Technology Innovation and Travel Conveniences

Hyatt now allows its elite members to check in to rooms on-line. I had 2 near misses this week with non-Hyatt properties.  Chicago had a convention in town and I was lucky to get my room when I checked it at 11 pm.  My Houston hotel had several rooms damaged from flooding earlier in week, and I was lucky to get a room when I arrived after midnight.

Several hotels are setting up kiosks to allow for flight boarding passes to be printed before you leave for the airport.

Hilton allows you to download in PDF format your final hotel bill (including the late breakfast just before you left with the paper bill). Hertz has long provided on-line versions of car rental receipts. Along with electronic airline tickets, makes major travel expenses easy for travelers to get digital copies from the source provider.

Airlines are innovating with smarter ways of boarding planes - including the "reverse pyramid" format of US Air. I like the simple A-B-C boarding plan Southwest uses. I get A 98% of the time by checking in on-line 24 hours prior. This ensures me an aisle on the left side of the plane (so my right hand can easily work on the laptop) and plenty of overhead space. Unfortunately, Southwest may be mucking with that. That's one "innovation" I do NOT want to see.

Finally, talking about regression - Verizon is (finally) killing its Airfone service. Shame it never priced that right. I liked it on long flights to quickly check and clean out voice mail. But more disconcertingly Boeing mey be re-thinking Connexion - its satellite driven WI FI service on planes.

Update: Business 2.0 talks about car sharing service, Google Transit trip planner and helicopter service reinstated between JFK and Wall Street

Update: Sheraton (Starwood) went one further this week. As soon as I had checked out they emailed me a PDF file of my bill. No need to wait 2 days and go to their site as the Hilton process works.

Comments

[Deepak]

I was very disappointed to hear about Connexion. I would use wi-fi on planes all the time, even in economy with the limited battery life on my laptop. I hope that wi-fi on planes returns soon. Airfone I have never used since the prices were too high.