Spendthrift Shoestring

À Pointe-à-Pitre il est 14 h 29

Researching flights from Guadeloupe to various nearby "offshore islands"—more on this soon—I chanced upon this page on the the Pointe-à-Pitre airport Web site.

I'm a little bit concerned about the Alerte Ouragan in January, as well as the fact that the airline company information page includes but this one descriptive word: blablablablablablllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaablablablablablaaaaaaaaaaa.

None of this, obviously, is meant to suggest that I'm not over the moon about the job that will be taking me to the French Caribbean shortly...

Budget, Value, and Hotel Listings

I love Budget Travel. It's my favorite American travel magazine. It's the only mainstream, commercial U.S. travel magazine that succeeds consistently in coming up with tips, advice, news, and information of real value to travelers determined to see the world on a reasonable budget. In the prevailing U.S. travel publishing context, where aspirational travel nearly always trumps value-based travel, Budget Travel offers a much appreciated alternative.

I hope that the following will be taken in the context of my sincere appreciation for the magazine.

The lead story in the BT's February issue is titled "Best Values 2008," and it's a list of 100 hotels around the world. The magazine teamed up with TripAdvisor to come up with the list, which utilizes the latter's "Popularity Index." The theme driving the listing is "value," based on what the editors refer to as "a quality experience without ... exorbitant rates." (So far, so good, though I find that user-generated review-driven sites like TripAdvisor are by no means the best guide to actual hotel quality, which is itself far less quantifiable than many seem to want it to be.)

The main problem with the listing lies in its rate ceiling, which is $250 per night.  I understand that the main criterion here is a "quality experience" and not cheap charm, but the question has to be asked: Why is a budget travel magazine recommending hotels that run $250 per night? A $250 rate ceiling is downright alienating to me, a travel writer who travels for work and fun as much as possible. What does it look like to people of moderate means who want badly to travel and budget accordingly for their one or two trips per year?

For me and for most people I know, $250 is an exorbitant amount of money to spend on a hotel for a single night's accommodation. I don't know how else to phrase it.

$250 per night means $750 for a long weekend. It means $1750 for a week's stay.

A high-value budget hotel list would be far more valuable with a ceiling of $100, or, pushing that limit into splurge territory, $150. Such a goal is by no means impossible. Over the last several greenback-unfriendly months, I've stayed at many lovely hotels with rates under $100/night, in Europe, the Caribbean, Central America, and Asia. I have even managed to stay at stylish hotels in the too-dear eurozone for $150 per night. One quick example: Madrid's utterly gorgeous Hotel Meninas, a polished boutique charmer that charged Matt and me €102 (under $140 then; a hair over $150 today) per night for a room this past August. The rate included breakfast and a shuttle to the airport.

Elsewhere, the letter from the editor hits all the right notes for this weak dollar moment. It suggests three basic budget saving approaches: traveling to places like Mexico and Argentina where the exchange rate won't leave Americans broke; looking beyond hotels to house rental agencies and house-swapping; and getting beyond first-tier destinations. All sound, all very helpful. And online, Budget Travel pairs the top 100 hotel listing with two others, both far better: its irresistible list of 50 hotels with rates under $150 per night (from last November) and its primer to non-US hotel chains (from last September.)

Hubbub & Change for Three LCCs

Three interesting developments over the past few weeks caught my attention.

First, Ryanair announced on Wednesday that it is raising its baggage and checking-in fees. In the airline's words, this decision is part of their "continued drive to encourage passengers to travel without checked in bags and avail of Ryanair’s free of charge online check in." In practical terms, this means that checking in a single bag will cost £6 (up from £5) and that checking in at the airport (as opposed to online) will now run £3 (up from £2). These are modest increases, though they do have the effect of making it even more difficult to navigate an actually low fare on Ryanair. For the time being, bargain hunters—who aren't checking any luggage and who are checking in online—will continue to book Ryanair flights. But it is beginning to seem conceivable that with the steadily growing litany of charges Ryanair's most natural customers will soon be discouraged from flying with the airline.

Next up: SkyEurope's partnership with Czech Railways, from the Prague Daily Monitor via AirScoop. Dubbed the "CD Sky alliance," this partnership will allow people to purchase combination train-air tickets from train stations around the Czech Republic. The airfare component of the combination tickets are lower than those offered on SkyEurope's site, with advance fares cheaper than last-minute fares. Yesterday, the program kicked off in Brno. Pardubice, Ostrava, and Prague Liben train stations will begin offering combination tickets in February. What's most interesting about the partnership is its legacy. Until last year, Czech Airlines operated a similar arrangement with Czech Railways, abandoning it because it was judged to be less than seriously profitable. It will be interesting to see if and how the new partnership works out for SkyEurope.

And lastly, yowza, the Air Berlin rebranding! Until recently, Air Berlin's brand carried the aesthetic promise of a 1990 supermarket sale in some chain-drenched corner of the world. No longer. Earlier this month, the airline launched a new font (sexy), a new Web site (beautiful, and, um, is that a Finnish-language option?), and a new tagline (in German: "Genau deine Airline"; in English, the rather less precise "Your airline".)

Air Berlin's rebranding is especially sweet because it follows the creation of a good product that previously suffered from a ho-hum brand identity. Air Berlin has distinguished itself from other low-cost carriers in Europe by offering free newspapers, snacks, drinks, and seat assignments, maintaining a significant base of business customers, checking luggage without a charge, and guaranteeing some connecting flights. The rebranding itself comes at a good time for the airline. After acquiring dba in 2006 and LTU and Condor in 2007, Air Berlin is in the process of becoming an entirely new beast, one that straddles the low-cost and median-cost airline worlds, and that offers long-haul journeys (Beijing! Phuket! Windhoek!) as well as the more typical Germany-to-the-Med routes.

New Blog Alert: Somewhere Beyond...

My friend Suzanne Russo is currently in the Argentine province of La Pampa, on a whirlwind work/play South America adventure. Happily for us, she's blogging about her travels. Check out her takes on Argentina and other destinations to come at Somewhere beyond...

Over and out.

Nassau Layover Suggestion

The Bahamasair agent was efficient and friendly. After we checked our bags and obtained our fluorescent carry-on tags, we asked her about the airport food options.

"There's the cafeteria over there, and then in the parking lot there's Bahamian food. That's where we eat."

And also, it turns out, where Matt and I eat. On our first layover, I destroyed a massive Styrofoam carry-out container of curried chicken, rice and peas, and sides of spicy potato salad and cole slaw. The (financial) damage: $10. After our Eleuthera sojourn, we had another lengthy layover at the airport. We hit a stand for fish burgers for $5 apiece.  A few minutes later I tore into a curried mutton on a bed of rice and peas, with more spicy potato salad and a dense rectangle of macaroni and cheese. That, plus a jug of local desalinated water, cost $9. Matt's ribs were similarly delicious. With sides and water, his total came to $9 as well.

The real perk of a layover in Nassau is not the worn charms of a slightly dilapidated airport. It is in the vendor stalls in the airport parking lot.

Keeping to a Budget on Eleuthera: Three Tips

On Saturday, my post on getting around pricey Grand Cayman for $150 a day appeared in Travel on a Shoestring's Blog Carnival on the Americas. I'm in good company. The Innovative Traveler's action- and tip-packed post "The Secret Lives of Travelers" is resourceful to an almost mind-numbing degree, and several other posts are great as well.

So it's appropriate, in a way, to come up with some tips for navigating a value-rich, budget-poor itinerary in the Bahamas, another corner of the Caribbean not usually associated with bargains. And yes, I know that the Bahamas is not well and truly part of the Caribbean, but since the island nation is close by and generally associated with the region, I'm extending the designation.

Matt Armendariz and I just got back from a quick three-day trip to Eleuthera, where we dashed around the northern half of the island, ate some fried food, drank some Kalik beer, and generally blissed out. The weather was perfect: warm—not hot—and breezy. We're putting a collaborative project together; for now, I thought I'd come up with some tips for keeping costs down on the island.

Travelers accustomed to exorbitant Caribbean bottom lines will be pleased by Eleuthera, where our costs settled around $40 per person per day, not including accommodation and car rental; toss those in, and our costs were about $125/day. Not orthodox shoestring territory, but considering the region's general expense (insane),  the quality of the grub (high), the funky friendliness of the guesthouse (excellent), and the mobility factor (limitless), this is an extremely reasonable outlay.

1. Stay at Morgan's Bonefish Harbour in Gregory Town. Two cottages go for $75/night ($450/week), plus a $50 cleaning fee. We stayed in Starfish Cottage, a tiny, rustic, cute little room. The shower is outside. For those who have never experienced the sheer joy of an outside shower on a warm island, you're missing a true pleasure. The guesthouse is run by Kimberly Morgan, a longtime resident who is a treasure trove of information about her adopted home. She brought coffee over in the morning, offered a ton of suggestions, and invited us to a few lively meals.

2. Restaurants on Eleuthera are far cheaper than you might expect. We dined a few times at Cambridge Villas, just down the hill from Morgan's Bonefish Cottages in Gregory Town, and enjoyed a delicious frittered fish dinner for about $20; another night, our fried chicken came to $8 per person. Cambridge Villas also offers some inexpensive motel-like rooms. Pina Café in Governor's Harbour fed us lunch for $10, and Rosy's delicious fruity breads (sold by Rosy out of a house on Queen's Highway in James Cistern) provided an ample breakfast for $7.

3. Rent a car from Hilton Johnson at the North Eleuthera airport. I'm happy to pass his number on to anyone interested. Our jeep ran $220 for three days; we filled the tank up just before dropping it off for $40.

Eleuthera is insanely beautiful and relatively undeveloped. There's a lot to say about it, but you'll have to wait just a short while for our more comprehensive take on the place.

Um, wow.

The Wall Street Journal linked to my post of a few days ago on SkyEurope and Ryanair! I hope that my finance world friends are duly impressed.

This and That

Tomorrow I'll head to Eleuthera for three nights with Matt Armendariz. We'll be scouring the incredibly long and skinny Bahamian island for treasures. Matt and I will return with a collaborative project, and I'll also write a few posts suggesting how budget-minded travelers can spend a few days in the Bahamas without going broke.

Also on my mind...

1. On Friday, I looked at Ryanair and SkyEurope's December statistics in comparison. It's not just the Irish and Slovak budget airlines that are grappling with falling load factors. In December 2007 (against December 2006 numbers) easyJet's load factor fell 2.3 percent, Aer Lingus saw a 4.6 percent slip, and Air France-KLM stumbled .8 percent. See this MarketWatch piece (via Air Scoop) for more information.

2. The December/January Monocle, which has been around for weeks and weeks and really shouldn't be cited in a blog, came with a "Travel Top Fifty 2007/8" booklet. As one might expect, Monocle's universe is no budget paradise, but it is seldom about spending money for the sake of spending money. This translates into a true interest in value and some surprisingly inexpensive recommendations. To wit: two family-run hotels in Barbiano near Bolzano, Bad Dreikirchen and Briol. Rooms at Bad Dreikirchen start at €54 per person including half-board in low-season; at Briol, rooms start at €60 per day per person, also including half-board. Very nice. I've been sensing an upcoming moment for Süd Tirol for a while; this sort of coverage of glamorous yet affordable properties can't hurt.

Budget Airlines Battle, Dec 07: Ryanair vs. SkyEurope

I got into the habit of blogging about the monthly passenger traffic statistics of two of Europe's low-cost carriers months ago at EuroCheapo, and I think I'll continue doing so here. Both Ryanair and SkyEurope make monthly passenger traffic information available a few days into the following month, allowing for easy comparisons.

Over the first months of 2007, SkyEurope had the edge over Ryanair in terms of increase of passenger numbers and load factor, which designates the number of "earned" seats, that is, seats sold or booked via some promotional guise. They've never had the edge in numbers of passengers flown—Ryanair flies almost 15 times the passengers that SkyEurope does. By the middle of the year, Ryanair was performing better than SkyEurope on both passenger number increase and load factor.

In December, SkyEurope achieved a 40 percent increase in number of passengers flown against December 2006 stats. Their load factor was 9 percent lower in December 2007 than it was in the previous December. Meanwhile, Ryanair managed an 18 percent increase in number of passengers flown against December 2006 numbers, with a decrease in load factor of 2 percent.

SkyEurope cut back on bases and routes in 2007 and even sold some airplanes; their passenger numbers probably aren't going to continue to rise in 2008; Ryanair's no doubt will continue to rise modestly. The drop in load factor at both airlines in December is a bit surprising. Could it be that more Europeans stayed put over Christmas this year?

Lastly, I've long been curious about the Ryanair habit of blocking rows of seats off. Could this be some crafty way of increasing load factor numbers, by identifying some rows as nominally off limits? Any ideas?

Hot Shop Alert: Vintage, Mérida

In Mérida there are tons of shops selling Mayan rugs and blankets, silver, and other tourist objects; there are lots of treasures to be found among the loot here. Even more interesting things (from honey to piñatas to wooden toys) can be found at the Zócalo, with its mass of vendor stalls.

For those looking for a blast of modernism, there's a great shop at 428 Calle 60 (between Calles 47 and 49) called Vintage. Run by Maria José Cetina Cachón with a personable attention to detail, it's a treasure of vintage clothes, furniture, home furnishings, and other decorative objects. The shop is full of Americana and its Mexican equivalent (Mexicana?)—down to reformatted matchbooks from vanquished mid-century spots on the North American landscape.

To anyone who loves such mid- to late-century shops, the inventory here will be familiar; what sets this shop apart is its variety of carefully-chosen items as well as the range of Mexican objects on sale. I snapped up a rusted Orange Crush sign, advertising a Tienda "San Lorenzo." It's truly gorgeous, and was cheap by US mid-century furniture store standards, to boot, at 550 pesos ($50).