customer service

It’s not just winter weather. Many holiday travelers also face poor service.

This is a story we wrote for NBC News

Holiday Travelers face bad weather and bad service

A frigid arctic blast is threatening to derail holiday travel this week. But even those who reach their destinations on time may have reason to grumble: Some will have to make their own hotel beds, wipe their own in-flight tray tables and wait in lines at airport lounges — or pay more for a smoother experience.

While travel demand is roaring back, many hotels, airlines, cruise operators and airports are still racing to hire and train workers. Some companies are tightening access to perks and amenities, in a few cases by raising prices. That means the level of customer service will likely take a hit, industry experts say.

Nearly 113 million Americans are forecast to take to the roads and skies between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2, according to AAA, up 3.6 million from last year and just shy of pre-pandemic numbers. But employment levels in the leisure and hospitality sector are still 5.8% lower than in February 2020, when the industry employed around 980,000 more people than it did last month, federal data shows.

“Everyone is jumping back onto the travel wagon again, but in some cases, these wagon wheels may still be a bit wobbly,” said Corey Green, a travel adviser with AAA in Wilmington, Delaware.

Flying?

The good news: While holiday airfares remain high, ticket prices are inching down and the labor crunch is easing.

“After a summer with numerous problems with flight delays and cancellations, U.S. airlines have been successful in hiring a lot more pilots and flight attendants, and getting them trained,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group. “They’ve also been hiring people to work at airports, reservation offices and elsewhere. So I anticipate that from the airline side, we’ll have a good Christmas and New Year’s season.”

What to expect at airports

But some fliers say the customer experience remains rocky.

“Since summer, when I’ve flown between the U.S. and the U.K., lounges have been so packed that it is sometimes impossible to find a seat,” said Rachel Franklin, a geography professor based in the United Kingdom. She added that she’s seen “used dishes accumulate in teetering piles on tables, so you can’t sit there either.”

To address overcrowding, some airlines are tightening lounge access and limiting or eliminating day passes.

Starting Jan. 1, Delta Air Lines’ Sky Club memberships will be available only to “Silver Medallion” and other elite-level fliers, and fees are going up. By Feb. 2, members traveling in basic economy will be cut off from lounges unless they pay with certain cards.

Alaska Airlines will also raise lounge membership fees starting next year. And beginning Feb. 15, the carrier will grant complimentary lounge access only to passengers with certain long-distance, first-class tickets.

Delta, which expects its 2023 earnings to nearly double thanks to strong demand, pointed to an earlier statement by Dwight James, senior vice president, customer engagement and loyalty: “While we’re thrilled to see so many customers enjoy the fruits of our teams’ hard work, our goal now is to balance the popularity of the Clubs with the premium service and atmosphere for which they were designed — and that our guests deserve.”

Seattle-based Alaska said its lounges “have become so popular during certain times of the day, we’re making adjustments to our complimentary First Class access policy to allow for a bit more elbow room.”

For now, Harteveldt said, “you don’t want to plunk money out in advance for a lounge pass only to be told, ‘Sorry, we’re not accepting them.’ Instead, wait to buy a lounge pass until you’re at the airport and are confident you will be able to enter.”

Many airport employees say they’re overworked and their teams are understaffed, making it hard to maintain quality service for so many passengers.

Earlier this month, Service Employees International Union members working as baggage handlers, cabin cleaners, ramp agents, wheelchair attendants and janitors demonstrated at 15 U.S. airports, calling for higher pay and better conditions. “We’re so short-staffed, they make it almost impossible for you to take a sick day,” Omar Rodriguez, a ramp agent and cabin cleaner for contractor Swissport USA at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, said in a union statement. “We get blamed for delays, but we’re only given a few minutes to clean and don’t have enough people to do the work.”

Swissport said it “denies any unfair labor practices” and “fully complies with applicable regulations and provides competitive wages and benefits.”

Inside terminals, concessions operators are also struggling to hire and keep staff at shops, restaurants and bars. So passengers should be prepared for longer lines, limited operating hours and some commercial spaces that have yet to reopen.

Checking into a hotel?

Hotel guests may also find some service reductions still in place.

Many properties that suspended daily housekeeping to maintain social distancing have been slow to restore that amenity, said Jan Freitag, the national director of hospitality analytics for CoStar Group, a commercial real estate research firm. “They say, ‘Of course, we’re here if you need a towel or something,’ but they will not automatically clean your room.”

Some labor groups say hotel operators are taking advantage of pandemic policies to make long-term cost cuts, and they encourage guests to demand housekeeping during their stays — especially since many are now costlier. Room rates were up 15% in November this year over November 2019, according to Freitag. “That’s just the national average,” he said. “If you are in a 4- or 5-star property or resort, you are paying much higher rates, in some instances 30% more than in 2019.”

At most 2- and 3-star properties, he said, guests generally must request housekeeping, and while pricier rooms are more likely to include it, “some high-end properties may not have enough staff to offer housekeeping either.”

There are currently more than 100, 000 open hotel jobs nationwide, including nearly 20,000 housekeeping roles, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. “Recruiting workers continues to be the top challenge for many hoteliers,” said Chip Rogers, the trade group’s CEO.

Going on a holiday cruise?

One potential bright spot can be found at sea: During the summer, several cruise lines had to cancel voyages due to staffing shortages, but major disruptions have been largely resolved.

“It’s highly unlikely your holiday cruise will be canceled due to lack of staffing,” said Colleen McDaniel, editor-in-chief of Cruise Critic, a travel site run by Tripadvisor. “But just like so many other industries, you might notice some staffing or supply chain-related effects onboard.”

That could affect service quality a bit. Many cruise lines are adding fresh staff en masse, and a lot of those crew members are new to the industry, she said, “so training is ongoing and is critical to the onboard experience.”

Bottom line

Passengers across the board should “be prepared to pay a little more than usual if you want the vacation of your dreams,” Green said. Or be flexible with timing to avoid the busiest periods most prone to service snags.

“This year, I moved my annual holiday travel to earlier in December,” said Abby Rhinehart, an educational researcher in Tucson, Arizona. “It was a little strange to celebrate so early in the month, but I think it was worth it to avoid all the stress.”

Now airline customer service is going virtual at the airport

COVID-19 is bringing new technologies and workarounds to airports.

And customer service desks are riding that wave.

Recently, StuckatTheAirport.com reported on several airports now offering virtual information desks.

Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF), Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Denver International Airport (DEN), and Baltimore Washington International Airport (BWI) are on the leading edge of this trend.

And now airlines are joining in with assistance from a distance.

First up is United Airlines. They are rolling out virtual, on-demand customer service at their hubs.

United’s “Agent on Demand” program lets passengers use their mobile devices to call, text, or video chat live with an airline agent.

So this means you can deal with a flight-related issue anywhere in the airport. And you can avoid lining up at the gate or at the airline service center.

United’s “Agent on Demand” service is up and running at Chicago O’Hare (ORD) and Houston’s George Bush International Airport (IAH). And the airline says the service should be live at its other hubs later this month.

To use the program, passengers scan a QR code or access the platform through self-service kiosks at some gate areas.

Like the in-airport staff, the remote agents are able to deal with tasks such as seat assignments, upgrades, standby lists, flight status, and rebooking.

And a nice added bonus, there’s a translation function in the virtual agent program. So if a customer types in one of 100 available languages, their messages are transcribed and sent to the agent in English. And the agent’s responses are returned in the language selected.

In this age of contactless everything, we expect other airlines to offer this type of service soon as well.

How DFW is upping its customer service game

My most recent “At the Airport” column for USA TODAY explores the “Experience Hub” at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Take a look and let us know if you think this model can make a difference in passenger happiness at other airports.

Like most airports, Dallas-Forth International has an operations center to monitor everything happening out on the airfield.

But for the past two few years DFW has been beefing up another type of behind-the-scenes center.

This one is called the Experience Hub and its role is to keep watch over everything happening inside the terminals, to respond as swiftly as possible to any sort of passenger issue and to solve problems before they happen.

Every airport will tell you it has people and departments to do all that. However, DFW officials believe their customer experience hub is a unique and more effective way to serve its more than 69 million passengers in part because it has centralized many functions that were previously spread out across departments and locations.

“Everybody here has responsibility driven by making the customer experience the best it can be,” said Julio Badin, DFW’s Vice President of Customer Service during a recent tour of the windowless, 7,000-square foot room in Terminal D that houses representatives from just about every customer-facing agency or department at the airport and dozens of monitors streaming data and live terminal feeds.

“This group is focused on all the things that touch the customer from the experience perspective,” said Badin, pointing out staff checking on everything from the weather and airline load factors to TSA lines, baggage room operations, custodial schedules, restroom maintenance needs and mentions of DFW on social media.

The hub, located on the non-secure side of the airport, in Terminal D, is staffed 24-hours a day and has a conference table in the center and low-lit work stations (to avoid monitor glare) for about 20 people around the perimeter.

Two officers from the Transportation Security Administration’s planning department are chatting about what they see on the monitors at their work station. Their job: to study projected passenger numbers from the airlines, observe the wait times at the airport’s various security checkpoints and decide how and when to open additional lanes, move staff around and send in teams of bomb sniffing canines with their handlers to help speed things up.

“The planning team is the guts behind how well the TSA checkpoints work,” said DFW’s Badin, who was pleased that TSA accepted the airport’s invitation to locate this team here.

Sitting nearby the TSA planners are customer care specialists who spend their days answering passenger questions, solving problems for travelers and monitoring and responding to social media messages or mentions.

“People call wanting to know if their car will be towed if their flight gets back late. They want to know where they can get a mimosa at 8 a.m. And, of course, we get lots of calls from people who need help finding lost items,” said Clara Meyer, an Experience Hub Specialist whose shift starts 4:30 a.m.

“We once got a call about a man flying in on a flight from India. He didn’t know that his travel agent had put him on a flight to Dallas instead of [Washington] Dulles and his daughter called us asking for help,” said Meyer, “We sent someone to find him to explain what happened and had them stay with him until he got onto a flight to Dulles. We also helped him on the way home.”

The computer screens at the work station next to Meyers are filled with live streams of messages tagged with #DFW on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media streams.

A hub staff member responds in real time to just about anything that pops up on social media relating to DFW customer service. Sometimes it’s a “Welcome to DFW,” or “Sorry your flight is late,” message. But often the response is a tweet filled with specific information a customer has requested, such as a list of airport restaurants open before 5 a.m. or a shop that might sell a replacement for a left-behind hair straightener.

And because the social media monitoring desk is in DFW’s Experience Hub, if there’s a tweet from, say, a frustrated mom who’s run out of diapers during a flight delay, there’s someone at the next desk who can call or text one of the airport customer experience specialists (ACES) out in the terminals and have them bring supplies over.

Make a playlist and follow it

Back in the hub, each day begins with the building of “playlists,” said DFW Experience Hub Manager Ricky Griffin, “We look at expected passenger loads, weather, and other factors so we can give the ACEs a detailed list of tasks they should complete and check off in the terminals that day.”

To predict the day’s passenger flows and identify areas that might need extra attention, Griffin’s team looks at what TSA has planned for staffing and holds conference calls with American Airlines (which has a main hub at DFW) and other departments at the airport to find out what they may be expecting that day.

“Then we draft an email that goes out to our team to let them know what’s happening,” said Griffin. As the day progresses, everyone in the hub continues monitoring and watching out for everything from such storms in the area to baggage hiccups, unattended luggage, fire alarms, and anything that might cause a glitch in the terminals.

The time, energy and resources DFW is putting into enhancing the customer experience for passengers seems to be paying off.

The airport has won some major customer service awards and in the past year other airports keen to raise their level of customer service, including Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Seattle-Tacoma International and a few international airports have sent teams out to see DFW’s Experience Hub in action.

Travel Tidbits from JFK and LAX

For the next four months, 14 hand-drawn, large-scale illustrations of iconic New York city locations, such as the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, can be seen in the corridors of Terminal 4 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The work is hand-drawn by British-based artist Chris Dent and also includes 18 smaller illustrations of NYC staples such as subway trains, taxis, slices of pizza and coffee cups.

National Employee Appreciation Month is being marked at Los Angeles International Airport with a Gold Star recognition program that celebrates employees who provide great service.

To make it easy for travelers to nominate a badged LAX employee, the airport has created a web form.  Nominations can also be made by texting STAR to 52948. Anyone who works for the airport, airlines, concessions, service providers, TSA and Customs are eligible.

To encourage travelers to particpate,  LAX Guest Services staff will be in the terminals next week sharing information – and handing out goodies.

Tidbits for travelers: Talk back at Gatwick

Lots of airports are using Twitter as a tool to interact with travelers passing through.

London’s Gatwick Airport has been one of them.

Now the airport is kicking its social media program up a notch by integrating Twitter messages into the physical space of the airport. Throughout the day, Gatwick passengers will see this message on the check-in monitors.

Airport officials say reaching out by Twitter is part of an overall airport upgrade and rebranding program that will improve facilities but also “provide passengers with a more human and personal experience.”

That sounds promising.

The goals is to monitor and respond to in-airport comments 24 hours a day.

But not yet: while Twitter works round-the-clock, Gatwick’s social media team does not. So for now you can talk back to Gatwick on Twitter, but the airport will only Tweet back during working hours.

London Gatwick Airport Twitter screen