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eople who don’t travel for a livingthink business travel is so glam-orous. You get to see the world, eatat the finest restaurants, and stay atFive Star hotels! Actually, we see

more of the world’s airports and conven-tion centers, eat at fast food restaurants,and stay at hotels where folks are sometimes less-than-thrilled to see us.

AIR SICKNESSNope, travel ain’t all glamour, but it canbe fun. We love Southwest Airlinesbecause the people who work there real-ly are friendly folks. They make us feelimportant, plus they get us to wherewe’re going on time, which is a very goodthing in our line of work.

If you’ve traveled on SouthwestAirlines, then you know that they don’tpre-assign seats. Depending on when youcheck-in, you are given a boarding passfor the “A” group, the “B” group, or the“C” group. This is not a class distinction;on Southwest all the seats are the same.The letter on your card shows when youare permitted to board the plane.Obviously, the “A” group is preferablebecause you get to board first. When wefly Southwest, Rich always grabs an openrow and sits in the window seat.Georganne sits on the aisle, with thehope that the center seat will remainopen, so we’ll have more room.

On full flights, Georganne has beenknown to pick up the air sickness bag,hold it tightly in her lap, and stare at it

until it looks like everyone is on boardand in their seats. If someone eyes theempty seat next to her, she coughs a fewtimes, stares a little harder, and the per-son usually keeps on moving down theaisle. The flight might have just one openseat left when they close the doors, butthere’s a good chance that one open seatis the one between us. We’ve shared thistrick for years in our seminars, and weknow it works, because attendees havecalled to tell us so. One man even sent usa bottle of wine, along with a nice photo-graph of himself on the airplane holding“the bag.”

NO GUARANTEESAs you would imagine, checking in tohotels isn’t always glamorous, either.There’s not always someone in a spiffyuniform waiting outside to open the cardoor and whisk us directly to our rooms.And, sometimes, even confirmed andguaranteed room reservations are neitherconfirmed nor guaranteed.

One memorable experience happenedone winter night when we had to drivefrom one seminar to another, a trip thatunder normal conditions took aboutthree hours. It was snowing that night,so our three hour drive was more like six,but we weren’t too worried. We’d arriveat the hotel around midnight, in plenty oftime to set up the meeting room, andsleep for a few hours before our seminarin the morning.

So we schlepped our bags through the

snow, and into the lobby, where the deskclerk informed us that it was late, andbecause of the storm, he had given ourguaranteed rooms to other people. Theywere completely sold out and there justwasn’t a thing he could do for us, exceptcall other hotels to look for rooms. After20 minutes of calling, he found anotherproperty – 57 miles away.

We looked at him like he was nuts. Itwas now close to 1:00 a.m., and this guywanted us to drive 57 miles in a snowstorm, then turn around and drive backin time for our 7:00 a.m. seminar thatwas at his hotel? Rich offered every solu-tion he could think of until, exasperated,Georganne announced that we would bejust fine sleeping right there in the lobby.There were two very nice couches, andwe could each take one. Then she beganto unpack her suitcase. Just as she wasabout to hang her undergarments on thelampshade, the desk clerk produced thenight manager, who apologized, andmiraculously, produced two rooms. Thishotel’s policy, it seems, was to alwayskeep a few rooms open just in case somedignitary happened to show up. Thedesk clerk knew it, but he apparentlydidn’t think we were important enoughto suggest this to the manager, until weraised a ruckus.

And just like Southwest’s air sicknessbag, the old hanging-your-shorts-on-a-lampshade-in-the-lobby works, too. Justask our good friend Bob Ferguson, ownerof Ben Franklin Crafts, in Redmond,Washington.

PThe Glamorous Life

BY RICH KIZER & GEORGANNE BENDER

Rich Kizer & Georganne Bender are nationally recognized experts on customer service,customer retention strategies, “messing with the media,” and everything retail. Contact them by e-mail at info@kizerandbender.com. © Kizer & Bender 2004 . All rights reserved.

How faking air sickness and hanging your undergarments on lamps can helpyou travel more comfortably

(more on page 28)

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As bad as our experience was, we onlyverbally expressed our displeasure. Wecould have been like the two guys fromSeattle who arrived at a Houston, Texas,hotel only to find their guaranteed roomreservations had been given to other trav-elers. They also weren’t real thrilled withthe snotty and unapologetic desk clerk.Unlike our situation, there was no manag-er there to save the day, and the two gen-tlemen had to spend the night at anotherless-than-desirable hotel.

Rather than threatening to sleep in thelobby, these guys created a PowerPointpresentation for the management of thehotel, entitled, “Yours is a Very Bad Hotel”.Then they unleashed it on the Internet tobe viewed by millions of potential customers.

According to one slide in their presen-tation the “Lifetime chances of dying in

a bathtub are 1 in 10,455; The chance ofthe of Earth being ejected from the solarsystem by the gravitational pull of a pass-ing star is 1 in 2,200,000; The chance ofwinning the UK Lottery is 1 in13,983,816; and the chance of either ofthem returning to that hotel is worse thanany of those.” You can view the presenta-tion in its entirety online at www.snopes.com/business/ info/badho-tel/frame.htm.

LUCKY IN LAS VEGASWhen you travel a lot, you are very awarethat sometimes luck just isn’t going to goyour way, but then there are glorious timeswhen it does. Like the time we arrived atthe Mirage Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas,only to find that our $75 a night, heck-of-a-deal rooms, were not available. Some

mistake had been made somewhere, andthe property was sold out.

This time the desk clerk didn’t call for amanager, she didn’t try to sell us moreexpensive rooms, and she didn’t offer tofind us another property. Instead she justsmiled, told us our low rate would be hon-ored for our entire stay, handed us ourroom keys, and told us to call her person-ally if we needed anything. Needed any-thing? She had given us two incrediblerooms, plus an unbelievably luxurious2,000-square-foot suite comfortably nestled in-between them.

So maybe travel isn’t so bad after all.We’ve been lucky because our good travelstories far outweigh the bad. Knock onwood, our luck will continue. Maybe we’reweird, but we actually enjoy business travel. Even the unglamorous parts. ◆

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