I don’t know about you, but I am getting really sick and tired of all the whining going on in the travel industry these days. This week, the Travel Industry Association has jumped on the bandwagon, “fighting back” against President Obama’s remarks about it not being okay for companies receiving taxpayer bailout money to then turn around and spend outrageous sums of money on extravagant perks for employees like 10-day vacations to Las Vegas. Fighting back against what’s right? Are they kidding? Of course the travel industry employs people, and of course the loss of travel business threatens jobs, and of course, we should be encouraging people to keep traveling, BUT I sure don’t want my taxpayer dollars going so some fat cat can enjoy 10 days at the Wynn. Heck, I’ve never even been able to afford the Wynn.
To assume that all conferences, conventions, and other business event travel is being cancelled because of public perception is attributing a lot more power to John Q. Public than he actually has. Has it not come to the travel industry’s attention that we’re in the middle of a RECESSION? Have they not noticed that companies are laying off people 10,000 or 30,000 at a time each and every day? It’s just as likely businesses are canceling travel because they simply can’t afford it any more.
To me this is a perfect example of how many in the travel industry are as out of touch with the middle-class in this country as George Bush was. They’ve been trying to out-Jones the Joneses for so long, creating more and more expensive and lavish and over-the-top hotels, restaurants and experiences to cater to multimillionaire CEOs and trust fund babies, they either do not remember how or never learned how to cater to the everyday average traveler on a budget. And right now, everyone is on a budget. Frugal is the name of the game.
Make no mistake. People are still traveling. Go to any travel forum online and you’ll see that. Many people in my “real life” who are everyday average working-class people are still going on vacation with their families. People who still have jobs and discretionary income are still traveling. If a particular city or hotel is not winning their business, they need to be a bit more introspective about what they are doing wrong, not point the finger of blame at someone else.
The perfect example of this is Las Vegas. There was an article in the Las Vegas Review Journal (“Movement afoot among hotel operators to reinvent Las Vegas yet again”) this week that made it abundantly clear that even though resort managers are slowly coming to realize that their old way of doing things isn’t working any more, they still don’t truly get what they’re doing wrong. If they want to understand what went wrong, all they need to do is read the comments in the comment section, written by everyday average people in response to the article. Of course, they would have known the truth all along had they bothered to read any Vegas message forums over the past few years. The way casinos treat middle-class visitors has long been a hot topic on those forums. Essentially, Vegas has been slowly but surely pricing us off the Strip. They’ve been so busy catering to the jetset who are willing to pay $300 for bottle service at a club or $300 on a fancy dinner that they have alienated their bread-and-butter population of middle-class gamblers. And the resentment from that population is too thick to win back easily by lowering hotel rooms for a little while. When you’ve been treated like a second-class citizen consistently for years, why would you give the people who treated you that way your hard-earned money just because they’ve suddenly decided your money is as green as that Wall Street banker’s was?
And while the travel industry is suddenly cutting deals right and left with middle-class travelers, they are still treating solo travelers like second-class citizens. With a few exceptions, most of the deals you see are still “per person double occupancy,” or “two-for-one” or “girlfriend getaways” or “romantic rendezvous”. They apparently don’t realize that solo travelers account for a good percentage of the traveling public, and those of us with good jobs and no families have a lot more discretionary income and the freedom to spend it however we want. They just don’t get it.
Until the CEOs (and boards of directors) of hotels, casinos, tourism agencies, cruise lines, etc. start realizing that they are themselves responsible for a lot of their own current misfortunes, the sooner they will be able to turn things around. People want to travel. But we don’t want to feel like we’re being mugged when we do. Give us reasonable prices, real value, new and unique experiences, and–most importantly–treat us with the same respect and customer service you would a millionaire CEO, and you might just win us back.
