The Naked Truth On Airlines, Hotels & Biz Travel - from travel legend Chris Dane. Plus, the 'Costas' of Spain, the $5,000 cocktail and more!

Chris Dane - former airline and hotel exec with too many titles to mention - guides us through an analysis of airline fares, hotel rates and the return of business travel - then where it's all going in the next year. Along the way Chris let's slip some secrets from a most frequent traveler. Plus, we look at the data and revisit the famous coastal resorts of Spain which are seeing strong bookings again right now (Bonus: a great book recommendation!). And we rifle through some headlines from the travel boom, including the $5,000 Star Wars cocktail onboard the new Disney Wish. Cheers!

Welcome to No Tourists Allowed

Welcome to No Tourists Allowed, a podcast where two recognized travel industry executives with a combined 69 years on the inside of travel and technology give up their secrets to the thing everyone wants to do: Travel better, pay less, and see more of the world. Enjoy today's episode. Hello, listeners.

Mike Putman: I'm Mike Putman.

James Ferrara: And I'm James Ferrara. Welcome to our third edition of No Tourists Allowed. We're very glad that you joined us today and we have a chock-full of content for you today that I think you'll find really enjoyable.

The Five Thousand Dollar Disney Cocktail

Mike Putman: James, there’s a couple of really interesting things that have happened this week in the travel space which are a little bit unusual. The first of which is Disney, aboard one of their cruise ships, is now offering a five thousand dollar cocktail.

James Ferrara: Yep, that's aboard the new Disney Wish, isn't it, Mike? Brand new ship.

Mike Putman: It is. This five thousand dollar drink comes served in a Camtono, which is the Bounty Hunter accessory container most recently featured on The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. I hope I said that right.

James Ferrara: You did, Boba Fett. Now, Boba Fett is one of the most popular characters from Star Wars, even though in the original movies he was a very minor character, a Bounty Hunter. But he became a cult favorite. Now they've developed The Mandalorian series and then The Book of Boba Fett around backstories for this character. As you might be able to tell, I'm a very geeky big fan of this.

Mike Putman: I was about to say, where did you get the time to do the background on this unless you just knew it off the top of your head?

James Ferrara: I do. In fact, in The Mandalorian, one of the characters is what everyone refers to as baby Yoda. It's Yoda, but looks like Yoda as an infant. In fact, it's a different character, but it's one of Yoda's race. And I have—oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm going to say this publicly—I have a stuffed baby Yoda on my bed.

Mike Putman: Yeah, I probably would not have shared that, James, but interesting. That's not the story.

James Ferrara: Oh yeah. But if you're interested in a five thousand dollar drink cocktail, head aboard the new Disney cruise ship and have your Star Wars drink.

Airline Overbooking and the Ten Thousand Dollar Payout

Mike Putman: Also in the news this week, we've spoken about last week and we'll have some more information this week about problems that the airlines are having: overcapacity, lack of supply, et cetera. As a result, the domestic airlines typically overbook flights, as we all know. If they have more people show up for a flight than they have seats, then they are required to basically bribe people off the airplane. This in the industry is called involuntary denial of boarding, which is relatively typical. I've had it happen to me, James. I'm sure you've had it happen to you.

James Ferrara: Sure have.

Mike Putman: Where you'll be ready to take off and the person at the gate will say if anybody's willing to take the next flight, we'll give you a voucher worth one hundred dollars, two hundred dollars, or five hundred dollars. Generally, what they have to do is keep bidding this up until they hit that magic number. Well, just this past week, Delta ended up having to offer ten thousand dollars for someone to give up their seats on a relatively short flight. If you can imagine being on a flight which might have cost you two hundred or three hundred dollars, and the gate announcer says they are looking for volunteers for one thousand, five hundred, or ten thousand dollars. They ended up paying ten thousand dollars on a prepaid Visa. This is really unusual because it used to be that they would only give you a voucher towards the purchase of more of their own travel. There was a self-consumption component to that, but they actually provided ten thousand dollar prepaid Visa cards. That is a big wow and it's kind of like winning the airline lottery. That did not happen on my flight to and back from Mexico this past weekend.

James Ferrara: But I was offered seven hundred and fifty dollars. Turns out I should have taken it because the flight was delayed on the tarmac. We sat in the plane for so long that I actually would have taken off around the same time that we did take off, and I would have been seven hundred and fifty dollars wealthier. Hindsight is 20/20. Look, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on in the industry. And just so it doesn't sound like we're unduly bashing the airlines, it's happening in other parts of the industry as well. I've got cruise bookings where advisors are talking about having cabins canceled because cruise lines have to reduce the occupancy on a particular sailing, or having whole sailings canceled. The difference there is it doesn't happen while you're standing on the port waiting to board the ship like it does sometimes with airlines when you're marooned in the airport. But there's a lot of disruption, let's just say that.

Introduction of Special Guest Chris Dane

Mike Putman: Yes, and I am going on my first cruise since the pandemic and I hope you aren't putting some bad juju on my cruise by giving me that information. We'll see next week.

James Ferrara: Check your emails.

Mike Putman: Yes. Well, today we have a very special guest, a very good friend of both of us, and we will be bringing him on coming up next. James, we are very fortunate today to have what I would truly call a legend in the travel business. I know he's a good friend of yours and mine, and I'd like to welcome in Mr. Chris Dane. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Dane: Thank you, Mike. Thank you, James.

James Ferrara: Let's give everyone a sense of Chris's background and standing in the industry. Otherwise, they're going to think he's a legend in his own mind. That could be partially true as well. But Chris is also one of the best-known figures in the travel industry. That started with a 20-year plus service at American Airlines as the managing director of travel agency sales. Anyone on the travel agency side of the industry knew who Chris Dane was, representing one of the most important airlines in the world. But even his work and his reputation extends beyond that. Chris was president of a unit of HRG, which is one of the largest travel companies in the world, and also has had tours of duty as president or senior executive of a number of the well-known names in the travel industry. This includes being one of the original executives at Vacation.com, which became the largest travel agency consortium and a travel company behemoth in the industry.

Mike Putman: Chris, we could take up all the time we have with you just talking about your resume. Let's not forget about Chris's stint at Delta Vacations, too. That was an important role. And his current role as the president of Hickory Global Partners.

Chris Dane: Absolutely. Let's quit talking about my resume and get to the meat of the model.

Rapid Fire with Chris Dane

Mike Putman: Let me do a quick rapid fire with you, Chris. This is something we're going to be doing with guests each week. I'm going to ask you a simple question and if you can just give me a one-liner. Favorite destination?

Chris Dane: Hawaii. Or Italy.

Mike Putman: Favorite airline?

Chris Dane: Delta or American.

James Ferrara: Oh God. He's so politically correct, isn't he?

Mike Putman: Favorite hotel or hotel chain?

Chris Dane: Marriott or Hilton for true business travel.

Mike Putman: And your favorite cruise line?

Chris Dane: Probably Seabourn. That's a good one. Very refined.

Mike Putman: And the last one, fill in the blank here, Chris. On vacation, I like to...

Chris Dane: Eat, drink, play golf, and hang out with my family. Not necessarily in that order, by the way.

Challenges in the Airline Industry

Mike Putman: Excellent. Hey, Chris, you have such history in the airline industry. You started with Eastern, isn't that correct?

Chris Dane: Yeah, with Eastern Airlines and Frontier—the original Frontier Airlines—then American Airlines.

Mike Putman: With that kind of history and perspective, I'm really interested in asking you to comment on the current air market. Coming out of the pandemic, there's a lot of turmoil. Where are we in the airline industry and where are we going?

Chris Dane: Let’s not talk about today because I think everybody knows the negative. The real issue is the long-term concerns. We don't have an adequate air traffic control system, and we didn't have one even before COVID. We've been way behind on updating that. Obviously, any industry with employees is having trouble with them, and that's a current problem. The bigger concern as we go through this period right now is twofold. One, of course, the airlines become an easy whipping boy for politicians and the like. I read yesterday where a senator wanted to charge airlines twenty-seven thousand dollars per passenger for late or canceled flights. If you do that, you're going to have a lot of unintended consequences. Not the least of which is that airfares, which are already outrageous, will go right through the roof even further. That’s not the solution. The solution is to do a better job of scheduling and air traffic control management. In the old days—now to me the old days is a whopping two years ago—if you had an off-schedule operation at an airline, you could pretty well recover within twenty-four or thirty-six hours. Today you have that kind of an operation and it's taking three and four days to get everything back in sync again. It's probably mostly airlines, it is certainly air traffic control, but it's all tied to people and not having enough of them. I don't really have an answer to it because this is not a business that I recognize. We've never been through that kind of environment ever. It's a strange environment for sure.

James Ferrara: So where are we going, Chris? We always have peaks in airfares and then they settle down and we get into competition wars. What's going to happen the rest of this year? Do we get back to something that looks like normal? Will inflation and fuel prices continue to affect fares?

Chris Dane: The big issues with airlines are twofold. One is a pilot shortage because the military's not turning out pilots the way they did yesteryear. The airlines have been left to their own devices to recruit and hire pilots. That is a highly skilled job. It's highly specialized. They are now going out and starting to train their own pilots virtually from scratch. To do that, there's a longer ramp-up time to get certified. That's the first problem, and it's not easily resolved. Even as we sit here today, I think American Airlines still has a hundred regional jets that are in mothballs because they don't have anybody to fly them. Those regional carriers are suffering the most in this process. Now they're addressing it. I think they're literally doubling the pay of some regional carrier pilots to attract them. They're trying to recruit them from other countries. Russia has put in place a process where none of their pilots can fly for other carriers or leave the country. The second part of it, and probably just as significant, is that there's still COVID out there. People are still getting sick and unable to report to work. Hopefully, that starts to wade so it is not such a regular part of our work habit. The third part is that there has been so much turnover. Southwest told me that by the end of this year, they would have had forty percent turnover in two years. What that means is much lower productivity because they're all trying to learn their existing jobs. Where before those people were with them twenty-five or thirty plus years, COVID forced a lot into retirement or to seek higher-paying jobs. You're dealing with a learning skill set and a lack of experience. It's taking them longer to do less. That will get better over time. The pilot situation will get better over time. I honestly don't see it getting better through the end of the year, though. I see it being not as bad as it is this summer because the flights are so full, but you're still going to have these problems.

Supply, Demand, and the Future of Travel

Mike Putman: That addresses the supply side. As we all know, the free market's going to ultimately resolve the problem. What do you think about the demand side, Chris?

Chris Dane: The demand is off the charts and driving airfares. You have the combination of lower supply—the airlines can't even get to operating a 2019 schedule because they don't have the people—and the demand through this summer is through the roof. I'll give you a couple of real-world examples. A friend of mine was trying to fly from Miami to Nassau, which is I think ninety miles, the end of August. The airline, who shall remain American, wanted to charge him fifteen hundred dollars for that privilege. I got stuck in Washington last week and I had two choices on the airline. There was a first-class seat to Kennedy from Washington National for $2,000. Or I could fly from Washington National to LaGuardia for four thousand dollars. That's not sustainable. I think several things are going to happen. One, I think there is going to be a lowering of demand come this fall. People are going to get discouraged with flying by going through the service issues they've had to go through. They're really going to work to avoid flying, which is not good for this industry. And three, I think oil will start to moderate, which also will help to bring down the fares. It'll be a combination of lowering demand, lower oil, and improving hiring at the various airlines.

The Roaring Comeback of the Hotel Industry

James Ferrara: It's fascinating, Chris. Let's turn to hotels. You have a background there too. What insights do you have for our travelers on what the hotel market looks like now?

Chris Dane: That has been the brightest spot throughout COVID. I mean, obviously, everybody hit the deck early on and everything came to a screeching halt. But hotels have come roaring back on both demand and their pricing. Their pricing is ahead of 2019. Their demand through the summer will be basically equal to or slightly greater than 2019 from an occupancy standpoint. New York, for example, the week of June 12th—according to STR—had the highest occupancy factor of the major cities in the US at 86%, when New York has really been dying for the last couple of years. I think that's a good indication of how strong the demand is for people to travel, even if it's a staycation. Now that they've taken off international testing, you're finally starting to see inbound demand for international travel to help support the overall demand. Italy is through the roof. To drive down the Amalfi Coast, it depends on the last number of your license plate. It's so crowded that odd-number license plates can drive on odd-number days. The demand is through the roof and services are stretched to the limit. If you think of a restaurant during a holiday season when they're packed doing parties, it's hard to put out your best product when you're jammed to the walls. That's really what we're going through. Hotels, like everybody else, are having trouble finding people and maintaining their room standards in terms of cleaning protocols. They're doing a better job of cleaning, but they're not cleaning as often just because of a staff shortage.

James Ferrara: There's been too much curtailing of services as a result of the pandemic. We're still seeing it where dining venues are not open, room service is curtailed, or housekeeping is not provided on a regular basis. As a traveler personally, outside of my professional role, it's a real pet peeve of mine. Hotel rates are not going down with the services. Hotel rates are going up while services go down. The city of LA—Mike and I talked about this—the city council has declared that hotels within the city limits must provide daily housekeeping unless the guest opts out of it. So that's an interesting development.

The State of Business Travel and "Bleisure"

Mike Putman: So, Chris, with all this demand, is part of that business travelers? Is business travel back?

Chris Dane: No, it's not back and it won't be back this year. It's coming back, but it's the last piece of it. There's two pieces to business travel. One is groups and meetings—conventions and conferences. That is absolutely back in terms of the number of meetings. Attendance is actually up over 2019 because so many meetings were canceled, so they're all being compressed into a relatively short window. If you're wanting to plan a conference this year, you're going to be hard-pressed to find space to do it. The transient business is not back. From a small and medium enterprise (SME) basis, it is actually ahead of 2019. From a Fortune 1000 basis, it is well behind 2019 because so many companies are not even back to the office yet. They can't have clients come visit them or vice versa. Hopefully, next year it will come back. The third part of it is you're getting a lot of leisure travel where people return Thursday or Friday for business and mix it with leisure. I had a hotelier tell me recently, "I can't tell you who's in my hotel or whether they're business or pleasure because the lives have gotten so blurred."

James Ferrara: It is down for sure. And it's particularly a popular way to travel for younger generations—millennials and Gen Z. We've seen the research that they consider business trips an opportunity for leisure time.

Chris Dane: Absolutely. They have a pent-up demand. What I worry about is what has historically happened in a recession: business travel leads the country into a recession and leads the country out of one. You're hearing the "R" word mentioned more frequently, and we have seen a modest dip in bookings among Fortune 1000 companies the last three weeks. Today the numbers have been running 18 to 28% behind 2019. It could be the cost of travel, the hassle of travel, or corporate concerns on a recession. Everyone we have talked to has not seen it yet. It may be an early-stage trend we haven't collectively picked up on, or it's information that is still not as accurate as we'd like it to be.

Mike Putman: I had twenty years of experience in the corporate world as well. I would say a lot of corporate travel is discretionary. There are times you've got to go see a client or go to a meeting. If I've got to do a corporate trip now, I'm going to think twice about it because of flight cancellations, higher prices, and general congestion. There's still that threat of COVID. So I think that probably has a lot to do with it.

Chris Dane: Absolutely. Instead of sending five people to man a booth at a convention, they're sending three. That kind of thing is going on currently. Or it just may be that business traveler is stuck in the airport waiting to get on a plane.

Expert Travel Secrets and Tips

James Ferrara: Listen, Chris, this has been really insightful. Before we let you go, let's turn personal for a second. Mike and I like to ask for tips or a little secret. You're basically a professional traveler, so you've got to get through the airport, check into the hotel, and stretch your travel dollar. Is there any tip or secret you'd like to share with our listeners?

Chris Dane: It never works out for me, and when you hear me say it you'll probably understand why. The best day to travel during the week is a Tuesday. It's the lowest load factor day and the lowest fares of the year. Coincidentally, Tuesday and Sunday are the best days to book air travel from a pricing standpoint. I also like to travel off-season where there aren't crowds. Before I lived in Florida, if I wanted to go there, I'd go in the first part of December—after Thanksgiving and before Christmas—before the crowds really descended on the place. I am going to Italy in late September, so I'm going after the peak. Off-peak travel always works for me. I find it the best. The best advice I could ever give, particularly now with the complexity of travel, is to use a travel advisor. You want a single throat to choke and you don't want it to be your own when there's a problem. You want to be able to call somebody when you're stuck in an airport because you're not going to get service at an airport in any way, shape or form. You still have COVID protocols that are changing, particularly internationally.

Airline Economics and Bailout Accountability

James Ferrara: Well, we couldn't agree with you more, Chris. You're a man after my own heart singing the song that we like to hear.

Mike Putman: I've got one wrap-up question for Chris. As a past airline executive and also a consumer, what is your thought about the airline bailout and their responsibility back to the taxpayers?

Chris Dane: I'm still an air geek at heart. Air travel is vital to this country and the economy. I thought it was fair. Otherwise, you would have had massive bankruptcies. You have a government that is having a difficult time wanting any more consolidation, but you would have been forced to do it had there been the bankruptcy. I thought it was appropriate to preserve the transportation system. I think the mistake we all made is that every time we thought it was coming back, it did for a bit and then fell back. Now everything is being overwhelmed and nobody can react fast enough.

Mike Putman: I definitely agree. My question is really more around the fact that we bailed airlines out a couple of times as a nation, and yet they rebound to potential record profits based on demand. Is there a fairness in having some of that paid back?

Chris Dane: This will be the airline part of me coming out. If you look at what airlines have made since the Wright brothers flew, they're basically at break-even. For a hundred years essentially, you're at break-even. When you look at the cost of travel relative to what it was in the sixties or seventies, it is a significant bargain. The same thing with cruise lines. It's not like they are rolling in dough. They have their up periods, but they're generally followed by deep troughs. That's why they've really never made any money over the life of the airline. Virtually every airline's been bankrupt. It's that old joke: if you want to be a millionaire and get into the airline business, you start with a billion. With a B.

James Ferrara: And you would know, Chris, because you knew the Wright brothers, didn't you?

Chris Dane: I wasn't there when they flew, but I certainly read about it in the paper shortly after.

Mike Putman: Chris, once again, thank you so much for being so gracious with your time. It was fun catching up.

Chris Dane: Thanks, Chris. It's always great being with you guys. Thank you for having me.

Trending Destinations and European Food Markets

Mike Putman: In today's episode, we've covered a couple of newsworthy things and then we had our guest, Chris Dane, on. Now we're going to talk a little bit about popular destinations. James, what's trending?

James Ferrara: What would a travel podcast be without lots of place names? I have gone back and looked at about ten thousand trips booked in the last week. There are no surprises in the top destinations: Jamaica, Montego Bay, of course. In Mexico, we have Cancun, Cozumel, Cabo San Lucas. In the Dominican Republic, Punta Cana. Also in the top ten: Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Orlando. It's kind of what you would expect to see; that's the pre-pandemic lineup, too. But we look for things that jump out as a little bit special. One thing I'm happy to see is the return of the beautiful big cities of the world. We lost that during the pandemic. But now we're seeing Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, and New Orleans domestically; Paris and London internationally. I noticed a big blip in a really great destination: the country of Spain. We're seeing an enormous rise in bookings. I saw Madrid, Barcelona, the resorts along the Costa del Sol and the Costa Blanca, and the islands: Mallorca, Ibiza, and Tenerife. And Mike, a destination that you and I were in last year—kind of improbably in the middle of the pandemic—we were together in Valencia.

Mike Putman: Yeah, we had a very big conference there. Hundreds or maybe a couple of thousand people. It was a lot of people and we had a fantastic time. That was my first time being in Valencia. Fantastic food, really good wine. Before I went to Valencia, I was not a Spanish wine fan. But I had a lot of really good Valencian wine.

James Ferrara: Mike, do you remember we went to the food market, those incredible food stalls? We were buying jars of this and that and confections. It was just overwhelming compared to the states. Just the variety and the freshness. People live closer to their food in Europe. That market in the center of Valencia was an attraction in and of itself. The colors, the smells, the spices, people eating standing in the middle of the aisles—it was a big part of the experience for me.

Mike Putman: For me, too. The thing a lot of Americans don't realize is that there aren't grocery stores per se. In some countries like the UK and Germany there are, but a lot of Europeans buy their groceries from food markets on a day-to-day basis. You don't see people hauling out big Walmart bags or Food Lion bags. They take away what they're going to have for dinner or lunch that particular day. That works really well when you're looking for very fresh ingredients. Fish that was caught this morning—you could potentially have it on your plate for dinner today. It's a really interesting way to enjoy food and I think Europeans enjoy their food a little bit more than we do as Americans.

Travel Reading and Business Class Strategies

James Ferrara: Couldn't agree more. Speaking of food and Spain, I've got a recommended read for you, Mike, maybe while you're on your cruise ship. It's a book called The Telling Room. A telling room is a room in the countryside of Spain where caves would be carved into the side of hillsides. Families would keep their cheese, herbs, and meats in these cool caves. The caves all had an adjacent room where people would sit and eat and the old men would tell stories. The subtitle of the book is A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese. It’s by an author called Michael Paterniti. It’s a really wonderful read.

Mike Putman: Great tip. Last episode we talked about a tip for everyone traveling and I think we should do that again. I can talk briefly about ways to buy business class tickets and travel really nicely sometimes for the same price you pay for coach. When you're going from the US to Europe, Asia, or South America, planes generally have three classes of service. You have coach class—and now iterations like premium economy—and then you have what is called business class, which is generally an upgraded version of coach. Oftentimes you will also have first class. During normal times, you can fly from the East Coast to Europe for a thousand or twelve hundred dollars if you do your proper planning. If you were to buy a ticket in business class, you would pay somewhere between six thousand and nine thousand dollars in general. Is it worth six thousand dollars to be a little bit uncomfortable? Typically I would say yes, but there are some ways to find these really affordable prices. There are several sites; one I personally use is called Passport Premiere. They scour all of the airfares to Europe and the rest of the world. They might find a fare like what I found on my upcoming trip to Scotland for $2,000 round trip in business class. Not $8,000, but $2,000. It does require some research to find these deals. People traveling with me on this golf trip are paying about $1,400 for coach, where I'm paying a little over $2,000 for a business class ticket. Passport Premiere will actually send you text messages when there's a fare sale, which they call buying opportunities. It's a chance to buy at very reduced rates. There's another trick. Let's say you're going to Munich as an example. Almost always, flights to Milan, Italy, or Lisbon have highly discounted business class tickets. You could fly business class over to Lisbon or Milan and then take a connecting flight. You might suffer in coach for an hour and a half for that inter-European flight, but you could buy a business class ticket for two or three thousand dollars on that long leg. You get to your destination for significant savings and you get to sit in business class. James, as you know, it's really nice to have a lie-flat bed so you can sleep on the way over.

Closing Remarks and Subscriber Growth

James Ferrara: It's a world of difference. It's comfortable, the food is relatively good for airlines, and there's service. It's totally different.

Mike Putman: Right. There's a couple of tricks that can make your travel more enjoyable, getting you in the front of the plane at a price maybe a little bit further back. That's about all our time for today. We really do appreciate you listening to No Tourists Allowed. Our subscriber numbers are really going through the roof. We're up two or three thousand percent over where we were last week in terms of downloads. I'm really enjoying this and I think James is as well. Please continue to subscribe.

James Ferrara: We're going to be introducing some prizes and rewards for you joining us, and please tell your friends. If you are a travel advisor, think about telling your customers, too. Remember, we're just spreading the love about travel with valuable inside information from two guys who've been around a long time. Thanks for being with us, and remember: no tourists allowed.

Thank you for listening to No Tourists Allowed. No Tourists Allowed was produced by the Greenville Podcast Company. See you next week for another episode.