down on cafe tables, railings, airport ticket kiosks. The potential for disaster was enormous.

As of about 20 minutes ago, the rumours iPad Mini is official. It’s 7.9 inches, with apparently up to 10 hours of battery life. The cell version — the one you want on the road — won’t be available until most of the way through November (and even then, only in the US, it seems). I’ve not tried it out yet, so I can’t say if it’s as good as or better than the Samsung that worked so well for me and, further, whether it’s worth the $459 they’re charging for the 16MB version ($599 for 32GB and $659 for 64GB). I’ll see if I can get back to you on that one.

However it turns out performing, though, the downsizing of tablets is nothing but good news for travellers.

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Cubans win right to (almost) unfettered travel

At long last, Cuban tourism is getting a little less one sided.

Host to more than a million Canadians a year, in addition to hundreds of thousands of other non-Americans (as well as increasing numbers of Americans), tourism for Cubans has for decades meant people visiting Cuba, not Cuban’s taking trips of their own.

But as of January 14, Cubans will no longer have to apply for exit visas, and their maximum stays abroad will be extended from 11 months to two years.

It’s not all rum and roses, though. At the same time the government announced this opening of some of the last communist borders on the planet, they averred that the new regulations would not apply to “intellectual capital,” Cuban talent that must still be protected from foreign poachers.

Of course, another major barrier also still exists. The monthly salary for Cubans, set by the government and as of 2008 subject to occasional bonuses, is about $19.

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Air New Zealand makes a North American push

Last week, Air New Zealand announced a significant increase in the number of flights between New Zealand and North America. Yesterday, they announced they were switching ad agencies, too, after years of punching above their weight in brand recognition.

Air New Zealand is one of the world’s best airlines, mostly because it absolutely has to be. Most of us wouldn’t have the occasion to travel on it much, ut it’s the sort of airline that, once you do, you start wondering why all airlines don’t have storytime for kids in the back, seat-back graphic menus that let you order food or drinks at any point during the flight, and in-flight concierges to give you advice on where to go and what to do when you land.

It’s the national airline of a small country far from everything but Australia, which has a much larger national airline that serves most of its routes. Most of its flights are long-haul, and long-haul flights are where airlines get to show their mettle. Recent innovations, like the cuddle seat for couples, and the face-to-face swivel seats for friendly or intimate in-flight dining, are likely to spread in some form or other throughout the industry.

The airline’s also been known, primarily in New Zealand, for its advertising and in-flight safety videos. Through YouTube, the naked flight crew video, the All Black safety video, and the Rico mascot series of ads — which sometimes carry warnings for “mature content” — have gained an international following.

Much of this is about to change. CEO Rob Fyfe, always dapper and oddly fit for an airline executive, and as a result, something of a personality on the New Zealand media scene, is stepping down next month, and in January, the company announced, after running a who-murdered-Rico finale to its long-running campaign, that they’re changing agencies at home, switching to DraftFCB, whose work for them has yet to hit the air. Yesterday’s announcement signals an international branding consolidation that is likely a precursor to more aggressive global expansion of this heretofore feisty, fun but mostly overlookable airline.

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It’s getting easier for the world to visit the US

Though the UK is a little muddled on the subject just now, it’s clear the US knows the value of a tourist dollar. It’s worth roughly the same as a lumber dollar, or a tech dollar, or a military-industrial dollar. The only difference is it’s way easier to make.

After making it clear in January, with an executive order no less, that he wanted to make the US easier to visit, the White House released a report today on the headway it’s made.

The interim report says that now 88 per cent of visa applicants are being interviewed within three weeks. That may sound like pretty weak tea for anyone in Canada or the US who’s applied for a visa to another country. I got mine to China, a notoriously difficult country to deal with, in three days earlier this year, with no interview. But apparently, it’s an improvement. They are reporting that in what they’re calling “key markets” like China and Brazil they’re doing much better. As a result, both countries joined Mexico in the One Million Visa club this year.

The Departments of Homeland Security and State have teamed up with three companies, Disney – to produce a video the help with consular operations in China and Brazil (“What’s that you say Pluto? Visa pictures must be 51mm square? Thanks!”) – and United Airlines and American Express (even more questionably) to reimburse rich folks for their $100 Global Entry Fees.

But however odd their efforts may seem, their priorities appear to be in teh right place, and it’s paying off. The latest figures say the US got 13.7 billion travel dollars in July alone, up $350 million from last July.

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