16 (Hotels, Seth Kornblum)

Today's SWAPA Number is 16. That's the section of the contract that covers hotel standards. So on today's episode, we spoke to Hotels SME, Seth Kornblum, about the Crew Accommodations Board, hotel language, and some of the issues that have arisen since the ratification of the CBA.

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Transcript

Amy Robinson:

Today's SWAPA Number is 16. That's the section of the contract that covers hotel standards. So on today's episode we spoke to hotels SME, Seth Kornblum, about the Crew Accommodations Board, hotel language, and some of the issues that have arisen since the ratification of the CBA.

Amy Robinson:

I'm Amy Robinson.

Kurt Heidemann:

And I'm Kurt Heidemann. And here's our interview with Seth.

Amy Robinson:

So Seth, you're working specifically with hotels right now. Tell us a little bit about the CAB because that's a question that comes up a lot is, what is the CAB?

Seth Kornblum:

The Crew Accommodations Board, or the CAB for short, is a group of pilots and flight attendants who source, procure hotels for our crew members that are out there on layovers.

Kurt Heidemann:

Who is on the CAB?

Seth Kornblum:

The CAB's composed of a representative cross section of pilots and flight attendants currently on their respective seniority lists. And that's a line right out of the CBA. And what we're saying there is that it's got to be people on the seniority list, both pilots and flight attendants. And we say a cross section, we're talking about seniority. We don't want all brand new people because their hourly rate is lower. We don't want all senior folks. We're trying to have a CAB that looks like what the crew members group looks like.

Kurt Heidemann:

And so what's the division between pilots and flight attendants on the CAB?

Seth Kornblum:

The language requires that at least 50% of the CAB members will be pilots on our seniority list. And the CAB chair must always be a pilot.

Kurt Heidemann:

So actually that's higher representation for pilots since 50% of the CAB has to be pilots. But there are more flight attendants than there are pilots so proportionally it's a higher representation I guess.

Seth Kornblum:

That's correct. And one other nicety in the language is that the language requires that a pilot is in fact present on every single site inspection that's done. So the pilot's viewpoint is always considered.

Kurt Heidemann:

Is that a problem? I mean, I guess would they send just a flight attendant team to go look at a hotel, or just pilots, or ...

Seth Kornblum:

I mean, that's a possibility and so that was something we wanted to guard against. In a way to make this contract language future-proof we just wanted to close the door on that and make sure that we always had a pilot's eye there.

Amy Robinson:

So when you talk about the CAB, one of the things that often comes up is, why isn't SWAPA the Hotel Committee? Why do we not have that?

Seth Kornblum:

SWAPA's own hotel committee basically been done away with a long time ago and we can't go back. We can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. What we do have is language today that assures we know what is is. We know which body is going to be responsible for having full authority of procuring our crew hotels. And that body is the CAB, the Crew Accommodations Board.

Amy Robinson:

One of the things that came a lot too is the Hotel Standards Manual. Who maintains that?

Seth Kornblum:

The Hotel Standards Manual is a companion to the hotel section in our new CBA, and that is jointly maintained between SWAPA and the CAB.

Kurt Heidemann:

Why are they separated? Why are they not incorporated directly in the CBA language?

Seth Kornblum:

I mean, hotel conditions change out there. There are circumstances that may be unforeseen right now that may need to be addressed in the future. And so by having it in the separate standards manual that gives both the Company and union flexibility to do that.

Kurt Heidemann:

And back during the board meeting back in May you briefed the board on some of the challenges that we're having with implementation or one of the things that you mentioned in-room safes, and that was actually a detriment in some cases. It seems strange that we'd yield on that. That's giving up one of the amenities that we've negotiated. Why would we do that?

Seth Kornblum:

Well, so our new language is great in that it specifies certain amenities that must be included in our crew rooms that we use for overnight accommodations. But the downside to having those criteria is that there are some hotels that just can't meet all of the criteria we need. In fact, I showed the board a Venn diagram showing all the overlapping pieces that need to work. Not only does the hotel need to be of a certain quality standard, and meet certain location standards and drive-time standards, and also include all these amenities.

So there are times in certain markets where that kind of hems us in, hems in the CAB when they're trying to source some hotels. So you mentioned the safes for instance. That's a good example where in-room safes are not part of the current brand standard for some brands of hotels that are actually quite good for our crews. And so the CAB approached us in a few instances of saying, "Look, we've got a city where we've got this great hotel option but they don't have an in-room safe. Is that okay?"

And the language does specifically give the president of SWAPA or his designee the ability to waive certain requirements at times. And so those are all evaluated by SWAPA on a case-by-case basis. And something like an in-room safe, which isn't really high on most people's list of have-to-haves on the overnight, that's something that often makes sense to deviate from in order to get a better hotel experience overall.

Amy Robinson:

Something else you mentioned when you were giving your brief, you mentioned water, and that was even an issue at a couple of hotels. Can you give us that example?

Seth Kornblum:

Sure. Yeah. In certain cities due to pushes to be more green if you will, environmentally friendly, certain cities and certain brands are trying to reduce the amount of plastic water bottles that are provided in the hotel rooms. And there are certain markets where because of local ordinance or as I said a brand standard where that water bottle has suddenly becoming a challenge.

So in Hawaii, I don't remember the city off top of my head, that's one example where the hotel that otherwise checked off every single box and was a great choice overall couldn't provide the water bottles in the room. Rather they were going to provide a fresh, clean, reusable water bottle that you could take to a filtered water dispenser. And so when you looked at the totality of circumstances there that made good sense to waive that water bottle requirement.

Amy Robinson:

Some of the other things that you talked about at the time too, you talked a little bit about some of the issues being hotels themselves maybe don't necessarily want or need the business that we're trying to like change a hotel is not as easy as it initially sounds.

Seth Kornblum:

Sure. Yeah, I'll say that I think the CAB's really trying to meet the new language that we've got as part of Contract 2020, but sometimes the marketplace just makes that difficult. Hotels are enjoying record-high occupancy rates, very high nightly room rates they're able to charge. And so for some hotels dealing with airline crew type of business is really just not worth it for them. And it's a lower profit margin type of business than what they have with other hotel guests. And so many hotels either don't want crew business at all or need to limit the amount of crew business that they have.

So in some of these cities where because of our language being new where only recently are we able to mandate that we have to go downtown on long layovers, some of those hotels in some downtown locations basically already have their fill of crew business from other airline crews that have been downtown for decades. And so in certain markets it's hard for us to get into certain locations. Certain hotels just don't even want to bid for the business. It's not a matter of the Company being cheap.

It's just a matter of some of these hotels just don't want this type of business. And so what we saw with one recent market that we discussed with the CAB is that eight different hotels, the eight hotels in the downtown area that met our criteria, out of those eight not a single one even wanted to return a bid at any price for the business. So that is daunting and that's certainly a challenge that the CAB is facing and it's a challenge for us as we try to maintain compliance with the CBA and the Hotel Standards Manual.

Kurt Heidemann:

So what's the fix? So we have to give relief then? Do we say, "Okay, you can put us out at the airport because none of the eight hotels ..." Do we change the standards? How do we as SWAPA address that?

Seth Kornblum:

It really takes a lot of manpower to look at each situation case by case. And we've talked with the CAB about trying to find out in this instance with those hotel sales reps why they don't want the business. Is there any particular standard that is scaring them off? What if we just had a fewer number of rooms there and we could divvy up where our long and short layovers are and we could grant certain relief in a case like that. But it's definitely not a one-size-fits-all situation and we need to at times allow exemptions as the situation dictates.

Amy Robinson:

And I know for one of the examples, this is something that seems to come up on a fairly regular basis, is meals. I think no matter what hotel we sort of keep getting these feedback that maybe the meals aren't as expected, or they're not hot, or whatever. Is that hampering when it comes to trying to negotiate those contracts?

Seth Kornblum:

No. That's a great question, Amy. And that was another thing I spoke about with the board. With the current economic situations that the hotel are enjoying and also the labor challenges that they're facing, there are certain times where the nicest hotel in town in the best location in town just can't be as flexible or won't be as flexible as we would like them to be with the hours of meal service, or being able to provide morning meals or very late evening meals, and so that has become a real challenge for CAB and for us as we try to maintain compliance.

Amy Robinson:

You know, one of the things that I've noticed in watching a lot of the traffic, the comments on Facebook pages, even the comments in the room, is that every single person has a little bit of a differing viewpoint on what hotel is good and hotel is bad. And so it kind of feels like in some ways it's a little bit more of a daunting task than just saying this is the best hotel in town or whatever. Is that true? Is that something that you guys are seeing?

Seth Kornblum:

That's absolutely accurate. This is very subjective. What one pilot may love another pilot may not care for. We're doing the best that we can. That language was written per what we saw in the polling during the survey educate polling process. And so that language that was ratified was all informed by that. And then here we are today trying to assure compliance and as the CAB is trying to do their best to be compliant. Yeah, food service is a challenge. It's a tight labor market out there.

Hotels can't find staff at times that are willing to work as late as we would like them to be available. And it's a dicey proposition for the hotels as well because nothing says that if they keep the food service available that our crew members will even necessarily use it.

Sometimes our crews are frustrated with the evening meal challenges or the early morning meal challenges, and so they're carrying a food bag. So now a hotel may go out of their way to make some after-hours food available and turns out they are rewarded by us not spending a single dollar there. So again, I'm never going to apologize for the needs of our crew members. But the reality is it's a challenge out there.

Kurt Heidemann:

Yeah, I think it drives home kind of what we were talking about during some of the road shows. Our language, our contract, is with the Company. And the Company has an obligation to go out and find hotels that meet this, but it's still a third party. We can't control what Marriott does, or what the Radisson does, or what the nicest hotel in the city does. So we have to set the standards and then we gave them the relief through the standards manual basically.

Seth Kornblum:

Yeah, absolutely. And it could sound like we're trying to make excuses for food not being available. The reality is the language does still always allow you to get food one way or another even if it comes down to the hotel providing you transportation to where food's available.

And if they won't do that, you can get your own transportation and get that reimbursed. So no matter what, we're not saying our crews are out of options. Of course, we're just trying to make sure that they have the most convenient and desirable options.

Amy Robinson:

They could always do Uber Eats too. Is that correct?

Seth Kornblum:

They could. They could. The language speaks to specifically crews getting themselves to the food. But yes, I think Uber Eats is a reasonable accommodation that's arisen since this language was first presented.

Kurt Heidemann:

We talk about some of the nicer hotels may not offer the food. But I guess if we're talking trade-offs we could stay at the Marriott Courtyard right at the airport. The lady that checks you in at the front desk can also make you a panini so you could get 24-hour food. Is that a trade-off that we want to make?

Seth Kornblum:

Well, you know what we've seen with hotel products like that, like the Courtyard or specifically the Hyatt Place comes to mind where it's the front desk clerk who is also trying to handle the food and beverage service. That's one of those things that's a nice idea on paper. But for years we have seen that it just doesn't work in practicality. And for years SWAPA has objected to past CAB chairs over the use of Hyatt Places because they just don't work in practicality.

But you raise a very good point, Kurt. These are all trade-offs. So let's just say the JW in the perfect location is already the nicest hotel in town. Well, because they're the nicest hotel in town, with the economy being strong as far as hotels are concerned they don't need our business that desperately. So it is a challenge, and I know CAB's got their hands full sourcing these hotels for us to meet these requirements.

Amy Robinson:

So I know in some of the recent polling we did hotels was still a bit of a consternation for our pilots, and I know that that kind of came in as something that they were concerned with. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Seth Kornblum:

Yeah, so I would suspect it's because a lot of this hotel language is not fully implemented yet across the system because the CAB, they can only do a couple cities at a time as we get the long and the short hotels split up. And as they bring the hotels up to the higher standard, cancel contracts if need be, get new contracts. So I think the membership is not seeing the improvements as fast as they are with say LCO or some of the scheduling things which they're seeing right away.

Because we did achieve the biggest thing that the group indicated they wanted in polling was the long and short split. We got that. I think we've got the best transportation language in the business as far as the 30-minute self-walk and self-source for your own transportation. I think that's really one of the greatest things we achieved in this contract, and it took a lot of work to get that.

But if your transportation to the hotel from the airport has not departed within 30 minutes of blocking, or will not depart the airport within 30 minutes of blocking, you can source your own at premium ride-share levels. So Uber Black, or what have you if there's another option in that particular city, 30 minutes from blocking you should be on your way. And like I said, even the way we worded it was very particular.

If you know the normal scheduled van won't be there, in advance if you know it's not going to be there within 30, again, you should be on your way. Get your own transportation. Take care of it. Take care of yourself. And that's huge. Also, the transportation from the hotel to the airport. No more being forced to leave much, much earlier than is required just to meet the convenience of a particular transportation provider. If they don't have the time set up correctly there's no more need to argue about it. Just as the contract allows source your own if you need to.

Kurt Heidemann:

You're required to attempt to change your time and if you're unable to then you can source your own, right?

Seth Kornblum:

Absolutely. But there's no reason to get into some of these huge long-winded conflicts. Make your attempt and if it doesn't go anywhere then yes, source your own. That's a huge victory. And we've also got I think really good language as far as if SWAPA has a dispute with CAB over whether or not a particular hotel is acceptable or living up to its expectations CAB has to get back to us within 30 days to come up with a plan. So that's really good language.

There's this urban legend out there that all the other big airlines have this automatic veto power over a particular hotel and that's just not true. We have not seen that at our peers. So overall, I think these are quantum leaps from our previous contract in the hotel area. And one of the biggest things too is that the CAB data, the crew rest feedback forms, that data, statistics from that now get shared with us, which we did not have that in the past.

The other thing is, speaking of the CAB, the fact that the CAB is still there as opposed to hotel procurement being outsourced by a third party. And a lot of our peers in the industry are having to deal with some third-party vendor that really is all about cost. And those people have less accountability. Those folks are never going to lay their heads down in these beds.

Whereas our CAB folks, they are in fact crew members on the seniority list. The language does require a pilot CAB member to be on every single site inspection for crew rooms and there's just more accountability there. So overall I think that there's some huge improvements from the last contract.

Kurt Heidemann:

Seth, you mentioned the van time issue. As a guy that has had a few of these like New York overnights, can we expect any changes there? Because honestly I've been 45 minutes sometimes, almost an hour to get downtown Manhattan. It's great, but it's eating into my overnight. Is that something that we're looking at?

Seth Kornblum:

Well, that's just one of the natural trade-offs from really what our pilots indicated strongly during the survey educate polling process that they wanted was the appropriate locations for long layovers and short layovers. And so in a city like New York, in cities like that if you want to go downtown, and our pilots have clearly indicated overwhelmingly that that's what they want, longer drive times are just going to be a reality there.

Now, we do have language that puts a limitation on how long the drive should normally be. But in cities like New York or Denver you're never going to be able to get to downtown within the normal limit. So that's another example of us allowing exemptions in the cases where it makes sense.

There are going to be some locations where allowing a longer drive time really doesn't make sense. The juice isn't worth the squeeze so to speak. But in a place like New York City or Denver it's been our determination that that's probably going to be the best thing for the most crew members in accordance with the polling data that we have.

Amy Robinson:

So one of the things that came out of this last set of polling was this separate hotels issue did not happen, that some pilots were upset that we did not achieve separate hotels from the flight attendants.

Seth Kornblum:

Right, and that's a result of the fact that ultimately the SWAPA Board of Directors directed the NC that that was no longer a priority.

Kurt Heidemann:

I guess I could add a little bit of context to that. I wouldn't say it wasn't a priority or it was. It was simply one path that we had. And this all came about a few years ago, for people who are newer here on the seniority list, there were some issues between work groups.

And one of the things that was discussed specifically was separate hotels to ensure that there weren't incidents that happened on the overnight. Seth, I know that you actually looked into this. And correct me if I'm wrong, the data supported the fact that there were very few incidents of write-ups or that kind of behavior on the overnights specifically.

Seth Kornblum:

Yeah. Statistically, the issue was not at all what social media would have pilots believe. The idea that there were frequent crew conflicts between work groups at the hotel just isn't the reality at all.

Amy Robinson:

When people do have issues that ... I know we've talked about all of the positives that did come out of this new language. But there are going to be hotels that do fall below the standard. What is the remedy for those people and how do they go about telling someone?

Seth Kornblum:

There are definitely times when the hotel experience falls short of our crew members' expectations. And so in those circumstances we absolutely want our pilots to use the Company's feedback form. And I know I have heard from many folks that in the past folks had given up on writing up those forms because they had expressed frustration with the feedback from certain CAB members in the past.

But if you're not giving the Company the data, even a chance to fix a situation, kind of unreasonable to expect something to be fixed. When you run to Facebook instead of putting it into the actual proper mechanism to get the situation looked at you're not helping anybody. And nowadays, as I mentioned, this new language affords us those statistics. And the CAB does a great job sharing the feedback form data with us monthly. Despite your experiences in the past with those feedback forms you got to keep them coming.

Fill out the data. Nothing gets fixed without data points. And those data points are there for the CAB to act on it and for SWAPA to assure compliance. And so we absolutely want to uphold the high standard that we fought for in negotiations and we need your help. We need that data through the crew rest feedback forms. Again, it gives CAB a chance to try to take care of the problem and it gives SWAPA a way to make sure that we're holding the Company accountable.

Kurt Heidemann:

Thank you to Seth for coming on the podcast to talk to us about all things hotels.

Amy Robinson:

Remember, if you have any feedback for us at all please drop us a line at comm@swapa.org. We really do want to hear your feedback and any suggestions that you have.

Kurt Heidemann:

And finally, today's bonus number is 204. That's the total number of properties on the CAB's crew hotel list. As Seth mentioned, getting that list up to standards with all the requirements listed in our new CBA is going to take some time. Rest assured though that SWAPA will be keeping a close eye on those as time goes on. So help us by continuing to submit any hotel issues you have via the comply form on your EFB.