Category: Travel

Iceland Volcanic Ash Disrupts European Air Travel on an Unprecedented Scale

Hazardous volcanic ash
I captured the above photo from a series of three documentary videos on Youtube [That since publication have disappeared]. The picture and the videos show the dangers of volcanic ash for air travel best: It abrazes not only the paint, but also the aluminum of the aircraft heavily.

The dangers are:

  1. Pilots can’t notice it, because, apart from areas near an eruption, it is very fine. Even near an eruption pilots can’t notice it on on board flight radar, because there is not enough moist in a cloud of volcanic ash
  2. Volcanic ash is very abrasive as the above photo from the tail of flight BA 009 shows: Almost all paint was stripped from it.
  3. when sucked into a jet motor, it can cause immense damage and cause the motor to stop. On 1982 flight 009 over Indonesia all four jets stopped and luckily the pilots were able to restart the engines when they had flown out of the ash cloud and prevent a crash..


The beauty of the eruption that causes all the problems:
This is a fantastic photo of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland by Örvar-Atli that causes a huge cloud of volcanic ash to spread all over Europe that is bringing almost all air trafic to a stand still as of yesterday. It will continue today and it wouldn’t surprise me if it will continue for a couple of more days.

It is a very wise decision to ground almost all air traffic in view of the above indicated hazards.

Ash influences hotel stays
Guests from Canada are stuck in London and had to cancel their stay at my hotel last minute. Do I charge them a late cancellation fee? Off course not.

Commercially viable? Maybe, maybe not.

I could claim a late cancellation fee and have them claim their loss from their travel insurance company. However I wouldn’t like to add that as an extra burden to them while they are already burdened with all the uncertainties and changes of plan due to these extra ordinary circumstances

..and you know what? I expect my guests to be and think a bit like I do myself. I hate to claim something from an insurance company, because I believe I should only claim when there is an extraordinary cost I cannot reasonably bear myself. I was once bailed out by a travel insurance company when I was stuck with a car in a foreign country that could not be repaired that country. Not only did they repatriate my car to The Netherlands and paid for the car repair, they also let me continue our travels with a rented car that I delivered here in The Netherlands. Almost no loss of holiday pleasures.

And our guest wrote me: “Thank you so much! When we rebook our trip you will be our first choice to stay with. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.”

What happened to the vintage Nested Suitcase Design?


Via Cribcandy I came across this vintage nested suitcase installation. Cribcandy found it on Mocoloco and Mocoloco found it at Design*Sponge. It made me wonder what designers do nowady with this perfectly pratical idea. If you travel you can’t have enough suitcases, but at home those darn suitcases take a lot of space…what better than to nest them in storage?

I did a quick image search on Nested Suitcases, but couldn’t find any eye candy design. Did I overlook something or is the idea obsolete and am I only nostalgic?

How Tunnelvisionaries at Eurostar “Missed the Train” again


Two Eurostar Trains by Austin Evan on Flickr.

Just before I hit the warm sack early this morning it became apparent through Twitter that 4 Eurostar trains had become stuck in the Chunnel, the tunnel under the Channel between Calais in France and Folkestone in the UK.

Earlier this week there had been rumors of British train drivers calling a strike because of failing salary negotiations. I wonder if the two items are connected.

Three trains from France to the United Kingdom were involved and one from the UK to France. At least 2,000 people were stuck in their trains. Moreover after they were hauled out of the Chunnel,  some people even were stuck in a train in Folkestone for another 7 hours making their trip a 15 hr horror journey without being at the destination. The official reading is a failed electricity system because it was cold outside and warm in the tunnel.

A Dutch paper suggested this week that the operators of railroads in the European Alps, the Nordic countries or Canada would laugh their ass off when they would read what the Dutch railroad operators presented as excuses for trains not operating as they should. Now they can add Eurostar as yet another laughingstock.

Tech Crunch has a thoughtful article about it: As hundreds of Eurostar passengers languish, Eurostar ignores Twitter They could have used Twitter, but didn’t think of it.

The main fail is that they didn’t show any compassion for their passengers and also apparently didn’t think about the relatives of passengers who were waiting in the cold at both ends of the journey without being informed in one way or another. No news was provided. Management seemed sound asleep. Same attitude seemed have been the rule in the case of the train that had a truck on board that got on fire in September 2008.

Today all trains to and from the UK were cancelled.

Customer Service, Marketing and PR should have been be married into one voice Marck Pack claims and rightfully so.  Note I chose the same photo by accident before I red his post.

When I travel from the continent to the UK I usually prefer to travel by car an then tend to prefer a ferry above a cartrain through the Chunnel. Only the idea you can swim instead of being burried or chocked in a tunnel does it for me. But I have taken the car train a couple of times because my fellow travelers prefer a train over a ferry because they get easy seasick. What can you do…

I’m a bit focused on the Eurostar because of the ticket incident with the Thalys, the Amsterdam – Brussels leg of the Eurostar that I described last week.

Update
Dan Beck Daniele Becari, a frequent Eurostar traveler commented here: Eurostar PR Fallout

I was reading through @Coletteballou‘s tweets and found the following highly interesting observation:

Colette-Ballou---Claudia-Schiffer-got-out-before-the-masses
Now that is good PR: Apparently Claudia Schiffer got out of the mess before the masses…”Quot licet Iovi…”

Now more incidents showing the same attitude are being mentioned on several places.

Update 2 – Eurotunnel saved Eurostar???
@Railservice, a twitter account maintained by three Swiss Public Transport employees pointed me to the following harnessed Press Release where Eurotunnel claimed it had saved Eurostar:

Eurotunnel rescues Eurostar
Overnight from Friday 18 to Saturday 19 December Eurotunnel staff went to the assistance
of 5 Eurostar trains which had broken down in the Channel Tunnel, following technical
failures. These incidents were in no way due to the Tunnel infrastructure.
Eurotunnel staff:

  • Rescued 5 Eurostar trains which had lost traction
  • Evacuated 1,364 Eurostar passengers and brought them to the surface in Folkestone, Kent, using their own trains, where they were able to continue their journey to London
  • Towed 2 Eurostars to St Pancras as Eurostar did not have the means to do so themselves*

Pascal Sainson, Eurotunnel Operations Director, commented: “In very difficult conditions Eurotunnel made the decision to assist the Eurostar trains and their passengers. In order to conduct these operations in complete safety, Eurotunnel mobilised substantial extra staff and technical resources and also made the decision to interrupt its own services. Eurotunnel has done everything it can to resolve the situation”.
Traffic in the Channel Tunnel has been progressively returning to normal since 05:40 CET this morning.
In anticipation of heavy traffic this weekend Eurotunnel had already instigated its BAR Programme (Busy And Ready). In particular a fleet of snow ploughs and road clearing vehicles has been operating to clear snow from the terminal in Coquelles, France to reduce
the impact of the current severe weather in northern France.
Eurotunnel is however not responsible for the condition of the motorways.
Eurotunnel has put in place an organisation to help passengers to cross the Channel even if they arrive late at the departure terminal.
* Eurotunnel locomotives and Shuttles are prepared and maintained so that they are not affected by rapid temperature changes.

This at least teaches me that the car shuttles and the Eurostar trains are operated by two separate companies that I wasn’t aware of.

The final quote is the statement that has been haunting me all day today and yesterday: From own experience that the Swiss operate trains that enter tunnels that have extreme temperature differences with the outside. Frequently I have used use the Lötschberg car shuttle between Kandersteg and Goppenstein when traveling to the Rhone valley in Switserland. There It can be minus 10 or minus 20 Celsius outside, while the tunnel temperature is plus 14 to plus 16 degrees Celcius. In addition passenger trains from Bern to Milan used to use the same tunnel without these kind of things happening. I take it there is no difference since the passenger trains are now using the new Lötschberg Basis Tunnel as of 2007. Moreover they have many other tunnels with the same phenomenon…So I have a serious question about the Eurostar trains failing under these circumstances.

Moreover. When I find the quotes regarding prior incidents with poor communication again I’ll repeat them here.

Last edited by Happy Hotelier on December 21, 2009 at 12:20 am

Top Ten Travel Blogs – Technorati vs Invesp

Top-Ten-Travel-Blogs-according-to-Invesp

Those who follow this blog, know that I have spent quite some time with manually putting together top lists of travel bloggers according to Technorati in the past. The last one I published over a year ago on my TList page and for prior lists you can check out in my Tlist Category:

  1. The 300 of Halloween last year. which is also at the TList page
  2. The Update of January last year
  3. The update of December, 2007 ah but that post doesn’t give you a list itself…
  4. That of November, 2007

I did pray that someone would come up with a better measurement to replace my dumb work. Moreover at the time Technorati seemed too outdated and too infested with scrapers and sploggers and what all.

In June I discovered Frothy‘s Alexa only ranking.

Then came Invesp. I mentioned it already back in July, that put several measurement methods in a basket and created its own list of Top Travel Blogs.

From time to time I checked those and had a good reason not to go further with my own cumbersome list making.

But now Technorati has really cleaned its act and rolled out a completely new approach in their Blog ranking. I have a feeling that they are moving in the same direction as Google search is moving. A nice way of reinventing yourself Technorati!

Each ranking has its own pros and contras, but if you want to quickly orientate yourself about influential travelblogs you can have a look at both lists and make your pick, while I can concentrate on other content here:-)

Moxie

Philip-C-Wolf-of-Phocuswright-IMG_9490Philip C Wolf of PhoCusWright

What the hell is Moxie?

One of the gurus in travel marketing is the very passionate Philip C. Wolf, president and CEO of PhoCusWright, a travel marketing think tank. At one of his conferences, at ITB Berlin 2009 he teached his audience that under the present economic circumstances “You need a lot of Moxie”. I didn’t have a clue what that meant. It was later explained to me that maybe you can translate this into “You need a lot of balls” or, “You need a lot of creativity”, or “You need a lot of perseverance”. So far so good.

Until today another passionate marketing guru and gifted blogger and speaker, Seth Godin posted a story on his blog: Everyone is clueless about a guy with a lot of Moxie, John Ness of Galoco’s Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles:

You don’t want to [adress] everyone. You want [to address] the right someone.

Someone who cares about what you do. Someone who will make a contribution that matters. Someone who will spread the word.

As soon as you start focusing on finding the right someone, things get better, fast. That’s because you can ignore everyone and settle in and focus on the people you actually want.

Actually that’s my whole point. That’s what I’m trying to as a hotelier when I want to convince someone to stay in my little luxury hotel.

At the end of the video below John Ness explains where Moxie comes from. You can drink it and he sells it: “It’s is the only soda that made it into the dictionary with it’s own meaning”.

Great story of John Ness. Wow! If only I could get such a thumbs up by Seth Godin:-)

So I learned a bit more about Moxie. Thank you Philip, Seth and John Ness for sharing this. (afterthought: John would be an excellent blogger)

How would you explain Moxie?