Travel suppliers keeping customers well connected
Dan Luzadder, Travel Weekly, 7/3/2007 (excerpted)
Jack Kerouac didn't have these kinds of problems when he was on the road. He never needed to hunt for a hot spot or find a place where his cell phone signal would work. The only wireless connection available on his famous journeys across 1950s America came from a car radio. His communications link was a pay phone at a crossroads somewhere.
But in the half-century since Kerouac penned his famous travel tales, the world itself has journeyed light years in terms of the well-connected traveler.
Wireless access around the world is on the increase, from trains to boats to planes to hotels and even entire communities. It is changing how business travelers look at travel opportunities and affecting leisure travel decisions, as well, as increasing numbers of casual travelers are lugging along laptops or BlackBerrys to stay at least loosely connected to work or home.
The impact of wireless accessibility through the range of electronic communications devices available is also driving new marketing opportunities for major players throughout the travel industry.
As the demand for service is met by new technological rollouts, say the experts, innovative ways of making use of wireless technology is driving efficiencies -- as well as new services.
Next year, major U.S. airlines are expected to launch high-speed wireless connections for passengers onboard their aircraft. In the Netherlands and other countries in Europe, you can connect to points of access onboard moving trains. In California, the 160-mile Capitol Corridor train between Sacramento and San Jose is poised to take wireless to a new level, planning for a wireless backbone that can serve safety and security as well as Web surfers.
Last month, another link in the chain for connected travelers was hooked up by Avis Budget, which began offering portable, wireless equipment to car rental customers for $11 a day, enabling them to use BlackBerry-type devices, smartphones and laptops in the car as they move about the country.
Increasingly, travel agents say they are getting questions about Internet access and cell phone services as their customers book travel. Business travel managers include wireless access in their decision-making on what vendors they choose.
Still kinks to iron out
While business and leisure travelers are on the threshold of being able to truly tune in and turn on their links to others no matter where in the world they may be, there are still bugs to work out and gaps to close.
Geri Mitchell-Brown, a Wi-Fi strategist with Boulder, Colo.-based SpectraLink, sees much of the network that is in place or expected to be in place soon as she travels the world.
"As a business traveler myself, where I see wireless doing well is that there are now a lot of pockets of availability," said Mitchell-Brown, whose company provides wireless systems for businesses with mobile employees.
"Of course, that also goes along with what is not doing so good, which is that I have one provider at my little airport in Denver, then another in San Jose and a different one at my hotel."
But as one whose business world and acumen revolves around the need for high-speed, wireless communications, she also understands what drives most travelers in maintaining their instant connections.
"At this point I could not live without my Wi-Fi," she said. "And I can't imagine dial-up in a hotel. But pockets of different providers is one issue that is still out there, paying here and there and the next place.
"On the other hand, one of the most exciting things for business travelers is wireless in flight. I flew on Lufthansa recently and was online for an hour-and-a-half, and the price was affordable."
While wireless in hotels is probably the most mature of the genre, there are probably still as many dial-up choices at hotels as there are wireless. Nevertheless, hotel companies have embraced Wi-Fi widely over the last three years.
But for airlines, trains and cruise ships, systems are still being developed. Taking advantage of travel time to complete work or use the Internet for travel-related convenience is highly attractive to both travelers and providers.
Air Cell, an Illinois-based company that won a wireless spectrum auction conducted by the Federal Communications Commission last year, expects to serve commercial airlines with a point-of-access device that will allow broadband, but not Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP), on aircraft in 2008.
Air Cell, a provider of communications links for business and personal aircraft prior to the auction, obtained spectrum that had been used by Verizon for its seatback phone service from aircraft, which is now discontinued.
For the present and foreseeable future, the FCC has ruled against cell phones for anyone other than pilots and crew and security personnel onboard.
Air Cell did not respond to repeated requests to talk about the status of the planned 2008 rollout and about how much aircraft downtime would be needed to equip them with wireless, broadband access devices.
Air Cell executives said in a previous interview with Travel Weekly that they intended to offer service through the airlines for a low per-use cost and were exploring pricing options at the time.
It came as a surprise to some, however, that VoIP, which studies have shown does not interfere with navigational and radio communications the way cell phones can, is not going to be offered.
Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that most passengers cringe at the idea of a plane full of people talking on the phone, a cacophonous chorus that travelers could endure for hours at a time.
Hot spots on wheels and rails
While security might never have been an issue of interest for car rental companies, having vehicles that act as their own hot spot has drawn interest from the major providers of late.
In addition to Avis' launch of Avis Connect, a Wi-Fi service that uses a portable router connected through the cigarette lighter, both Hertz and Enterprise have also developed Wi-Fi access at locations in major metropolitan areas.
Mike Caron, Avis' vice president for product and program development, said car rental car access had received a warm response from consumers who won't have to look for a Starbucks or other Internet access away from hotels and airports.
"There has been some surprise from customers that we are offering this type of service, but anecdotally the response has been enthusiastic," Caron said.
"We are rolling it out at the rate of one major city a week."
Trains, with the exception of some in Europe, generally have been slower on the uptake for wireless access than others in the U.S., but that is changing as demonstration and pilot projects are producing initiatives for wireless.
Amtrak has been testing wireless offerings in stations and aboard trains in the Northeast Corridor. It offers Wi-Fi in four ClubAcela lounges but has not progressed much beyond that stage.
But Jim Allison, a planner with the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, which supervises the rail corridor between San Jose and Sacramento, Calif., offered a glimpse of the future for wireless service aboard trains.
The authority, he said, has over the past two years investigated technology and is now moving toward a contract with a service provider that can build trackside infrastructure.
But he said efforts to put passenger access on the agenda "ended up with this thing being turned on its head. As we moved toward that, we began to see opportunities in a wireless backbone to develop better safety and security on trains."
Quoting wireless consultant Peter Kingsland at a recent conference on trains and wireless systems in London that he attended, Allison said he agreed with Kingsland that passenger Wi-Fi access is a "Trojan horse" for other applications.
"As soon as he [Kingsland] said that, it captured everything for me," Allison said. "As soon as we can have a platform for building applications, each train operator can analyze their own operations with a system they have acquired through passenger access modes.
"This has homeland security possibilities, and that is one of the reasons we are asking for the kind of bandwidth we are seeking: four megabits."
The Capitol Corridor Authority is not the first in the U.S. to explore those sophisticated access possibilities, but it is at the forefront for modern rail services, at least in the U.S.
"In five years, I think this will be the norm for train operators," Allison said.
"The riders want it, and the opportunities are there for other services and applications. Train operators will step out and start talking about this because it speaks to the bottom line. It makes business sense because as a model, it can help retain or gain riders."
He said because of potential increases in riders because of access, the authority is exploring offering the connections for free.
Construction of the Capitol Corridor wireless system is expected in the second quarter of next year, Allison said.