Sunday, June 28, 2009

Why the travel industry is in trouble (part II)

5)
I then called US Airways and after 15 minutes of being on hold, I
finally reached "Martin" who really tried hard to get to the bottom of
the issue and make it right. But before he was able to do so, enough
time had elapsed that we needed to board the flight. So Martin advised
me to get on the flight to Denver and he would work with United to get
us to Aruba as soon as possible.

6) Arrived at the United gate
in Denver at ~1am, I was greeted by a United representative who
informed me that they made arrangements to get me on an American
Airlines flight at 6am and as the airport was closed, they made
arrangements to put us up in a Hotel for about 4 hours of sleep before
our AA flight to Miami. They said that a shuttle was waiting right
outside to take us to the hotel immediately.

7) We waited about
an hour for that shuttle to arrive to finally get us to the hotel, for
what was now about 3 hours of sleep before the next flight.

8)
Finally on the flight to Miami, AA is smooth so far... land in Miami, a
long layover ~4 hours but we made the connection and boarded a plane
for Aruba.

9) We land in Aruba, nice landing... crew was pleasant. We go to our baggage claim and to our surprise... bags are missing! (what a surprise). The AA attendant there said, 'don't worry, this happens often from Miami and Philadelphia', then proceeded to fill out some forms to track our bags, saying 'they will probably show up tomorrow, if so, we will drive them to your hotel, if not we will call you to give you some status'.I asked if they had any 'travel kits' as we had been traveling for a
long time and needed something to brush our teeth (at least) as all
clothes were checked in baggage. He stated: 'oh,
we ran out of those... you should ask at the hotel and see if they have
any, if not just go buy some to last you one more day'

10)
Aruba was an amazing place, great people... Marriott nice. Spend some
good times there with family, but finally had to come back home. Via Expedia, we booked shuttles to and from the airport.. the shuttle on the way to airport was great... however, the shuttle never showed on our return to the airport, leaving us to hire a cab and spend another 30 dollars to get back home!

So
not only did we lose a day in Aruba due to all the flight challenges,
we also went without food or sleep on the travel there... our bags were
lost... and services that we paid for were not delivered... and people
ask why the travel industry is not profitable and people are taking
smaller vacations now and avoiding the airlines...

IT IS ALL ABOUT SERVICE... or the lack thereof.