BEAT OF HAWAII AND BEYOND

Travel reviews are something I’m very interested in.  So when something comes along that has the potential to change the review playing field, I take notice. Such is the case with the new location sharing applications.

If you’re already a Foursquare user, you know that one of the most interesting and useful aspects isn’t people checking in at various locations, but rather the comments they leave.  Taking this to a new level is the just released FourWhere, which is showing great potential to enrich your next Hawaii (or other) vacation.  If you’re not already familiar with Foursquare, read this.

FourWhere is basic in design and ease of use, overlaying venues and comments from Foursquare onto Google Maps.  Right-clicking on the map brings up options, so for example you can omit venues that don’t have comments.  You can choose a city, like Honolulu, or perhaps more useful, a specific street or neighborhood to which you’re headed.

Foursquare, FourWhere, and other Geo location products represent a whole different take on comments and reviews, which are paramount to travelers.  If you haven’t tried them, I suggest you do. They are evolving very rapidly and formidably.  Next to join will be mammoth Facebook, with yesterday’s announcement of their intention to release new location-based tools and features.

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Thirteen year old Allegiant is a diminutive airline compared with mainline carriers.  Their might, however, is far greater than their size would indicate. Allegiant is one of the most profitable airlines, period.

Last year Allegiant reported net income of $76.3 million on revenue of $558 million.  Up to thirty percent of Allegiant sales are derived from non-airfare, composed mostly of packages that include hotel and/or car.

In comparison, Southwest Airlines reported net income of only $99 million on revenue of $10 billion.

Allegiant joins the Hawaii market later this year in a field dominated by regional airlines Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines, together with mainline carriers American, Continental, Delta, United and US Air.

These legacy airlines all play on a relatively even field comprised primarily of air only.  Each is of course working to improve their all-inclusive package performance, but they have accomplished little in that area compared with Allegiant.

The Allegiant difference.

Two Allegiant destinations are similar to Hawaii:  Florida and Las Vegas.  There, the carrier has amassed nearly 60 exclusive accommodation deals which are offered in conjunction with air.  Not coincidentally, those are the only two major airports Allegiant currently serves.  Otherwise, and another Allegiant focus and distinguishing point, is that the company only flies from smaller airports that do not often have competing services.

Allegiant has been on the ground here in Hawaii for over a year shopping for the best deals possible as they begin to put together packages.  I expect this to put intense pressure on their competitors because Allegiant will offer Hawaii visitors advantageous accommodation deals not otherwise available. In fact, Allegiant may well choose to sell Hawaii air only in conjunction with accommodations.

Bottom line for Hawaii visitors.

First, it is going to be awhile before this is sorted out, as all of the new planes will not be in service for 18 months.  When complete, the six 757’s will be used exclusively for Hawaii service.  Depending on utilization, that should afford them the ability to run perhaps 10 daily round trips to the islands.  As such, Allegiant will become a major player in Hawaii, and their presence and unique marketing abilities will be taken very seriously.

Hawaii airfares have been climbing higher recently, and deals have been fewer and farther between.  Because of the way that Allegiant packages accommodations, cars and other trip expenses with airfares, and based on their history, I believe Allegiant can offer better value in Hawaii deals than any competitor.  That will in turn raise the bar, which should result in improved overall value in Hawaii vacations across the board.

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Over a year ago we broke the news that Allegiant Airlines would be flying to Hawaii in the near future.  Today, Allegiant CEO Maurice Gallagher confirmed those intentions.  The carrier has acquired the six Boeing 757’s of which we spoke, and plans to begin Hawaii service later this year.  Delivery of the first two planes will occur within 60 days, with those remaining scheduled from November 2010 to December 2011.

This is great news for Hawaii bound visitors in search of great airfares and packages as well as for Hawaii residents visiting the Mainland.

Which locations will offer Hawaii service?

Allegiant did not announce the cities which will premier their Hawaii service, but I remain confident that the contending airports are:

• Bellingham, WA
• Fresno, CA
• Las Vegas, NV

What to expect.

Allegiant will be offering their stock-in-trade packaging of highly competitive airfares with great deals on accommodations, car rentals and other ancillaries.

The competitors.

The primary competitors will be Alaska and Hawaiian Air, because they both offer service from surrounding airports, and Pleasant Holidays, which features aggressive packaging of United’s bulk seats, together with cars and hotels.

Earlier posts regarding Allegiant:

• New “Deal” Airline Coming To Hawaii?
• Allegiant Confirms Hawaii Plans
• Allegiant Buys 757s: Hawaii Service Update
• Allegiant Air Hawaii Update
• 2010 Hawaii Travel Trends

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Here’s an update since my last post about Airline Broadband Service to Hawaii.

Last week, Alaska Air pulled the plug on Row 44 Wi-Fi service, a Ku-band satellite-based system. The carrier opted instead for Aircell’s Gogo, a terrestrial-based service which has already been installed in over 700 aircraft.

Out the window with that choice went the likelihood of finding Wi-Fi on flights to Hawaii anytime in the near future.

Hawaiian Airlines.

Hawaiian has not made their intentions clear regarding Wi-Fi. When and if they do choose (and I suspect they will soon), we’ll likely see them select from one of the few viable over-water solutions of which I’m aware:

• eXConnect. Lufthansa has just signed on to use this by Panasonic Ku-based system to equip their fleet.
• OnAir. British Airways’ internet service provider, uses technology based on SwiftBroadband, and the latest high-bandwidth satellite technology from Inmarsat.
• Row 44. The Ku-band satellite Wi-Fi chosen by Southwest Airlines (but currently in use on only four planes).

Other carriers to Hawaii.

Air Canada, American, Continental, Delta, United and U.S Airways have all standardized on Aircell’s service, which is incapable of providing service beyond the continental U.S.

More Wi-Fi deployment issues.

It’s interesting to see how some carriers are rapidly deploying Wi-Fi while others are dragging their feet. Southwest, for example, originally indicated that they would have Wi-Fi throughout their nearly 600 plane fleet in early 2010. The latest word is that they’ll now start the rollout by June, but won’t complete it for another 2 1/2 years.

One problem is the lack of power outlets for laptops on planes. Most laptops can’t take full advantage of a long trans-Pacific flight without it.

The financial model for the airlines seems to remain unproven. Implementation cost is estimated at $100,000 per aircraft, and it still isn’t clear how many customers are willing to pay for Wi-Fi. Travelers, weary of ala carte pricing, certainly rebel against hotel Wi-Fi charges. Will the same prove true for Hawaii-bound and other air travelers?

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Two new issues are adding fuel to the fire surrounding rampant travel review fraud, and may help bring the matter to a head, sooner than later.

1.  Yelp Class Action lawsuit.

Yelp became the subject of a class action lawsuit this week in a filing that asserts that the company used extortion by demanding monthly payments (in the form of  “advertising contracts”) in exchange for removing or modifying negative reviews.  This has been widely alleged and reported before.

2.  Europe may see new laws governing TripAdvisor and other review sites.

The British Hotel Association and others are talking with the European Union about strengthening laws governing review sites.  Hoteliers, at the least, want sites to implement verification that a person at least stayed in the hotel they are reviewing. This appears to be a matter that the EU is taking seriously.

At the same time, Travel Weekly is reporting that  the American Hotel & Lodging Association conducted a recent poll asking its readers if they believe such travel review standards are necessary. Seventy-nine percent of those surveyed responded that the current system makes it too easy for competitors to unfairly tarnish or destroy a hotel’s reputation.

As a travel consumer, do you believe that travel review standards have become necessary?

(Beat of Hawaii is written as a labor of love; there are no advertisers and we’re 100 percent volunteer. Some posts, like the one you’re reading today, are “beyond Hawaii.”  Instead it’s a travel topic of interest to us and one we hope helps make each of us more informed travel consumers.)

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Consumer beware.

Hospitality marketing firms are promoting their ability to concoct systematic fake reviews to improve a hotel’s rating and lambaste the competitors.  Consumers, however, are poised to be hurt the worst.

Can you spot these fake reviews?

I assert, definitely not.

The wide-spread belief that real reviews can be sorted from the bogus is rapidly changing through more elaborate (though not abstruse) means.

Basing your trust on those who have written more reviews, or a wider range of reviews no longer matters.  It doesn’t take a scientist to opinion that someone with few reviews and an angled perspective is likely fake, or in any event, not credible.  Professional review creators certainly understand that even better than we do, and write accordingly.

The fraud problem, previously seen as a potentially self-limiting number of fake reviews contrived by employees, friends and families in a relatively low-scale, low-tech way, is now progressing to an entirely new level of reviewer identities specifically fashioned with multiple reviews of different properties.

How it’s done:

Not requiring Herculean technology, marketers are using a multitude of reviewer locations and IP addresses, among other means, in order to to circumvent both the manual and automated fraud prevention methods that TripAdvisor employs.  Likely these black hat sculptors are several steps ahead of TripAdvisor and the rest of us in this regard.

Proof:

On a small scale, the photo example above points to a job offer to sculpt fraudulent TripAdvisor reviews.  You won’t find hotel marketers offering these services on Google. They use other, less traceable means to engage prospective properties.  It is hard to imagine many hotels which wouldn’t at least want to listen to such a potentially lucrative ploy.

Why this is working:

With an extremely challenging hospitality economy predicted for some time to come, hotels can simply not afford to leave reviews to chance.  The value in a higher TripAdvisor rating equates to rooms filled vs. rooms empty and to a great deal of money.  Or simply the ability to stay in business.

Where is TripAdvisor in all this?

Expedia’s TripAdvisor regularly states their position that while they are aware of attempts to systematically subvert reviews, they take this very seriously and have the matter under control.  As you’ll recall TripAdvisor not long ago went to the extent of putting punitive red badges on properties believed to be taking part in these nefarious activities.

That having been said, however, I believe TripAdvisor continues to be wary of anything that would reduce its number of reviews, real or otherwise. Doing so would likely bring serious damage to its advertising business, which is Expedia’s cash cow.

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Several websites have been discussing whether clearing your browser’s cookies might help you find better travel bargains.  Is there any truth to it?

What kind of cookie am I talking about?

This cookie, unlike the one I’m eating here at a the Eveleigh Farmers Market in Sydney,  is a small piece of code that is sent by the website you visit, and stored by your browser on your computer. Among other things, cookies identify you to a website on subsequent visits.

Could cookies be hurting your deals?

A post on Airfarewatchdog recently so theorizes.  It further suggest the practice of clearing your cookies so that websites you go to for deals are unaware of your prior visits.  Originally brought to their attention by a reader, the editor concurs with the practice.  They conclude that when you return to look for the same deal on a subsequent visit, it may no longer be available.  And that when you clear the cookies and appear to be a “new” visitor, the deals magically reappear.

My thoughts: It’s highly unlikely.

Obviously airfares vary, seemingly from moment to moment.  And certainly the fact that you repeatedly look for airfares, say from Los Angeles to Honolulu, does have an substantive effect on future ticket pricing.

Here’s how that works.  Feedback to the airlines from searches we do indicate likely interest in purchasing tickets between locations at any point in time.  It’s all about supply and demand.  That feeds into their pricing models such that higher demand (in relation to availability) essentially yields higher potential prices.

Personally I use three different browsers (Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer).  I store no cookies in two of the three, and have never found any difference in availability with cookies or without.  And I’m looking at airfare deals across multiple sites numerous times each day.

Still want to give it a try?  Here’s what I suggest:

Don’t wreck the usefulness of your browser saving cookies for those sites you visit often.  Try doing one of these two things instead.

1.  Use a different browser.  If you normally use Internet Explorer for example, on that return visit try using Firefox.

2.  Surf anonymously using a proxy.  On subsequent site visits when looking for a deal, simply enter the site you wish to visit at a free anonymous surfing proxy site, and the page you want will be presented to you.  Here are a few such sites to try (although you can search and find an unlimited number of them):  Anonymouse,  Proxify,  The Cloak.

Please tell me your experiences.

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If you plan on flying inter-island, here’s a word to the wise, watch out.  It’s a new era in Hawaii transportation, and this isn’t good news for visitors (or those of us who live here).

We had two years of affordable airfares within the islands, which has now come to an abrupt halt.  The good deals started with the entry of Mesa’s Go! Airlines, and was further aided with the entry of Mokulele.  Unfortunately, however, Mokulele decided to call it quits recently, which returned Hawaii to the two-airline duopoly of Hawaiian and Go!.  Island Air remains a relatively minor, non-jet third player which is aligned with Go!.

Inter-Island airfares are on the rise, and they won’t likely be stopping where they are at.  They are working against us in three distinct ways:

1.  Base fares.  The base fare has risen steadily over the past number of months and today sits at $58, per segment, plus tax.  If you’re flying from Maui to Kauai for example, that counts as two segments, and you can plan to pay approximately double, or over $100 each way.  I expect the airlines will attempt to raise the base fare to approximately $80, as conditions permit.

2. Demand-based pricing.  As you can see from the above photo, the base fare is not always available.  And you should not count on it.  During any “projected” period of demand, the carriers are raising the price to as much as double the base rate or more.  The fares in the image are between Lihue and Honolulu, mid-week, next week.

3.  Ancillary fees.  Inter-island carriers have implemented bag fees of $10 for the first bag and $17 for the second bag.  Ouch.  Don’t forget to watch for excessive change fees as well.

Here are my suggestions:

1.  Plan your inter-island transport well in advance.  When buying mainland to Hawaii tickets, have a look at inter-island pricing before making your trans-Pacific reservations.  That way you’ll have some idea of what to anticipate.  Once you’ve purchased your mainland to Hawaii tickets, buy inter-island tickets as soon as possible, but keeping change fees in mind.
2.  Avoid inter-island flights whenever possible.  That means flying directly from the mainland to your Hawaii destination.  Even though that may cost more than flying to Honolulu, it won’t likely be as much as the cost and inconvenience of inter-island flights.

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When TripAdvisor’s list of the dirtiest hotels in America came out last week, the Laie Inn on Oahu’s North Shore was missing. A wrecking ball saved it from the list and innocent guests will no longer have to endure its nightmare.

Laie Inn closed in October and is being demolished this week. This is good news for the 45 year old Mormon Church owned property adjacent to BYU-Hawaii and the Polynesian Cultural Center.

When I stayed there several years ago, it was Pro Bowl Weekend and this was the only hotel with a vacancy. That should have been the first warning flag but we were desperate.

Not only did the Laie Inn reek of fake reviews, it also remains the single worst hotel I’ve ever had the privilege to stay at. This is the hotel that first perked my interest in TripAdvisor reviews and the issue of review fraud.

I remember having paid $100/night and encountered the following issues:

• Blood-stained sheets and towels.
• Dangerous parking lot; so much so I was afraid to leave the room.
• Worst bed and bedding ever (think I Love Lucy).
• Broken plumbing and lighting fixtures.
• Missing and broken windows, some boarded, some not.
• Loose electric wires hanging outside room.
• Unfathomable guest laundry (photo)
• Pathetic continental breakfast.
• Oblivious management.
• Outrageous price.
• False advertising.

All of the Laie Inn reviews on TripAdvisor have been removed, post wrecking ball. The Church is planning a new 200 room hotel in its place that may be branded a Marriott.

Did you ever stay at Laie Inn? If you have any memories to share please leave a comment.

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(Photo taken on a property walk during my stay at Laie Inn; dozer added for effect).

Recently TripAdvisor contacted me to verify that I authored an unfavorable, three star review five years ago. They gave me two weeks to respond or else my review would be removed from their site. That’s right, before I questioned Trip Advisor’s authenticity I was a frequent contributor.

So why, 5 years later, has TripAdvisor questioned my review?

• The email indicated that the verification process is random.  Having never received such an email, however,  I’m frankly suspicious about whether that is true.
• I noticed that the hotel I wrote about has responded to virtually all negative reviews. Is it possible they asked TripAdvisor to authenticate mine?

Too little, too late.

I can appreciate that, just perhaps, TripAdvisor is making this effort in order to attempt at least some form of verification.  After all, if you write fake reviews, you may have some trouble keeping up with all of the different email addresses in order to respond timely and thus keep the post active.

Here’s what I suggest TripAdvisor do:

- Implement a Real Name feature like we see on Amazon reviews. This requires that the reviewer confirm his/her identity with a credit card.

- Link reviewers to their hotel booking if their stay was booked on an Expedia site.

Why won’t TripAdvisor clean up its act?

There appears to be far more financial value in quantity of visitors and reviews than in having a virtually assured review authenticity.

Until then.

While consumer generated content (reviews) have definitely changed travel, reviews simply will not be trustworthy unless a credible identity verification process is in place.  Until then, TripAdvisor reviews will remain corrupted by the travel industry, and thus I suggest using them with a great deal of scrutiny and skepticism.

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Travelocity is back in competition with Expedia. Hot on the heals of new Roaming Gnome ads (in case you haven’t seen enough of him), there are two significant new features. I’ve always liked Travelocity, but have migrated away from using (and suggesting) it over time, and find myself much more frequently at Kayak. We’ll see if these new features plus others likely right behind them might be enough to sway me back.

Deals on a map

First, a new deals on a map feature, that may be useful for finding Hawaii deals from your area. Here are my tips after taking it for a test run.

• If you only want to see deals from one mainland airport, but are interested in what’s available for all the islands, select Hawaii as the destination. All of the island airfare and airfare plus hotel deals will be shown.
• What if you live some place like San Francisco where there are multiple airports available to leave from? If you enter a Hawaii city as your point of origination, and North America as the destination, the map will show multiple airports. Just zoom in and you’ll see deals for all the airports in your area.

Travel-Deals

The other new feature is the Travel-Deals page, which is a less visual but equally well laid out way to find Hawaii (or other) deals. Again, use it either of the two ways suggested above.

As a final thought, the OTA’s (like Travelocity) are in the business of selling packages.

Airfares alone do not bring them profit. Be sure to do your homework and check what’s available elsewhere before buying a package deal from anyone. Often, but not always, your best deal is had by buying airfare and accommodation separately.

Look forward to your thoughts.

As you’ve likely already learned, and as a reader should not be surprised to hear, Mesa Airlines filed for Chapter 11 this morning, in an attempt to restructure financially. So just how could Aloha Airlines come back? Read on for my insight.

Mesa may be ready to bail on Hawaii.

At this time, Go! Mokulele’s joint venture with Republic Airways will remain outside of the bankruptcy filing and their frequent flyer program remains intact.

The current joint venture (which probably precluded it from Chapter 11), 75% Mesa and 25% Republic owned (at least on paper), is likely still not a money-maker for Mesa.

Selling their interest in the venture to Republic may at this point actually appeal to both parties. Republic continues to have a voracious appetite to acquire other companies. They recently doubled their passenger traffic upon the addition of Midwest and Frontier to their stable.

Here in Hawaii, with Mesa out of the picture, Republic might actually make money in a Hawaii duopoly with Hawaiian Airlines.

Could Aloha Airlines return?

The interesting question is what name would a new Go! use if Republic takes over entirely?  My suspicion is that Republic would attempt to buy the Aloha Airlines name, which the court prevented Mesa from using in the first place.

On thing’s for sure, we have not heard the last of this.  Stay tuned.

Any thoughts?