AIR TRAVEL RELATED ITEMS

1. Become a travel agent. Global Travel International. 800.716.4440. Save a real 50% on hotels and get treated a bit better by the airlines. This is worth a few thousand dollars to me a year.  It will cost you either $250 for one person or $500 for two people to join up (husbands and wives shouldn’t both join unless they travel separately) for one year and then $100 a person to renew each year. If you do this, please mention my name.  I get a commission but your price is still the same. Consider that you will also get a commission when you refer people.

2. These days there is no best way to get the best deal. Shop around. You might do best by having the originating airline issue you one ticket for the whole journey (including the other airlines); point to point tickets from a broker that saves you a few hundred dollars but are nonrefundable are not worth the headache and the loss of protection. With European multi-line air tickets, the cost of a business class ticket might be the same as a economy-class ticket, so don't rule out this option. Some travel agents today will sell you a full fare economy ticket and give you the business upgrade; this is especially available on American carriers going overseas.

3. For flights, order western vegetarian non-dairy (vegan) meals. Not spicy. Freshly prepared. Reconfirm these meal requests as you arrive in each departure city, even if the concierge says there is no need to reconfirm your flight. Drink water on the plane. For domestic flights in the US, bring food aboard. Don’t count on being fed; even in first class they can let you sit for hours without food.

4.  Check with foreign airlines for US mileage partners and have info entered into reservation card. In any event, make sure at check in that your mileage info is in their computer and if you really care, save your boarding passes and submit it after you get home. Half the time abroad the miles don't come through.

5. Pick convenient travel times on safe airlines with nonstop flights if possible. Then bid on the price. Don’t fly at 6am if you don’t like doing it. Travelocity.com has good scheduling information. Fly carriers of the same flag of the country from which you are departing; if your plane needs a spare part in Madrid, Iberia will get it faster than Delta. You also get the benefit of the most convenient airport facilities and runway slots. Also, the European carriers fly 747's and the Americans fly 767's; the 767 is slower flying west and adds an hour to the trip. Also, the right-hand exit row on the upstairs cabin on a 747 is a wonderful flying experience. Finally, Americans fly their own carriers; if you are on a plane with few Americans, you will spend less time in passport control because you are on a different line when entering the US. For this reason, I also prefer foreign carriers flying out of the US as well. US carriers are also likelier to be targeted.

6. Get visas in advance to avoid airport lines. Make sure passport has enough pages for trip.

7. Collect face towelettes from airplanes; get extras. The international carriers have them. Carry one at all times. Useful in sweaty situations such as after running thru an airport. Keep these for future trips.

8. Stow your bag in the airport, train station or hotel if you don’t need it with you. Consider that if you have an extra bag you don’t need in that city (country) at all, leave it in customs at the airport until departure.

9.  In airports, get a cart to wheel things around and keep it as long as possible. At Newark, if you enter security on the left hand side, you can keep your cart all the way to the gate. At Charles de Gaulle, you will lose your cart at the passport control but if you walk around, you might find a cart on the other side. In Rome, you also lose your cart and this is horrible dragging around all your shopping bags. Brussels and Madrid you lose it too. In London Heathrow’s Terminal 4 and transferring between terminals, you can keep your cart. For transfers between Terminals 1,2,3 and Terminal 4 at Heathrow, the Heathrow Express is free and the best way to do it. The transfer takes 5 minutes although you might wait up to 15 minutes for the train. Allow 30-45 minutes from the time you get through passport control in one building to the time you arrive at the check-in counter in the other.

10. When approaching a customs officer, make a hand signal to them (but not a crazy wave) to let them know you are coming. Show you are no-nonsense. Say something short and nice to them.

11. Arriving at JFK, avoid the crazy taxi lines outside the international arrival Terminal 4 by keeping your luggage cart and walking to the next terminal, Terminal 3 or 6. No taxi lines there. If it’s raining at the airport, all bets are off and you will just wait forever for taxis. Very soon, there will be a monorail but it may not help if you can't get a taxi once you reach a crowded terminal in mid-town Manhattan. Newark now has a monorail that brings you by rail virtually straight into Manhattan.

12. There are usually more than one passport control entrance in European airports. If one is busy, go to the next one. It often happens that one is real busy, the other is totally quiet.

13. Reserve seats in advance for flights but this is only a first step since nothing good is ever available over the phone anymore; I like aisles because even in business class, you generally have to step over other people to get out of your seat if you are not in an aisle seat. At the gate, ask for released seats to get what you want (ie: either an aisle with no one next to me or an aisle in an exit row) and when they call for Final Boarding, ask the gate agent for this again if they said no the first time. Let the gate agent know you will be back later if they say no the first time. They might take your boarding pass aside and give you something as the computer makes it available. RECONFIRM flights while you are traveling and do this yourself so you remember to reconfirm your seats and meals or else they may be lost even though your reservation itself is reconfirmed.

14. Get off the plane before everyone else to beat the passport and customs lines. Don’t check your bag but carry it aboard. Your bag should be within reach before landing or in a closet near the exit, not in the overhead if you can help it. Make sure when you take a bag out of the overhead, that your watch doesn’t come loose. This has happened to me twice. Try to move to a front of the plane seat just before landing. Otherwise, when the plane approaches the gate and they call for Cabin Cross-Check, move swiftly toward the front of the plane and insert yourself in the central galley (ie: space by the bathrooms or kitchen) nearest the exit. The plane should be 15 seconds away from the gate and they are not going to send you back to your seat at this point. And if the plane is full, there is no place for you to sit.

15. Take a pillow with you. Good on the plane and good in whatever bed you are in. So many hotels and apartments with so many uncomfortable pillows.

16. ATM’s are best for obtaining local currency. If there is a crowd in the airport arrival area, go upstairs to the departure area. Railroad stations are also good places to change currency, often without commission.

17. Consider taking a car service to the airport. No worries as to whether or not you will find a taxi. No use showing up sweaty for a 6 hour flight. In the winter in New York, the subway to JFK Airport will save you $40 and get you from midtown Manhattan to your terminal in about 75 minutes at rush hour; at offpeak times, allow 2 hours by metro.

18. On the plane, you should be carrying a pen, paper, business cards, water, chapstick for lips, mini toothbrush and toothpaste, towlettes, pillow and reading. Some good travel tips for using rest rooms on airplanes: Hold your hand to the ceiling to brace yourself; used bottled water to rinse your mouth if you are brushing your teeth; use the bathroom before landing or before exiting the aircraft; use restrooms toward the front of the aircraft as it is less bumpy toward the front.

19. Going to airport: Check your flight status before leaving. Don’t check bags. At the gate, check your miles, meal request and seat number.

20. If flying any non-American airline, you can safely expect to be given that day’s newspaper with an English selection when you board the plane. No need to buy it in an airport. With Internet, I tend not to buy newspapers abroad.

21. At US customs, declare something if you have more than $1,000 worth of items. Declare a reasonable amount, and they will generally not give you a hard time. US Customs personnel tend to believe you are buying cheap clothing when you travel abroad, because Americans don’t tend to buy quality items.

22. Eat some food on the plane before landing, go to the bathroom before landing and wash up, eat a good meal after arrival (ie: after a morning sleep if you arrived in the AM) and everyday. I never sleep on planes so I go straight to hotel in the morning, shower and sleep for a few hours and then start my day. Change clothes. Keep your hotel room neat and don’t put things in drawers unless you will be there several days. I tend to take out the clothes I need for the next day or two and keep the rest in my bag. 2 or 3 piles plus the stuff in the bathroom is all I need to see in the room.

23. If in business class on a 747, ask for the upper deck and for an aisle in an emergency exit row.

24. Use frequent flyer miles for upgrades rather than free economy class tickets. You get more bang for your mile. The best plan I’ve found today is Merrill Lynch’s Signature Visa card for $75 a year. You can use your miles as cash toward the purchase of tickets on any airline for any flight. Even American Express’s premier mileage option doesn’t come close as it has many restrictions. Even if you're not upgrading, some airport business lounges let you pay per entrance and this can be a good buy. Take a look at www.prioritypass.com; you can get into almost any airport lounge with this and there are varying degrees of membership.

25. Get American Express Platinum card if you are married and travel business class. Their 2-for-1 deal is better than you will get from any discount broker. You also get airport lounge access with several airlines.

TRAVEL PLANNING

26. Choose hotels for good central location within walking distance of shopping or important streets or transit points and a metro station and fax ahead for travel agent’s price. Use internet to research and NY Times travel section has good recommendations. If you know the name of a hotel, google.com is a good search engine that will almost always pull it up. Just about any hotel open today has a website. AOL has access to NY Times archives and their What’s Doing in... columns. If you need a morning room, fax ahead and be prepared to pay to guarantee it if necessary but usually this isn’t a problem. Make sure you know if hotel prices include all taxes and breakfast. A good hotel room is quiet, can be darkened, in a carpeted area both inside and outside the room and away from the elevator. No smoking floor unless you don’t mind. Pay an extra few bucks for a double or a Deluxe room if the single or standard rooms are tiny. 

27. Check CNN.com’s weather page for sunset info and weather forecasts to help pack and plan your days, especially Friday/Saturday.

28. Consider that in winter the air fares are lower but daylight much shorter and weather miserable in Europe. Not worth it in my book.

29. Prepare info sheet to carry around (pack a second copy and leave a third copy available to be faxed to you) with your passport number, health insurance info, doctors numbers, credit card info and contact numbers, bank cards, phone-home numbers via AT&T if you have no cellphone. Telephone numbers of hotels, all your contacts, and time-certain appointments including flight numbers and times and airline reconfirmation numbers. Travel agent contact number; your IATA number (if you are an agent); and your cellphone number and instructions how to get into your voicemail. Get a plastic pouch sealed on left side and open on the right side so you can slip papers and a few things such as a pen in and out easily. This avoids loss and creases and makes it easy to get to papers quickly.

30. Xerox your passport cover page and put it in your bag.

31. Packing: See Ivan’s Packing List document on the globalthoughts.com website. Some thoughts: A navy blazer goes with everything (including any tie you might be lent in case you go to a place without a tie and have to wear one). White shirts do too. Long sleeve and long pants do not offend and a jacket offers more pockets to put things into.  If you know you will be walking around without a jacket, have a pair of pants outfitted with velcro-lined pockets so that things that might be lost or stolen from pants pockets (and therefore better kept in a jacket pocket) can be safely stored.  Look decent and it is harder to pick you out as an American, and you tend to get treated with more respect. There is almost no place a tourist should be in shorts or T-shirt except for the beach and informal countries at leisure hours with counterparts who are not working. Pack one shirt per day; one pair pants per 2 days; change clothes upon arrival. Figure an extra pair underwear. Also a pair of socks if you like to sleep in them. Slippers useful even in hotel rooms. When packing, count days till and between your planned laundries (ie: for me a laundry is after 4-5 days or a city in which I will spend at least one full day) and plan your outfits in advance; put in an extra shirt if you will go out casual one evening. Take a sweater only if you know you will need it; otherwise buy it. Consider it may be cheaper to buy socks and underwear as you go along than to give it to the laundry (or you can wash it yourself in the bathroom).  The main point here is that it is usually helpful to feel fresh in clean clothes and not to walk around a mess and uncomfortable. Whether on vacation or business, the incremental cost of having clean clothes is worth the expense even if you want to kill the hotel over the price of its laundry. Try asking the front desk manager for a 20% discount on the laundry; you might get it. The point is to pack light; you can send heavy things ahead of you or things you know you only need in one place such as a pile of original documents or a cellphone for a particular country by parcel post  – that goes for coming home as well. How not to forget things: Use Ivan's Packing List (globalthoughts.com/packlist.html). Check off the list one by one and write down stuff you need that you have not packed. Stuff you need the night before you leave should be put onto one table all together so that you don't have to go hunting for things. As for things you need to have with you (ie: a pillow, pajamas, shaver) that you can't put on the table or on the floor next to your travel bag, put substitute things that you don't intend to take to remind you of the things you will take (ie: a different pillow, pair of PJ's or shaver cord that you won't be taking).

32. A good bag is an over-the-shoulder “valpak” with lots of zippers and pouches but lightweight. No metallic gizmos or heavy vinyl material. You can always have the bag repaired between trips if the material rips but at least it is light when you carry it. TUMI sells a triple-fold bag which is designed very smartly and which is likelier than a double-fold bag to get you past the airline agent who would like to get you to check your bag. A bag with plastic pouches and zippers is great to hold toiletries.

33. Have shoes polished and soles checked before leaving; get new pair Dr. Scholls insoles. Bring along 1 or 2 instant shoe-polish wipes in case hotel has none and you don't want to waste your time looking for shoe-shines.

34. Get your hair cut before you travel. Make sure you have enough medicines and that you are up to date with medical and dental checkups.

35. Consider getting multiple-entry visas for countries you visit. They may cost the same as one-time entry visas and you don’t have to deal with this problem again for that country.

36. Any electrical appliance that runs on 220 volts should either be automatic or switched over to 220 before you leave the US. It is too likely you will forget and have your appliance burn out abroad on first use.

37. Pack shirts folded and take out the cardboard; pack pants folded and all in plastic. Drycleaners give out plastic bags that are used for sweaters and knit shirts; these are great to stuff things into such as pants, sports jackets and neckties. Ziploc bags are good for toiletries also. No reason to pack any hangers. Wear your jacket on the plane or have it closeted. Remember it gets chilly on a plane and passports should not be in pants pockets so wear the jacket.

38. Toiletries – put items that are in large containers (ie: pills) into small containers just the right size for the trip. Put all small and possibly wet toiletries (ie: shampoo and creams) together into a toiletry bag, preferably with zippers and plastic pouches.

39. Rent a cellphone. (ie: Travelcell.com) This is terribly useful; no phone cards; you can receive calls and call anywhere you want. Helps with rendezvouses; your contact might be standing 20 feet away from you in a crowded airport and you wouldn’t know it otherwise. Can also give it to the taxi driver who can't speak English and is lost (ie: to talk to your hotel concierge or friend). Worth the incremental cost; buying a GSM phone and paying for international calls on a calling plan will not save you any money, at least for an American traveling abroad unless you really travel often enough.

40. Leave emergency transition info at home for someone to find (ie: your bank and brokerage account information) in case you’re not coming home.

41. Before leaving, call your credit card companies and tell them of your travel plans. It lessens the probability they will freeze your card when you shop abroad.  Check your credit limits and pay off any outstanding bills. Put money in your checking account so your ATM card will get you money. Take at least 2 ATM cards so that if one account doesn’t work, the other will. Make sure your PIN’s are 4 digits long.

42. Know in advance how to get to your hotel, or just take a taxi. Keep a card with the name of the hotel in the local language and script. Make sure before the taxi starts to move how much you will pay and that the driver knows where to take you or flag over the dispatcher for help. Consider having a car meet you at the airport. You might want to have a car and driver/guide meet you and start an orientation tour immediately upon arrival and then have them drop you off at your hotel. An excellent way to get a fast start in a city. This can be arranged by your hotel concierge in advance (ie: send a fax or telephone) or by the local tourist office. Increasingly, these hop-on hop-off bus tours exist in all major cities and in 1-2 hours they give you a good enough orientation to make the former option not really necessary.

43. Get a map of the local metro system as quickly as possible. Guides to weekly activities such as Time Out London are useful as well. The Internet has lots of city guides online.

44. Before walking around in a strange city, have a taxi drive you around and get a sense of the context of the city. Consider an orientation tour of 1-2 hours. If your visit is really short, spend the money and have a professional guide show you around and answer all your stupid questions or have a friend take you around. Caution: Friends often don’t know their own cities very well. Most people just don’t know much about their cities. Look at the cost of the tour as a 1-credit college course on site and, like laundry and telephone calls, resolve not to be anxious about it. Expect to pay $50 an hour in Europe for this service. Hey, an hour with a psychiatrist costs twice as much, right?

45. Know in advance the opening and closing hours of museums and attractions and dates of national holidays. Again, your tour guide is helpful here. If the visit is short, you want to plan these things in advance, particularly if you want to go to something where tickets may sell out or where the main attractions may be closed. Pay fees for guaranteed seats; the disappointment having traveled somewhere for nothing is not worth saving a few bucks. Use your hotel concierge to make reservations for local things; you probably don't pay any more for fixed price items and it reduces confusion. Concierges at good hotels know a lot; you are paying for their expertise by staying there. Bother them and let them help you.

46. Get a good aerial view in a city to gain perspective. Look for alternatives to the usual places which tend to attract long lines and high ticket prices. Your tour guide will have answers to this. 

47. Carry a bottle of water (8-10 oz size) at all times. A band-aid is also good to carry around. Consider sticking to bottled water even if the tap water is OK; the 2-3 days of cramps and diarrea are just not worth it. 

Ivan’s Jet Lag Tips: Arrive in the morning; drink only water on the flight and order VGML (pure non-dairy vegetarian) as it digests well; nap a few hours on arrival and make believe it’s bedtime (ie: take a shower and put on sleepware); keep snacking during the day and stay up till about midnight and then sleep late the next morning. Have quiet time before going to sleep at night. Even if you wind up taking 3 showers in the first 24 hours, that’s not so bad.

48. Metro passes for a full day offer good value and spare you the need to keep making change. Certain cities offer City Passes (ie: Vienna, Helsinki, Stockholm) which include metro, discounts on museums and are excellent values.

49. Avoid using local currency except for small items. Use credit cards; they also help you keep records for future return trips or recommendations to colleagues. Even if you pay 2% to Amex or 3% to MasterCard-VISA to convert foreign purchases, the problem with currency is if you leave the country without using all of it up, especially coins. Here are three ways to avoid leaving the country with useless currency or giving the money to the bank: Give your leftover currency to the taxi driver and then put the remainder of the cab fare to the airport on a charge card. Partially pay the hotel bill in currency, keep some for the airport transfer and put the rest on credit card. Finally, go into a duty free shop, buy something, overpay with local currency and have them give you change in a curreny you want.

50. At the opera, consider standing room tickets for a few bucks. You can sit down after the first act in the $100 seats when lots of people leave, if you are staying.

51. Phone or e-mail ahead to make appointments with friends in a particular city. You can always change it but at least you know who you will be meeting with and when. If your visit is short, you don’t want to miss your contacts. Strange but true – it is probably cheaper to call abroad from the US than to make the local call once you are abroad.

52. Photos should tell a story and also recount unusual features of the place you visited. If you don’t know what the caption will be as the subject is in the viewfinder, don’t take the photo, unless it’s just that pretty. Some things you see with your own eyes just don’t look good in photos. Take the extra time to set up a good photo; remember your zoom lens. Get down on your stomach or climb something to get the good shot. Remember, you can buy a book of photos or post-cards of all the important sites. Maybe even on the Internet after you’re home. Get some humans into the picture; even yourself once in a while. Remember that certain kinds of photos never come out good; photos that are dark or taken into the glare of the sun are just not going to come out good. Filler-flash and red-eye reduction settings can help to some extent. These new digital cameras will at least let you see what works so you can make adjustments before you leave the scene.

53. Internet is often accessible from your hotel business center or internet cafes. Do you really need to lag along a laptop? I’d rather pay to use the service than carry the laptop.

54. Food: Movenpik chain offers “marche” market restaurants with huge selections and buffets where you pay for what you take. A good way to eat predictably across the globe.  Also top floors of department stores often have good eating areas. Don’t overlook hotels; might be a bit pricey but they tend to have very good food.

55. When shopping, know the VAT refund policy and act accordingly; know how you will get your documents stamped before you go through passport control. Some places have refund windows before and after passport control; if they do, lines are probably shorter after passport control. In Germany, for example, you can bring back the stamped form to the shop within a year and get the entire VAT back. If you can get cash back from the Global Refund counter in the airport, take it because the credit card refund takes a few months and you have no recourse if they lose your paperwork. Preview stores and merchandise before buying to avoid returns, duplicates or regrets. Consider whether or not it pays to buy the item (ie: is the same thing available in the US?) or rather to have it custom made. I don’t buy pants, shirts or jackets anymore unless they are something clearly I can’t have made in Hong Kong. Remember you can ship stuff home although you lose the $800 duty allowance which is only good for stuff you carry into the country. Go shopping in a major department store before traveling so you can know if the prices abroad represent good values. Some things appear more expensive abroad not because they are but because you are not accustomed to paying for them at home (ie: the cost of eating in a hotel). Send stuff home rather than carry it (this pertains to brochures and souvenirs and not just purchases).

56. Bring an alarm clock; I don’t even bother asking for wake-up calls. Plan a good night's sleep and good meals as an essential part of your day; it increases the odds you will stay healthy.  It’s also nice to have a radio with you to pick up local and shortwave stations. Know your shortwave frequencies in advance (ie: BBC evenings in Europe is 6195 mhz), although today with internet and cable TV, the radio is more for local flavor than shortwave and I don't even carry one anymore. To get out of a hotel fast in the morning and for short stays, prepack by never fully unpacking and keep items inside various bags (ie: laundry, pants, shirts, jackets, undergarments). Don't put things in drawers and make piles in a separate area close together on the floor or on a table. 

57. Keep tabs of your expenses in a journal as you go through your trip. Update it every day. Make notes every day and particularly on airplane flights when you have time to think. A Palm Pilot might be good for this.
Big Money Saving Tip: I’m tired of Amex and Visa charging about 3% to convert my foreign currency purchases back into dollars on my credit card statement. So I’m pulling out cash every day from my ATM cards and using them to pay my bills. There the rate is the market rate and there is no commission or bank fees. Also the merchant doesn’t like paying 3%, so between the two charges there is room to negotiate down the price a few points.

58. Review your tourist literature in the evening in your hotel or during breaks just to see if you’ve missed anything you want to do. You might have missed something the first time you looked at the literature or you might now be open to something you earlier rejected.

59. In a city, if you can’t find a taxi, go to a big hotel or the central train/rail station. Or have a friend call for a car service. Consider using the metro; it costs 1/10 the price of a taxi and I find that taxis build up a large travel cost that can often be avoided, especially in countries where taxis are very expensive (or where you get overcharged because you are boarding in front of a good hotel -- this can often be avoided by walking away from the hotel, if you at least think you will get a cab).

60. If in a place where taxi drivers don’t speak English or don’t really understand you (ie: Hong Kong), have your concierge write down or tell the driver where you are going and/or determine the fare, know the fare in advance or have the meter put on, and carry a card with the hotel’s name and address in the local language. Your hotel phone number should be on your info paper that you carry around (described earlier).

61. Gifts for me are usually for kids. A good gift is cheap, small and light. Items I’ve bought are hand puppets, dolls, boxes that open up with little dancing frogs inside, lace collars for dresses, and kiddie foot coverings. Often in major tourist areas there are people on the street selling cute things for kids for very cheap prices.

62. If you can’t resolve a disputed charge on your hotel bill (ie: the drycleaning or telecom bill is just too damn high), after you get your credit card bill, just ask American Express to reduce the charge by $25 as a courtesy. They will generally do this over the phone on the spot. Save this tip for use only once in a while and on an overall monthly bill that is at least $2,000.

63. York Photo Labs (www.yorkphoto.com) offers cut-rate and good quality photo developing by mail with free-postage mailers. They offer upoading of digital prints for and 25 cent prints for orders of at least 100. I got a club card at my neighborhood Ritz Camera shop and pay 39 cents a print; I get a further reduction when it is a big order. Send Photos Gold is a godsend from novatix.com. It costs $25 and you can easily e-mail digital photos in an attractive way with user-friendly wizards and templates; you can also export these pages to HTML for posting to the web, and the program can be tinkered with to do things such as edit photo captions and insert hyperlinks. Their technical support unit is also attentive.

64. Try to have your home cleaned up before you leave so that it will be tidy when you return. Don’t go straight to read all your mail. Plan to relax a bit when you return; consider having a massage in the first few hours after arriving home after that long plane ride. Go to bed at a reasonable hour and try to sleep through the night. I try not to look at the clock when I get up early; I just set the alarm and refuse to look at the clock until the alarm goes off. Otherwise, I look at it and then can't go back to sleep. I like flights that arrive in the evening so I just go home and to bed. Leave the stack of periodicals for the first Saturday home.