A pandemic record 800,000 travelers passed through TSA airport security Sunday, August 9. As well, daily trip counts at Teddyslimo.com continue to climb a little more every week and we are prepared for a big increase in business travel after Labor Day.

So, if you are feeling the pressure to dip your toes back into your business-travel routine soon, for a successful Q4, rest assured we professional business travel partners are looking out for you.

“Anything that we do that exposes us to other people is potentially risky, hotel stays included. But if proper precautions are taken, then it’s unlikely that they’re among the most risky things people could be doing,” Caitlin Howell, a chemical and biomedical engineer at the University of Maine, told Business Insider.

“Aspects of hotel stays that put people close together, such as talking with other patrons or exercising in a small space with others, are more likely to be risky than sleeping in a room,” she said. “…the risk of catching COVID-19 during a hotel stay is low if it’s properly cleaned.”

Well-run hotels and car services, like Teddy’s, are disinfecting services before every guest.

More at Business Insider.

 – pandemic-era ‘rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated’ …again

(The answers to the quiz question, the ROI of business travel, is at the bottom of this page.)

It was a typical livery service ‘fire drill.’ As they sometimes do, the Teddy’s dispatchers pulled me away from the phone to run out and drive a Teddy’s private car service customer.

This one was probably the early ‘90’s and the trip was short: Norwalk to probably Westchester County Airport in White Plains (straddling Harrison and Purchase, NY ..and mere yards from Greenwich, CT). Or maybe it was just the eight-mile run to Amtrak in Stamford.

Anyway, one of our full-time professional chauffeurs probably got hung up on the previous trip or maybe this client called and was ready early. The fare, I remember, was a man and a woman and the pickup was at an office building on Connecticut Avenue in Norwalk.

In short order, one of them thanked me, “we heard you were the company president so thank you for coming for us.” If I was true to form, I probably said ‘my pleasure’ followed by “if Stew Leonard can take a register when it gets busy, I can certainly service a VIP customer.”  Tom Peters had recently highlighted Stew Leonard’s grocery store in A Passion for Excellence so it was safe to assume everyone in a business suit knew about the Norwalk grocer.

They asked me how our dispatchers communicated with our drivers and I explained we had three Nextel repeaters and we’d have to dial into the right one depending on where we thought the chauffeur was: was he within a 25 mile radius from the channel 1 repeater on the Chrysler Building in New York City?  …or would the repeater in Syosset, NY work better which gave us good coverage across Long Island Sound into Greenwich, Stamford and Darien, CT. …or maybe the repeater in Bridgeport would work. (Ironically, with this system, the closer to our Westport office a driver was, the worst the radio reception.)

The woman passenger said I might be interested to learn about the project they were just pitching. She showed me a piece of paper with a honeycomb design and said they were going to buy our three Nextel repeaters then build 300 more in our region and 30,000 repeaters across the United States. ..and they were going to call it cellular telephone. That explains the honeycomb.

“Cell phones were going to be the death of the private car service industry.”

We heard that a lot. But business travel continued to grow every year as it always does.

Quite a few years before that, we heard we were upon the demise of business travel with the fax machine became widely available. Then with the 1995-’96 growth of the World Wide Web .. “who in the world would ever need to fly to a business trip again!?” Statistics continued to strongly prove otherwise.

Video conferencing, clunky at first, came quickly on the heels of the Internet and the refrain was the same. But business travel continued to grow significantly nearly every year. For seven consecutive years, Teddy’s was an INC Fastest Growing Companies in America.

AFTER ALL, Face-to-face meetings allow for clearer communication. In addition to being able to read facial expressions, body language and inflection, in-person meetings often end up being more positive and considered more credible than online or virtual conversations according to Entrepreneur.

Without non-verbal cues, you also run the risk of misinterpreting information. In fact, 60% of people regularly misread tone or message when communicating via email or phone.

No matter how much we may like social networking, in-person interactions are at the very core of relationship building, both personally and professionally. In fact, 85% of people believe face-to-face meetings contribute to stronger, more meaningful business relationships.

So, if you want to form true, concrete connections, try to meet in-person rather than online whenever possible according to an article in Medium.

Answer: Business travel has a 12.5-to-1 ROI

The Medium article also reminds us in-person meetings are more focused and more productive. In fact business travel is said to have better than 12:1 Return On Investment, or ROI according to Business Travel News.

So while you still have to be extremely cautious when you travel and its smart to avoid it a little while longer, if you can, incentives are far too high to believe Zoom is going to be enough to allow you to get the job done faster and better than your competition.

To learn more about the Teddy’s Platinum Reward Miles program, click here.

Four-star services and business traveler wellness are not a luxury for road warriors

   ~ Travel managers, take note

A uniformed driver (we still call the best ones chauffeurs) with a polished luxury Lincoln sedan pulls into your neighbor’s Darien driveway: “Impressive.” But it was at 5AM. So next time you see the neighbor, you ask and learn she had a 7:30AM flight out of LaGuardia to Chicago. “Business class!? Nice.” And she stayed at an upscale business hotel for two nights and enjoyed a couple of splendid dinners at 4-star restaurants – not bad at all!

But if you are envious, don’t be. An extensive 2018 study[1], by the Global Business Travel Association and American Express found a “strong correlation between frequency of business travel and a wide range of physical and behavioral risks” according a 2018 article[2] in Harvard Business Review.

Think back and there seems to be a private car service driver in her driveway about every other week! ..and usually very early in the morning. She tells you she’s been on that punishing schedule for years. She is away from her family until late Wednesday or Thursday night on those weeks. That is a lot of missed Little League games and dance recitals – a heavy burden indeed.

“Compared to those who spent one to six nights a month away from home for business travel, those who spent 14 or more nights away from home per month had significantly higher body mass index scores” writes Andrew Rundle in HBR, “and were significantly more likely to report the following: poor self-rated health; clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression and alcohol dependence; no physical activity or exercise; smoking; and trouble sleeping. The odds of being obese were 92% higher for those who traveled 21 or more nights per month compared to those who traveled only one to six nights per month, and this ultra-traveling group also had higher diastolic blood pressure and lower high density lipoprotein (the good cholesterol).

Sixty-seven percent of surveyed business travelers reported that frequently or occasionally they experienced “reduced confidence that I can keep up with the pace of work and fulfill commitments” according to a slide in an April 2020 Business Travel News webinar attended by this author. Well over half surveyed also ‘frequently or occasionally’ felt significant fatigue, back disorders, anxiety, trouble sleeping and a negative impact on personal/family relationships.

Even with the cost of executive car service, seat upgrades and top hotels, business travel has a 12:1 Return on Investment. And the people who travel most frequently typically command a company’s highest pay scale. So, it pays to keep your road warriors not only happy, but safe and productive. The best talent demand a valid and vetted safe executive-tier car, upgraded air and hotel services and command it at the best companies.

There is just no easy way to get from Connecticut or Westchester to LaGuardia (LGA), Kennedy (JFK) or Newark Liberty Airport (EWR).

After all, New York City and Fairfield County are consistently ranked as two of the top five worst traffic areas in the United States.  So, having a heavily-vetted professional driver in a gracious Lincoln motorcar – with fully 7.2 inches more rear seat legroom than Mercedes’ biggest sedan – will take a tremendous burden off the shoulders of your top rainmakers and go far in helping them be successful on behalf of your company. A private car service from the airport gets them home much sooner and lets road warriors get their post-meeting work done, instead of fighting New York traffic, and be ready to enjoy the family when they arrive home.

For Teddy’s Hartford County clientele, the benefits are manifold:

It is downright dangerous to think you can safely drive yourself all the way home from JFK or Boston Logan (BOS) after an international or west coast flight.

Recruiting top talent?

The BTN webinar findings show the top three travel wellness wants are:

1. “the option to include an extra day in-destination to prepare and acclimate
2. Time off work at the employee’s discretion after long trips
3. The ability to upgrade my room or bed type

Teddy’s Transportation System, established in Westport in 1932, is the 2020 LCT magazine National Limousine Operator of the Year.

[1] https://www.amexglobalbusinesstravel.com/press-room/business-travel-responsible-547-billion-gdp-2016-creates-74-million-jobs/

[2] https://hbr.org/2018/05/just-how-bad-is-business-travel-for-your-health-heres-the-data

Since March, Teddy’s private car service drivers have been instructed to crack open the car windows, when able, during the coronavirus crisis. Today, Teddy’s received OSHA guidance confirming this policy is helpful.

Teddy’s professional chauffeurs are also instructed on how to set the air conditioning system for fresh are, not recirculated air.

Public health officials are also increasingly trumpeting the benefits of open windows and fresh air to help mitigate the virus. According to an article at Medium.com, a 2019 study found natural ventilation can reduce transmission of tuberculosis by 72%. Now the CDC recommends opening windows to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, as mentioned in the same article.

Whether it be Westport to Westchester, Darien to LaGuardia, JFK to Stamford or Bradley to Bristol, be assured your professional Teddy’s driver is trained on all the latest clean-car and safety needs to make your business travel safe.

Our time to shine

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting business crisis come with astronomical human and financial costs. But this week, as folks are starting to head back to LaGuardia, Kennedy, Newark, White Plains, Hartford/Springfield and Boston Logan, I wrote to Team Teddy’s about this being an opportunity to demonstrate the value of a truly professional private car service.

“…business travel managers feel assured their Duty of Care responsibilities are met and this is now more crucial than ever.”

Premium executive transportation has always been a trusted boutique niche in the ground transportation industry which, in general, has as many customers as the airline and hotel industry. But only about three percent of the overall market, the most influential, hardest working and wealthy travelers typically leverage the added productivity of premium private car service.

This positioning has been challenged by global app-cab platforms to share personal cars which blurs lines and may have travelers and travel managers begin to question our value equation. Many observers have thought that our niche would be further eroded by futuristic mass transit algorithms, automated marketplaces and artificially powered robots.

‘Yes,’ we had to re-energize to show that a qualified, duly vetted, trained, briefed, managed and committed professional driver in an impeccably spotless premium vehicle has remarkable value. Such service keeps you safer, more productive and greatly increases the peace-of-mind of the traveler as well as that of his family and his corporate risk manager.

If your team’s travelers are flying business class and staying in premium boutique hotels, they command the added comfort and productivity of a professional private car service. Luckily, Teddy’s professional private sedan service from, say LaGuardia to Westport or JFK to Stamford is still about $100 less than UberBlack during busier times of day at airports!

To this, add the new dimension of travel during the COVID crisis. “Premium private car” has always helped business travel managers feel assured their Duty of Care responsibilities are met and this is now more crucial than ever. As our industry deploys the safest and most stringent COVID protocols, business travelers, older people and families, being cautious, will favor our pro solution and much more lightly used vehicles over jumping into a random personal-car driver with a cab app and many times the per-day fare count.