![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Business Travel Briefing for August 2-16, 2018 The briefing in brief: Everyone wants to save the TSA at small airports. Why? Delta upgrades Raleigh-Durham to "focus city" status. United will fly from Dulles to Tel Aviv. Where are hotel developers building? Texas and New York. Hyatt aligns with Small Luxury Hotels. And more. ![]() Most travelers hate the TSA. It has a 95 percent failure rate. It continually flouts and ignores laws. Screeners wear phony badges to bamboozle you into thinking the TSA is a law-enforcement agency. And TSA officials promulgate rules that aren't even rules. So why the outrage when CNN revealed this week that the TSA was considering eliminating screening at more than 150 smaller airports? The proposal, the result of internal spitballing, has virtually no chance of moving past the idea stage. After all, when did a government bureaucracy voluntarily give up power? Besides, it would cause total chaos at the nation's space-constrained larger airports, which would be required to separate the unscreened transfer passengers from flyers who have already passed through the security checkpoints. But here's the bottom line: The most effective security measure imposed after 9/11 was the hardening of the cockpit and its doors. Too much of what the TSA does is just security kabuki. We should be thinking about practical, cost-effective alternatives to the existing order, not squealing like stuck pigs when a new idea is proposed. ![]() The airline industry generally categorizes destinations as either "hubs" or "spokes," but lately they've invented the "focus city" sobriquet to cover places where they operate a large number of nonstops for so-called O&D traffic. (Those are flyers who aren't connecting passengers in a city.) Delta is about to name Austin a focus city, but it has already applied the moniker to Raleigh-Durham. According to Delta, it has grown to 27 destinations from RDU, up from 11 in 2010. It has more than doubled the number of seats it flies there during the same period. Delta says its next new route from RDU will be Chicago/O'Hare. There'll be three weekly flights beginning in April, the first time Delta has flown RDU-ORD since 1978. ![]() ![]() United Airlines is launching another nonstop to Tel Aviv, this time from its Washington/Dulles hub. The three weekly flights begin May 22 using Boeing 777-200ER aircraft. United already operates Tel Aviv nonstops from its Newark and San Francisco hubs ![]() ![]() ![]() The fastest-growing hotel markets in the nation? New York, Dallas, Nashville, Houston and Los Angeles. According to the consulting firm Lodging Econometrics, New York City has 169 projects in the pipeline and nearly 30,000 rooms under construction. Dallas and Houston together have more than 300 properties in the works representing about 35,000 rooms. Texas is the star of this week's new openings, too. Another Hampton Inn opened in Plano. A Tru by Hilton opened in a converted 1930s office building in San Antonio. Hilton also added another Embassy Suites in San Antonio, this one at 5615 Landmark Parkway. Hilton also injected its Canopy brand into Dallas with an outpost in the Uptown District. ![]() ![]() As I warned last week, the bid Hyatt said it would make for NH Hotels of Spain never materialized. But this week it announced a marketing alliance with Small Luxury Hotels (SLH), a reservation service for about 500 boutique properties around the world. Hyatt says World of Hyatt members will be able to earn and burn at SLH properties by the end of the year. This sounds great, but the devil will be in the details. It's already dramatically cheaper--sometimes by a factor of two or three--to book SLH properties directly than via SLH.com. One shudders at what Hyatt may charge. Awards for SLH properties aren't likely to be cheap, either. Stay tuned. ![]() ![]() This column is Copyright © 2018 by Joe Brancatelli. JoeSentMe.com is Copyright © 2018 by Joe Brancatelli. All rights reserved. All of the opinions and material in this column are the sole property and responsibility of Joe Brancatelli. This material may not be reproduced in any form without his express written permission. |