If it's sunday it must be Friedrichshafen
Coming to you from 34,000 feet aboard Air Canada, I’m on a rather heavy travel schedule for a number of my portfolio companies. All part of the “active VC” thing you hear so much about.
Here is the general itinerary, Robert Scoble, keep up with this, bud…
April 20th Air Canada to Seattle
April 21st - Fly Air Canada from Seattle to Vancouver then the red eye to Toronto
April 22nd - Fly 9am Air Canada to London, UK
April 23rd - Fly Round trip to from London to Friedrichshafen, Germany.
April 26th - Fly from the UK, via Amsterdam, to Hong Kong
April 27th - Ferry from Hong Kong Airport to (Shekou) Shenzhen
April 30th - Fly from Hong Kong to Los Angeles via Seoul, South Korea on Korean Air.
May 2nd - Air Canada Home to Toronto.
Here are some interesting things I’ve learned while planning this trip and talking to a ton of business travelers.
Line Cuts: A seriously good business.
Virtually every business person I’ve talked has said they would do serious background checks, pay $150 per year, and cough up some privacy for what amounts to a line cut card in two places: The customs line and the security screening line. For customs/immigration, swipe the card and go. For security, this is essentially the business guys paying for Homeland security to bring on extra people to man a separate line. No other special treatments, just line cuts.
Airline sites do have low/weird fares but.
What a pain in the butt. First of all, Travelocity, Expedia, etc, all pretty much blow chunks when it comes to really really digging diving into low fares. For example, that little leg you see from Toronto-Seattle–Vancouver-Toronto-London is thousand of dollars cheaper then doing what would appear to be something a bit more normal, ie, when I’m done with my meeting in Seattle. By backing tracking to Toronto, on the Air Canada web site, I was able to get a fare for that leg which nobody could come close to. My day trip from London to Friedrichshafen is on RyanAir; for 5 dollars base fare and 30 dollars of taxes. Round trip. No major site came anywhere near the price, surprise, but even more important most of the sites couldn’t even tell me I could do this flight non-stop. KLM had a dirt cheap fare to Hong Kong from London and Korean Air, going via Taipei vs. direct to Seoul, cut the price in half. The cost of the whole trip you see above? $3400 dollars. The punch line? Business class. (okay, a couple of upgrade coupons tossed into the mix) Time to book all this nonsense? 5 painstaking hours.
Business folks are using Macs and, shhh open office.
On the Air Canada flight I was just on, 6 Mac laptops with two of them running open source software, two running office from Microsoft. Yeah, I asked everybody who had a laptop what they were using, sorry to the rest of you, I’m just weird. That just seems pretty interesting given that company is supposed to have no market share with business people.
Anyway, those are just some fun little items and the trip has just begun. Stay tuned for more..
I used to live in Friedrichshafen! I am chuffed to hear there are startups there. I thought it was all DASA, MTU and mittlestand family businesses. Geil (as they say)! . I can taste the dark wheat beer, Schweinhaxen and Mohnkuchen now. If you have spare time in Vancouver, love to meet! Roland 604 729 7924 roland AT bryght.com
Posted by: Roland Tanglao | April 21, 2006 at 01:42
Rick, are you starting to seed your business case for Google Travel? ;)
Posted by: nolin | April 21, 2006 at 14:41
Sounds like you are setting us up for another period without posts... :o
Safe travels, my friend. :)
Posted by: Steve Meyer | April 21, 2006 at 17:41
At the Banff Venture Forum three years ago there was a presentation by San Francisco-based AirTreks (http://www.airtreks.com) who specializes in Round the World and MultiCity International travel. My son used them for a round the world trip a couple of years ago and got a total price that was significantly (>40%) lower than trying to piece together flights such as you have done. As their website says "The only website for real instant prices for all the places you would like to visit."
Posted by: Jim Courtney | April 21, 2006 at 20:13
As newly interested person in travelling I am getting nuts about those sites and how they really make it hard to get what you want.
I am really hoping to get some improvements through google
With your interest I assume you know about Kayak, Expertflyer and round the World Tickets? ;))
Posted by: Nicole Simon | April 22, 2006 at 05:45
I use kayak.com to scan and then double-check prices on expedia, travelocity and orbitz. Once in a while ticket availability will differ. All of these suck, though, for complicated routes.
Redeeming mileage points: ugh. So painful. It's bad enough that someone could set up a biz that just makes that easier.
Posted by: Oshoma Momoh | April 22, 2006 at 12:55
I flew to London from Vancouver a couple years back on Air Canada and I noticed something very interesting when checking prices. As many Canadians know, airfare is often cheaper if your flight originates in the US (because of more competition I suppose), so I had a look at Seattle-London via all the regular travel sites. I was on a very tight budget at the time.
Not only was a ticket on Air Canada C$450 cheaper from Seatle but it was on the SAME FLIGHT. Meaning the route was actually Seattle-Vancouver-London, with the flight from Vancouver to London being the *exact* flight they tried to sell to me for hundreds of dollars more.
How is it that adding a whole two extra legs to my iternary could result in a lower price? Obviously, differences in taxes could account for part of that but certainly not $450 worth.
I ended up going direct from Vancouver-London because of time constraints but boy did that tick me off. Airline ticket pricing is total voodoo.
Posted by: Mark Thomson | April 23, 2006 at 03:46
"On the Air Canada flight I was just on, 6 Mac laptops with two of them running open source software, two running office from Microsoft."
Was there a Star Trek convention going on? Did they have Spock ears on? :) Couldn't resist.
Posted by: Josh Einstein | April 23, 2006 at 14:03
13-stops travel plan in 5 hours = 25 min per stop.
bravo =)
weird this is so close to my estimation in a school report - 30 min planning per stop.
Posted by: Timothy Li | April 23, 2006 at 20:15
If you want to find the cheapest tickets try:
http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch/
It'll almost certainly find you the best route for the best price, problem is they won't sell it to you!
Posted by: Miles Barr | April 28, 2006 at 09:51
Hi Miles,
I've used it a lot. Great stuff, I agree. Too bad you can't get a ticket.
Thanks for stopping by.
Posted by: Rick Segal | April 28, 2006 at 10:00
One other thing. The ITA flight schedules are not complete in that they don't always show the discounts or the discount airlines.
Posted by: Rick Segal | April 28, 2006 at 10:14
I am feeling nerdish that I do not only know about the ita site but actually know how to use it. :)
Posted by: Nicole Simon | April 29, 2006 at 18:38