Saturday Night Live At Mohegan Sun (02-01-2010)

What recession?

A Saturday night on the last weekend in January found the Mohegan Sun living up to its slogan “a world at play”. It might not be the whole world, but a good part of New England.

An estimated 25,000 people were everywhere. Forget getting a reservation for dinner. The Latin band “Aventura” sold 7,500 tickets to their show in the arena.

5,000 more people were on hand for the 7th Annual Food & Wine Show at the Convention Center. A Billy Joel Tribute band entertained another 800 enthusiasts in The Wolf Den. Singer Tony Bennett will play the arena on Valentine’s Day.

You had trouble finding a 25-cent slot machine to play in the new Casino of the Wind.

The latest restaurant to open at the Connecticut casino is Bar Americain under the direction of Celebrity Chef Billy Flay.

It was doing great business with a New York Strip steak priced at $39. For $11, you could get a crock of onion soup complete with Parker House croutons and blasted Vermont chedder cheese.

Looking around the understated elegant restaurant, no one seemed to be blasted and the younger crowd dressed up was having a very good time.

By Sunday night, things had calmed down and the crowd was actually pretty light. All is not that rosy for a further expansion of gambling in Connecticut at its two major casinos. Its main draw continues to be to the north from Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The breakfast 2 for 1 buffet on Monday morning had them standing in line to get in at the Seasons buffet.

Overall business was down last year at Mohegan Sun and a lot of people who follow the industry say that casinos that have saturated the landscape in New York and Pennsylvania in the last couple of years are one of the major reasons for the drop off in business.

As you drive up to the hotel valet parking entrance, a 10-story crane sits idle after a year as construction stopped on a second hotel.

All of this is taking place as Massachusetts again gets ready to bring gaming legislation to the table in an election year. It may be too little, too late.

The Times Gives Boston A Boost (01-06-2010)

The “Escapes” Section of The New York Times on January 1 did a number on a visit to Boston and it was all positive. Sara Rimer wrote the story and it should give the city a boost for the winter tourism season.

The big winners in this article, complete with pictures and maps, were the Boston waterfront and the Fairmont Battery Wharf Hotel.

According to Ms. Rimer, you fly into Logan Airport, call ahead for the Water Taxi and are met at the dock by a smiling bellman at the new North End hotel that she reports is located in Boston’s “Little Italy.” She is high in her praise of the demolition of the Central Artery and what that has done for Boston.

She lists a number of new restaurants and places to visit with a nod to the new Institute of Contemporary Art on the waterfront in the Seaport District. Rimer lists Sportello, operated by chef Barbara Lynch, as a good bet. She calls Lynch “a chef goddess in this town.”

One of the key elements of a visit to Boston is The Harbor Walk that you can start at The Batter Wharf Fairmont Hotel. And if you are really ambitious you can wind up at The John F. Kennedy Museum, although that trip might take almost the whole day.

On Saturday January 2, The Times gave Boston another boost; here is the first paragraph of the story on the “Outdoor Classic” National Hockey Game.

“BOSTON – The atmosphere was terrific and so was the game, a ragged but thrilling winter afternoon of pond hockey that just happened to be played in the country’s oldest and one of its most beloved major league baseball stadiums.” That piece was written by Jeff Klein.

Boston is still a great hockey town. 38,112 fans turned out for the outdoor NHL game. What was more surprising was that over 30,000 fans came to Fenway a day later for an old-timers charity hockey game.

H1N1 Wasn't The One (01-04-2010)

Terrorism has taken over the media. But what happened to the H1NI pandemic?

Cases are receding as the regular flu season reaches its peak.

There is now plenty of vaccine around but there are few takers at drug stores in Boston. On December 29, I ventured into the Walgreen Drug Store in Central Square in East Boston near the airport. The flashing electronic sign outside said that flu shots were available. I was 15 minutes too early. One woman sat waiting for the opportunity.

On January 2, I checked out the CVS Pharmacy on Boston’s Newbury Street. They had never offered the service.

The same morning I visited the Walgreen’s opposite the Prudential Center on Boylston Street. Signs were everywhere in the store. The woman behind the pharmacy counter told me that yes, the store was giving the shots four days a week; but she couldn’t tell me what days they were going to be.

The only thing you can say for sure about this surge in swine flu cases is that hand sanitizers made a killing. By that I mean, you see them everywhere. I’m not sure you can say the same for facemasks.

Speaking of killing, health officials indicate that 10,000 people have died from flu-related symptoms. I am always suspect of sweeping comments like this. It is encouraging, however, to note that fall estimates of deaths were coming in at the 50,000 or more range with everyone waiting in a panic mode for the H1N1 vaccine that was delayed.

Remember the cries to close the Mexican border and shut down schools when the swine flu spread? It turned out none of that was necessary.

The government turned out to be very wrong in its estimate of how many shots would be available last fall. It had predicted about 160 million. The actual amount was about 30 million.

My personal physician’s office called me in early November and told me to come in for a shot.

Why me?

The nurse administering the dose said she did not know the reason.

“You’re at risk,” she said.

“From what?” I asked.

So it goes and let’s hope the swine flu does not make a comeback. We’ve got enough to worry about. 

Hyatt finally speaks up (01-01-2010)

The Hyatt Hotels in Boston and Cambridge can’t catch a break.

After over four months of not saying much about its side of the layoff of 98 long-time housekeepers this past summer, the general manager of the Hyatt downtown hotel penned a signed column for the opinion page of The Boston Globe. The newspaper decided to run the piece on Christmas Day when people had to be more interested in giving out presents than the present situation where the Hyatt hotels continue to be threatened with meeting cancellations and city boycotts.

Let me say that I have known Hyatt’s General Manager Phil Stamm since he came into the market six years ago at the Harborside Hotel at Logan Airport.

He has and continues to be very responsive to the needs of the community and the tourism industry.

In addition to his Hyatt duties, Stamm serves as the Chairman of the Massachusetts Lodging Association, the trade group for the hotel industry.

Having said all that, Hyatt finds itself in a very difficult position.

Hotels that are used primarily by business travelers have been severely hurt by the recession causing reduced rates and staff cuts. Simply put, their rooms were not occupied as often as two years ago.

No room sales mean no work for the housekeepers. However, Hyatt made a major business mistake by bringing in contract housekeepers that the Hyatt workers trained followed by hotel layoffs.

“I regret that we did not do a better job with transition support for employees as well as our communications with them. We have acknowledged that our initial steps fell short and were not consistent with our culture of respect. For that we have publicly apologized,” said Stamm in his column.

Hyatt’s mistake was thinking that these dismissed employees would go away quietly. Things don’t happen that way any more. Press conferences and the internet created a huge problem for Hyatt’s three hotels in Boston and they persist.

Hyatt is a non-union operation, but the hotel workers’ union in Boston picked up the workers cause and the story will not go away.

Across the street from the downtown hotel is a rundown trailer in a snow bank with tattered signs calling attention to the situation. You can be sure that this trailer won’t get a ticket.

Hyatt claims that they have added medical coverage into next year as well as matching terminated employees’ pay scale with those of another hotel staffing company. That offer is probably not going to be enough. The layoff affected veteran employees, most of whom liked their jobs and liked Hyatt.

This situation is not going to get any better until the hotel business gets better.
When you check into the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, there is a letter at the front desk saying that between now and April 2010, the hotel will be undergoing a renovation of all guest rooms and corridors. The Hyatt Harborside recently completed a renovation of all its meeting rooms.

Improvements in personnel management should be the next step. 

A 1 in 40,000 Shot (12-16-2009)

Megabus, the low cost bus carrier, operating from Back Bay Station, fired the first shot in a 2010 price war on the Boston to New York bus run.

It may be offering as many as 40,000 free seats in the Northeast to the Big Apple. A couple of days after a press release, a man was fatally shot in Times Square by a policeman and the city took a negative tourism hit.

The publicity on the negative event outweighed the bus promotion 100 to 1.

The announcement by Megabus, in conjunction with New York & Company, the city’s visitor’s bureau, failed to get as much publicity in Boston as the bus company had wanted.

Megabus sells its tickets online at megabus.com.

A trip to that website on December 12 found no mention of the new promotion.

A search of January trips from Boston to New York found only one $1 trip available for sale.

For travel on the morning of January 7, the 10:30 am departure listed a $10 charge for a seat. Going further out to January 26, you could get a $1 ticket on the 8:30 a.m. middle-of-the-week trip. All the rest were $10 or more.

Under no circumstances should anyone discount the growing popularity of bus travel to New York. Low prices, comfortable buses and Wi-Fi make this mode of travel very popular with student travel in New England.

People waiting for bus departures at the Clarendon Street side of Back Bay Station have to stand out in the cold weather waiting for their bus. If the service is not going to move back downtown to South Station, would it make sense to put some seats indoors looking out at the MBTA parking lot?

Talk About Bad Timing (12-04-2009)

My January Golf Digest arrived on December 3 and on the cover there is Tiger Woods peering over the shoulder of President Obama on the course. Talk about bad timing. The headline reads “10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger.”

My advice to the president is not to be seen in the same room. One might say that both Obama’s and Woods world crashed over Thanksgiving weekend with lax security at the White House and more security needed at Woods' house.

Dump him.

That’s my advice to Tiger’s corporate sponsors who provide over 90 percent of his income.

Companies like Gillette and Nike are saying all the right things about family values, but the tabloid press is just getting warmed up. Boston’s Gillette Company is a division of Proctor & Gamble. Many men might forgive Tiger, because he happens to be the best golfer in the world, but the women have nothing good to say and P & G has a lot of women’s products.

My bet is that at least one major sponsor will drop Woods in the next month. Their contracts allow for that. You can also be sure that all TV commercials showing Woods are off the air for the present time.

Can you imagine the press coverage when Woods plays in his first tournament next year.

One more thing. One of Tiger’s first sponsors was Buick who dropped out earlier this year, because General Motors is having financial problems. His accident occurs while he is driving a Cadillac Escapade that suffers $8,000 worth of damage and the air bag doesn’t deploy.

Getting back to Golf Digest another headline on the cover reads: “How to Outsmart Your Buddies.” Tiger Woods failed in every respect.

Red Faces At The White House (11-30-2009)

It wasn’t a happy thanksgiving for the Secret Service or the White House staff.

Michaele and Tareq Salahi crashed President Obama’s first state dinner for 350 guests on November 24 in Washington and even got to shake hands with the President in the receiving line. They have the pictures to prove it. On a slow news weekend, this caper was big news nationally and internationally.

And it appeared that the Secret Service couldn’t even find the Salahi’s to question them. Their agent knows where they are and is asking for six figures for a TV interview. You figure it out.

You don’t just stroll up to the White House and not get checked.

The key element of an event like this is the guest list. It keeps changing and the dinner seating list is all-important. Dinner planners have to know the exact number of people coming. No empty chairs please.

Most people don’t drive themselves to a party like this; they are driven in a big black car. There is no valet parking at the White House. The initial Secret Service explanation was it was dark at the pedestrian entrance to the dinner.

The Salahi’s had a plan and viewing the pictures of the former Washington Redskins cheerleader, they executed a game-ending two minute drill perfectly.The picture I loved was Mrs. Salahi posing with three Marine sergeants at the dinner. Post-event coverage indicated that the football team had no record of Ms. Salahi making the team or the taxi squad.

Everyone should have been checked in at least twice at the dinner.

There was a media pool inside the White House to photograph people entering the festive reception before dinner. In a setting like this, that group should also have had a copy of the people invited and their titles for media coverage.

I’ll bet there was a member of the White House press corps with that group. And remember that everyone involved had a cell phone to check anything out of the ordinary.

There was no place for the Salahi’s to eat, so they must have left. That in itself would cause concern. But they probably ate in the kitchen with the White House staff swapping Washington gossip.

This whole thing would be funny except that the breach of security was so serious.

Bravo TV was considering the Salahi’s for a new show, “The Real Housewives of Washington D.C.” In this case “DC” stands for disaster central.

A Number Of Things Went Wrong (11-16-2009)

The more I hear about this Northwest airliner that was out of contact on a flight to Minneapolis on October 21, the more I don’t like it.

Perhaps it’s possible for the two-person flight crew to be using their laptops in the cockpit for perhaps 10 minutes, but an hour? Talk about being distracted.

According to media reports, losing radio contact with an airliner in the air is not a major event. It happens every day.

There are a couple of things that make the ground operation suspect in this era of potential terrorism.

Air Traffic control personnel waited over an hour to notify Norad, the military air defense command, that there might be a problem. Procedures put in place after 9/11 calls for this notification to take place after 10 minutes of silence.

There is the much more troubling event connected with ground personnel trying to contact the pilots. It was the way a request for a telephone text message send attempt failed. According to aviation consultants that we have talked with, such a message would sound some sort of electronic ring in the cockpit.

Because Northwest is integrating its system into those of Delta Air Lines, air controllers had the wrong number and the message never got through.

The MBTA put an order into effect after a trolley crash that no electronic devices were being allowed while on the job. I hope the airlines make the same edict for their employees.

Pilots often are asked to change radio frequencies while in flight. Is it too much to ask them to stay tuned?

If this incident happened on a flight from Boston to Washington D.C., military planes would certainly have been scrambled and everybody would be scrambling to come up with recommendations “that this never happen again.”

I still can’t get over the fact that radio contact is lost with aircraft every day.

The Blue Line Has Arrived (10-30-2009)

The MBTA has put a new look on the Blue Line and it’s appreciated.

Nowhere is this more evident than in East Boston’s Maverick Square. Not only has one of the oldest T stops been completely rebuilt, but all the space and parking around the station has taken on a new look.

New six-car trains are now in service and that increase alone means less hassle in the rush hours.

In about a month, Maverick Station will once again get a first. A new display system will become operational that shows the location of every train on the Blue line for passengers waiting for a train. Similar boards will come into operation at other T stations.

The Blue Line was the oldest line to be renewed and now it is one of the newest. The Airport Station, connected by bus to all Logan Airport Terminals, gets a great many passengers connecting from the Green and Orange Lines. The well-used Silver Line takes care of passengers coming to the airport using the Red Line.

One of the great advantages of new stations and new subway cars is that litter left on the transit cars has been greatly reduced. It should also be noted that these trains operate with one driver, who also serves as the conductor opening the doors at the stations. An extra person is used to do that on other transit lines. That fact alone saves a lot of money.

It may only be a coincidence, but JetBlue Airlines just put up a huge new billboard at the exit of the Callahan Tunnel approaching the airport with the line: “More Stops On The Blue Line,” talking about its 32 non-stop destinations from Boston. Actually, it’s a go for the new Blue Line.

The new Maverick Station has entrances at both ends of the platforms. If Massport’s East Pier project ever restarts construction a couple of blocks away on the waterfront, not only will residents have the best view of downtown Boston, they will have the fastest way to get there.

Money spent on mass transit is money well spent.