Don’t pack your bags yet. But serious people in the aerospace and travel industry are taking the idea of space tourism seriously. Pundits predict that the first space tourists could be in orbit by 2005. Tourists would travel by “space plane” to “space hotels” 200 to 300 miles (320 to 480 kilometers) above Earth. NASA’s Space Shuttle is capable of flying 60 to 70 passengers on each flight. In fact this was envisaged by Rockwell engineers in the design of the Shuttle 25 years ago.

There seems to be plenty of interest from armchair astronauts. More than 40 percent of Americans yearn for an “out of this world” vacation, according to the 1997 Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown/Yankelovitch Partners National Leisure Travel Monitor, based on in-depth interviews with 1,500 U.S. households.

Forty-two percent of those surveyed say they are interested in a space cruise that would offer amenities similar to an ocean-going cruise ship while 34 percent specifically say they would be interested in a two-week vacation aboard the Space Shuttle and be willing to spend (on average) $10,800 for the trip. Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine recently reported similar surveys in Japan, Canada, Germany and the United States that found “an enormous unsatisfied desire among the general public to travel in space.”

“Space travel is about 10 to 15 years away if NASA and the private sector develop the necessary research and technology,” says George Diller, NASA spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. “I think you’ll see commercial initiatives, but it’ll be pricey. Ten thousand dollars won’t get you to the launch pad. You’d probably be looking at something closer to $50,000 for a trip lasting an hour, allowing the passenger to experience weightlessness for about 15 minutes.”

For space flights alone, Bob Citron, a former aerospace executive and director of the Foundation for the Future in Bellevue, Washington (an organization dedicated to scholarly research on life during the next millennium), speculates that $3 billion to $5 billion would be needed to buy 24 to 45 space tourist vehicles, four or five launch sites and staffing for 1,000 to 2,000 flights a year with ticket prices of up to $50,000. “A Space Shuttle vacation is certainly real in terms of consumer interest,” says Dennis Marzella, senior vice president at Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown. “The technology is there, but it needs to be adapted to accommodate tourists — comfortable seats and big windows.”

Patrick Collins of the University of Tokyo and the Japanese Rocket Society, speaking at the International Symposium on Space Tourism in Bremen, Germany, last March, estimates the development of a reusable, vertical takeoff and landing rocket for passengers would cost $10 billion and take six to seven years. “We need a lot of windows and we need bars, and the Japanese need a karaoke bar,” Collins says. “A gym with padded walls for zero-gravity sports would be a really fun place.”

The space plane designs may draw on the experience of “Hotol,” a pilot project of British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce a decade ago. Hotol was to have been a 50-to-60-passenger plane that would take off from conventional airports. After accelerating through Mach 5 to 80,000 feet, the plane would leave the atmosphere, continue to accelerate and become a satellite itself after reaching 250,000 feet — about four times the cruising altitude of Concorde — and an orbital velocity of Mach 25 to 30. Maximum flying time, ground to ground, to anywhere in the world would be about 70 minutes. Unlike the Space Shuttle, such a space plane would need no external fuel tanks and would re-enter the atmosphere and land under its own power. A space plane would be ideal for picking up and delivering tourists to a space resort en route.

Space Islands Project has an intriguing scenario for a space resort hotel based on a “20-year-old Rockwell idea” for joining up a dozen or so of the Space Shuttle’s empty external fuel tanks into a wheel-shaped space station. Each external tank measuring 28 feet in diameter and 154 feet long (a tad shorter than a 747 fuselage and walls four times thicker than those of the Mir space station) would be divided into three decks. The space station could accommodate 300 people in “cruise-ship conditions.”

‘The external tanks would be joined up end to end in the form of a ring with two more tanks joined up passing through the center like an axle through a wheel, like the orbiting Hilton in the 1969 movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” says Gene Meyers, director of Space Islands Project, “a loosely knit group of engineers, educators and architects,” in West Covina, California. “The station would take about an hour and a half to make a complete orbit of the Earth, but the ring itself would be spinning like a roulette wheel at about one revolution a minute thus developing artificial gravity. People would live in the outer ring where they would experience about half of normal gravity — they’d just be half their normal weight — so they could use bathroom facilities and suchlike at pretty well normal conditions. The central column section would be zero gravity. This could be the entertainment and recreation center, which guests could visit for an hour or so at a time. You’d have windows in the central column to view the Earth.

“There are lots of entertainment possibilities at zero gravity. Astronauts have found that blood that is normally drawn down to your legs is sort of released and drifts upwards. Astronauts’ legs become thinner, their chests expand by two to three inches, their faces fill out and wrinkles disappear. Shots of men in their forties before launch and an hour after launch look like father and son. Shannon Lucid, a 53-year-old American astronaut in the Russian space station last year, said she looked 20 years younger in space.”

Meyers and his group are looking to corporate sponsorship to meet the $10 billion to $15 billion cost of building the first space station. “You’d need about 16 of these external tanks. If we can get companies like Coca-Cola and General Motors to sponsor them for $500 million each, you’d cover big chunks of your costs for the first station; the second station would cost roughly half as much, and the third and fourth stations would be about 10 to 15 percent less.

“Space Islands Project is privately funded right now. We’ve budgeted $20 million for this first push to bring in some of the larger sponsors. The payback for them will be enormous. Coca-Cola, for example, spends $8 billion a year on marketing. So we’ve suggested that if they were to pay the cost of a shuttle launch — $400 million to $500 million — they could have the external tank painted white with their logo splashed all over it. This would give them two to three years of broad international exposure. We’re talking to Carnival Cruises, Hilton Hotels, Universal Studios, Radisson Hotels and Disney to support the project.”

‘The Frequent Traveler’ International Herald Tribune: Published: FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1997

An interview with Bea Tollman – iconic founder and president of Red Carnation Hotels.

RC: Could we please talk about what I like to call the ‘boutique experience’ and what it means to you?

BT: Well, the boutique experience to me is the fact that people feel they are almost walking into a home where the welcome is warm and genuine and where they are recognized for whom they are… but they’re a guest and every guest should feel special; and that’s what we really aim to do. When guests arrive at the hotel they do feel they are warmly welcomed; and made to feel special and comfortable.       

RC: Yes, everybody wants recognition…

BT: Yes…

RC: …but want recognition in different ways…

BT: I think they want it as a genuine feeling; because having traveled a lot, and been to many great hotels around the world, and when you go into some of the larger hotels, the staff have been taught certain things they have to say; it doesn’t come from the heart; and everybody you pass along a corridor or anywhere in the hotel they all say the same things. You just feel they’ve been taught to say that…   I believe my staff genuinely feel pleased to see a guest – hopefully know their name – and feel that they mean what they say.

RC: This comes through in talking to guests; it’s a real feeling. But how do you instill this in your staff?

BT: It’s through training; and also from leadership example… how you genuinely feel about people, and I do feel it comes from the top, and takes a certain amount of training… to know what is expected… how a top manager, when they are around the hotel, behaves to the guests; and that’s the example to follow. In my case, I think they’ve seen this through all the years. I am genuinely pleased and happy to see guests – and care so much about them. For me they’re important; I worry that they’re looked after in the right way. And I think they see this from our use of departments and the training that we give them; to make them passionate – and I do feel that our whole team at Red Carnation feels the same way about feeling passionate about our guests and the hotels and its standards. 

RC: Well I feel that is manifest….

BT: I think basically it’s been shown especially in this last year; we have won so many awards…

RC: You’ve been what you might call, punching above your weight… which is extraordinary.

BT: Yes, that is well put, punching above your weight…

RC: And why is this? Is it because of the training, this service, this recognition? I don’t want to put words into your mouth…

BT: No, well I said it’s the training really, the training, and example, the heads of departments, from the top down; from me, the managers, heads of departments; it’s a genuine feeling that permeates down. And the staff sees that they realize that that is very important and they feel it themselves.

RC: You have constant contact with the general managers… and all the staff really…

BT: Well yes, they also see it in another way, because I see every arrivals list for every hotel every day and who they are, what room they’re going into, what the rate is, how many times they’ve been to stay. And I write personal notes to many of these.  Somebody might be coming and having a 50^th wedding anniversary. I might not who they are, or they haven’t been there before, but I make sure they get something special, and I’ll write a note to welcome them and congratulate them.

If somebody has been there fifteen times I like to do something personal there too; that I appreciate their custom and that we care and that we know what they’re doing and what they like – you know we have the guest preference, and it’s always looked at before a guest checks in if we have it on our computer.

And so we watch all of those details. And the staff knows it: I will phone up and say, ‘What about Mr So and So? What are you going to send him because he’s been there on thirty visits; and are you going to send him something extra tonight – snacks in his room, or whatever else there might be?’  And I do special things for different occasions. So the staff knows that I do that and I take a great interest in our guests; and I think this helps to permeate… the idea about how one should worry about the guests and their comfort.

RC: Is there an optimum size for a boutique hotel?

BT: Well I think it should be under a hundred odd rooms; because other than that, to make it a real boutique hotel, because how do have that contact with that amount of guests? We still keep high standards, but I think that’s the optimum amount really.  Although we do at the Rubens where we have 180 rooms; our management is so aware and they watch for all of these things as well. And they’re well aware of companies and people who again and again, to really look after them. So a hotel that size is really difficult to run as a boutique hotel, but we have a jolly good try at doing that.

RC: You now have thirteen hotels in several countries – Durban, Cape Town, London, Palm Beach, Dorset, Guernsey, Geneva… how do you select hotels that you want to acquire or get involved with? What are the criteria that you look for?

BT: It’s a hotel that has potential in the right location. And often the hotels that we’ve looked at and purchased over the years have not been in a good state but you could see that they have had tremendous potential with some loving care, money, and style. And then to create from that base, just an ordinary-looking hotel, into something that you can turn into a beautiful hotel. And location is so important. If you don’t have a good location, you really are finding it very difficult to run a very good hotel…   

RC: Location…

BT: That’s where it’s at, you know. Every one of our hotels has a wonderful location. If you think about it, The Montague’s next to the British Museum; The Rubens, opposite Buckingham Palace; The Egerton is in Kensington, Harrods and all of those shops on probably the most expensive real estate street in London… so it’s a very appealing concept to a lot of European travelers who want to be in an exclusive small hotel, where they really know who you are, and be very private… You couldn’t have a better location than the Milestone; 41 is in the same location as the Rubens… and the hotels in South Africa are the same, in a unique location. And the Angleterre in Geneva, you can’t have a better location than that… 

RC: Yes, the Angleterre has a marvelous location on the lake, with a view of the Jet d’Eau… and a very good restaurant that we used when I worked in Geneva years ago; … How do you see hotel restaurants… as a profit center, or…

BT: Well it’s not a great profit center but you have to have a good restaurant for your guests. And the Egerton is the only hotel we have that doesn’t have a restaurant, but we have wonderful room service and snack and bar menu, and there are so many restaurants around… and a guest always loves to go out. The first thing they when they arrive is, where should we go for dinner? They often don’t look at your own hotel restaurant as a place to go to.  It’s only if they know it, they’ve heard about it and they look at the menu, there are things here that I would like to have. Basically, most guests when they get to a hotel they want to see where they want to go to dinner – out. So it’s hard to attract them, to keep in the hotel, to at least have one meal. So you want to entice them to eat there and give them an experience that they will remember and want to come back. Some people like very exotic and unusual food, fussy food; and then we always try and provide what a lot of guests want – comfort food. So we have a section of our menus which are my recipes.

RC: I love your cook book, by the way. You’ve got all that sort of food in there; it’s what I call real food, not messed about food…

BT: I agree. So many people are going back to that sort of food. You can go to a restaurant and everything might look good, piled up one thing on top of the other. How can you keep food like that hot?  How can you mix so many flavors together?  Are you eating food or are you eating a creative… picture.

RC: Exactly. And sometimes the poetry of the menu is unrecognizable when the dishes arrive…

BT: But it’s got to be edible. And you know I always tell our chefs all the time, just taste everything that goes out of the kitchen; the executive chef’s got to taste every departments food before it goes out. But just say, is this delicious?   The only way to test if it’s right: Is this delicious? And if it’s not, improve it, or change the recipe or something.

RC: In some cities in the Far East, in Hong Kong, for example, the hotel restaurant is the best restaurant in town; locals go out to dine there…

BT: Exactly, exactly… We have a lot of people who come to dine in our restaurants from other places, not necessarily just guests in the hotel. You have to build up a reputation; you have to really entice them.

You have these big name restaurants of famous chefs, they get the whole restaurant, it’s under their name, and it works well in many instances. But they’ve also got to look after the guests staying in the hotel; and usually their interests and care isn’t really in the guests in the hotel. So it’s not just the restaurant in itself at meal times but at all other times of the day and the night.

And we just don’t believe in that. I’m not saying they’re not successful. But we don’t believe in that; we like to have control over what we serve and what people like because we’re guided by them; we get an analysis every month of what are the most popular dishes; what they like, what they don’t like. And it’s very interesting, and it guides us as to what the tastes of the public really are. So it’s helpful for us doing that.

RC: I’ve had some experience of family businesses in other domains, such as health care… One of the great advantages is what you might call ‘patient capital;’ as compared to the public company’s utter dependence on quarterly ‘return on investment’ figures, and the market, and outside shareholders. You don’t have this problem – it’s a great advantage.

BT: Exactly, no we don’t. We have patience, and we know that certain things take a long time to build up, they really do; it is patience that you have to take and you have to be able to support it and afford it. You know, the moment that things aren’t so good, whether it be the economy, or you’re not doing very well, it’s cut, cut, cut. And then all the work that’s gone in to create the standards falls away and then where are you? It’s a shortsighted sot of policy…

RC: Yes, that’s the key, because you can beyond what a public company can do…

BT: Right. With shareholders you have to report the right things, and they say right, cut that… but then it’s hard to keep your standards up as a five star hotel, or even a four star.  When you’re proud of what you do, you’re proud of your standards. And people aren’t stupid; they immediately see, oh, they’re cutting this out now, they’re cutting that out now… and I believe in generosity, and I like people to feel that there’s a generous feeling towards our guests – it might just be giving away small things, just that feeling of welcoming and generosity that counts when guests come to your hotel and to your restaurant.

RC: Well, you are certainly focused on attention to detail.  I remember when you showed me round the Milestone when we first met several years ago and I was struck because we were in a bathroom or a bedroom or something, and you were looking around and you said, ‘Oh, we need another hook here. You can’t have too many hooks.’

BT: Yes, it’s anticipating guests’ needs; putting your self in the place of the guest: have I got this? I didn’t find that in my room etc. and also if you travel you pick up ideas, and you see that is a good idea. I introduced the whole thing with the ‘business ready’ rooms in our hotels, where you’ve got paper, a ruler, staples, paper clips, and all of those things; it’s so important if you’re on business; that’s a very personal thing we do but it’s very useful and people like that. We just try to think of ways to make the guests’ stay more pleasurable, more individual I suppose…

RC: How have you seen the guests’ needs, desires and so on changing over the years? 

BT: Well they certainly have changed, you see that all the time; the whole thing with the Internet, the web sites, all of those things. So you see now what they need, and you obviously try to keep up with the times and what’s going on in the hotel industry.  Everybody boasts, well not everybody, but I know that free Internet service is very important. So you’ll lose guests if you don’t… it’s a way of making money; and everyone has their telephone. The hotels used to make a lot of money through their telephones and they don’t do that any more… those little things make so much difference. 

RC: Yes, because in the old days was relatively minimal, a comfortable bed, armchair, nice bathroom… Nowadays now they assume they’ve got to have web access…

BT: Yes, and they’ve got to charge their phones… you’ve got to have everything that’s easy to find, easy to use, and user-friendly and all the things that you need in a modern life all the time.  And then the guests’ standards have risen.  They expect so much more today because there’s such competition; everybody is battling to get more business and be better than their competitors. It’s a very competitive field today…

RC: There was a time when a comfortable bed was a comfortable bed. Now people are asking about ‘thread counts’ and whatever…

BT: They’re astute today, you know. Pillows… we have all of that. We send a guest preference form asking, what kind of pillows do you like; what kind of…? everything that a guest might want, so that it’s all ready and waiting for them in their rooms.  I don’t how much more one can do.

RC: So where’s it all going? With all the competition out there…

BT:  Well, what it all amounts to really is the service. That’s where it’s going to go because everybody’s got everything today; you read up what your competitors are doing and you do it… So what really counts, I’ve always said the same thing, it’s your staff and how you genuinely care about your guests. 

RC: And the training…

BT: Well, the training is everything: And the motivation; to motivate passion into your staff, and to be proud of working in that hotel or that company. That’s the thing that makes their working life more interesting and they know there’s a chance to do better in a company where someone’s watching over them, and encouraging them to grow. 

RC: Yes, I’ve been very impressed doing interviews with Liz McGivern [director of human resources and training] and you’ve just won a big prize.

BT: We’ve won prizes – against giants; every major hotel company.

RC: And I’ve always been very impressed at your annual staff appreciation party… especially whenever someone from a staff table of colleagues is called up for a prize, there’s a palpably genuine cheering… this is very special.

BT: There is a spirit among the staff…

RC: Are you still looking for acquisitions? Have your eyes open for opportunities?

BT: Well, one has… but one wants to be able to grow not too much that you can’t do today to keep up the standards with the input that we have to give from the higher level of management into the different hotels. You can spread yourself that thin, because you just get busier and busier, standards get higher in the hotels; the things that we do takes an awful lot of time and effort… How can you keep that spirit up when you’ve got too many hotels? We’ve got fifteen operations now; and to look after all of those and to watch what’s going on, to know what’s happening, and to encourage them and do the right thing… it takes a tremendous amount of work.

RC: I’ve always believed that you have to plan to have an optimum size business, which may be a small business. Do you feel that you have ‘institutionalized’ as it were the Red Carnation family, so that if you were to retire, or whatever, so that if you are not there, things still work in the spirit that you have engendered?

BT: You hope that it would do; and you hope that the people I’ve been working with all these years will always keep up that attitude, that they’ll still be there, that they won’t be away… Because, as you can imagine, if you’ve won all these different prizes, opportunities come up with other companies; everybody’s always trying to poach your people; it’s not easy to find good people today who know the business. And when you have achieved certain recognition, we’re obviously a good place to poach from. But we’ve got such a loyalty factor in us. So what would happen if I decided to retire? Well, I’ll never retire! But as the business gets bigger there’s so much you can do in a day. But I hope that our management team is so passionately inspired that they’ll always keep up these standards, so proud of the name. It all depends on who is at the tope and who is orchestrating it – and keeping them that proud. Because everybody is proud, with all the accolades they’re winning; they’re all so proud to be working with this company… we’re fighting giants; I always say it’s David and Goliath.

RC: It’s truly amazing – with all the huge resources that these people have. I’ve talked to a number of what I call entrepreneurs, or family companies… I talked to Richard Branson, two years after he started the airline, and how he was trying to be competitive by training his cabin staff in the Virgin way without the ‘plastic’ smile. So he didn’t want cabin staff with actual airline experience – except heads of cabin and flight crew, who he poached from BA.

BT: That’s basically what it is. And you know the thing is, I try and inspire the young people to know that there’s somebody watching over them, that everybody has an opportunity to grow; that your talents are noticed.  And I also try and explain to them that we have lots of meetings; we have our newsletter, and I watch over them. I like to tell them that anybody can do anything and in the hotel business you can rise in the different ranks quicker than you can in most businesses because you are noticed – by us, not in every hotel.

But we notice… we have all these different ways of noticing people and their performance because we have these weekly, these monthly meetings and they all vote who was the best…  in the hotels. They have an afternoon tea party in every hotel once a month. And then they win points and they’ll say, who was the best manager of these departments last month, and they’ll get points; then they’ll have stars, and that’s how they manage their own competition so to speak. So it motivates them all to win a star, get so many stars, and then at the end of the year when we have that party, they themselves vote who they thought was the manager of the year in that hotel; they vote for themselves who they all recognize. Now this person, let’s say, in the food and beverage department, during the year he’s got so many stars or points, and they all know that…

We don’t choose every prize winner. The staff themselves choose the prize winner of that hotel; they all see; they all work together…

Then they also change positions during the year.  The doorman might end up being a receptionist; a manager will be a doorman… so they see how difficult or easy or whatever it is working in another department.

RC: So how do they compare departments?

BT: Well, it’s difficult, you know. Some of them may say, gosh, my job is so difficult, the most difficult type of job in the hotel, and they’re put into another position… And then when they try this out in different positions, they get to understand what it’s all about. So they get the experience of knowing … how a hotel runs, and how important everybody is whether they’re washing the dishes in the kitchen, or whatever…

So we have all these things. And at Christmas times, myself and the manager of the hotel and the management staff all give a Christmas party where I give my gifts to 2,000 all over the world – from me. Then at the party all the management team will wait on the staff; we’ll give out the presents, serve them dinner and everything. And we go from hotel to hotel and give a Christmas party, in two shifts, we give out the presents, I give a little speech, encourage them all.  And we do picnics in the park and all kinds of things like that. So they feel they’re part of a big family. 

Jonathan and I work at this all the time and watching the standards. There are so many things that I notice and watch, food-wise as well as everything else; if they look clean and tidy, if their shoes are polished, all kinds of things that can slip. Nothing should slip.

RC: I’m going to do some interviews at the Hotel School in Lausanne [Ecole Hoteliere] which is a huge resource for ideas… What sort of things, which areas, should I be looking at? I mean, I can ask questions like, how are you developing the hotel manager of the future? That sort of thing…

BT: It’s sort of knowing the standards of a hotel and having a very critical eye; you should be watching everything. It’s by example. Nothing should be left half done; if you see something that’s not right, you should immediately do it, and be enthusiastic about doing it. It’s just about caring; knowing that certain standards have to be kept up. But you’ve got to learn, and train your eye to notice these things; to put them right; and then to be genuine, to be sincere. Because hotel management is the same all around; everybody is taught the same things: how to run a department; what you should look for.

It all comes down to service.

RC: In a number of industries – especially at a very high level – people can move around fairly easily between different types of business… Is the hotel industry so special, or different, that you cannot bring in a manager from another discipline into a hotel? 

BT: I don’t think you could really; I don’t think you could. Because, you know, you have to be really trained in the hotel business.  It’s looking for the detail – because it’s a detail business. I think every business is detail really; a business is as good as its manager. There’s no such thing as a bad business. It’s management really.

But the one thing about being in the hotel business for people working in the hotel business; you’ve got a way of traveling around the world, and you can take your qualifications and get a job anywhere. That’s very nice because young people can travel the world and gain experience, get jobs in other parts of the world, and move with their talents. In the hotel business every thing is the same. If you’re a chef you can cook anywhere; if you’re a receptionist… if you’ve got some experience in the hotel business.

RC: That’s interesting, because I’ve always had this thing about the mobile manager with ‘portable skills,’ being able to translate yourself to another company. Many redundant middle-aged executives who find it hard to find another job because pretty well all they have to offer is expertise in the culture of their old company.

BT: Exactly. In the hotel business you can actually go anywhere, do anything, step down into another position, you can still be useful, helpful and able to earn a living. And I feel a lot of our young people… I encourage them to move; I hate losing them when they’re good.  But I understand, because that’s the way they’re going to learn. A lot of the people we’ve had working for us didn’t know anything when they started; and I see this at Summer Lodge so much of the time.

They come from France and all around Europe and they work in the restaurant, housekeeping, or reception. And they can’t speak English; they don’t know what to do. And in a year or so they are management material; they are fantastic. And then after a couple of years they want to move on to something else, they don’t like the country life any more, they want to go to a city, to go to another country, and I’ve got the most wonderful people, my students I almost call it, they’re all over the world now. Other hotels are lucky to get people who have been qualified in my university.

RC: That reminds me of Proctor & Gamble in the old days. If we could get a product manager who had been at P&G, we knew they’d be good people… we knew they would have been properly trained in consumer marketing.

BT: I see these young people, and they’re young, and I say, why are you leaving? And they’ll say, we want to go and work in America or somewhere else. The e-mails we get from people in Australia, Canada, from all over, who have left us and gone on to other things, and have been made managers; thanks to the basic grounding we’ve given them. Because when they came to us they knew nothing.

RC: With thirteen hotels now it seems to me you’ve got the critical mass to be able to some extent offer career development across the hotel collection.

BT: Yes, it’s wonderful. You know we have people coming and going from South Africa to here, where they get trained… and of course it’s wonderful.  We train them so well, and they’re keen to learn, and they know they’ve got a future with us. And they back to our hotels there; it’s a wonderful resource for them in South Africa – and for us.  We’ve got the opportunity to train people and make it a better industry in South Africa, for instance

Airborne between Paris and Hong Kong on a Global Airlines Boeing 2000ER, John and Jane Harbinger are lingering over lunch in the gourmet restaurant on the top deck (not much point in fast food on a 16-hour flight) figuring how they’re going to spend the rest of the afternoon. Jane decides on a soothing séance in the beauty parlor: John will make a few calls from the business center and polish his presentation.  They’ll meet for drinks at six in the suite before dinner. ‘Would sushi hit the spot? I’ll book a table downstairs.’    John asks a passing ‘skycop’ for directions. ‘Head down the main corridor towards the tail and take the elevator down to the bottom deck.’

            Planes such as this three-deck 1,000-seat Goliath – which entered service in 2015 – are derived from the 600-seat super jumbos promised (or threatened) by Airbus and Boeing in 1999.  They are flying villages, allowing infinite scope for social congress, with half a dozen restaurant concessions – from classical French to McDonalds’ junk food – casinos, shops, cyber-cafes with Internet access, and health clubs. About the only things missing are a pool and an outside jogging track. But you never know!

            There is no such thing these days as first, business or economy class. The price you pay depends on your choice of seating, cuisine and entertainment along with the kind of service you want on the ground. Accommodation ranges from standard cattle class and ergonomic sleeper seats with more personal space to air-conditioned cabins with beds, bathroom and butler service, that convert to a daytime lounge. For an extra charge, the airline will deliver a container to your home or office, transport you through the airport and load you onto the plan. Some tycoons have converted their offices into flight containers, re-creating the private railroad cars of a century ago – the ultimate in seamless travel.

            Many people travel ‘a la carte.’ You book a seat or cabin and pay extra for meals and in-flight facilities and lounges, limos and other trimmings on the ground. Traveling cattle class is no longer much of an ordeal. You only have to stay in your seat for take-off and landing; the rest of the time you can move around freely. Skycops patrol the crowded aisles ready to deal with unruly or abusive passengers who can threaten not only the well being of other passengers but the safety of the aircraft. After all, on a long-haul flight you can be in the air for up to 18 hours – almost long enough to get married, start a family and get divorced, although not necessarily in that order. Some enterprising agents are using reservations computers to help people choose in-flight companions. They punch in your high-altitude likes and dislikes and match you up with a suitable seatmate.

            Global Airlines is one of three mega-carriers that together share 80 percent of the world air travel market – the culmination of the giant airline alliances and code-sharing deals that carved up the skies in the late 1990s. These compete with consortia of regional airlines in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, along with half a dozen long-haul carriers mainly serving the business market.    

            Code sharing, whereby two or more airlines operate the same flight, and ‘block seat’ arrangements, whereby one airline sells seats on another airline’s flights, became commonplace by 2000. The abundance of space on the superjumbos allowed several airlines to share the same plane with their own fares, flight attendants, in-flight cuisine and service.

This led to the concept of the ‘virtual’ airline. You don’t need to own aircraft and infrastructure when you can ‘brand’ your own cabin in a superjumbo. Travel agents can buy blocks of seats (and hotel rooms) and market them under their own brands to corporate customers.

Since 1999, superjumbos – along with advanced technology for better control of the airways with new satellite navigation systems and new airports and terminals – have diminished the specter of gridlock in the skies by quadrupling air traffic capacity since 1999. But the challenge was daunting. Since 1999, air traffic has been growing at around 10 percent a year.

Thus the number of passengers has doubled every seven years, reaching a staggering 20 billion in 2020. Where are all these people going? And, more to the point, why do they all seem to be going with me?

The growth of tourism in China has been phenomenal. The Chinese government set the ball rolling when it cut the working week to five days, giving the nation’s workers an extra half-day off a week.

This was even better news for the travel trade, because – assuming a workforce of 750 million from a total population of 1.2 billion – it meant an extra 15 billion days’ leisure time coming on stream. And with more disposable income and the liberalization of passports, the Chinese have become international travelers.

According to the World Tourism Organization, China now generates more out-bound tourism than any country in the world apart from Japan, Germany and the United States. China has also become the world’s top tourist destination with 137 million visitors in 2020.

The world’s top 30 airports will handle more than 16 billion passengers this year. The traditional mega-hubs such as Chicago O’Hare, Los Angeles International, Atlanta, London Heathrow, Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok and Singapore’s Changi are bursting at the seams, each handling around 200 million passengers a year.  But an airport building boom, especially in Asia, has added capacity. China has built more than 50 new airports since 1999.

Meanwhile, the creation of ‘wayports,’ or new hubs, in remote parts of Norway and Siberia has siphoned off a large amount of connecting traffic. More than 30 percent of the people milling around Heathrow, for example, were simply trying to get somewhere else.

Supersonic travel has become space age with Orbitol, a 50-passenger space plane that travels in low earth orbit enabling it to fly from London to Sydney in 45 minutes. Unlike the old space shuttles, Orbitol takes off and lands under its own power. After accelerating through Mach 5 to 80, 000 feet, the plane leaves the atmosphere, continues to accelerate and becomes a satellite itself after reaching 250,000 feet – around four times the cruising altitude of Concorde – with an orbital velocity of Mach 25 to 30.

More down to earth, high-speed maglev (magnetically levitated) trains traveling at 300 miles per hour have replaced air travel on journeys of up to 500 miles, releasing slots at major airports, most of which have train stations, for long-haul traffic.

Regional airlines serve ‘thinner routes,’ enabling business travelers to avoid mega-hubs. Thus ‘regional long-haul’ services allow travelers to fly point-to-point between cities such as Manchester and Osaka, Seattle and Perth, Stuttgart and San Francisco.

Mega-hubs, with a larger daily population than many major cities, are no longer a means to an end but an end in itself, destinations in their own right. They form a worldwide network of alternative cities – what you might call the terrestrial equivalent of space stations – with their own business communities and civic amenities, hotels and conference centers. Who needs to go downtown when you are already there? Many people don’t travel to cities any more, just to airports.

John Harbinger, on-line to his office in Broken Springs, Colorado, asks himself a routine question: whether he really needed to make this trip.

Technology enables (and requires) him to be totally wired at all times.  The No. 1 rule for business travelers is wherever you are, always to be on the phone to somewhere else. So why travel? John rationalizes that this is a working vacation – a chance to bring Jane along. He’s looking    forward to a round of golf with his Chinese associates. And he and Jane plan to take off for a five-day airship cruise among the Hong Kong islands.

Modern airships are safe, comfortable, and environmentally friendly, as they sail and hover less than 100 feet above the ground.  An airship cruise is a spectacular way to see many wonders of the world, such as the Amazon and what’s left of  the rain forests in Brazil and Peru, chateaux of the Loire, fly along the Nile to see the pyramids, explore Venice or make an air safari in Kenya.

‘Virtual conferencing,’ has done away with the need for many business trips. A 100-inch (256 centimeter) illuminated high-resolution screen with ‘wrap-around’ sound makes everyone seem life-like and gives the illusion that you’re in the same room. This means that you can participate normally in the discussion; using the same body language.

Travel was in danger of becoming an end in itself. I am therefore I travel: I travel therefore I am. Travel is about human interaction, hands-on experience. Getting the best return on your ‘interaction expense’ is a trade-off between cost in terms of time, money and hassle and the opportunity of staying doing something more productive somewhere else.

Of course, there’s sometimes a need to be somewhere in person – the eye contact, the real, compared to the cybernetic, handshake, the impromptu meeting and, of course, the social dimension can be pure gold. It is not something you can quantify; it’s intuitive, gut feeling. Who goes to a conference to listen to the speakers? You can pick up a transcript or receive it live in your office. It’s real-time networking that counts.

In the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Homeric hero, Ulysses, back in 1842:

‘I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch where thro’

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.’

But business travel is less poetic and a good deal less sentimental. Which is why John Harbinger makes fewer trips these days. This excursion with Jane is a fairly rare experience in real-time reality. Like most other road warriors, John embraces the new ‘travel avoidance’ technology, such as virtual conferencing and virtual meetings in real or ‘displaced’ time, with chiliastic zeal.

            The technology is rooted in voice recognition software developed back in the late 90s that enabled you to call a computer from anywhere in the world, check your e-mail your voice-mail and faxes, either by computer or through the telephone. You could convert them from voice to text, or vice versa, and re-direct them by any medium.

            Recent advances in artificial intelligence make it possible to hold an open-ended discussion through a computer. The machine not only understands the meaning of what you say but replies to you in a normal voice – which might be the digitalized voice of a real person. 

John Millennium, along with his colleagues, has had his voice ‘digitalized’ and stored on-line. Early computer-generated voices sounded robotic because words were mechanically strung together into sentences, thereby losing the rhythm of the dialogue; whereas digitalized voices are produced by recording entire sentences, then shoehorning in numbers and letters of the alphabet.

Voices are recorded in three ways. If you say the number nine, for instance, at the beginning of a word, it sounds different from if you say it in the middle or the end. The same applies to words and phrases.   

It’s hard to detect a digitalized voice in displaced time from a real voice in real time. Meetings can thus be conducted in real or displaced time. You program your responses, to say, a budget meeting, in advance and your digitalized voice conducts a dialogue on your behalf. Cognitive programs are being designed whereby John can participate vicariously at several meetings while he is away. It beats the old way of having answering machines talk to one another, or batting e-mails back and forth, communication lost in fruitless volleys of non sequiturs.

Back in their suite, the Harbingers are mentally packing their bags for an ‘out of this world’ space vacation. They have been armchair astronauts for years and are looking forward to five days in a Disney Space Resort 300 miles above Earth. They will take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a NASA space shuttle adapted to carry 40 tourists, experiencing weightless for about 15 minutes.

The resort accommodates 300 people in cruise-ship luxury. It takes an hour and a half to make a complete orbit of the Earth, spinning like a roulette wheel at about one revolution a minute, thus developing artificial gravity.

You stay in an outer ring, where you experience about half of normal gravity – just about half your normal weight – so you can use bathroom facilities and such at practically normal conditions. A central column section has zero gravity. This is the entertainment and recreation center, which guests can visit for an hour or so at a time. There are windows in the central column to view the Earth.

There are lots of entertainment possibilities at zero gravity, including a gym with padded walls. Astronauts have found that blood that is normally drawn down to your legs is released and drifts upwards. You become thinner, your chest expands by two to three inches, your face fills out and wrinkles disappear.

While Jane muses about a second honeymoon in space, John is thinking about the final frontier in space travel – to experience Einstein’s paradox of relativity, that if you travel faster than the speed of light, you are younger when you get back than when you left. Daunting implications for a career in international business.

Who would have thought that the premium class airline cabin could be the inspiration behind a radical new concept in hotel design?  But Yotel ‘capsule hotels’ in the South Terminal at Gatwick Airport Terminal 4 at Heathrow, and soon at Amsterdam Schiphol, have cabin-like rooms with a bed that turns into a sofa, pull-down desk, a fold away chair and a flat-screen TV, free WiFi Internet access, and ‘techno-wall’ entertainment system. Cabin crews serve drinks and light meals 24 hours a day from a galley.

Yotels are a refuge for travelers who want a cheap and cheerful place to lay their head for a few hours at any time of the day or night. Ideal if you have an early flight, a hefty wait in transit, or time to kill before a meeting.

Prices for standard cabins range from #25, or about $50, for a minimum four-hour stay and #55 for a 10-hour (overnight) stay, while premium cabins cost #40 for four hours, and around #82 overnight. Cabins can be booked on line at www.yotel.com.

Yotel is the brainchild of Simon Woodroffe, 55, a British entrepreneur, founder of the Yo! Sushi chain of Japanese fast-food restaurants in London, Paris and the Middle East. (While hotel chains with pod-like rooms catering to short-term and mobile guests are opening elsewhere, Yotel differs because it is actually part of the airport.)

“I had the idea during a flight from Kuwait to London on British Airways when I was upgraded to first class,” Woodroffe says. “I went to sleep thinking how one could make the idea of a Japanese capsule hotel acceptable in the West. The solution is something like this BA cabin. All I needed to do was to find the designers and ask them to help me design a hotel. We’ve used the design language of airlines, how to make the best of a very small space, and some of the technology of luxury yachts, to create our cabin system - a proper room and bed with all the facilities you’d expect in a four-star hotel room, but miniaturized. And at a budget price.”

‘The holy grail of retailing - and hotels are retail outlets,’ Woodroffe adds, is to bring to everyone what rich people have. At Yo! Sushi we have media people, business suits, MTV kids, and ladies who lunch, all enjoying the same experience side by  side. It’s about being young at heart.’

Check-in at Yotel is like checking in for a flight at a self-service kiosk. Swipe your credit card and receive a key-card to your cabin. Check out in much the same way.

Premium cabins (10 square meters) feature a double bed (2 meters by 1.3 meters) that deploys to a sofa at the touch of a button, like a first-class sleeper seat; a one-meter-square desk, folding out of the ‘techno-wall,’ with a retractable chair and storage for baggage; a 58-centimeter TV; free Internet access; and a bathroom behind a sliding glass screen with an overhead rain shower, hairdryer and “soft towels.”

Standard cabins (7 square meters) feature a single bed (2 meters-by-one-meter ), a 50-centimeter TV, free Internet access, fold-out desk and stool, and bathroom.

A nine-hour stay in a Yotel premium cabin for #75 seems a bargain compared with #4,250 for a one-way flight in first class with British Airways from London to New York - except that you do get fine dining and transportation thrown in.

Jo Berrington, marketing director at Yotel in London, says, ‘We are aiming at people with an extremely early morning flight who might arrive at nine to 10 pm the night before and just need a bed for the night; or those with a long transit wait of up to four hours, or arriving early in the morning off a long-haul flight who  need somewhere to rest and shower, and who do not have use of an airline arrivals lounge.’

Look out now for airlines entering the hotel business with “flights on the ground” featuring sleeper seats in their individual, waist-high pods with the latest gizmos, superb airline cuisine, lavatories-on-demand, simulated aircraft noise and optional turbulence.

The pitch might be something like: A night in London for half the cost of a one-way first-class fare to New York. With no jetlag, just a restless night.

Few things are more disconcerting on a trip than to wake up in a hotel room, and for a few bewildering seconds wondering where I am, which hotel, which city, why am I there?   Even which day it is, never mind the time.

But a release from British budget hotel chain Travelodge, reporting that sleepwalking among guests increased  seven-fold in the past year, mostly involving naked men, has set me worrying about a more alarming kind of amnesia: What am I getting up to while I’m asleep!

According to Travelodge, which runs 310 hotels in Britain,   more than 400 night-time wanderers appeared at reception in the past year asking such questions as ‘Where is the bathroom?’ ‘Do you have a newspaper?’ or ‘Can I check out, I’m late for work?’

One naked male sleepwalker even managed to get himself locked out of the hotel and later arrested. On other occasions, hotel staff were able to direct somnambulists safely back to their rooms.

The top five sleepwalking activities are:

opening the curtains; watching TV; getting dressed; eating and drinking; and going for a walk.

Studies have found that sleepwalking can be brought on by  such factors as, stress; alcohol; cheese; eating too late; too much  caffeine.

Chris Idzikowski, a sleep expert at Edinburgh Sleep Centre says, ‘The Travelodge figures are a surprise. Sleepwalking is a serious disorder that can develop for a variety of  reasons.  It can be triggered by a stressful lifestyle, sleep deprivation, alcohol abuse, or not breathing properly during the night.   Sleepwalking is most likely within an hour or two of going to bed and slipping into a deep sleep.’

‘Part of the brain switches into auto pilot, and can manage well-learned movements, Idzikowski adds, such as walking, bending or sitting, even detailed activity such as talking, texting, eating and drinking, opening and closing doors, even driving a car. Sleepwalkers will awake quite unable to recall any of their actions. Other forms of sleepwalking may involve acting out dreams.’

Leigh McCarron, director of sleep at Travelodge says, ‘My job is make sure guests get the best nights sleep possible; by  making sure we purchase the right duvets, with good linen, and comfortable beds. But we are seeing more cases of sleepwalking so we have issued our staff guidelines so they know how to help sleepwalkers when they meet them.’

Idzikowski’s recipe for a good night’s sleep is to allow at least an hour ‘of non-work-related activity,’ to empty the mind, to wind down, however late it is, along with silence, darkness and comfort. ‘We have shown that light from a laptop or Blackberry is concentrated enough to signal the brain to stop secreting melatonin, the natural hormone that  produces sleep.’

‘After a business meeting, go to your hotel room, sort out the results, what you’re going to do, put that aside,’ Idzikowski says.   ‘A hot bath can be relaxing, especially for women; there is no point in going to bed and not sleeping. Caffeine: a general rule is to avoid it for six to seven hours before you turn in. I am pro-alcohol; a nightcap is not a bad idea, but low doses basically. Above 80 milligrams it is catalyzed down, the brain reacts to lack of it, you get a rebound effect, and three to four hours later you wake up again.’

Idzikowski recommends sleeping in darkness and being progressively woken by an alarm clock with a light that slowly increases in intensity, simulating a sunrise; although you might draw the line at seashore, nature or city sounds.

One of the most frequent questions we get is, “What’s the best airline program for me?” Not surprisingly, the second most frequent question is “What’s the best hotel program for me?” Each year in the Freddie Awards, members around the globe have the opportunity to vote for their favorite hotel programs, rating all aspects of their experience, from the customer service at booking, to elite-level perks and special award offers. Everyone seems to have a staunch scheme preference; they cling to it, singing praises while plugging their ears to the other programs’ enticements, much like a familiar primary-school taunt, “la la la la, I can’t hear you.”

Well, playing favorites is exactly what these programs have commissioned their advertising budgets to accomplish, but the only tricky thing about it is the tendency to forget about the bottom line: the payout. Ads are great, but what is the return on your investment with your program? How fast are you earning status and redeeming free award nights compared to similar travelers out there? We asked this question two years ago and wanted to revisit the comparison in today’s standards, to see which programs came out on top this time.

We all know how quickly the industry changes: prices, elite thresholds, benefit losses and surcharges are just a few of the initiatives that incite the wrath of our readers every month. All business travelers are not created equal (just ask the ones standing in the Priority boarding line at your gate). Some are on the road one weekend a month, others for over 300 days a year. Some hoard points for the 7-day stay at a Caribbean resort, while others cash theirs in for regular suite upgrades.

Hotel programs also vary widely in their point offerings and award structures. Differences can be exaggerated when linking earn and burn levels to average room rates in various cities — New York City is not Bismarck. Also, not all travelers stay at exclusively one level of hotel. Some stay at low to midscale properties the majority of the time, and stay at luxury properties on vacation, while others split their stays between midscale and upscale chains.

So, in the interest of helping you make informed, objective decisions about loyalty, as part of our public service (or was it community service?) for the year, we ask these programs, in the infamous words of Paula Abdul, “What have you done for me lately?”

It is impossible, given all the intricacies, to come to a conclusion in black-and-white. But after much pondering, we concluded that the fairest method of comparison was to start with identifying several “frequent traveler profiles” and compare the yield each could expect from each of the major programs at a given spending level.

We began with the profiles: one is a high-spend traveler with at least 100 annual nights in a hotel; the second, a moderate spender with 48 nights, and finally, a low spender with 19 nights. Based on opinions of our wise-flying friends over at FlyerTalk, we came up with fractions of total nights likely spent in each level of hotel for each traveler type, using the Average Daily Rate (ADR) figures for the different chain scales in the U.S. There are seven chain levels: Independent, Economy, Midscale without Food & Beverage (F&B), Midscale with F&B, Upscale, Upper Upscale, and Luxury. (And the difference between Upscale and Upper Upscale would be…? The hospitality equivalent of ordering your pizza a la carte, versus “with extra cheese?”). Most programs have a hotel chain in at least two levels — think of the differences between the JW Marriott, Courtyard by Marriott, and TownePlace Suites properties.

One interesting trend we noticed is that the more frequent the traveler, the higher their stays in the Upscale and Luxury category hotels. Low-frequency travelers tend to accumulate the most stays in Economy and Midscale hotels, with only a few spent in the high-end properties. In the interest of relevance to this average, we weighted our ratios of night per chain scale for each traveler profile accordingly.

For the purposes of our comparison, we eliminated the Independent category — as this category, by its very definition, consists of hotels that are not part of a frequent guest program, making them irrelevant to this study. We also simplified the categories into four main types to avoid overwhelming you, the harried business traveler, with a plethora of fancy calculations. We chose to compare Economy, Midscale, Upscale, and Luxury, thinking of Midscale without F&B and Economy as a single category, and Upper Upscale as a category within Upscale. The reason being, business travelers in general are more concerned with amenities that make their lives easier, such as breakfast, so we assumed for simplicity sake that Economy and Midscale without F&B would be generally seen as comparable choices, but significantly different than Midscale with F&B in a business-person’s eyes.

We calculated the amount spent annually according to our traveler profile formulas of nights at each hotel level by ADR, resulting in the Spend figures. We chose to use a spend comparison simply because the programs’ award values are determined by program spend. There is no standard currency value, with one program you’ll earn five points per dollar spent, with another it will be 10. Despite these differences, the total amount you are forking over is what determines your award options. In addition, several of the programs only have one or two levels of hotel, therefore, any levels that did not apply to the program were not considered in the calculations.

Allow us to clearly explain our use of the term “Average Daily Rate.” The ADR represents the aggregate room rate for each chain level, irrespective of brands or locations. We assume that the average traveler likely spends nights in various cities, some with higher ADR’s, like New York City’s $238.05 scale-topper, versus other destinations like St. Louis, with an $81.42 ADR. Using the U.S. average evens the playing field, making our results more easily generalized across a population.

In addition, according to a leading lodging industry research firm, Smith Travel Research, Inc., a typical traveler spends another 30 percent over the room rate on amenities. Therefore, for this comparison, where applicable, specifically for the Starwood Preferred Guest and Hilton HHonors programs, we added in this 30 percent to the point yield, as they are the only programs that allow points to be earned on full-folio spending, not just on the room rate. In all other cases, the extra 30 percent that may or may not have been spent would have no bearing on the point yield, as points wouldn’t be earned on the incidental spend. Additionally, with regard to the annual nights spent at a hotel by each traveler type, we were trying to establish an average spend for a typical traveler, and realize that a spend of $2,000 will net you more nights at chains with only one level of Midscale or Economy hotels, like Best Western or Choice, than the same $2,000 spent at a mixture of Hyatt Hotels and their more affordable chain, AmeriSuites, for example. We are calculating points based on the dollar, not the number of nights, which may vary between programs.

Finally, with regard to elite level, with the moderate and high-spend profiles, we assumed that these were typical members who had carried over their elite status from the previous year, and we applied any applicable elite bonuses, netting them an increased point yield of between 10 to 15 percent, depending upon the program. In addition, we also assumed that the higher-frequency travelers were likely to spend the highest frequency of nights in the Upscale to Elite category hotels versus infrequent Economy and Midscale stays. Alternately, the low-spend travelers likely spend the vast majority of their stays in the Economy to Midscale hotels, and their comparison was also weighted accordingly. We also assumed the low spenders were new to the “points and miles game,” and are coming in at a base level, having not carried over an elite status from the previous year, therefore, no elite bonuses were applied.

We realize that no comparison of this kind can be perfectly accurate, given the many variables here. Our travel profiles are in no way identical to real frequent traveler behaviors, and we recognize these limitations. However, we simply hoped to use relevant information with generally representative profiles, which will provide the majority of travelers with an “apples to apples” type comparison, and to find the program with the richest awards, irrespective of the number of points earned. After all, what good are the points if you can’t use them, or spend them at your favorite destination?

Profile: The Low-Spend Traveler — $1,900
This profile is based on an annual hotel-stay spend of $1,900, representing the ADR of 19 nights a year spent at a mixture of Economy, Midscale, Upscale, and Luxury properties. This traveler type would likely not annually qualify for elite status, and would have earned no elite bonuses. However, we must point out that, since the last time we did this comparison, the elite thresholds for several programs have lowered, meaning that this traveler could possibly qualify for elite level after reaching 80 percent of their annual stay total. Where applicable, we have calculated point yield by including any elite bonuses earned on nights over and above the elite threshold.

At this level, travelers can’t expect to sleep for free in the lap of luxury. Sure, you’ll probably earn a free night or two, but generally you’ll need to spend more than $2,000 to stay in a high-end hotel, unless you consider La Quinta’s Tier C your flavor of the month. Hilton offers great value with their top category award in the PointStretcher program. Of course, for a standard stay in a solid lower tier hotel, Marriott gives solid value with their multiple night PointSaver award offering, but Choice is right up there with their solid three nights at a Level 1.

Moderate-Spend — $5,200
This traveler spends 48 nights annually in hotels, on average, and prefers to spend more nights in the Upscale and full-service Midscale hotels than the low spender. We are assuming that this member annually earns qualifying status at the mid-elite level, therefore we included the appropriate elite bonuses and incidental spending in our calculations.

Program	$ Spent	Elite	Point Yield	The Rewards
Best Western Gold Crown Club	$5,200	Diamond	53,560	One free night at a top category (Level @ 36,000 points, or two free nights at a Level 5 hotel @24,000 points per night (i.e., Best Western Lighthouse Hotel, Pacifica, CA)
Cendant TripRewards	$5,200	None	52,000	Three free nights at a Wyndham Hotel (i.e., Wyndham Garden Hotel-Pleasanton, CA) @ 15,000 points per night, or eight free nights at a Level 1 hotel @ 6,000 points per night.
Choice Privileges	$5,200	None	52,000	Four free nights at an Orange level hotel (i.e., Comfort Suites San Francisco Airport) @ 12,000 points per night, or eight free nights at a Blue level hotel @ 6,000 points per night.
Hilton HHonors	$5,200	Gold	69,290	One free night at a top level (Category 6) hotel @40,000 points per night, or two free nights at a Category 3 or 4 partner hotel (i.e. Embassy Suites Hotel San Francisco-Airport, South) @25,000-30,000 points per night, plus enough points left over for one night at an Opportunity (level 1) hotel another time.
Hyatt Gold Passport	$5,200	Platinum	29,900	One free night in a Category 4 Suite (i.e., Grand Hyatt San Francisco) @ 23,000 points per night, or nine free nights in a Hawthorn or AmeriSuites hotel.
InterContinental Priority Club Rewards	$5,200	Gold	57,200	Two free nights at a Special Destination hotel (i.e., Holiday Inn San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf) @ 25,000 points per night, or three free nights at a Holiday Inn Express Value Destination @ 15,000 points per night.
La Quinta Returns	$5,200	Elite	67,600	Six free nights at a top tier (Tier C) hotel (i.e., LaQuinta Inn San Francisco Airport) @ 11,000 points per night.
Marriott Rewards	$5,200	Silver	62,400	Three free nights at a Category 4 hotel (i.e., Courtyard San Francisco Airport/Oyster Point Waterfront) @ 55,000 points per stay, or four free nights at a Category 3 @ 52,000 points.
Radisson goldpoints plus	$5,200	Gold	91,000	Three free nights at a Tier 3 hotel (i.e., Radisson Hotel Fisherman’s Wharf) @30,000 points per night, or six free nights in a Tier 1 at any other partner hotel @ 15,000 points per night.
Starwood Preferred Guest	$5,200	Gold	20,280	Two free nights at a Category 4 hotel (i.e., Palace Hotel San Francisco) @ 10,000 points per night, or six free nights at a Category 1 hotel during the week.

At this moderate spending level, all of the programs offer a variety of choices, the importance of which we can’t accentuate strongly enough. There is a slight bias in our results in favor of the chains on the lower end of the ADR, like La Quinta, Cendant, and Choice, however, by looking at the mid-level awards in the other chains, we uncover some surprises. Hyatt’s partnerships with Hawthorne, AmeriSuites, and Summerfield Suites are clearly valuable, serving up an outstanding nine free nights. Choice and Cendant finish next with eight free nights, and both Starwood and La Quinta trail closely with six. For top level awards, Hilton and Starwood definitely know how to dish up the quality enticements.

High-Spend- $12,900
This “high-spend” traveler profile is based on an annual spend of $12,900, and somewhere around 100 nights per year. This profile assumes the member annually earns enough stays to qualify for the highest elite level, so appropriate elite bonuses and incidental spending were included where applicable. This high-flying, full-service type of traveler is also the most likely to spend the highest frequency of nights in the Upscale to Elite category hotels versus their infrequent Economy stays, therefore, we assumed the majority of their stays would earn points at the highest level in each program.

Ahhh, now this is the life! Thanks to those elite bonuses, the points multiply almost magically. Want to spend a week at a resort? No problem. All these programs have properties near Orlando, Florida that allow us to compare redemption values. The shocker is that the biggest payout comes from the La Quinta Returns program, although their top tier is not a luxury style property along the lines of Marriott, Starwood, Hilton, or Hyatt’s top tiers. The highest level (Category 2) of Starwood hotel in this area has Preferred Guest coming in a close second, which is a bit misleading since you’d only get two to four free nights at a Category 3 or 4 hotel, making it more comparable to the other programs. InterContinental and Cendant are hard to beat with their week-long stays in luxury properties. What we find here is that the members have more than enough points for that much-needed getaway. All that’s left to do is decide where you want to go, and how pampered you want to be when you get there!

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: there isn’t a “best” program for every member. But the important thing is to evaluate your stay patterns and annual spending habits, and take into account your hotel and chain level preferences, to decide where you want to spend your nights. Point yield is certainly a great thing, but at the end of a long day of meetings and flights, the customer service and comfort of the bed is just as important to factor into your program choice.

Our advice? Find the program that gives you the value, flexibility, and quality you want, and adjust your spending and stays accordingly in order to bring you the rewards you are looking for. When it comes to a good night’s sleep, it’s hard to beat the satisfaction of knowing you’re racking up the maximum points while counting sheep.

Legend:

For the longest time, frequent-guest programs have been the Rodney Dangerfields of the traveling world — they just don’t get any respect, or even attention for that matter. Though travelers earn millions upon millions of points through hotel programs each year, most fail to recognize the value of these points, especially when compared to the airlines’ frequent-flyer miles.

Why do most travelers have such a large blind spot when it comes to hotel loyalty programs? Some of it can be blamed on the history of these programs. In the past, airline frequent-flyer programs truly were the best deal around — no contest. Fifteen years ago, a typical frequent -flyer award included free hotel and car rental. Hotel programs, for all their effort and good intentions, simply couldn’t match the level of the airlines’ rewards, and slipped into the loyalty background. Many travelers came to view hotel programs as a way to add extra mileage to their frequent-flyer programs — in fact, there was a time when as much as 70 percent of a hotel program’s loyalty currency was converted to airline miles (though today, that number is closer to 30 percent).

Even as the awards offered by hotels gradually improved, and those offered by the airlines tended to decline in value (just try getting an airline award today that includes hotel and car rental), the hotel programs lagged behind in the minds of most travelers. This could largely be attributed to sheer spending power. While the airlines saturated every form of media with ads touting their latest and greatest program promotions, the hotels toiled in relative anonymity, secure in their role as a sidekick to the bigger, more flamboyant frequent-flyer programs.

But all that is about to change. In the wake of recent changes and restrictions among airlines, frequent-flyer programs have begun to lose some of their luster, and the hotel programs appear prepared to speak up and make a name for themselves. Many of the hotel programs are now committed to matching the marketing muscle of their frequent-flying cousins, and as they do so it’s a sure bet frequent travelers will begin to understand that, dollar-for-dollar, hotel awards are in many cases a better deal. It’s time to take another look at these oft-neglected frequent guest programs and seriously consider re-balancing your portfolio of miles and points.

Head to Head: Crunching the Numbers
All things considered, hotel programs offer some of the best benefits around. And we can’t recall the last time that anyone in the media wrote a story about not being able to get a free hotel room. In fact, the representatives at awardplanner.com stated that in more than 90 percent of all cases, they are able to get clients the award rooms they want, on the nights they want them.

But how do the frequent-guest programs compare on an award-to-award basis with the frequent-flyer programs? We researched three head-to-head award scenarios, pitting a hotel against an airline, to show you how the various programs stack up (To simplify the equation, we have elected not to factor in elite bonuses, etc. since we’d need another 50 pages to chart all the options). Here are the results:

Hilton HHonors vs. United Mileage Plus
Hilton HHonors is one of the more well-regarded frequent-guest programs, garnering its fair share of Freddie awards each year. With the addition of Scandic Hotels internationally and full integration of the Doubletree, Embassy Suites and Hampton Inn brands, Hilton’s property count fits comfortably into the demands of your typical road warrior.

One of Hilton’s most popular awards is the VIP ALOI award, which provides members six free nights at a Hilton Hawaiian property along with two coach airline tickets from the continental U.S. at a cost of 280,000 points. Based on our research, we’ve determined that an HHonors member would need to stay approximately 117 nights to earn the points necessary to redeem for this award. Our calculations were based on an average room rate of $159, and factored in the 10 points that members earn for every dollar spent at Hilton, as well as the five points per dollar spent that members receive when using Hilton’s American Express-branded affinity card. Total expenditure: about $19,000. The vacation cost is about $2,500 — giving a reward value of some 13 percent.

Now, let’s try that same trick with United. Two coach tickets to Hawaii on United carry an award cost of 70,000 miles. Because there’s no standard way to get hotel rooms using your airline miles, we’re going to have to rely on Hilton for this one. Six free nights will require 100,000 HHonors points, or 50,000 Mileage Plus miles (using the 1:2 Mileage Plus to HHonors conversion ratio). Total miles needed for this trip: 120,000.

Assuming that the average roundtrip on United is 2,400 miles and the average cost is $579, you’d spend about $24,000 on United to achieve the very same reward that you could get with a $19,000 spend with Hilton (We were fair and added the United BankOne Visa earning of one mile per dollar spent to even things out). The value return, then, from United, is “only” 9.6 percent.

Priority Club Rewards vs. America West FlightFund
Let’s move on to another program that really epitomizes the Rodney Dangerfield identity — Priority Club Rewards. In 2002, there was not a single hotel program that ran as many bonus promotions as Priority Club Rewards. But, for whatever reason, this program has always been regarded as less glamorous than Starwood and not as important as Marriott.

So, let’s play the same game. This time we’ll go off to San Francisco for a long weekend. We can choose to stay in a Holiday Inn or the Crowne Plaza on Union Square. Two nights costs 50,000 points. Airline tickets to San Francisco? No problem, Priority Club has an award for that also, and it will cost us 67,200 points per free ticket. Total points needed: 184,400.

OK, members earn 10 points per dollar spent and, when they use their Platinum Visa, they’ll add one more point per dollar spent. At an average daily rate of $121, members will generally have to stay 139 nights for this award, spending about $16,820.

Now let’s go to the airline: America West. This one is more difficult, since America West isn’t an exchange partner. So, how can we do this? Off we go to points.com. We’ll convert the necessary 560,000 FlightFund miles into 50,400 Priority Club Rewards points (those exchanges can really kill your program value) for the two free weekend nights in San Francisco and add another 40,000 miles for two free coach tickets (FlightFund still offers domestic awards for only 20,000 miles). Total miles required to match vacations: 600,000.

America West has shorter flight segments, so we’ll say they run 969 miles roundtrip. They have a credit card that earns members one mile per dollar spent, so it will take 438 roundtrips at an average cost of $401 to earn the needed points. A total cost of $175,638 — more than 10 times the cost with Priority Club Rewards! The value of this weekend trip is about $850.

Marriott Rewards vs. American AAdvantage
In the battle of the heavyweights let’s head off to do some holiday shopping in New York City. A quick look at Marriott’s award chart reveals that it will cost 10,000 Rewards points for four nights at the Marriott Marquis, a Category 7 hotel. Add in another 125,000 points because you’ll need 50,000 American AAdvantage miles for two free coach tickets to New York. Total points required for this award: 235,000.

Assuming you earn 10 points per dollar spent, use your Marriott Visa, which adds another three points per dollar spent, and the average room rate is $159, you’ll earn 2,067 points per stay. This works out to a total of 114 nights and an approximate spend of $18,000.

With American, you’ll need the same 50,000 miles plus another 180,000 miles to get four nights at the Marriott Marquis using American’s Vacation Awards option (paying for hotels with miles). Total required: 230,000 miles. Since the average roundtrip on American is similar to that of United, we’ll assume 2,400 miles and we’ll throw in one additional mile per dollar spent for using your Citibank card. Average ticket price is $579. You’ll need 77 flights to earn these miles and will spend about $45,000 toward this award effort.

Looks like Marriott is the clear winner, costing less than half the price to earn similar awards. The award has a value of $2,300, meaning an award value of 13 percent with Marriott and five percent with American.

Adding Up the Results
Though these are just a few examples, they do demonstrate the extent to which hotel points are underrated as compared to airline miles. And we didn’t even get to local favorites Hyatt and Starwood, let alone Ramada and Best Western. Trust us, the results would have been similar. In all three cases, it is clear hotel programs can be very important allies when planning your next award vacation and, dollar-for-dollar, they are of greater value to members if that value is used correctly.

Trading Points
We’ve covered the subject of transfers from points to miles in previous issues, but many of you out there still continue to enroll in an auto-transfer program. As noted from our research, you really do want to keep the points at home and use them when it makes the most sense. But, despite the evidence, some of you will still not be interested in hotel room value from awards, so let’s look at another way you can get even more value from your miles transfers.

Take the following scenario: In the Marriott Rewards program, you may choose to automatically earn airline miles with each stay or you can choose to earn Rewards points (which can later be redeemed into airline miles). If you choose to automatically earn airline miles, you start with a handicap. You’ll earn three miles (with major U.S. frequent-flyer programs) for each dollar spent at full-service Marriott and Renaissance Hotels, but you’ll only earn one mile per dollar spent at Courtyard and Fairfield Inns. If you choose to earn rewards rather than miles, you actually earn a full 10 points per dollar spent at both the full-service Marriott and Renaissances as well as the Courtyards and Fairfields.

Now, let’s say you stay 24 nights a year at Marriott with those nights split evenly between each type of property. Average rate at Marriott is $159, average rate at Courtyard, etc. is $119. Total miles earned from the auto-earning option of Marriott Rewards is 7,152. But if you had chosen points, and then later converted into miles, you would have used award #790, which converts 30,000 of the 33,360 points you would have earned into 10,000 miles. This method would have earned you a 40 percent bonus in miles.

Why did we choose 24 nights for this example? Because if you stay less than 24 nights a year, you’ll earn more miles with the auto-earn option than by earning points and converting. Twenty-four nights is the magic threshold. While the threshold changes by program with the auto-earn option, you can now use this scenario to figure out your own best options.

The Rest of the Equation
Another often-overlooked component of the hotel programs are the amenities. It seems every time we turn around, the hotels are introducing new choices and benefits for members. Don’t take these benefits for granted, since it’s highly unlikely the airlines will greet you with a list of amenities when you board your next flight. And though some might compare floor level lounges to airport lounges, who besides British Airways and Delta include them as high-elite benefits at no additional cost? Also note the award sales that Hilton and Marriott offer members each Spring and Fall. While the some of the airlines also offer discounted awards from time to time, they certainly don’t discount as many awards as regularly as the hotels.

And shall we dare mention upgrades here? In most major frequent-flyer programs you either earn a limited number of upgrades or spend your miles and money seeking to sit in front of the dreaded coach curtain. That is the frequent-flyer version of “best available seat.” On the hotel side of things most elite members are automatically upgraded to the “best available room” subject to availability. Now, we do sometimes question what “upgrade” means at hotels since it just may be a room not next to the elevator or overlooking the alley. But nonetheless, it’s nice to know your ability to luck on to a suite or parlor room is there just for the asking without deductions and spending your points. Of course most self-appreciating regular at a hotel seems to know the latest excuse to ensure that suite upgrade. Could you imagine talking to the check-in agent at an airline and really trying to impress upon them that you hope an upgrade is available since you just closed a big deal and want to celebrate, or were wondering if, since your significant other will be flying with you, that you could have tow seats up front? After years of comparing the benefits of both, we find it much easier and rewarding to be a member of hotel programs with elite status.

Now, we don’t want you thinking we dislike airline programs — quite the opposite. But we do want to wake the traveling public up to the award-purchasing power of hotel programs.

Bottom line: Frequent-guest programs deserve more respect. On top of all the advantages we’ve already listed, most hotel programs also offer free account consolidation between spouses (last we heard, airlines were charging for that benefit). And, when you compare express fees and other award-redemption fees charged by hotels versus those charged by airlines, you’ll find the airline charges are about 40-percent more expensive on average.

While there’s always some inherent unfairness when comparing hotel and airline loyalty programs (they are, after all, two distinct industries), a strong case can be made for acquiring more hotel points than frequent-flyer miles in the coming year. So, if you’ve been funneling those hotel points into your airline program, it might be wise to balance your portfolio.