The article below from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@xxxxxxxxx /--------- E-mail Sponsored by Fox Searchlight ------------\ THE CLEARING - NOW PLAYING IN SELECT CITIES THE CLEARING stars ROBERT REDFORD and HELEN MIRREN as Wayne and Eileen Hayes - a husband and wife living the American Dream. Together they've raised two children and struggled to build a successful business from the ground up. When Wayne is kidnapped by Arnold Mack (WILLEM DAFOE), and held for ransom in a remote forest, the couple's world is turned inside out. Buy tickets now at: http://movies.channel.aol.com/movie/main.adp?mid=17891 \----------------------------------------------------------/ When Business Class Means Second Class July 20, 2004 By CHRISTOPHER ELLIOTT Listen to business travelers like Michael Kolsky, and you might be left with the impression that the travel industry has forgotten the basics of customer service. "I check into a hotel, and I'm given the worst room,'' said Mr. Kolsky, the president of Mikol Ltd., a beverage consulting company in Blaine, Wash. "I board a plane, and the flight attendants ignore me. It used to happen occasionally. Now it happens constantly." But listen to representatives of the airline, hotel or car rental business, and you could be left with the impression that business travelers, who have become increasingly budget-minded, are getting exactly what they deserve. At a Cornell University hospitality industry conference this spring, for example, Matthew J. Hart, then the executive vice president of Hilton Hotels, declared that guests who book discounted accommodations online are more likely to be stuck in a room next to the ice machine or elevator. (Mr. Hart has since been promoted to president of the hotel chain.) The remark drew laughs from the audience but also nods of agreement, said Judy A. Siguaw, a professor of marketing at Cornell who attended the panel discussion. "Corporate America wants to save money," she said. "But business travelers have not adjusted their expectations accordingly." Indeed, her guest-satisfaction research suggests that they are demanding more from a travel industry that is prepared to offer less. Several new studies support that conclusion. The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index survey, a quarterly measure of customer sentiment compiled by the University of Michigan Business School, found that business travelers give airlines a failing grade. Not only that, but their opinion is sinking: the airline score slipped by 2 points this year, to 63 out of a possible 100. Leisure travelers, by comparison, gave commercial carriers the same grade as in 2003: a 67. Corporate travel managers - the executives who manage business travel at large corporations - acknowledge that their employees are more demanding. An internal survey by the National Business Travel Association, a trade group, found that 79 percent of business travelers said they were entitled to a higher level of service than other travelers. Taken together, the polls not only point to a widening gap between what business travelers expect and what they get, they also suggest that the indignity they dread above all others - being treated like tourists - is tormenting them. And as skies become more crowded and hotel occupancy rates soar this summer, tensions are bound to run even higher. "Business travelers as a whole have been significantly less satisfied than leisure travelers during the past two years," said David Van Amburg, the managing director for the American Customer Satisfaction Index. He said the situation was similar to the one that leisure travelers faced after airline deregulation in the 1970's, when carriers cut everything from legroom to meal service. Tourists eventually adjusted. But will business travelers? Not if they can help it, they say. Airline passengers like the Rev. Ronald Culmer, an Episcopal priest in Winnetka, Calif., are reluctant to put up with bad service and shrinking space. On one transcontinental red-eye flight, a passenger in the narrow economy-class seat next to him fell asleep, Father Culmer recalled, "and I had his hands, his head, his drool and half of one leg in my seat.'' On another, the cabin was so cramped that there was no way to escape the prodding elbows of flight attendants and the bumping of their meal carts. "Where can you go at 35,000 feet?'' he asked. Father Culmer says the only alternative to suffering in flight is an upgrade to first class, but like many other frequent fliers, he wonders why it should be the only option. The complaints are not limited to airlines. Kathy Bible, a lawyer for a trade organization in Tallahassee, Fla., says car rental companies have also stopped caring about business travelers the way they used to. She remembers a recent experience with her organization's preferred car rental company in which she was subjected to discourteous employees, her reservation was lost, and she was given the keys to the wrong car twice. "When I returned the car, I was charged for gas even though the tank was still full,'' she said. And on the company's shuttle bus, a driver "very rudely told me I couldn't get off the bus through the back door where the other passengers were departing; instead, I had to get off through the front door. I had a hard time refraining from giving him a Dick Cheney greeting as I got off the bus. But I controlled myself.'' But do business travelers deserve preferential service? "Yes, I do expect to be treated better,'' Ms. Bible said. Business travelers support the travel industry in good times and in bad, she reasons, and they often also pay more, booking airline tickets with fewer restrictions, hotel rooms on short notice or full-size cars. Generally, the travel industry agrees that business travelers who pay more deserve more. It is the ones who book deeply discounted airfares, hotels or cars through the Internet who perturb them. Mr. Hart's comments at the Cornell conference were hardly unique. Efforts to rein in bargain-hunting business travelers have included changing loyalty programs so that benefits are tied to fare prices instead of just the number of miles flown, as Delta Air Lines did last year. The pay-for-perks attitude also extends to employees, who seem less willing to tolerate business travelers who demand to be pampered even when they travel on the cheap. Raul Zambrana, a flight attendant for a major American airline who is based in Frankfurt, remembers two recent passengers in first class who were particularly difficult. "They came in with a queen and king of England attitude," he recalled. "They threw stuff everywhere. They told us to put their bags in the overhead compartment. They held the meal service because one of them needed to work." Mr. Zambrana says he has no problems with high-maintenance passengers who have paid the full price, in some cases upward of five figures, for a first-class seat on an international flight. "But as I was looking at the flight's paperwork, I noticed that in the remarks columns, next to their names, it said, 'operational upgrade,' " he said. "Which means they didn't pay for it. It turns out the passengers were flying on an inexpensive economy-class ticket.'' Although he was put off by the passengers' sense of entitlement, he says he did not allow it to interfere with his job. But his disdain for passengers with Champagne tastes and beer budgets is widespread in the travel industry, especially among employees who have accepted pay and benefit cuts to help their companies weather hard times. For such customers to demand red-carpet treatment strikes them as impudent. The rift between corporate travelers and the travel industry has always existed to some extent, says Jack O'Neill, the chief operating officer for the corporate travel agency Carlson Wagonlit Travel USA. But higher costs on the part of the travel industry and increased demand by leisure travelers have turned that fissure into a chasm. "On the one hand, business travelers are the travel industry's best customers - they drive profitability,'' he said. "On the other hand, with all the focus on travel spending, business travelers are finding new ways to save money.'' Is there a way to bring the two sides closer? As difficult as these regular customers may be, Mr. O'Neill said travel companies, and particularly airlines, do not want to lose them to their competition. "I think they really want to treat business travelers better,'' he said. "But how can you do that when your planes are flying full?'' Readers are invited to send stories about business travel experiences to businesstravel@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/business/20deflate.html?ex=1091327783&ei=1&en=81b44effbade8cca --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here: http://homedelivery.nytimes.com/HDS/SubscriptionT1.do?mode=SubscriptionT1&ExternalMediaCode=W24AF HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@xxxxxxxxxxx or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@xxxxxxxxxxxx Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company