Thursday, June 19, 1997

A new time-saver for the road worrier

By TOM BELDEN / Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Are you among the "time-deprived?"

That's a buzzword in the travel industry to describe really busy road warriors. These are the business travelers who keep such hectic schedules that they seem to work best standing up, check e-mail on a laptop computer, listen to voicemail in a phone booth, or do all their banking at an ATM machine.

Now, three of the big names in travel and computing - Hilton Hotels, American Express and IBM - have teamed up to sell a new service to these busiest of business travelers. The companies say their pilot program is the first test of "smart cards" in the hotel check-in and check-out process.

The test started last month at eight Hilton hotels heavily used by business travelers, including those at Chicago O'Hare and Philadelphia International Airports, where special kiosks were installed in lobbies. The pilot program is being conducted among several thousand travelers who are members of Hilton's HHonors frequent-guest program.

Each participant was issued a special American Express Corporate or Optima card, or a special HHonors membership card, with an IBM computer chip embedded in it. The Amex card can be used like any other charge card.

With the card, a traveler can check in or out of the hotel without ever dealing with the folks at the front desk, but that's not the special part, officials of the companies said.

Several other hotel companies have similar ATM-like kiosks that allow a guest to bypass lines at the front desk. At any of the hotel kiosks, a guest using a credit card can pull up a reservation and have a room key dispensed at check-in, and get a printed bill when checking out.

What's different in the Hilton pilot program is that the "smart" chip in the card can receive, store and share data with the kiosk, which will display information from the participant's HHonors account.

The traveler's preference, for example, for a no-smoking room with a king-sized bed on a lower floor, can be displayed. The traveler also can review his or her HHonors account, to make sure credit has been given for staying at Hilton and buying services from other companies, like rental-car firms, that give participants bonus points.

Officials from Hilton, Amex and IBM said the experimental card fulfills needs that business travelers have been saying for several years were unmet. Travelers say they want to get in and out of hotels quickly, without standing in a line, and want quick, convenient access to their frequent-traveler accounts.

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Anyone who pays the bills for business trips on airlines knows the story by now: Fares paid by most business travelers have risen over the last year at a phenomenal rate. However, there are signs that prices may have stabilized.

American Express Co., which tracks ticket prices month by month on 215 routes between major cities, reported that the typical one-way business airfare in April was $421, 24 percent higher than it was in April 1996. But $421 was actually 1 percent lower than the typical fare found in March, when prices peaked.

For leisure travelers, bargains have abounded over the last 12 months, with the lowest one-way discount fare averaging $118 on the 215 routes. A year ago, Amex found the average discount fare, which only a limited number of business travelers use because of its advance-purchase and Saturday-night-stay requirements, was $137.

Business air fares have gone up for several reasons. A good economy has kept demand strong, and business travelers obviously still consider it a necessity to make trips to sell, see customers and attend meetings. Mostly, however, fares are higher because the airlines took advantage of two situations: diminished competition in many markets since the ValuJet Airlines crash, and two lapses in the 10 percent federal airline ticket tax. When Congress let the tax go uncollected for eight months in 1996 and two months in 1997, carriers raised fares.

The Amex index is among the best systematic, repeated, publicly available measures of fares, but it has limitations. The index provides a snapshot of what fares are on a single day for companies large and small that are American Express clients. It checks fares on the one airline with the most service on each of the 215 routes.