Travel agents staging a comeback

WHEN SHE WAS PLANNING her birthday trip to New York City, Caroline Koons Forrest started where most of us do: online. She checked everything from Hotels.com to the Four Seasons' site. No luck. Everything was booked solid, outrageously priced or completely unfamiliar to her (the Days Hotel, anyone?). So the West Palm Beach architectural designer did something she hadn't done in ages: switched off her computer and called a local travel agent. Minutes later Stacy Small of Elite Travel International phoned back with a room at her first-choice hotel, the Four Seasons, at half the $1,600 price tag for a suite Forrest had spotted on the web. The icing on the cake? An actual birthday cake, which awaited Forrest and her husband when they entered their room.

After more than a decade of decline, the humble travel agent is staging a comeback. Frustrated with the recent rash of sold-out hotels and airline seats, travelers are discovering that for all the hype, web sites like Hotels.com, Orbitz and Travelocity are losing some of their edge, especially when it comes to high-end locations. And customer displeasure is starting to show; growth in the once red-hot online travel business is cooling, up 20% last year after a 28% increase in 2004. Enter the travel agent, the most savvy of whom can use longtime connections to secure that "sold out" room or coveted aisle seat. Written off as dinosaurs not so long ago, agents are seeing a welcome bump in business, with the 2006 average weekly sales per agent location up 15% over the year before. High-end travel is turning up as well, with members of Virtuoso, a consortium of more than 300 luxury agencies, racking up $4.2 billion in sales last year, an 11% jump over 2005.

Read more by clicking the above link from Smart money.com

The air travel nightmare continues

The media has a certain fascination with the airline industry.

The press has not been good this summer.

Here is a link to the Denver Post detailing the misery of air travel

The Philadelphia Inquirer has some tips on how to fly and survive this summer.

The Chicago Tribune has a front page article about flying the angry skies.

And the Chicago Tribune companion article about 2007 being the worst year ever for air travelers.


We recently flew Southwest to Las Vegas. Somehow despite the problems of other airlines, our Southwest flights arrived on time, were 90% filled, the planes were clean, the seats were not broken, the rows have more room than other airlines, and Southwest managed to serve everyone a drink at no charge and a small box of snacks. Which brings me to the Southwest paradox. How did this airline, the greyhound of the air, become the market leader? They steadfastly avoid assigning seats causing passengers to line up hours before the flight leaves to get a "good seat." Although there are rumors of a change in boarding policies. They set the prices in any market they serve. Their recent fare increase was matched immediately by their competitors and their soon to announced sale fares will be matched as well. Southwest airlines employees are genuinely friendly and seem to like their jobs.

And Southwest airlines is profitable, but that profitability is being threatened by higher fuel costs and increased competition.

Hopefully the things that make flying Southwest more attractive today, won't disappear as a result of the squeezed profitability and increased competition.

"Our customer service providers recognize the additional stress and tension of traveling today,"

USA Today reports that flight attendants are feeling the wrath of flyers. Flying today is a very unpleasant experience and apparently some are fighting back...literally.

Say goodbye to the New Frontier

It looks like another notch in the casino death watch bed post. The closing and demolition of the New Frontier is imminent. Another bit of Las Vegas history passes away. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, "the New Frontier launched the Las Vegas career of Elvis Presley, who played his first-ever show at the casino on April 23, 1956. The Frontier was the site of the final performance of Diana Ross and The Supremes on Jan. 14, 1970."

Although we never stayed at the New Frontier, we had an occasion to gamble there a few times and found it to be ratty and rather unpleasant all around. We are not shedding alot of tears for the New Frontier. R.I.P.

Feds to suspend new border rules to ease passport crunch

Apparently the massive backlog in passport applications is the reason the State Department and other agencies have agreed to lift the passport requirements for United States citizens to travel to Canada and Mexico. "The whole system is ready to collapse" according to the above linked article from the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

New Springfield to Las Vegas Air Service

As announced in today's State Journal Register....click on the above link to read the story....even better read the comments concerning the flight times and time changes for a few yuks...Allegiant Air announced new non stop air service from Springfield to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is our client's favorite destination. Each year we send hundreds of clients to Las Vegas. Springfield's lack of decent air service to Las Vegas has always been somewhat of a problem. If you really wanted to save money, you really had to drive to St. Louis or perhaps Peoria to meet your goal. If you wanted to fly to Las Vegas from Springfield, be prepared for a long flight...sometimes as long as nine hours because of the connection....and paying $200.00 more than the going rate in St Louis.

No longer is this a problem.

Based on clients' initial reaction, the just announced flights will really be a winner.

Kudos to the Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport folks.

What to do?

Back safe and sound from Italy, our WUIS group arrived Wednesday evening in Springfield exhausted and safe. And not without some concern that Tuesday's one day labor strike by Alitalia airlines flight attendants might spill over to the next day when our flight was scheduled to depart. Our concerns were without merit, although every seat in our airplane was filled. We visited with some of the flight attendants and they told us about their concern for their own jobs since the economic future of the airline is not very good.


We have posted more pictures from our trip on our flickr site.

Here is a link to our flickr site.


Italy is intensive living and Rome maximizes it. We managed to pack in as much as we could in our three day stay in Rome. Our group members scattered throughout the city exploring the sites. Some even managed to attend an opera concert the night before we left.

As the group members departed for home from the WUIS studios Wednesday evening, I watched them exchanged hugs and telephone numbers. A very good sign. As an exhausted as she was, I had one group member ask me for she left for home, "Where are we going to next?"