Posts in the category "Etiquette":

Noticed some extra nice lately?

For airport employees around the country, courtesy and empathy are becoming part of the basic job description.  Not just because those are nice traits in workers, but because in these belt-tightening times, airports are hoping better customer service can help shore up the bottom line.   In my Well Mannered Traveler column this week on MSNBC.com, I take a look at some of the ambitious customer service programs underway at airports around the country. Here’s a preview.

Polite in Portland

Oregon’s Portland International Airport (PDX) regularly wins awards for its services and maneuverability.  But customer relations manager Donna Prigmore says that’s just not enough anymore. “The economy being what it is, we can’t afford to lose passengers.”  So this month the airport rolled out a “roadway to runway” initiative that challenges everyone who works at the airport, including taxi drivers, TSA staff, and shop employees, to be nicer.  Those who do, can win prizes.

Mindful in Minneapolis

The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) also regularly wins award for its services and amenities.  Volunteers staff eight information booths but, as you know, not everyone will stop to ask for directions.  So the airport is training a team of roving ambassadors whose job it will be to approach passengers who seem like they could use a bit of assistance.

Lessons at LAX, Plans in Pittsburgh

Around the country, many other airports have signed up for the Tom Murphy’s Resiliency Edge program, which is based at New York’s Fordham University. Scores of workers at the New York City-area airports (Newark Liberty, JFK, and LaGuardia) have already taken the course, which teaches employees strategies that can help them deal – calmly and effectively – with passengers who are apt to be stressed out, clueless, irate, confused or, often, all of the above.  I had the opportunity to sit in on one of the classes at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), and watched a role-playing exercise that pitted a gaggle of needy and insistent passengers against a customer service employee.  Murphy’s advice to the class: you can’t solve every problem but try to be empathetic, a good listener, adaptable, and a creative problem solver.  “If you can do that well,” says Murphy, “You’ll be more resilient, less stressed yourself, and better able to neutralize the irritations in a customer’s experience. We call that N.I.C.E.”

During the recent winter storms, nice-training benefited some arriving passengers at Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT). Late on a snowy Friday night, planes were still landing and passengers were still arriving, but taxis and hotel shuttle buses had stopped running.  Instead of allowing about 125 people to spend the night stuck at the terminal, several airport workers arranged for one of PIT’s employee buses to drive those travelers to area hotels. “It will cost the airport a couple of hundred bucks to cover that,” airport executive director Brad Penrod to me, “But they saw a problem, solved it, provided a needed customer service, and created a great deal of good will.”

Nice!

Have you noticed airport employees going out of their way to be nice? Please share you story.

Categories: Air Travel, Assistance, Etiquette
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First impressions are important, especially if you’re a city and you’d like folks who are just passing through to come back and stay awhile.  So you’d think every city would want its airport – its front door – to be all pretty and nice.

Like, say, Auckland Airport. Check out what greets visitors arriving on international flights:

No one is going to mistake this for an airport in Omaha, now are they?

And here’s another nice touch:  volunteers at the Auckland airport greet every international flight with complimentary coffee, tea, and travel information.

Categories: Air Travel, Architecture, Art, Assistance, Etiquette, Exhibits
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Last night, acting, looking, and in a few cases smelling like a bunch of junior high kids embarking on their first prom, about a hundred of the Americans who flew to Auckland on Air New Zealand’s Matchmaking Flight joined 150 nattily-dressed Kiwis for the Great Matchmaking Party.  As billed, it was a night of inter-hemisphere mingling, complete with dating games and dance performances, including a repeat of this choreographed dance the flight crew performed in the holding gate at LAX airport.

Were matches made?  You bet. Were lives changed? Time will tell… but at least everyone has a great story.

Categories: Air Travel, Dating, Etiquette, Events, Fun Stuff
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If you’re lucky enough to go somewhere this summer, even if it’s just to an airport hotel, chances are there will be a pool in the picture.

Do you know what to do when you’re there? It seems like a lot of folks don’t.

That’s why my Well-Mannered Traveler column on MSNBC.com this week is titled: Don’t be the fool at the pool.   You can read the full column on MSNBC.com (and vote on what you think is the most annoying pool behavior) but here’s an excerpt.

As they check into and out of hotels in the course of taking notes for their assigned site visits, staff members of the recently launched site, Oyster Hotel Reviews, take a lot of pictures. Some photos confirm that a hotel’s king-size beds are as plush and as large as advertised. Others, like the shot taken at the Sheraton Manhattan Hotel (below), might make guests think twice before taking a dip in the pool.

Ick, right? Do people really need to be told not to poo, pee, spit, or blow their nose in a hotel pool? Evidently they do. And, looking over the results of a recent TripAdvisor survey, it’s clear that there’s an ocean’s worth of other travelers out there who could use some tips on what sort of behavior is acceptable, or not, at the pool.

Travelers told TripAdvisor that loud music, hogging beach chairs, and urinating in the pool were some of the activities they found most annoying. Although 53 percent of the almost 4,000 people surveyed admitted they thought it was OK to pee in the ocean as long as other swimmers weren’t too close by. Other irritating behaviors high on the list included smoking, littering, not showering before entering a pool and letting kids take other kids’ beach or pool toys without asking.

Bad manners, right?

There’s more:

In some places, it’s PDA, public displays of affection. At the Vero Beach Hotel & Spa in Vero Beach, Fla., the pool concierge (yes, that’s a job) says he keeps an eye peeled for couples getting a little too cozy by the pool and, when necessary, steps-in and asks them to tone it down. “Usually it starts out subtle,” says Alex Serkadakis, “but then after a few drinks, they can get a little too frisky. Rubbing suntan lotion on their partner’s back can turn into a seductive massage and then next thing you know, they are rubbing oil all over each other.”

Serkadakis says kids love putting stuff like fish, turtles, etc. into pools, but sometimes people want stuff taken out of the water. Like all the water.

Erin Scheinost, the manager at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak’s River Ranch in Phoenix had one mom who demanded that the resort’s 4-acre water park be drained because her 12 year-old son had lost his retainer in the lazy river section of the park. Scheinost couldn’t do that. Nor could she call the woman if her son’s retainer popped up. “My staff finds a lot of retainers and we have no way of identifying the owners.”

To read more pool fool stories and get some tips from experts on proper poolside behavior, see my Well Mannered Traveler column on MSNBC.com: Don’t be the fool at the pool.

Categories: Etiquette, Well-Mannered Traveler
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Jack Daniel’s at IAH

Don’t know how I missed this in real time, but in June (2009), Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) rolled out the black and white carpet to welcome the world’s first Jack Daniel’s-themed airport store.  Located in Terminal D, near Gate 6, the  duty free/retail shop is stocked with shirts, hats and other JD logo-emblazoned items and, as I see from their video, lots of bottles of whiskey.

New Business Center at MIA

At Miami International Airport’s South Terminal, passengers who need to take care of business can now stop at the post-security business center between Concourses H and J. The International Currency Exchange (ICE) Business Center has a conference room and five computers with Internet and print capability, and offers fax, photocopy, currency exchange, and cell-phone rental services.

Messy Passengers make messy planes

It’s irritating – and gross – to get on an airplane and have to clean off the seat and the tray table (and sometimes the seat back pocket) before you sit down.  Maybe you should blame the messy passengers who sat there before you instead of the airline cleaning crew.  As Patrick Smith describes in his Ask the Pilot column on Salon.com this week, some passengers are really pigs!

Kids traveling alone – beware!

And this is sad.  A few weeks back, there were reports of two separate incidents in which Continental Airlines put children flying as unaccompanied minors on the wrong flights.

All worked out well for those kids. And as I described in a recent Well Mannered Traveler column on MSNBC.com (Tiny travelers; big responsibilities) there are some things you can do to make sure your kids are safe when flying alone as well.  In addition to making sure your child is mature enough to travel alone and is equipped with the right tools (information, confidence, cash, food, cell phone, etc.) the column points out that, even though an airline will take a fee for transporting your child, it’s important not to confuse the airline with a babysitter.  As one flight attendant says, “…we don’t watch unaccompanied minors 100% of the time.  If a child is shy and isn’t comfortable speaking up for themselves,” then they probably shouldn’t be traveling alone.

That last point is especially important because, as Traveling Mama Jennifer Miner reminded me when she sent me the link to this article from SFWeekly.com, there are some really sick people out there.  The article is a really frightening read. But if you’ve got kids that fly alone, it’s probably important that you read it and then have a talk with your kids.

And if don’t have kids that fly alone but you see a kid on a plane that looks as if he or she is in trouble: do something!

Categories: Etiquette, Kids
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