For all I know, you could be reading this blog post on your teeny weeny Blackberry screen.  It wouldn’t surprise me—did you know that roughly three out of every four business travelers uses one?  And experts expect that half of all Americans will be sporting smartphones with online access as soon as next July.  Oh, the power!

Shop the iPhone app store and you’ll discover thousands of apps aiming to make your travel life easier (and in most cases, earning some money off of you as well).  Many companies don’t let travelers download apps to their work-sanctioned devices.  Maybe you get around that by using a separate personal smartphone when you travel.  Or, perhaps you’re in that group that has some freedom to download what you’d like.

Either way, my fellow road warriors, you might be interested in these words of wisdom:

1. Embrace free info.  I’m addicted to the Paris metro app (RATP)—most major cities have apps for their transit systems—and to Gate Guru, which instantly shows me the nearest airport Subway sandwich shop and bookstore to my departure gate.  What free travel apps do you love? Tell us in the comments below!
2. Use the power. If you’re traveling internationally, try a low-cost translation app to help you leave warm fuzzies with your prospect by greeting her in her language.  Download a free currency exchange app to double-check your math when converting your US or Canadian dollars. This stuff helps you and your company.
3. Respect your company’s travel policies. There are some fiercely popular travel apps that may cause you and your employer more pain than they’re worth.  For business travel use at least, stay away from apps that let you book flights, hotels, and rental cars, because once you use them, you’re outside of corporate policy if you’re expected to book through your agency.  Your company can’t report on those bookings, which negatively impacts its ability to negotiate with suppliers and find you in an emergency, among other things.  If in doubt, ask your company’s travel manager before using a travel app for corporate purposes.
4. Protect yourself. I’m a Facebook junkie, so believe me, I understand that primal urge to tell the whole world (or, at least, your 7,000 “friends”) where you’re traveling at any given time.  But before you do, ask yourself two things.  First, is there any risk to your company that you’re broadcasting where you’re traveling for work? (Like, maybe, signaling to the marketplace that you’re about to make a big acquisition?) And second, is there any risk to YOU?  It might not be wise to let all those “friends” know that you’ve left your house vacant all week.

 

And finally, if you find an app that unpacks your suitcase and does the laundry for you, let me know.  As far as I can tell, unfortunately, there isn’t an app for that.  Yet.

Happy Monday! Just popping in with some news that may be of interest to you leisure travelers specifically. Travel Agent magazine just announced its Top 25 Agents list for 2010, and six of the honorees work for CWT’s leisure division, CWT Vacations, which also includes Macy’s Travel!

These people have spent years helping our leisure clients plan dream vacations literally all over the world, and we’re proud that Travel Agent has recognized their experience and expertise by including them in this list. Even better, I’ll be inviting them to be guest bloggers here over the next few months, so you can benefit from their wealth of knowledge, too!

You can click here to view Travel Agent‘s entire group of honorees, including our six experts; in the meantime, check out this photo of one of them, Pat Humble of CWT Vacations in Wayzata, MN, monkeying around on a recent trip to Indonesia!

In our promise to gather the experts for your benefit, this CWTer certainly delivers! I’m pleased to introduce our first “guest blogger,” Dale Eastlund, who heads up our consulting practice here in the Americas, the CWT Solutions Group. Every year the CWT Solutions Group goes through a rigorous exercise to crunch the numbers and examine macroeconomic indicators, in an effort to predict what the year ahead will hold for the travel industry, including pricing and the dynamics that will have an influence in the year ahead. Below Dale shares with us a summary of the CWT 2011 Travel Forecast.

 

 Brace for price increases in 2011
Whether you’re a business traveler who must be mindful of your travel expenditures, or you have a broader responsibility managing against a travel budget for your entire department, we think you’ll find our CWT 2011 Travel Forecast useful—it’s a look ahead at pricing for travel next year.

As the economy slowly improves and demand for travel increases, be prepared for price increases nearly across the board. While our predictions are specific to corporate negotiated rates, in general terms these predictions can be applied to leisure travel as well.

Airfares: Expect domestic economy, international economy, and international business classes to increase 3-5%, international first class should increase by 4-6%, while domestic first and business class pricing will likely decrease 2-7%. Factors impacting overall air pricing in 2011 include higher demand for travel, increases in crude oil prices, slight capacity reductions, and limited availability of highly discounted fares.

Hotel rates: CWT forecasts average daily hotel rate increases of 6.4–7.4% in the United States and 4.7-5.4% in Canada. For those with heavy travel to the Northeast United States, brace yourselves for substantially higher hotel-rate increases than the national average, ranging from 12-12.5%. The highest Canadian increases will occur in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, at 6.7-10.1%, also well above the anticipated national average.

Ground transportation: Anticipate some relief coming from rental car prices, with a predicted decrease of 1.5-2%. However, leisure travelers will actually experience increases. Limousine and black car prices are expected to decrease 3-5%. Finally, rail travel prices in North America are on the rise 4-7%, as suppliers like Amtrak enjoy record-breaking ridership increases thus far in 2010.

One particularly difficult expense to predict is those pesky ancillary fees tacked on to flights and hotel rooms, paid onsite at the airport or hotel. Every day airlines are inventing new fees for bags, seat selection, or legroom. Just remember, these are not accounted for in the price of the airline tickets at the time of purchase. While hotels have always charged for extra amenities like phone calls, laundry, or movie rentals, it’s the free amenities travelers should watch over these days. Perhaps your company has negotiated free Internet access or breakfast, which are included in your corporate hotel rate, but beware of additional charges that may apply if you choose a faster Internet connection or a hot breakfast over the free continental. Finally, you should know that rental car companies have their own version of these extra fees that are not accounted for in the daily rate you are quoted. Items such as energy fees, facility charges, tourism assessments, license recovery fees, and others will affect the bottom-line price of the rental.

On a positive note, J.D. Power and Associates’ annual study indicates airline passenger satisfaction is on the rise for the first time in four years—a welcome sign for all of us.

If you’d like to learn more about CWT’s 2011 Travel Forecast, a 13-page report chock full of colorful charts and graphs is available to you! Just email Savvy (cwtsavvytraveler@carlsonwagonlit.com) for your personal copy. And, if you have some thoughts about your travel patterns in 2011, or your company’s plans, please share those with me here.

OK….I admit it.  I am a virgin blogger.  In fact, I didn’t even know what a blog was until I was told I would be writing one.  I had to do some quick research and found out that a blog should be a little more personal than a newsletter. So if you will indulge me for a minute, I’ll get personal.

One of the reasons I didn’t know what a blog was is that I am a man of “a certain age” and when I was in elementary school, we didn’t have computers and iPhones.  We had Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencils and The World Book Encyclopedia.  I just celebrated my 30 year anniversary with CWT.  When I joined the Company we were “Ask Mr. Foster Travel” and I was so excited because my hiring supervisor told me I was going to be an office manager. What he didn’t tell me was that it was a one person office and I was to manage myself.  Flash forward four years to 1984 and I was named the manager of the first government contract our Company was awarded; the Department of Interior.  I didn’t know a GTR from a VCR and the first six months were eventful to say the least as we all had “on the job” training in government travel. Since then I have been an operations manager of many government accounts as our Division grew.  Currently, I am Director of Account Management for the Military and Government Division of Carlson Wagonlit Travel otherwise known as CWTSatoTravel.

I am so very proud of our Division.  We have become the major and most vital contractor to the Federal Government.For those of you who still watch the nightly news on TV (I told you I was of a “certain age”), you can barely hear the name of  Federal Agency mentioned or a branch of the Armed Forces for whom we don’t provide the travel.

Most recently we have been extremely busy for very unfortunate reasons.  We have sent the first responders from the Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers to the Gulf oil spill while at the same time sending the first responders from the Department of the Interior to the wild fires in the West and to the Midwest for the floods.  Add to this the continuing activity back and forth to the war theaters and you can see how busy we are making sure the Government is where it needs to be. And we do this all with only  1,200 employees.

You can see why I am so proud of our Division.  Our customers mean so much, not only to us, but to the Nation.  It is an honor to serve them.

Until next time….Bob Beard the Blogger (YES!)

As a frequent traveler, I’m always interested in the steps being taken to enhance the safety of air travel, aren’t you?

One of those steps is the collection of information from each airline passenger that is called Secure Flight Passenger Data (SFPD).

Under the direction of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) requires the airlines to collect and transmit SFPD to the TSA at least 72 hours prior to departure, or at the time the reservation is made if travel is within 72 hours.  The TSA then compares the data against the government watch lists in order to:

• Prevent individuals on the No Fly List from boarding an aircraft
• Identify individuals on the Selectee List for enhanced screening
• Identify known and suspected terrorists

So what, you may be asking, is SFPD exactly?

SFPD is:

• Passenger’s full name, as shown on government-issued ID (e.g. driver’s license, passport, etc.)
• Date of birth
• Gender
• Redress number, if applicable (more info available here)

Some airlines and travel agencies are requiring the SFPD at the time of booking on all reservations in order to issue the ticket. CWT, for one, will be making the SFPD mandatory for any tickets issued August 30 and later for travelers booking through CWTSatoTravel, and September 13 and later for travelers booking through CWT. If the information is not provided by the traveler, the airline ticket will not be issued.

The bottom line—you MUST provide Secure Flight Passenger Data if you want to fly.

If you’d like to read everything there is to know about the Secure Flight Program, I invite you to visit the TSA website.

To make sure I’m covered, I’ve included my Secure Flight Passenger Data in my traveler profile. Does your traveler profile include this information? If you don’t have a traveler profile, you can always provide your data at the time you make your flight reservations.