Talk Story
Travel competition
heats up as passengers
adapt to restrictionsFOR Hawaii residents, the best deals these days seem to be the 99-cent menu items at McDonald's, Burger King and Jack in the Box.
Isn't it marvelous what competition does to prices? Just in time for Super Bowl Sunday, you can buy a case of cold beer for $14.49, pick up a Sunday Star-Bulletin for 75 cents or make a long-distance call for 7 cents a minute.
True, my property tax assessment might have soared even as neighborhood home prices remain in a 10-year slump, the price of postage stamps might keep rising faster than I can use them up (anybody need a few 30-cent stamps?) and gasoline prices might be headed north again, but thanks to competition I can get a double cheeseburger for $1.04, tax included.
Meanwhile, airlines are offering folks across the mainland U.S. the airfare equivalent of a 99-cent cheeseburger to fill seats again.
"These are the probably the best deals ever," a spokesman for the British Tourist Agency told the Wall Street Journal.
For example, Air France will fly Los Angelenos to Paris and back for as little as $343, while American has a special $334 deal from LAX to London. The extra 208 miles from Heathrow to Charles de Gaulle costs a mere $9, as long as you start in Los Angeles.
On the other hand, the best price I could find on the Internet for a flight from L.A. to Honolulu during the same late-February period was $528 on Hawaiian Airlines.
THE COST per mile from Los Angeles to Paris on Air France's special fare is 6 cents, while from L.A. to Honolulu it's almost 21 cents. In other words, if that flight to Paris were a 99-cent double cheeseburger, to buy the Honolulu trip instead would be like paying $3.47 for the same sandwich.
Of course, the weather in Paris in February is not what we'll expect here. If surf, sun and sand are what Southern Californians are after, coming to Hawaii will be worth the 350 percent difference in fares.
Still, France is the world's leading travel destination with 76.5 million visitors in 2001 --more than 10 times the number who visited Hawaii. They spent $29 billion dollars and that's a lot of burgers, even if it averages out to a mere $380 per visit.
Despite a 20 percent drop-off immediately after Sept. 11, the number of visitors to France in 2001 increased by 1.5 million over the previous year. Today, with a quarter of the seats empty on most international flights, the French are scrambling to keep their momentum.
Hotels in Europe are slashing rates by 30 to 40 percent, travel agents report. One London chain, the Radisson Edwardian Hotels, dropped room rates as much as 60 percent. Hold the pickles; hold the lettuce!
TRAVELERS, in the meantime, are reportedly adapting to the new realities of air travel, changing the way they pack, dress and act to speed up security checks.
One traveler interviewed by the Wall Street Journal says she gets around the new one-carry-on-per-passenger baggage restrictions by bringing her parka with her wherever she flies, even to Hawaii. The coat doesn't count as a carry-on and has lots of pockets to stuff with things that used to go in her duffel bag.
Other passengers are packing everything in Ziploc freezer bags -- socks in one, shirts in a second, underwear in another, etc. The transparent bags allow security screeners to easily see what's inside and keep things organized, both of which make random searches faster.
To avoid being singled out for one of those random security searches, savvy passengers are now hanging back during boarding instead of rushing to the front of the line, the Journal says. People in the front of the line are picked more often.
Travelers are dressing differently, too. Slip-on shoes with no laces to retie are in, but jewelry, hairpins and even underwire bras are out since they set off metal detectors. Shapeless shirts, loose fitting pants and loafers are now preferred to business suits.
In other words, travelers on the mainland are dressing more and more like we do in Hawaii -- except for those parkas.
John Flanagan is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
He can be reached at: jflanagan@starbulletin.com.