109 - Sunday Reflection

Good morning.

With travel this past week, I missed recording on Thursday and Friday.  Saturday I have managed to skip for 3 weeks in a row.  I still have in mind to do a travel related show on Saturdays to have some fun and to boost my travel agency a bit.  We'll see how that works out.

The pandemic had an effect on my travel to New York.  I had checked the travel restrictions and New York apparently has some of the tightest controls in the country.  I'm happy about that, because we don't seem to be taking it as seriously as we probably should especially since we had  a record number of new cases yesterday.

To make it to my client in Rochester, I had to complete a form for the New York State Health Department giving the details of where I was arriving from and if I've shown any symptoms or if I'd been exposed to anyone with symptoms or been in any potentially hazardous activities that could have put me at risk.  

Unlike Massachusetts, New York didn't say they would waive the requirements with a negative COVID test within the past 72 hours.  I decided it would be prudent to get one anyway, for my client's and my own peace of mind.

CVS does drive through testing that easy and essentially free, so I took care of that on Monday morning hoping to have the results before I arrived in New York.  I didn't, but I filled out the New York travel forms and got an email back with a green check mark that said I'm good to go.

When I arrived in Rochester, the National Guard was there to collect information from everyone arriving.  I showed them my green check mark and they let me sail on through.  I picked up the car at Hertz with no trouble and arrived at the Marriott hotel with no trouble.

The client had a similar statement that I had to sign, plus they took my temperature before they let me in.  Our group met in a large, well-ventilated training room that allowed everyone (a group of 9 people) to spread out.

At lunch, I got a phone call from the New York State Health Department and we had a nice conversation about how I was feeling, and if I'd had any symptoms at all.  They said if my employer had restrictions or quarantine requirements I should follow their guidance.  I was following the client's guidance so I think I'm good to go.

Later that afternoon, I got an email from them (the Health Department) that was pretty much a form letter that they must send to everyone arriving in New York from almost any other state that ordered me to quarantine in my hotel room for 14 days.  There was no hint of this coming based on the phone call I had, which clearly indicated I could work following the employer's guidelines.  

About this same time, my test results arrived - a nice big "Negative" across the top.  I forwarded this to the client, and showed them the email, and we decided to proceed with the second day of training.

I was supposed to get periodic text messages from the Health Department asking about symptoms, but they sent them to the wrong phone number so I didn't see them until I got home.

I'm home now, feeling fine except for not sleeping much because my poor wife is still hurting so badly from her knee surgery.

This past week, I showed you my C4 Card and explained how to use it.  On Wednesday, I talked about 4 types of problems:  Alert Response, Measured Response, Individual Idea, and Management Response and how they tie in to the C4 card as well.  

This week, I'll bring up the C4 worksheet and a Master file I give to groups to use to hold everything they discover on their problem solving journey.  I'll talk through both of those, then go into a little more depth on  the types of problems and on the types of gemba walks.

I hope you'll stick around.  Let me hear from you!  Make a comment.  Let me know if you'd like to know more about anything I'm talking about.  Let me know if you'd like me to come to you and take a group through these steps.  

david.veech@clandestinetravel.com

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

93 -Travel Update

My travel agency is a very small side-hustle.  I started it for a couple of reasons:

1. I love to travel

2. I was traveling a lot and wondered if I could offset some costs with Travel Agent commissions.  It’s also a fantastic tax shelter.

3. I want to work with travel companies like cruise lines, hotel chains, and airlines in my lean and leadership consulting businesses


You’ll notice that I didn’t include “make lots of money.”

Still, to learn the business, you have to DO the work.  I have booked a couple of dozen vacations for people - mostly cruises, but several land vacations for people.  I find it fun but it’s pretty time consuming to do the research and then get the booking done and make sure every client is treated as if they are my only client.

Of course, this year destroyed the travel industry.  Cruise lines have been anchored since March.  One of the last things I did before the pandemic really hit was a Ship Inspection of the Disney Magic cruise ship in Port Canaveral.  Yes, travel advisors get to do ship inspections, which for us are really just familiarization tours of ships.

Because my business is small, I have not had to cancel a hundred vacations for people - just a few.  Yesterday I had to cancel a European river cruise for a client after Avalon Waterways, following global health guidelines, suspended all cruises through the end of the year.

Now, with United and American laying off 38,000 employees and Disney having to cut 28,000 mostly from California Theme Park operations,

And now with the early aid money gone, more and more suppliers of travel products on on the brink of disappearing.

But in speaking to both Carnival Cruise Lines and with Globus, which operates Avalon Waterways, and with people in general, there is still demand for traveling, but its bottled up right now.

What that tells me is that when the pandemic lifts, there’s going to be a huge opportunity to take advantage of that pent up demand.

If you think you might want to get into this business, send me a message and I’ll walk you through how I did it and get you hooked up with my Host Agency - which really makes it easy and very cheap to get started.

For the next few travel updates, I’m thinking about profiling particular places or suppliers.  I can show some pictures and video if I do this through zoom.  I want to offer more luxury vacations, so I’ll likely focus on small ship and expedition cruising, river cruising globally, and some other places that offer unique experiences.

If you want to plan a vacation for late 2021 or 2022, they are all booking now and I’d be happy to find something special for you.  You can reach me at David.veech@clandestinetravel.com.

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow.