PAGPFT. BA’s bad English, and singlets; London airport’s bagger.

FOXTROTS

 

 

Fox – sly.  Trots – left-leaning (Trotsky) plus its more insalubrious meaning. 

Foxtrots – leading the industry in a dance.

 

 

2009 March 23

 

PAGPFT (pronounced PAG-puffed); People Are Getting Paid For This. BA’s bad English, and singlets; London airport’s bagger.

 

[] British Airways says:

 

“We have come up with a phrase to describe what we are – ‘The experts that fly our customers with style’. Whoops. If you can understand the meaning despite the grammatical error, you are left with something that sounds wrong. PAGPFT.

 

“We have a strong network well poised for growth”. To me, that phrase seems either contradictory or meaningless? PAGPFT.

 

 

[] A stewardess, not young, on BA flight, asked one passenger at a time what they wanted to drink, and then returned to the trolley to get it, then asked the next passenger what they wanted, and so on. My quick estimate is that she took twice as long to serve a row of six passengers than if she asked two people what they wanted and then returned to the trolley to fulfill the order.

 

She is getting paid for that, so is the person who does the BA training. But the people paying are the passengers – with their drinks coming about 10 minutes after their food has been served. PAGPFT.

 

 

[] Standard announcement at London Heathrow airport: “Passengers are reminded to take all their baggage with them when leaving the building”. Someone got paid for deciding that if passengers were not told otherwise, they would leave some baggage behind?

 

Or is it that if they do leave something behind in the terminal and it is lost for ever/stolen, the airport can say “But we told you!”. PAGPFT.

 

 

The Fox

PAGPFT. Hong Kong airport, NH Hotels, Hogg Robinson.

FOXTROTS

 

 

Fox – sly.  Trots – left-leaning (Trotsky) plus its more insalubrious meaning. 

Foxtrots – leading the industry in a dance.

 

 

2009 February 23

People are getting paid to do this. Hong Kong airport, NH Hotels, Hogg Robinson.

 

 

1. People are getting paid for this:

 

Hong Kong airport frequently figures at the top of lists as the world’s or the region’s best airport. I have always disbelieved these. After a visit to the airport one month before it opened, I wrote about ‘A Design Disaster’.

 

Well, the designers have gone one step further. Is this the only airport in the world that requires passengers to change trains to get to some gates?! This, for a station concourse that is two floors down (then two up). And currently there are no signs for travellers to take escalators – they direct them just to the lifts – which do not have enough capacity for a train load…

 

 

 

2. People are getting paid for this:

 

I noted that Spain’s NH Hotels name for its new up-market brand, EdeNH, was a disaster. After all, probably the first criteria for a successful brandname is to select a word that can be said – in at least Spanish if not English. Try to say ‘EdeNH’ and you will understand.

 

The head of NH once said something similar to “It is Eden with NH at the end”; that is hardly a snappy name.

 

It has now been dropped. The official reason was that there are too many ‘Eden’ hotels around the world, so customers were unsure whether these were part of NH or not. I’m not sure I believe that…

 

But NH has chosen another brandname, for another type of hotel, a trendy one, starting with a hotel in Milan and to be followed by one in Berlin. I think that brandname, NHow, is as good as EdeNH was bad.

 

 

 

3. People are getting paid for this:

 

Hoggwash from Hogg Robinson, a business travel agency group:

 

-“…[Companies] will gain greater access to negotiated hotel rates.” I presume this means hotels will discount rates?

 

-“…pockets of growth…where demand [for hotel rooms] outstripped supply…[including] Abu Dhabi, Berlin, Moscow.” To me, demand greater than supply indicates occupancies of just below or just above 100%.

 

 

 

The Fox