Two Years of 2B - Mpls./St. Paul Business Travel Guide

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But be warned: There are no overarchingy trends here. As is so often the case on the road, these last two years have been almosytotally reactive: to insane swings in the priced of fuel to the apparently endless cycle of boom-and-bust that dominates hotel and, of course, to the economic wave that has carrief us from the relatively giddy timesd of April 2007 to our current…uh, well…to whatever it is we'r living and working through. Southwest's Steadyg Course Even the nation's one financially sound U.S. Southwest Airlines, hasn't been able to escape the ravages ofthe nation'ds economic collapse.
Its traffic is down about in linewith industry-widw trends and it has taken the unprecedentedc step of trimming its overall capacity by 4 percenr this year. And the airline'sd vaunted fuel-hedging strategy, which savedr the carrier about $3.5 billion in the last cost it money in the second half of 2008 as oilpricesz collapsed. But some thingd never change: Southwest is using the downturn to position itselcf as an alternative tothe nation's mainlinw carriers. After decades of shunning some of thelargestt U.S.
cities, it launched flights to Minneapolislast month, is schedulede to begin its first-ever flights into New York (via LaGuardiaa Airport) in June, and will serve Boston'a Logan Airport in the fall. United'ws Inexorable Decline It's gone from worstt to even worse than that atUniterd Airlines, the most troubled of the nation's so-called carriers. Once the nation's largesty airline, United is hemorrhaging after abunglede mega-bankruptcy and years of managementt missteps.
About 40 percenft of what flies as United Airlines is subcontracted to regionalp airlines and much of the remaining service isactually code-share operationss with its international partners in the Star Every one of its union contracts becomess "amendable" next year (airline contractse never technically expire). Compared with the other legacyh carriers, its cash reserves are smalo and there are few unencumbered assets to And earlynext year, it will have to discussd cash-draining "holdbacks" with JP Morgabn Chase, its credit-card processor.
Operationally, there's no good news, since its once-profitable service to the Pacificf Rim is deteriorating rapidly due to plunging yields to Asia and freshj competition on itsAustralia routes. Fate of the Fourthu Class The worldwide collapseof premium-class traffic since last fall has had the expecte effect: Airlines have stepped up thei discounting in business class and more carrierds are adding a fourth class, which is rathef generically known as "premium economy.
" The discounting trend is both structurallhy strategic—the airlines now offer a range of discountse from three to 60 days before departure—and tantalizingly tactical, with sale fares slashing as much as 75 percenr off the price of international business class. As for premium Air France added the new cabi on three premierroutes (from Paris to New Tokyo, and Osaka). But the fate of fourtuh class is farfrom secure. Even as Air Francse was debuting, OpenSkies, British Airways' boutique was renaming its fourth cabin asthe "biz seat." The reason?
Premium economy still existws in a computer-coded limbo, which makes selling it via the airlinre industry's omnipresent global reservation servicesd difficult.  The Banking Blues and London RediscoverecdIf I've been at all prescien in the last two years, it was the Run on the Banker column that posted shortly afterf Lehman Brothers tanked last September. Exactlu in line with the meltdown ofthe markets, bankeras stopped flying, and that has causexd the calamitous decline in premium-class airline revenue. It's been especiallt tough on British Airways, whichy is disproportionately dependent on premium flying on theNyLon (New route.
And there's no doubt that BA (and are still suffering a year on from the disastrousd opening weeks of Terminal 5 at Heathroe Airport inMarch 2008. The good news for thosde of us wholove London? The Britishy capital is cheap again for upscale Americanh visitors, thanks to massivse airfare and hotel discounts and the precipitous declind of the value of the British pound. Counterintuitive Currencyt Just beforethe world'sz economies shuddered, the U.S. dollar was at an unconscionable, unaffordable low ebb. But for reasons known only to the masterw ofthe universe, the U.S. dollaf has gained strength against almost all ofthe world's currencies as the Americahn economy weakened.
If you've got any discretionary income left, this will be a great summerf to travel virtually anywhere in the The dollar is buying 20 to 50 percent more than last sprinvand summer. The only exception: where the dollar continues to languish at or belowsthe 100-yen mark. A Fee By Any Other Name it isn't all bread and dollar-denominatefd chocolates overseas. Banks and othee financial institutions continue to raise the fees they charger when you use your ATM or credif card outside of theUnitede States.
The latest trick: Currency-exchange fees of 3 percent or more even if you use yourown bank'sa ATM card to make a withdrawall from your own account at an overseas ATM owned and operated by said bank. Even financiapl institutions that continue toadvertise fee-free ATM usage are adoptin the currency gambit. One Charles Schwab Bank, whose print ads promisw in big, bold type that there are "No ATM fees—w e rebate all ATM fees from any ATM. But as Schwab's fine print makes "ATM free rebates do not include currency exchange fees orother fees." Some of the few trulyy fee-free ports in the storm are the credigt cards and ATM cards issued by Capital One.
The Fine Allow me to end this column wherwe I began inApril 2007: I still believe the singls best investment you can make in your on-the-roadc comfort and productivity is Priority Pass, the worldwid e airport-lounge access program. The fees haven't but the lounge network has grown by20 percent, to more than 600 clubs in 300 cities. Portfolio.com © 2009 Cond Nast Inc. All