Finally made it to Sydney after a long, long flight.  Screaming baby behind me for nine hours, which meant that I didn’t get much sleep.  Delightful parents who thought that a business-class seat made a much nicer changing table than the changing table in the bathroom.  Particularly delightful since they decided to release their little darling’s stink bomb just before dinner was served.  Thank goodness they don’t have ejector seats on commercial flights.  I was sorely tempted to pull the handle.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that the photo here shows a baggage tag.  Yes, I succumbed.  Due to the new security regulations in India, you can only carry on a single item of less than 8kg.  So my cunning plan of spending 11 days in Asia with only hand luggage was thwarted, meaning I had to wait 20 minutes for my bags to come off the belt in Sydney.

I obviously don’t match the description of an agricultural smuggler, so I was waved through customs, agriculture, and quarantine and straight into a taxi to the hotel.

Despite quite a lot of time traveling the globe, I’m still not a whiz with time zones.  So it didn’t come as a total surprise to receive a phone call at 11pm while enjoying a beer in the hotel bar – my bi-weekly call with one of my colleagues.  We’d very carefully arranged the call to be after I’d finished my business day in Mumbai.  I’d calculated the hour just fine.  I’d screwed up the day.  Luckily he’s also got pan-Asian responsibility, and is understanding of mix-ups like these.

Slept like a log last night, and woke up today feeling refreshed.  It’s warm and sunny today, and I’m headed out like Tommy Tourist, in a tee-shirt (okay, who are we kidding…a polo shirt) and camera in tow.

Well, it’s been a pretty full 24 hours.  After a very full day in Mumbai, I finished my workshop and headed out to the airport to catch my flight to Bangkok, then onwards to Sydney.  Mumbai traffic is legendary – the roads are normally jammed in the small hours of the morning when most international flights come and go.  But my flight last night left earlier, so we fought our way out to the airport at the peak of rush-hour.  Driving in India is not for the faint-hearted.  I always end up with a few more gray hairs.

It was a good trip – both professionally, as I got a lot accomplished, but also personally.  My Indian colleagues have discovered that I like to eat, and are showing me some of Mumbai’s best restaurants.  We went out last night for super seafood, including delicious garlic crab – whole crab sautéed with loads of butter and garlic.  It’s the second time I’ve had it in Mumbai – and both times, I’ve made myself sick by overdoing it with the rich, spicy concoction.  The pleasure’s worth the pain in this case.

I made my way through the throngs of people outside the airport, through check-in, customs, and security.  The airport in Mumbai really is the pits – I’ve been through plenty of unpleasant, grotty airports in my time – but it’s the inefficiency, the crowds, the dirt, and the hassle that make Mumbai top my list.

Finally through to the departure lounge, I had a few hours to kill.  After four days of curry, I decided to treat myself to a KFC for dinner (never let it be said I’ve lost touch with the common man).  Across from the fast food court there is a massage hall – where the massage is performed by blind masseuses.  So I treated myself to a foot massage.

I flew Thai to Bangkok.  The flight to Bangkok was uneventful, but the service was such a contrast the Swiss service I had the other day.  Friendly, attentive, and constantly trying to please.  The seat was rubbish, uncomfortable for sleeping – when I finally find the airline that combines the flat seat with the great service and convenient routes, I’ll be a convert for life.  (BA would win my business if it didn’t mean constant backtracking, and sadly my travel budget doesn’t stretch to Singapore on regular basis.)

Not the sign you want to see at 4:30am when you've just arrived from Mumbai, desperate for a shower

My flight arrived in Bangkok on schedule at 4:30am.  I went straight through customs and security, only to be turned away at the lounge because it didn’t open until 5:15am.  After a few fitful hours of sleep on the flight from Mumbai, this was not a pleasant surprise.  I made a quick phone call home, then hit the lounge for a shower as soon as it opened.

The spa opened at 6am, so I headed over to have a shoulder massage before I boarded my flight to Sydney.  Two massages in a day might be a little indulgent, but they were in different countries, so I chalk it up to one of the benefits of being a global traveler.

Time to jump onto my next flight to Sydney.  Next update from down under!

My plane awaits: flight TG451 to Sydney

I’m writing this from a Swiss flight on my way from Zurich to Mumbai, and I’m currently somewhere over Abu Dhabi, looking down on the brightly-lit highways that cross the country. 

The good news is that the new Swiss business class cabin is much more comfortable than the old one.  The bed is totally flat, and the unusual layout of the cabin means that I ended up with a huge single seat with a table either side of me – far wider than any first-class seat I’ve ever sat in (although not as long, making the layout feel slightly claustrophobic). 

With only five seats in each row (compared with six or even seven on other airlines), Swiss are sacrificing a lot of potential revenue to give people their extra space.  I guess they’ve done the calculations of revenue vs. load and determined that if they can get people on-board and paying full-fare, it’s worth having fewer, higher-paying passengers.

Mine was like the solo seat on the right of the photo — with a table either side of the seat.

Despite the new seats, I still can’t bring myself to like Swiss.  It’s just a little too much like Switzerland.  You never really feel that you’ve gotten value for your money.

The marginal cost of providing catering can’t be that high.  On Lufthansa, they recognize the good German appetite and cater accordingly.  Portions are generous and you’re served at least two proper meals plus a snack on most routes.

But the portions on Swiss are incredibly small.  Half the menu is vegetarian (catered by the Hiltl restaurant in Zurich), which doesn’t meet my definition of food (it’s not a meal if it doesn’t contain meat or fish), and they’d run out of the meat choice halfway through the cabin, despite the plane not being full.  On my last flight, they fooled me twice – they served me a vegetarian meal of soup.  Breaking two of my rules: 1) no meat and 2) soup is not food.  Seriously, when you’ve spent several thousand dollars on a ticket, you expect something more than a bowl of soup.

If this were an American airline, with loads of upgrades and much lower revenue-per-seat, I could be more forgiving.  But nearly everyone on this flight has paid the better part of US$4500 for their seat.  At that price, everyone should be able to get a decent meal, and one of their choice.

I left my last flight on Swiss feeling the same way – that they’re cutting too many corners unnecessarily, especially with their catering.  I’ve booked the rest of my 30,000 mile trip on Lufthansa & Thai – revenue that would have gone to Swiss if they’d just spent another $20/head on catering.

Enough griping about the food.  It’s just that I get grumpy when I’m hungry.

Shifting gears, I’m secretly jealous of all my friends and family in Washington who are busy digging out of the deepest snow they’ve had since 1922.  Something about the way snow transforms a busy, noisy city is absolutely magical.

I left the house early this morning, walking up our road at around 6:45am on a Sunday morning.  I had the entire village to myself – dark, misty, and utterly silent.  I thought to myself that it’s the last time I’ll enjoy silence for the next week or so.

I’m mentally preparing myself for Mumbai – the cacophony of horns, the chaos of cars, scooters, bicycles, pedestrians and cows that are everywhere, the smells and sights.  I’ve managed to bring a decent camera this time, so maybe I’ll even get the chance to take a decent picture or two.  If I’m brave enough, I may even venture outside the hotel this time…

I read an interesting article called It’s the Little Things today about the type of small services that only come from loyalty, and it got me thinking.  I’ve stayed at hundreds of hotel over the past ten years, but there are some where the personal service really stood out – and where my loyalty paid off. 

It’s a chicken-and-egg thing, of course, and that’s what I think the article misses out on.  The hotels where you’ll stay frequently enough to build loyalty are the ones that treated you well enough as a guest initially to cause you to return.  It speaks about the commitment of the hotel management to really understand what their guests want, whether it’s for a single stay (when you get the standard package) or for a long-term repeat visitor who gets a little more special treatment.

I’ve certainly had the kind of treatment that the article talks about from a few hotels where I was a ‘regular’, and the extra service really makes them stick out in my mind.

In New Orleans, the sales manager of the hotel knew that I liked a particular room, and she made sure that it was always available for me whenever I stayed at the hotel.  At the hotel bar, the staff learned that I liked Guinness (not on the menu) and arranged to have it special-ordered and kept in the bar when I was staying at the hotel.  It was a really nice, personal touch.  When the lifts were slow, I was escorted to the staff lift and taken downstairs the ‘back way’ to avoid the queues.  Each time I arrived at the hotel, the front desk staff greeted me like an old friend.  The sales manager at the hotel would invite me for a coffee every few weeks to find out personally how I was enjoying my stay.

At another hotel in London, it was the same story.  There was one room in the hotel that was furnished differently from all the others – it was a prototype for the redesign that they rolled out to the entire hotel, but some of the higher-end features were cut from the final design, so only featured in this room – making it the nicest in the hotel.  Once again, the hotel manager learned that I liked this room, and made sure I had it on every visit.  He’d often invite me for a drink in the bar to hear my thoughts about the hotel and service – it was a really personal touch that made a huge influence on my decision to stay with the hotel.  When the food & beverage manager learned that I had eaten everything on the room service menu and was bored, he asked the chef to propose some specials from the main restaurant and have them sent to my room.  It was a nice touch.

In Singapore, there was no formal loyalty programme at the hotel where I used to stay regularly, but it was clear that the hotel was tracking my stay and preferences each time I visited.  There was a sort of one-upmanship in the welcome I received each time I visited.  The first time I arrived, there was a pot of tea waiting for me in my room.  The second time, it was a pot of tea and some cookies.  After that, tea, cookies, wine, fruit, even a tub filled with rose petals.  I was afraid of what they’d think of next if I went back again!  Still, it made an impression that they really valued my business and were interested in making me happy as a customer.

As much as a hotel can track preferences through loyalty schemes and guest preference cards, there’s no substitute for the real customer service that comes from a genuine human.  It’s becoming more and more rare these days, but there are still some places that make the effort.

After having heard other frequent travelers raving about it, I finally found time to see the new George Clooney film, Up in the Air.  Lots of good attention to detail and plenty of things that made Aude say “wow, that’s exactly like you!”  The suitcase-packing scenes (right down to the brand & model of suitcase) could have been shot at our house, and the TSA security regime (including the slip-on shoes and de facto profiling of the other passengers in line in order to get through quickly) rang true as well.

Really enjoyed it, although there was a little too much gratuitous product placement (heaven knows how much Hertz paid to plug their #1 Gold Club card, and one wonders how effective it was as they hurtle towards bankruptcy).  But overall a fun movie.

And sadly, playing the Frequent Flyer game of one-upmanship with Platinum cards only helps you score if you actually look like George Clooney.  For the rest of us mere mortals, even with a fist full of Platinum cards, I don’t suggest trying it at the hotel bar.

All in all, a lighter-hearted look at frequent travel than Lost in Translation.  The truth, I think, lies somewhere in between the two…

I knew it had to be too good to last.  I’ve been gloating over the past few weeks about how quite my travel schedule is.  No sooner had I thought about taking a week of vacation than I learned that I need to be in Mumbai for a few days, then straight to Sydney for a two-day workshop. 

Flight times mean that I lose two weekends away from home.  And Aude will have to add Valentine’s Day to the long list of events I’ve missed due to business travel (her birthday and my birthday being the other two events, recently).  And let’s face it, 21’099 miles in a week is a lot, even for a backside as calloused and travel-weary as mine.

Still, we’re headed out to the slopes for a week as soon as I get back from Sydney – hopefully without too much jetlag.  We’re just finalizing our plans for the trip, booking our apartment, and buying our skis!

As soon as we’re back from skiing, it’s straight onto a plane again — this time, headed for Beijing.  Yep, February is turning into a pretty brutal travel month.  Plenty of frequent flyer miles, though!