With this newsletter, we would like to give you a little overview of the Voyage Reports on Hotel deficiencies you sent us over the year 2019 and show you the statistic that highlights some of the events and trends we picked up.
A staggering amount of 77 Voyage Reports was received as pdf-copies and we would like to thank you for not only sharing your reports with us, the Hotel Committee, but also taking the effort to put it into writing. This allows us to follow up with Senior Management on deficiencies, unsuitable hotels and directly getting in contact with hotel management, even if that station received a single report over the entire year!
40 reports were directly related to “Crew Rest Disturbance”, where some of them are simply the consequence to no updated bookings and the common calls from housekeeping/reception to check on the booking status with the crew member directly. Unfortunately, not all Voyage Reports are being properly investigated as they don’t always end up with the right department. Crew rest disturbances has also been brought up at the FSAG when you have filed ASRs after having delayed a flight.
Your reports are well received and enable us to show the trends and highlights to Senior Management, address omissions to OM-A/CWA requirements and provide proof to flawed bookings procedures etc. It also highlighted to the company that certain hotels were well below standard (e.g. GIG airport hotel) thus enabling us to address the issues with them and to subsequently move to approved and inspected hotels by the Hotel Committee like in Almaty, New York, Seoul and of course Anchorage. In Columbus our recommended hotel was disregarded and we were forced to move to the current hotel that still receives Voyage Reports.
Below we broke down a few highlights in more details such as:
ANCHORAGE
The highlight and biggest issue in the last year was quite obviously the Anchorage Hilton with 26 reports alone and these reports were received within roughly 3 months! We sometimes received multimedia attachments to demonstrate the unacceptable outside noise level, got shown pictures of technical deficiencies in bathrooms, broken window handles and frames etc.
Various reasons led to this spike and in summary we can say that the vast amount of reports could have been avoided if we had either been able to stay at the Marriott or if we had been able to move quicker to the Sheraton. Unfortunately, the Marriott canceled the contract with Cargolux and forced us to the Hilton, were unfortunately the agreed renovated rooms were not always reserved for us as initially agreed by the hotel.
HONG KONG
The reports we received for Hong Kong were only related to the airport hotels booked during the social unrest, the Regal and the Marriott. After being consulted again for the recent and temporary move to the airport, the Marriott SkyCity was selected. We clearly communicated to Senior Management our concerns due to the previous Voyage Reports we received, mostly related to aircraft and construction noise next door. We recommended the Novotel Hong Kong Citygate in Tung Chung, which was inspected by us in October 2019 with enough proximity to the airport and the Citygate Outlets in walking distance, with its many food and shopping options as well as the adjacent MTR station. The argument against it was, that social distancing in the Novotel Crew transport could not be guaranteed.
INCHEON
The move from the JW Marriott was only supposed to be a temporary measure whilst the hotel underwent renovations. We were never consulted nor allowed to provide suitable alternatives whilst the renovations took place, and we were forced to move to the Sheraton. Most complaints were related to the inability to control the room temperature and noise complaints. We hope to have a suitable alternative soon that we are actively working on.
LUXEMBOURG
During B2B operation we had seen a few cases were crews were booked in a B&B style hotel in Trier-Igel which was neither inspected nor would have ever been approved by us, as it was not fulfilling the basic requirements. In one case, a crew member had to report unfit for duty due to the inability to blackout the light. Similar cases were reported in the NH, which was used quite often on B2B operations, where the complaints mostly related to the lack of temperature control.
SUMMARY
Many deficiencies occur when suitable hotels are not selected. This occurs as costs are the determining factor. The same cost cutting approach has caused cancellations of contracts by hotel managements at various destinations.
The detailed items show in the statistic, that your single report is vital in order for us to act and address issues with Senior Management and with hotels directly. The statistic also reveals the weakness of Cargolux’s booking system and process, mainly for Area 1 (North America), as the majority of Voyage Reports are addressing issues in the US (47). These issues are mostly linked to delays and schedule changes, that are not updated or being unnoticed due to the non-existing 24/7 coverage of A1 travel office.
As long as these issues are not eliminated, we still expect “Crew Rest Disturbances”, “No Bookings upon Arrival” to be happening in the future and we therefore would like to emphasize again every one of you to be vigilant and keep us sending your Voyage Reports, also during COVID-19 operations and social unrest. We have to maintain our minimum hotel standards, our first gate to maintain flight safety!
Stay safe and keep reporting!
