Posted by Seth on February 24, 2012 under Hotel | 
Well, maybe they’re worth mentioning, though it is hard to know some days. Neither is an incredible offer, but both might have some value.
First up, DoubleTree is running a contest to win a trip to Costa Rica as part of a cross-promotion with The Lorax. Register here (DoubleTree.com/TheLorax) and you can win. Stay at a DoubleTree before April 29, 2012 and get an extra entry. And you can mail in a postcard to get more entries, too. Odd of winning are perilously low, but there’s no real work involved in entering (at least the one freebie) so no harm there either.
Next up is a discount promo from one of my favorite small-chain hotel brands. They recently won some award and are celebrating by offering 15% off at a bunch of their hotels for stays through March 31, 2012.
The deal includes their property in New York City, for those who are averse to such awesome destinations as Barcelona, Madrid, Buenos Aires or Mexico City. More details on that promo here.
Like I said, nothing earth-shattering, but worth mentioning.
Posted by Seth on December 30, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Little did I know that, on the eve of our great North Africa adventure, our decision to screen Casablanca would be the inspiration for one of the reports from the trip. Sadly, however, it has come to pass that we are stranded in Casablanca, awaiting exit papers to Tunisia. Really it is more like we are awaiting the next flight but it feels the same: nothing we can do and nothing more the airline will do. And so we wait.
In our case the situation was a pretty simple yet rather egregious snafu on the part of Royal Air Maroc. The morning started reasonably enough. Some minor confusion upon checkout from the Riad regarding the bill but those details were quickly resolved and we quickly made our way to the airport. A line here, a line there and next thing we knew we were in the international terminal for our domestic flight from Marrakesh to Casablanca. The flight continues to London and I guess no one ever takes just the domestic portion. Either way, we were in the international transit area awaiting our flight amongst the hordes boarding Ryanair and easyJet flights to the Continent.
At the posted boarding time no gate assignment on the departure screens nor any update to the flight status. A full 20 minutes later – only 20 minutes to departure now – still nothing posted. I wandered over to the lounge (small but clean and decently stocked) and asked the agent there what was going on. Not to worry, she assured me, as the inbound was only delayed a little bit and the flight would leave soon. She was right. We were only about 10 minutes late pushing back and made it to Casablanca with 60 minutes to make the connection over to the second flight of the day.
Then things got ugly.
None of the departures screens in the terminal had any details about our flight. Through some dumb luck we happened across a wholly different set of monitors that indicated that departures to five countries, including ours, should proceed to a specific gate. We headed down to the gate, now about 40 minutes prior to departure to discover a desolate area. We were the only passengers there. Not good at all. There was a gate agent off in the corner flirting with a police officer. She seemed to suggest that it was fine, that we’d be fine and that she’d call a bus to take us to the gate. Ruh-roh.
Twenty minutes prior to departure we’re still waiting for the aforementioned bus to appear. By now we’ve been joined by three other passengers, two of whom were also headed to Tunis. I ask again about the bus, noting that it is very close to departure and that I am quite worried we won’t make the flight. Eventually a bus shows up and the five of us scurry aboard. And wait – and wait – and wait. Precious minutes tick away before we finally start rolling to transfer to the other terminal.
The bus drops us of about 150 feet from an aircraft, the one that happens to be bound for Tunis. Unfortunately, we aren’t going to head directly on board. Instead we have to go into another transit area in the new terminal. As we enter there is an agent inside who come out, calling for the Tunis passengers to hurry so that we can make our flight. We hurry, as instructed, only to get to the gates about 60 seconds later and watch as the other gate agents laugh at us and the plane rolls away. We’re now officially screwed.
At this point the four of us who have missed the flight become allies. It was of great help considering my limited French skills. A cacophony of French, Arabic and English overwhelms one agent after another. How to get help? “Nothing we can do for you here.” We head back to the original terminal where we visit the transit desk. “Nothing we can do for you here.”
So we immigrate. Again. In our case, because we never really left Morocco they actually just annulled our exit stamps and gave us additional entry stamps. Then the search for useful help continued.
No one was willing to help and few were willing to point us in the correct direction to even see help. Ultimately, whether by design or just dumb luck, we ended up in what I believe was the Royal Air Maroc Station Manager’s office. Even he wasn’t all that interested in lending assistance until we started to pull out chairs and make ourselves comfortable in his office.
Eventually we did get help. A guy took our boarding passes, wandered off for an hour or so and eventually came back with passes for the early flight tomorrow. They took us to retrieve our bags, only one of which was located.
They provided us with hotel and food vouchers at a pretty dingy airport hotel where the lunch offerings were pretty bad and the restaurant itself had not a single clean table. Needless to say we ended up buying our own meal at the other restaurant in the hotel to avoid that mess. There’s a cute little bar that is dingy, smoke-filled and over-priced, but the value of a wee bit of alcohol at this point is not to be underestimated. The WiFi doesn’t work and the room is pretty dingy though the sheets appear to be clean.
And it only took us about 3 hours to get all that sorted out.
Suffice it to say, I’m not really all that impressed with Royal Air Maroc. Or maybe it is me. We had similar troubles last year on our trip between Egypt and Barcelona for New Year’s Eve then.
Read more of my Marrakesh adventures here!
Related Posts
Tags: Africa, Barcelona, Egypt, Flying, London, Marrakesh, Morocco, NYE2010, Photos, Royal Air Maroc, Trip Report, Tunisia
Posted by Seth on March 17, 2010 under News |
The American Express Fine Hotels & Resorts (FHR) program is one of those benefits that their cardholders find either incredibly valuable or an incredible waste of marketing materials. The benefits are certainly tangible but the cost to get there can be quite high. Paying extra to be in a fancy hotel just to get the free breakfast doesn’t always make sense, especially when one wouldn’t otherwise be in that level of hotel.
Still, the annual update of the properties in the program is a much anticipated event by many as the changes can change booking habits for a number of customers. In previous years the property list came as a huge glossy book with tons of photos and detailed descriptions of each property. This year the update was a matte post card with only the new properties listed. Indeed, budget cuts are deep, even in the luxury travel sector.
So, what are the new properties this year? There are over 60 new hotels joining the program, about half of which are Four Seasons properties. In addition to the 30ish Four Seasons properties there are a number of Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency locations joining the program (Tokyo, Goa, Shanghai and Aruba) as well as a couple Mandarin Oriental properties added (Barcelona, Las Vegas and Jakarta). There are a number of non-affiliated hotels as well such as The Pierre, Montage Beverly Hills, The Resort at Pelican Hill, Lizard Island and La Momounia Marrakech.
This year’s new additions look like a solid group of properties and represent good growth in the FHR program. Too bad that I’ll still likely not use it this year.
Posted by Seth on January 6, 2010 under Trip Reports |
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| Happy New Years from Barcelona! |
I’m a bit late in getting to my year-end summary of travel this year because, well, I was traveling. No sense wasting part of a wonderful vacation in Barcelona trying to figure out the details of my year in review when there was so much delicious food to be had and beautiful sights to be seen. But I’m back now and finally had a chance to update my records with the flights from last year and take a look at just how much I did. The numbers are pretty astounding to me.
My travels in 2009 were, by far, the most extensive I’ve ever had. There was more of just about everything. And it was a ton of fun. I visited more countries – 20 – than I’ve ever visited in a year. I actually doubled my previous high of 10. Even more exciting for me is that of the 20, 12 were new to me.
I flew on 25 different airlines (more if you count the various express operators out there), from the largest in the world to some of the smallest.
I flew on 34 different aircraft types, ranging in size from 6 seats to 350ish. I got on every jet type that Boeing currently has flying (I think – 717, 737 Classic, 737 NG, 747, 757, 767, 777) and most of the Airbus (A300, A318, A319, A320, A321, A330, A340) and Embrear (E140, E145, E170, E190) options, too. There were other aircraft, including random props and a few flights on a Gulfstream G IV.
I flew a total of 180,752 miles, give or take a few. I spent almost 17 days in the air and flew about three quarters of the way to the moon or just over seven times around the earth. That bests my previous annual high by over 50%.
Most amazing to me, however, was the number of new (to me) routes I flew this past year. I flew 126 flights in the year. Of those, 70 of them were on routes I had not previously flown. A full 55% of my flights were on new routes. Considering that I managed to make it home from every trip that seems rather amazing to me.
I also redeemed more miles than ever last year – over 500,000 in total. That covered a number of trips, many in the pointy end of the plane and all of them across oceans. Some of my accounts are looking a bit anemic right now but I’ve got plans to solve that problem pretty quickly.
The best part is that I’ve already started to count up for 2010. A couple countries, several new routes and a bunch of miles have already been logged. Plus, I’ve got trips booked through April so far covering lots more routes and miles.
Posted by Seth on January 1, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Barcelona is, from a tourist perspective, a huge Gaudi museum. His influence on the city is remarkable and tons of the sites are out in public, making life as a visitor quite easy. The line at the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s famous Cathedral, was insanely long today so we went for another option, visiting Guell Park. The park is a short metro ride up from the waterfront/La Ramblas area and was reasonably tolerable even with a pretty big crowd today. There are the more popular spots and they were definitely crowded but there were also rather empty sites quite close by.
I really want some of whatever Gaudi was on. I think it is unfair to say that he was living in a parallel universe. There is nothing parallel about it. Still, there is an amazing beauty to much of his work. You have to be willing to let go from “normal” and appreciate the way everything flows together. You also have to be willing to accept the rather trippy style. I suppose drugs could make that easier but simply forgetting what you think of as normal and going with the flow seems to work pretty well, too.
The tile work throughout the site is amazing. Gaudi wasn’t content to simply use beautiful tiles. There are amazing mosaics set on both concave and convex curved surfaces. I cannot imagine what the workload was like to make all of them. Hardly a surprise that the park construction was halted because the project was not financially viable.
The site also has the great advantage of being up on a hill side. This means that the 1.2 kilometer walk from the Metro station is mostly uphill, steeply so at the end of the walk. It also means that the views are phenomenal. Simply off the charts amazing. The winds were whipping around pretty good today but the view down to the waterfront and beyond was awesome.
The park is a must-see site for any visit to Barcelona and with good reason. I’d love to go back and spend some more time just soaking in the atmosphere, away from the crowds. The paths and woods are truly calming and peaceful.
Posted by Seth on December 31, 2009 under Trip Reports |
Arriving in to Barcelona right at sunset was a beautiful sight. The skyline was lit up and the water was beautiful. Getting through immigration and customs was a piece of cake and we figured out how to store our larger bags at the airport quite quickly. A simple train ride into town, connecting to the metro and then a couple hundred yards to the hotel through quiet neighborhood streets. Checked in to the hotel and the out to wander a bit for dinner. Incredibly easy and pleasant and quite picturesque. Love at first sight.
We chose a small tapas restaurant, Cata 1.81, for dinner – only 6 tables inside plus the bar area – and sat in the bar for a couple hours drinking and snacking on some ridiculously delicious food. Salt cod ravioli, squid & Iberico ham with mushrooms & miso sauce, dried sausage and several other small plates. Plus several glasses of Spanish cava and red wine. Love at first bite.
Off to explore more now and to steel ourselves for the New Years celebration here tonight!
Posted by Seth on December 30, 2009 under Trip Reports |
I should be in the air over the Atlantic Ocean right now, curled up in a First Class suite on Turkish Air. Instead I’m on an Airbus A321 over the Mediterranean on a non-stop flight to Barcelona. Indeed, the trip has taken a much more direct routing and quite substantial turn. In the end, I still get to celebrate New Years in Barcelona with the splendiferous missus and we even get to sleep in a real bed tonight rather than in coach on a Delta 767-300ER. Still, the scene today in Istanbul’s airport can only be described as frustrating and trying, with a bit of misery thrown in as well as a reasonably successful tactical retreat.
Last night, while waiting in Luxor for the departure of the flight to Cairo, I learned that the Istanbul-JFK flight for that day had been delayed pretty badly. Over three hours, in fact. That plane was turning around to come back to Istanbul and then would be used for the flight that we were scheduled to be on. Except at the time I didn’t know that it would be that plane, and there was no one in Luxor I could ask. There wasn’t really anyone to ask in Cairo, either. So I went into the flight to Istanbul hopeful and optimistic, as well as truly exhausted.
As first class passengers we were greeted at the end of the jetway with a sign and a golf cart to whisk us away to the security checkpoint and then the lounge. It took them a while to round up the necessary supplies for us to shower but we managed to get that done and settled in for breakfast. Everything seemed OK.
Failure
And then the bottom fell out. The lounge agent came over to me and handed me the house phone. An agent on the other end of the line was explaining that the flight would be rather delayed and that she had arranged for a day room at the hotel in the terminal for us. Ruh roh. Just how delayed would the flight be? At least 3 hours (it turned into 5 by the time we left the airport). That completely ruined our 3 hour connection in JFK. Time to scramble.
There was a flight to Frankfurt leaving in 40 minutes that would get us to the early Frankfurt-JFK flight by the woman could not (or would not) make the change for us. While I tried desperately to negotiate through the language barrier and explain my predicament the minutes ticked away and the flight was closed. That was our last chance to make it to JFK in time for the Delta outbound flight. Game over.
It is also worth mentioning that at this point my laptop decided it didn’t want to power on and my BlackBerry went into a reboot cycle every 5-10 minutes. Ouch.
Recovery, Part 1
The Delta tickets we had were bottom of the barrel priced sale seats. The change fees for them were more than the actual tickets cost. That money was now gone. Poof. Still, I had a mind to celebrate New Years in Barcelona more than I cared about getting the Istanbul – New York flight in Turkish Air first class (a five day vacation is always worth more than an eleven hour flight) so it was time to start making things happen. The lounge had no phones available for customers and there was no means for me to reasonably call the United States to get in touch with Continental, the carrier that issued our tickets. Things were getting worse, not better.
There was a flight leaving for Barcelona in 45 minutes and the agent was willing to put us on that flight, right up until she realized it was a reward ticket. Then she was quite willing to sell us a walk-up full fare ticket and let us deal with our “travel agency” to handle the flights that were missed. Not gonna work. Still, I managed to revive my laptop and get the Skype client working and continental.com’s reward search inventory up on screen. Even more amazing, I actually found two seats available from Barcelona to New York in business class on the date we were scheduled to go home. A glimmer of hope.
Karla answered the phone for Continental and was incredibly patient with me as I explained my needs and desires over a rather questionable voice quality connection. I was able to feed her the flight numbers and she saw the inventory available. She just wasn’t sure if she could change the flight as I had already started the return trip. She had to call a supervisor and in the mean time the 45 minutes to the Barcelona departure were ticking away with great speed. Karla made the necessary changes, inserting an open jaw into the ticket and leaving the Istanbul – Barcelona segment open for us to fill. She was still working on confirming it but we had to go immediately to catch our flight. I gave her my credit card number without knowing the charges and hung up to hop on the plane to Barcelona that was now 30 minutes away from departure.
No can do. The agent was reasonably polite about the situation but it was quite clear. We weren’t getting on that plane. Rebooking the Continental tickets took a bit too long and that flight was closed for sales, even with 30 minutes remaining. I had made the changes that she agreed to and now I was still stuck in Istanbul.
Recovery, Part 2
At this point we had some time to play with. Continental was already reissuing the return ticket so we just had to find a way to get to Barcelona at a reasonable price. There were a number of options, including overnight connections in Amsterdam, Riga and Athens. All were slightly cheaper than the non-stop afternoon flight to Barcelona. In the end, however, we settled on the non-stop flight. Better to go for a relatively sure thing. Besides, we don’t have winter coats with us so Amsterdam or Latvia would be pretty unpleasant tonight.
We booked the flight through Travelocity because is was half the price that the agent wanted in the lounge. Such transactions are normally completed pretty quickly but after 20 minutes we still only had a reservation, not a ticket. Time to make another call. The Travelocity agent initially just wanted me to wait it out. Only when I explained that the flight was 4 hours away did it get properly escalated. Apparently they were worried about fraud for a last minute, one-way ticket purchased from Istanbul to Barcelona. I can’t say that I really blame them. Another 10 minutes on the phone assuring them that I really was me and that I really was buying walk-up tickets and the ticket was finally issued.
The agent had also previously offered us that hotel room for our wait. I now called that one in, asking that we be able to still use it. She agreed and we soon were laying down for a couple hours’ nap time that was much, much needed. Everything seemed OK at this point. We had our flights to Barcelona and the onward flights from Barcelona to NYC, albeit on a somewhat circuitous routing. And we had a bed for the first time in 30 hours. Not all bad. Except one little thing.
Recovery, Part 3
For some reason, Continental couldn’t actually make the change to our reward ticket. The agents I spoke with (and there were several of them) all insisted that we were still checked in for the Turkish Air flight from Istanbul to JFK. As long as we were on that flight they couldn’t remove it from the itinerary and substitute in the three segments to get us home from Barcelona. Time and time again I approached the agents at the counter and asked them to confirm that we were not checked in anymore on that flight. Each time they said we weren’t but the folks at Continental said we were. My worst nightmare at this point was getting to Barcelona and having Turkish reporting us as a no-show for the flight, canceling out the remaining value of our tickets. The price for Istanbul-Barcelona was bad enough. Shelling out for Barcelona-NYC on top of that probably would have driven me over the edge.
I finally had our Turkish Air “handler” from the morning back at the counter so I called Continental one more time with the plan of having the two of them talk it out so I didn’t have to stay in the middle. By coincidence I managed to get Karla on the phone again.
“Karla with a ‘K’?” I inquired. Yes, she said, somewhat befuddled. “I talked to you earlier with the crazy re-route from Barcelona to New York via Brussels and London; remember me?”
I’d like to think that she has fond memories of me now, if for no other reason than I’m pretty sure I was the most entertaining customer she had today. In reality, I’m just really happy that I didn’t have to explain my story one more time. The minutes were now starting to tick away on the afternoon departure to Barcelona and I had already paid for those tickets and I wasn’t about to lose them, too. Fortunately Karla proactively got another supervisor on the phone while I was talking to the agent at the desk. The supervisor apparently has some magic “refresh” button (Karla’s words, not mine) that made the reservation sync up again and show that we were no longer checked in for the flight.
Finally.
Karla then was able to issue the new ticket, collect the $40 additional in taxes and confirm the new flights for us.
Success
And there we were, six hours after the bottom initially fell out, with our flights rebooked and a new itinerary ready to go. Sure, it cost us some cash and the price actually went up as the rebooking process continued. Still, the overall goal was met. We’re going to celebrate New Years among friends in Barcelona and we’re going to experience some fun times on premium cabin flights along the way. The new return flight gives us about four hours at the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse in Heathrow along with our Upper Class seats across the pond. I’m sure that we’ll be exhausted on Tuesday when we get back to work but overall the adventure remains mostly alive, even if it means no Turkish Air first class. Based on their ground handling I’m not entirely sure it would be worth it.
Lessons learned from this experience:
- Betting on Turkish Air arriving within 3 hours of on-time for the NYC route is a rather large gamble. I lost.
- Creativity and flexibility can find all sorts of reward seats if desperation sets in.
- Sometimes the adventure costs a bit more than expected, but the stories are generally worth it, especially when the rest of the travels are happening on the very cheap side of the ledger.
- A good agent at the airline can really make things happen. Karla did it for me today and others have in the past. They make this whole game run just a bit more smoothly.
Posted by Seth on December 29, 2009 under Trip Reports |
I sit in the airport in Luxor, Egypt pondering the absolute insanity of the trip I’m beginning. Nothing quite like a 36+ hour adventure to travel from Luxor to Barcelona, Spain. It is just across the Mediterranean. It really isn’t that far. But I’m crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice – three hours apart – to make the trip. Yeah, it is crazy.
versus
Back over the summer Delta offered up a sale for flights to Spain so we bought a couple for the weekend over New Years. Celebrating in Barcelona seemed like a good idea. A few months later, we learned that my wife got a few extra vacation days for the time between Christmas and New Years. Use ‘em or lose ‘em, so we used them. A quick search of various reward inventory showed Egypt as a destination with premium cabin seats available and a destination where the country doesn’t shutdown over the Christmas period. Plus, it is a pretty soft introduction to travel in Africa. We were sold, and the trip was phenomenal.
But we still had to be back in New York City in time for our flight to Spain. No need to spend any extra time there. Three hours should be more than enough for an international to international connection. So we’re off.
We’ve got an 11:10pm flight from Luxor to Cairo followed by a 3:30am flight from Cairo to Istanbul and then a 10:30am flight from Istanbul to New York’s JFK airport. All in premium seats including the first class suites of the Turkish Air 777-300 wet-leased from Jet Airways. That should be quite nice. We follow that up with coach seats on a Delta 767-300ER. Probably one of the worst long-haul products out there today that crosses the Atlantic (likely still better than a Lufthansa 747-400 in the back), but the price was right. And there is plenty of potential fun and crazy along the way. Just the way I like to travel.
Images from Great Circle Mapper
