Arnie Weissmann:
What one amazing pig can
teach us about managing
through a downturn. P. 12
DESTINATIONS:
Oahu goes Hollywood P. 25
Travel Bound in China P. 28
Gay travel in Brazil P. 32
Richard Turen:
‘I first learned 25 years ago
the importance of the palate
and stomach in travel.’ P. 37
www.travelweekly.com
T
H
E
THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY
AUGUST 4, 2008
[ CITES IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ]
Greenspan says
business travel
to keep booming
By Laura Del Rosso
S
P
A
F
A
C
T
O
R
Once a luxury cost center that denoted pampering,
spas are now profit centers marketed as wellness services.
BY JERI CLAUSING PAGE 18
LOS ANGELES — Despite airfares and other
travel costs being driven sky-high by surging
energy prices, former Federal Reserve Board
Chairman Alan Greenspan predicted last
week that business travel would continue to
boom.
“The corporate travel industry is fundamentally about moving people around,”
Greenspan told an audience at the National
Business Travel Association convention here.
“One thing that is amazing from the end of
the Cold War onward is the extent of globalization. You can see the force of business
moving beyond sovereign countries. And that
means that people have to move around.”
Greenspan said the rise of video conferencing and other technologies that enable
people to engage in immersive communication without travel would do little to drive
down the need for business travel.
“People want to be with people,” he said.
“And, there’s no substitute for sitting and
See GREENSPAN on Page 40
TSA fingers airlines for bad IDs
and dilutes Registered Traveler
By Michael Fabey
The Transportation Security Administration made few friends in
the travel industry last
month as it first accused
airlines of watch-list
misidentifications that
grounded innocent passengers, then announced
it was expanding — but
simultaneously diluting
— the Registered Traveler program.
Though the TSA stated that Registered
Traveler, or RT, serves as a strong complement
to the government’s existing terrorist watch
list, it also said it would no longer perform
RT background checks, which critics said reduced the program to little more than an elite
frequent flyers club.
What’s more, the
TSA’s voicing of support for expanding the
program came just as
TSA Administrator Kip
Hawley, in testimony
before Congress, was
blaming airlines for er-
roneously matching passengers with names
on the government’s no-fly list.
‘TSA contributes to the
confusion and ineffi-
ciency of the system.’
— Steven Lott, IATA
[ PROJECTS BEING DELAYED OR CANCELED ]
Tight credit begins to crimp
hotel development pipeline
By Jeri Clausing
When Barry Sternlicht unveiled his
new eco-luxury brand, 1, he announced eight locations and plans
to have a total of 15 signed within
24 months.
Some 20 months later, construction on the
first of his 1 hotel-and-residence projects,
which was set to open in Seattle this year, is
on hold. And the number of projects listed
on his Starwood Capital Group website has
been scaled back to six.
“Nobody wants to give him money,” one
industry insider remarked. “And if he can’t
get money with his track record, I don’t
know who can.”
Indeed, the latest report from Lodging
Econometrics, which monitors global hotel
construction, reveals that “the lending crisis is now creating a serious drag within the
[hotel development] pipeline.”
Because the construction pipeline includes projects that were initiated long before the credit crunch, total rooms under
construction are at a record high of 242,229,
Lodging Econometrics said. But, the report
