The Overheard Bin - BobCarriesOn

April 22, 2014May 25, 2015

Should CNN apologize for story on travel agents?

Female travel agent in front of plane, suitcase, globe

CNN may be considering an apology today after airing a report on the future of travel, complied by the travel-booking site Skyscanner, predicting that by 2024 travel agents will be replaced by virtual devices.

The apology could become necessary after it was revealed, in the course of fact-checking the story, that travel agents had already long ago been replaced by such devices.

“It happened back in 2008, but since people were already doing most of their own booking online, no one noticed the travel agents were gone,” said Bob Payne, Director of the Institute of Overlooked Public Phenomena.

Another reason little was heard about the changeover, Payne said, is that most of the travel agents quickly got better-paying jobs. “With their industry expertise and their special ability for telling people where to go, they were immediately snapped up by the airlines, to answer the complaint lines.”

Payne said a technology that virtual travel agents are already using – one the report mentioned as something still in the future – is facial recognition. “By knowing when someone is telling the truth, it allows agents to book travel based not on where people say they want to go, but where they’d really rather be.”

It’s one of the reasons, Payne said, that we are seeing such an increase in bookings to Disney World by CNN personnel.

When not working on behalf of the Institute of Overlooked Public Phenomena, travel humor writer Bob Payne is the editor in chief of BobCarriesOn.com, which has been sharing accurate travel news and advice since before Columbus landed at Plymouth Rock.

October 31, 2013May 1, 2014

Hotel desperate to have guests complain about ghosts

Recognizing that a reputation for being haunted can be good for a hotel’s business, the manager of an aging resort in the Great Smoky Mountains is making every effort to get guests to complain about ghosts.

Bob Payne, who has been running the Shady Indian Resort, just outside of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, for more than 20 years, said that knowing the financial bonanza hotels such as The Crescent, in the Ozarks, and The Stanley, in Colorado, have made from their resident spirits he thought it could be worthwhile to scare up a ghost or two for his own property.

But getting people to believe in ghosts, and, more to the point, complain about them loudly enough to garner national, or even regional, press, has turned out to be much harder than Payne anticipated.

“Doors that seem to open and close on their own, unexplained cold blasts of air in the hallways, skeletons in the closet – I’ve tried to blame it all on paranormal activity,” Payne said. “But guests just assume it’s the result of poor maintenance.”

Payne said it was particularly hard because in all his years at the Shady Indian the only violent death he could recall was when he accidentally checked a family with a small cat into a room already occupied by a circus performer who was traveling with his pet boa constrictor.

“And without a death worthy of a headline it’s really hard to conjure up any kind of story about an apparition,” Payne said.

He said he did think he had a winner one night when guests began complaining about shrieks and moans coming from what appeared to be an empty room. “But it just turned out to be a honeymoon couple who had somehow managed to get themselves under the bed.”

With Halloween upon him, Payne said he would give the haunted approach one more try, perhaps by having the maids draw images in soap on the bathroom mirrors of the contents of guests’ luggage. If that didn’t work, he said, he would go back to claiming “Washington Slept Here.”

October 21, 2013April 22, 2014

Report finds animals in national parks prone to nervous eating during government shutdown

A study just released by the U.S. National Park Service has found that while most aspects of life in our national parks are back to normal following the recent government shutdown one exception has been the effect on park wildlife, as many animals are now overweight as a result of nervous eating during the days the parks were closed.

“The uncertainty brought about by the shutdown caused general stress, relationship conflicts, and fears of unemployment among virtually all park animals, many of whom reacted, as we all often do in such situations, by overeating,” said Bob Payne, a quality of life activist for national park wildlife (except mosquitos).

Payne said that unhealthy calorie intake had been especially pronounced among the parks’ larger carnivores who, more as a distraction than because they were really hungry, routinely preyed on tourists who had entered the parks illegally.

“The French and the Germans were a particular problem,” said Payne. “It got so bad we had to run ads in the European press, warning visitors to our parks of the harm that an unnatural diet could cause the animals.”

Payne said the situation was slowly returning to normal, with many of the large carnivores now back to exercising portion control and eating only healthy snacks, primarily consisting of West Coast and Asian visitors.

“Thank goodness the government shutdown lasted only as long as it did,” Payne said. “Otherwise we would have had to start getting the park animals signed up so that they could take advantage of the Affordable Care Act. And the stress of that would have had its own health repercussions.”

When not working on behalf of national park animals travel humor writer Bob Payne is the editor in chief of BobCarriesOn.com, which has been sharing accurate travel news and advice since before Columbus landed at Plymouth Rock.

September 3, 2013May 15, 2014

Airlines face sombrero crisis

A recent study confirms what the airlines and the flying public has long suspected. More than 70 percent of sombreros brought aboard aircraft are left behind by people pretending to forget them.

“The explanation is simple,” says Bob Payne, spokesman for the National Association of Airlines Against the Abusive Use of Overhead Bin Space. “Owning a souvenir sombrero, especially if its purchase in some way involved margaritas, always seems like a much better idea when you are actually in Mexico than it does on the flight home.”

The result, says Payne, is not only that aircraft cleaning crews are having to spend considerable time removing the hats but the storage problem created for airline lost and found departments is reaching crisis proportions.

“They haven’t seen anything like it since 2008 when they were inundated with Obama bobble head dolls,” Payne said.

One possible solution to the sombrero crisis, Payne said, would be to have TSA agents wear the cast-off headgear, thus making airport security screening a more welcoming, festive experience, especially if it were possible to get drug-sniffing dogs involved in wearing the hats, too.

Another solution, more popular with the airlines, would be to charge a fee of $25 for the first sombrero brought onboard, and $350 for the second. “The beauty of the latter plan,” Payne said, “Is that it would sober up most of the offending passengers long before they got to their seats.”

Bob Payne is the editor in chief and occasionally fact checker for BobCarriesOn.com.

September 2, 2013April 22, 2014

Fewer children “accidentally” left beside highway this Labor Day

In a clear sign that the economy is on the upswing, AAA reports that fewer children have been “accidentally” left beside the highway during family auto trips this Labor Day weekend than for any other similar period since 2008.

AAA attributes the downturn to increased consumer confidence across all financial sectors, particularly in the area of savings for college tuition, and the fact that siblings are more likely to report the absence of a child from a car during a family auto trip than they are during tough economic times. Some observers, though, argue that another factor is in play, too.

“Children have wised up considerably in recent years, so that few are still being taken in by the parental ruse of sending their offspring to a highway rest stop snack bar with a dollar and a green light to buy whatever they want, and then ‘accidentally’ speeding away,” say Bob Payne, spokesman for the National Organization of Children Who Might Actually Be Better 0ff Without Parents.

Payne said that on a family auto trip most children are still more than willing to go to a highway rest stop snack bar on their own, but not without enough funds to cover a stay at the nearest hotel with a pool for at least through the first month of school.

In related news, another just-released AAA report has found that children who are forced to play the license plate game on family auto trips are 50 percent more likely than other children to move to Hawaii when they grow up.

In addition to his responsibilities as a spokesman for AAA, Bob Payne is the Editor in Chief of BobCarriesOn.com, the website that has been sharing accurate travel news and advice since before Columbus landed at Plymouth Rock.

May 21, 2013September 2, 2013

If the TSA could only perform, like they do in Tahiti

After arriving in Tahiti recently for my fifteenth or so visit, (he said, trying to keep as modest a tone as possible) I was reminded once again that traveling doesn’t necessarily have to be the cruel and not so unusual punishment we have come to expect.

I was flying Air Tahiti Nui, and even in economy, with enough leg-room and enough in-seat movies so that I didn’t have to resort to watching the Gangster Squad in French, it was – in relative terms – a pleasant enough flight.

What was most pleasing about getting there, though, was that meeting us as we entered Tahiti’s terminal, just as there had been for every one of my other flights, was a woman presenting each arrival with a flower, and a couple of local guys, dressed in brightly colored traditional outfits, serenading us with guitar and ukulele.

How much nicer travel would be, I thought, if someone, perhaps TSA agents needing a little overtime, would meet us in a similar manner when we arrived at LAX, or JFK, or Miami.

How hard would it be to arrange? After all, if they used TSA agents, security clearance for the performers wouldn’t be an issue. And with the lack of common sense so many of the agents exhibit, you just have to believe that many of them are already musicians.

And this would be America going to work. So you’d think they’d be able to put together an even more extravagant, and memorable, performance than some little place like Tahiti, who has nothing more to draw from financially than the ever-dwindling resources of France.

Can’t you see it? A Latin beat as you enter Miami. Jazz welcoming you to New Orleans. A cacophony of car horns for New York.

My only fear? That the TSA-staffed program would have women handing out flowers, too – as they barked: “Married. Behind your left ear. Single. Behind your right ear. Looking forward to a cavity search. Behind both.” — Bob Payne

Long-time editor-in-chief of the travel humor site BobCarriesOn.com, Bob Payne was recently appointed as a consultant to the TSA’s performing arts program.

hugontour.wordpress.com photo