I’ve never paid much attention to this, being the trusting person that I am, but according to Nancy at Full Circle Online Interaction Blog, Northwest’s frequent flier programs award fewer miles than are actually flown. She says:

I was checking my frequent flyer miles on Northwest Airlines and thought, hm, the total qualifying miles seems low, considering I flew from Seattle to NY, to Austin back to Seattle. Only 3,346 miles. That didn’t seem right. So I went to the Flying Distance Calculator. Hm, quite a discrepancy. Considering the lower nautical mile figures, NW is crediting me about

NW Says LGA to IAH - 709 miles
Flying Distance Calculator says - 1229

Sea to Newark NW says 1201
Calculator says 2080

Houston to Seattle NW says 937
Calculator says 1626

Now if Northwest raises prices because fuel is going up, yet they are actually flying LESS miles due to some crazy math, something is wrong here. I’m losing 2088 miles (and, with my elite status, another 50% on top of that.)

I can understand bankruptcy. I can understand hard times. I can’t understand blatant deception.

Other than learning there was such a thing as a Flying Distance Calculator, I thought you all might want to check it out for yourself to see if, in the airline frequent flier world anyway, it’s becoming a smaller world than it used to be. If anyone from Northwest is reading this, please e-mail me or drop a note in the comments with your point of view.

Interesting article in the LA Times today about Meetings Exchange, or Inmex. Inmex is a new program created by the hospitality labor union Unite Here. The LA Times article says:

“We are providing groups and associations on a wide scale the information they need to determine whether a particular hotel company is taking a positive or negative approach toward its employees,” said Unite Here hospitality division President John Wilhelm. “We think the impact on the hotel industry over time will be huge.”

But industry officials called Inmex a ploy by Unite Here to increase membership and said they would closely monitor the information being distributed.

The organization is drawing criticism from the hotel industry amid labor negotiations with Unite Here in several major cities. The union orchestrated contracts to expire this year in a number of major cities — Los Angeles, Toronto, New York, Boston, Chicago and Honolulu — leading to a powerful threat of a nationwide strike. In Los Angeles alone, there are more than 5,000 union workers at 25 hotels.

According to the Inmex Web site, the organization provides a resource to member organizations that will provide help in site selection, cost analysis, and contract negotiations, and through Unite Here, also give them the latest on labor issues and lists of union and nonunion hotels.

Starwood is getting into the social networking thing these days. First, they launched The Lobby blog, and today I hear that they’ve relaunched Sheraton.com with a feature that lets guests tell their stories about the hotel and the area. They’re all pretty cute, at least the ones I read, though I doubt a discouraging word will be heard. Anyway, to get a kickstart to the program, Sheraton is offering a prize for some lucky travel-story-sharer— five rooms for five nights at any Sheraton hotel and resort around the world, roundtrip airfare for five people, $5,000 spending money and five digital cameras to capture all the memories. There are lots of areas that are still waiting for their first story; yours could be the first. I like that they’re doing this.

At our franchise meeting this week, one person who’s fairly new to our industry kept rolling his eyes as we threw acronym after acronym at him, from PCMA to TIA to ASAE to T&E. But when one of our new media guys asked for an example of something, and one of our magazine people said, “F&B,” he said, “Are you swearing at me?” What we automatically filled in as “food and beverage,” he heard as “effing b” (use your imagination). Once I wiped the tears of laughter out of my eyes, it made me think of when I first started this job and felt totally at sea, awash in mysterious letters that held great meaning, if I could only figure out what they stood for. I think we’re pretty good at remembering to spell out our myriad industry acronyms, but obviously, not always. And it’s not just acronyms, but all that jargon that now seems second nature, but to newbies might as well be Farsi. Check out this quiz, taken from an article written while back by a former colleague then new to the biz:

POP QUIZ: TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
Pick the correct answer

Arrival Pattern
a) anticipated dates and times of arrival of group members;
b) the line formed by airplanes approaching an airport;
3) what quilting-bee contestants call their adversaries’ coverlet

Docent
a) facility staff member who provides special services such as transportation and tour arrangements;
b) tour guide in a museum, educational facility, or art gallery;
c) slang for a bad smell — scent — and a person’s reaction to it — “Doh!”

Dualing Menus
a) split (dual) entrées, such as surf and turf;
b) printing a lunch menu and dinner menu on the same document;
3) a fight between fast food restaurant staffers

Planagement
a) term for good management through proper planning;
b) term for an arboretum’s staff members;
c) one heck of a typo

Squirrel Cage
a) the area in which a speaker awaits his or her introduction;
b) Nicolas Cage’s little brother;
c) revolving drum used for raffle tickets

Click on the comments to see the official answers.

Check out tradeshow startup man Tim Bourquin’s thoughts on speakers and sponsors who don’t seem to have much interest in showing up on the show floor. The sponsor who only wanted to cough up for something for the goody bag said to Tim:

“Tim you have a show all about the new medium of podcasting, and yet you are running it like a 1950’s AM/FM broadcaster. Seems to me that you need to take the 1950’s Trade Show model (which is what you have) and modernize it with new opportunities…”

But getting a catalog in the goodie bag and an ad in the program isn’t exactly Jettson’s material; that’s been around almost as long as tradeshow floors, so I’m guessing this guy just has a booth aversion. But it’s an interesting question as to what those new opportunities might be, though. What I hear some shows are doing is, for those who don’t want to buy a booth or provide other sponsorship dollars, they pay a hefty fee to attend (three to five times that of regular attendees, sometimes more) so they can mingle with buyers even when boothless. Others are allowing people to pay to hold hospitality suites, but again, that’s not new.

Is the traditional tradeshow model outdated, as Tim’s client suggests? Is there some other way to get buyers and sellers together and still remain solvent, much less profitable? The reluctance to buy booth space isn’t just Tim’s problem—we hear about it from all types of shows where clients want the buyer exposure, but not the booth.

Check out this silly quiz to waste a little pre-long weekend Friday afternoon: If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be? Here’s mine.

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Cult Classic

Quirky, offbeat, and even a little campy - your life appeals to a select few. But if someone’s obsessed with you, look out! Your fans are downright freaky. Your best movie matches: Office Space, Showgirls, The Big Lebowski