First of all, we would like to thank all the members for taking the time to write the Voyage Reports (VR) highlighting the deficiencies at some of our current hotels. These reports are highly valuable as they provide us with evidence data when approaching both management and the individual hotels.
To further expand on issues you may have encountered, such as food poisoning, disturbances, room issues etc. that affect you, please notify the relevant hotel manager, be polite in your approach and follow it up with a VR, providing a copy to the Hotel Committee (HC). It is very difficult to address certain issues dating back by 3 months after the complaint!
As ANC is one our more frequently visited destinations you may have noticed the change to the Hilton hotel. The contract at the Marriott had been cancelled at short notice and we are currently investigating the main reason for this abrupt decision. Unfortunately, the Hilton is not providing us with the suitable rooms and many complaints are being filed. Cargolux management have been assessing the situation and we are waiting for a response to their visit with a prompt improvement in service.
We are still working on a few other hotels accumulating a higher than normal number of complaints, ICN being one of them. Although adequate offers from competitive hotels have been forwarded to management, they still do not see a reason to move us back to our old hotel the JW Marriott due to costs.
One of the arguments heard repeatedly is that a hotel “satisfies the hotel policy”. Therefore, it is important that if you write a voyage report you should always ask yourself, if this is really the case. Following the wording of an in-house policy is a required, but by far not sufficient prerequisite for selecting a suitable crew-accommodation. We should never forget the aim that any hotel-selection, anywhere, needs to provide an undisturbed pre- and postflight rest. Any other aspect such as budget or location are of secondary importance. We will elaborate later in this text on how to react when facing grievances.
LCK; we have been informed that a move is imminent, but management´s definition of imminent seems sometimes different from ours.
ALA; we are pleased to announce that a new contract has been signed with the Intercontinental, which some of you will remember.
JFK; rumors of closure are still floating around, but we have been assured that a suitable vendor for the property has not yet been found. Therefore, a short-term change seems to be unlikely, however we continue to assess this situation.
CGK is a new destination on our network with one frequency per week. The hotel committee has looked at the Shangri-La in town, which meets all the requirements including security. It was the intention that the hotel will be assessed for three months, but despite all the preparatory work unfortunately for the time being still the Mercure hotel is being planned. We will continue to work with management to ensure that the Shangri-La will be booked in the future.
There is still an issue where crews are not informed of hotels changes in a timely fashion as it used to be a few years ago. We have requested an improved communication procedure between Procurement Department and Flt Ops Management in order to avoid surprises and disruption to crew rest. We await an outcome to their meeting.
We continue to address hotel issues with our management, but this is only possible with you taking the time to write a VR and copying in cvhotels@alpl.lu in order for us to monitor any negative trends.
As mentioned above, hotels have to be suitable, so that we as crew members are able to obtain undisturbed rest (meaning a quiet part of the hotel), where we can control the temperature and lighting. Should this not be the case a room change must be requested. Please explain to the hotel management in a polite way that you as a crew member are responsible to be fit for duty and if proper rest is not achieved, one consequence may be to delay the flight until such time as the required rest is achieved.
This is the first update since we asked our members to join the Hotel Committee to actively support those who are already part of it. We would like to thank the following new members joining David Wainwright and George Karambilas in their effort to improve and maintain the quality of hotels:
• Tim Garnich
• Jochen Ehrenfeld
• Jonas Hindersin
• Ingo Schuster
• Tobias Woll
