I spent a few hours last week at the RV Museum and Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Indiana, where curator and RV historian Al Hesselbart was kind enough to give me a personal tour of the collection and share some of his RV stories and photos. I’ll be including some of the photos in my Well Mannered Traveler column on msnbc.com this week, along with tips on RV etiquette, but wanted to share a few of my favorites right away.
The first is this 1931 Chevrolet Housecar, which was owned by Mae West. Hesselbart is confident West never really camped out in this house on wheels, but rather used this chauffeur-driven model in much the same way modern-day actors use trailers on the set.
And check out this 1976 Heli-home, a helicopter camper – with canopy – that could sleep six.
If you had one of these, you’d have little chance of getting stuck at the airport on your way to your next camping vacation.
In a video about San Francisco International Airport, Mayor Gavin Newsom has a cameo. So do Marion and Vivian Brown, the kooky 83 year-old identical twins who have become beloved San Francisco icons. Designed to promote SFO as the connecting hub of choice for travelers coming to the United States from New Zealand or Australia, the video compares SFO’s airy, light-filled, international terminal to an unnamed airport simply referred to as “the bad airport.”
In this video, the bad airport does look pretty bad. But, marketing experts tell me, that’s what airports have to do these days to stand out.
Another example is the new campaign from Canada’s Edmonton International Airport (YEG), which serves about six million passengers a year. On March 1st the airport rolled out a “Stop the Calgary Habit” campaign, urging residents of central and northern Alberta to stop connecting through or driving to Calgary International Airport (YYC), which serves about ten million passengers a year. Using the tag line “When you go south, so does your air service,” (Ouch!), the campaign includes short (:15) videos portraying repentant passengers.
For years Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport’s (MKE) was marketing itself to northern Illinois as “Chicago’s Third Airport” and back in 2005 mailed out a “Sick of O’Hare?” media kit that included (now highly collectible) air sick bags that said “Feel Better, Fly MKE” and a package of breath mints. A few years later, when the Chicago Cubs were playing the Chicago White Sox at Wrigley Field, MKE hired a skywriter to write the address of the MKE website in the airspace over the game.
Airport spokesperson Patricia Rowe says they don’t do that ‘in your face’ stuff anymore. “Now we spend more time focusing on what’s great about our airport instead of attacking O’Hare.”
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.
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.
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.
