Canadian Personal Finance Blog » Tourism

Legroom Fees?

bigcajunman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:53:20 +0000

OK, Air Canada has been an important part of my life, but their new “Leg Room Tariff” is one step too far in my estimation. Over the years I have watched traveling in an airplane going from being an elegant thing, where civilized folks dressed well and were all civil with each other, to these days where I think it’s lucky that folks are wearing clean clothes (don’t get me started about the people who travel in sandals and then complain that the plane is too cold).

As time has passed, we have gone from complimentary candies at the start of flights and on landing to help you with “popping ears”, to the point now where I would not be surprised to see pay toilets offered by an airline. Hidden costs abound in air travel these days, where they could just as easily offer a free flight to Toronto from Ottawa and still end up charging you over $150 in service fees (there is a landing fee, does that mean if I don’t pay it we don’t land?).

This new tariff for the seats in Economy that have a bit more leg room are now going to cost more is beyond gouging. Being someone who does not fit in airliner (unless I am in Business class or First Class) being able to sit in a seat that allows me not to have to fold myself in half to be able to fit was nice, but now I will not have access to these seats unless I am willing to pay for them, and the seats are “available”.

The fee will only be $14 for each leg of your trip, to sit in a bulk head seat or in one of the emergency exits, but it stinks in my estimation. So if someone who cannot open the emergency exit pays for the seat, and refuses to move people may die in an emergency situation? Seems like a safety issue to me.

Will you pay this fee? Me I don’t travel these days, so it is a non-relevant question for me right now, but for the frequent fliers out there are you going to pay? I single out Air Canada on this one, but I will bet other Airlines will add this fee quickly if Air Canada succeeds with this new fee.

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Happy Canada Day!

bigcajunman — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:55:44 +0000

Happy 141st birthday Canada, you don’t look a day over 85! Yes, I am taking today off, to enjoy Family and Fireworks, back to the daily posts tomorrow folks!

Canada at 150?

Given for Canada’s 100th birthday we had Expo67 (the greatest World Exposition ever, I’d like to say), what is Canada going to do for it’s 150th anniversary? Anybody know?

And Now a Large Flag

Happy Birthday Canada

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Debt Reduction is like Teenage Sex

bigcajunman — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:42:27 +0000

Debt Reduction is like Sex in your teenage years, everybody wanted to do it, but almost none were skilled at it, and very few actually did it, and worse still, nobody dared tell you how to do it.

Do I have your attention now? Think about it, I am right and for all you folks who are taken aback or think this is a crass statement, so be it, but you know it’s true.

Debt reduction is a subject few people bring up, especially the ones that need to be helped the most, because they don’t want to appear they don’t know what they are doing, or worse that they appear as stupid to other people as the way they feel inside.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and don’t be afraid to talk to people you trust about what they do about this problem. Let’s take Debt Reduction out of the closets and bathrooms and into the bright light of the day!

Come to Canada, PLEASE!!!

Tourism is taking an almighty beating these days thanks to the strength of the Loonie, according to Stats Canada.

Travel to Canada hit a record low for the fifth consecutive month in March, in the wake of substantial declines in both same-day car trips from the United States and the number of visitors from overseas nations.

Tourism is an important industry in Canada, so don’t discount the importance of this decline.

Gone in 15 Minutes

That was how long it took our old Bar B Q to disappear last night when I put it out for the garbage at 7:10 PM, 15 minutes. The quest for de-crapification continues with gusto with a great deal of yard waste and most of the metal frame from a sofa bed going out in the garbage last night as well (I had cut it up with my reciprocating saw).

First a scavenger arrived and took the top and left a whole bunch of stuff, and I was quite irate that I was now left with a mass of crap strewn on my front lawn. I went out and tidied it up a bit, and went back inside, 10 minutes later it was all gone, except for the bar b q rocks, which remained in the garbage, where I had thrown them. The second scavenger had taken everything and also part of the sofa bed that I had cut up to put out for the trash (also metal), it was all gone, in 15 minutes total. Not sure what they wanted it for, but I feel foolish having bent two cutting blades cutting up the bed frame, if someone was going to take it all.

There is more room in the garage, but still more still to throw out.

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Happy Victoria Day

bigcajunman — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:52:42 +0000

Yes it is a holiday finally, and I get to enjoy the first long weekend since Easter (which seems a long way away). No stores are open around me, but Ottawa has some benefits that other Ontario cities don’t have because we have the Rideau Center, which is deemed a “Tourist Area” so all of it’s stores will be open and we are across the river from Gatineau/Hull and there all stores are open today. Will I go shopping? I might run to Tim Horton’s to have a Pro-Monarchist Coffee and Donut, but that is about it.

Happy Victoria Day

Why do we celebrate this holiday still? We need a holiday in May as simple a reason as that.

Oil is over $125.00 a barrel, and gas in Ottawa is about $1.25 a liter, so if you are driving, do it in a very calm fashion and try to save that valuable gasoline. Inflate your tires, don’t stomp on the accelerator or brake and don’t idle too long in those traffic jams trying to get home tonight!

Enjoy your day of vacation folks, I’ll be back tomorrow.

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Found Money and the Prisoner’s Dilemma

bigcajunman — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:25:54 +0000

Michael James talked about found money yesterday and the joy of paying off bills with found money, and how we should not squander this found wealth, and really use it to create happiness in the future by paying off debt now. I think this is a sensible approach to found money, but it made me think about another post I did a while ago, which was how couples deal with money.

Many times found money can cause a great deal of consternation between spouses because each have their own idea of what the best thing is to do with found money.

I think this is natural, as with most every subject possible spouses are going to have their own ideas, but the problem arises when the two ideas are contradictory or even orthogonal to each other.

Say Mary and Bob get $10,000.00 in found money from an inheritance. Mary thinks she’d like to go on a nice vacation with the family because the family has never really been on a vacation, however, Bob thinks that putting that money on their Mortgage (thus shortening it’s term by 5 years), is the right answer.

Reading this, it sounds like an easy enough “problem” to deal with, both folks want to do what they think is best with the money, but the problem now is you have is a simple difference of opinion. The problem I have seen in my life and from other folks I know is that this is not a simple problem, because:

There is no wrong answer (or right answer)
Both spouses have voiced their opinion, and thus feel they have the right answer.
Money and money management is a divisive factor in many relationships

Is there a Solution?

Only if both parties are willing to compromise, or one is willing to lose (i.e. typical Prisoner’s Dilemma issue). Wikipedia’s explanation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is:

Two prisoners (the players) during the interrogation each have a choice: whether to betray the other one, and thus to decrease his own jail time by, for example, 1 month (as a compensation for the cooperation), while increasing the jail time for the other by, for example, 10 years, or to stay silent. Each of the prisoners is only interested in receiving the least possible sentence. It shall be assumed that the prisoners make their choices (to betray or to stay silent) simultaneously, and they know for sure that their choice cannot affect the choice of the other one.

All right I am stretching this (feel free to leave a comment), but the need to compromise and find the best solution for the couple is not always obvious to either spouse, and sometimes they feel it is not in their best interest (they got their way the last time, so I want my way this time). Sound familiar to any of my readers? Never happened to you?

Resolution?

I have no canned simple answer for this one, because as I keep saying, Money is a strange and divisive thing in a relationship, especially if the spouses do not agree in terms of money and how to use it.

What needs to be done is have clear lines of communication and rational discussions between the spouses about what they want to do, and a decision made that doesn’t cause either to feel that they have “lost” in this decision. Sounds easy doesn’t it ?

Think this is a simple thing to resolve? You and your spouse never have these issues? Then you are either very lucky (or very naive).

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Consumerism: Just Don’t Ask Me

bigcajunman — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:53:11 +0000

I was supposed to leave Ottawa on Saturday to London, but thanks to a tremendous snowstorm, it didn’t really happen until mid-Sunday (and even then it caused a domino effect of problems and troubles due to tight scheduling and such). I was doing this for work and our corporate travel is actually dealt with through a large credit card company’s travel service (we’ll call them TinCan Travel).

TinCan actually offers an emergency travel number to call when things go wrong or you need to make changes while you travel (and in the past I have used this service and it has worked very well). Last weekend was a “perfect storm” for this system to fail miserably.

Two snowstorms in a row had transpired in successive days
It was the start of March Break in Ontario, and thus one of the busiest travel days
It was the weekend, and most likely they have a lower staffing at that time

These points and others meant we never were able to connect into the emergency response number. We stayed on the phone for over 4 hours one time and almost 3 hours the Sunday morning, we were put on hold and given the repeating message about how important our call is to them.

Am I unhappy with this? Yes, but I also realized why this was happening. We eventually had to clean up the travel mess ourselves and at the end of it we only had to pay one penalty, so we did ok. We never tried to call TinCan’s emergency help line the rest of the week.

This morning I got an e-mail asking for my opinion on how well TinCan’s travel service worked. Pardon? I was going to let sleeping dogs lie, I would tell the story of our travel debacle as a joke at parties were everyone would laugh and that was where it was going to stay, however, if someone asks my opinion, I feel obliged to give it (especially when I am really miffed).

My main complaint was, “Don’t tell me you are going to answer my call when you neither have the resources or the time to do it”, change your message to say, “We are incredibly busy due to the storm (which they did), please make your own arrangements if possible (which they didn’t)”, and for the sake of all involved don’t ask me what my opinion is.

I filled in the questionnaire in an honest, but hopefully not rude manner, and maybe TinCan will learn from this, but what would they learn? Don’t ask me my opinion? When snowstorms strike put more people on your Emerg Call In Line? Who knows?

Another really good example of making sure you have an emergency financial plan.

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London is Expensive

bigcajunman — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:30:26 +0000

I am very tight for time unfortunately, and my guess is that I will have a much longer post about this, but I am glad I am traveling in London on someone else’s money, because this place is bloody expensive. The hotel rooms are very expensive, but my pet peeve on this trip is that in hotel rooms the internet access is typically 15 pounds per 24 hour stint? Yes, I am using that access to write this post, so it is at least ironic in that area too.

How does anyone afford to live here is the question that keeps popping up in my head. Maybe it is cheaper to live somewhere, but I suspect that is not the case for downtown London.

I apologize for the shortness of this post, but my job awaits me.

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Tourism as Important as Agriculture

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:59:00 +0000

Well in 2002 as a contribution to the GDP, yes Tourism was just as big a contributor to the GDP in Canada as Agriculture was (according to Stats Canada).

Mining was 2.5 times more important than both of them, so keep that in mind as well. This is an interesting number to keep in mind, now that the Canadian dollar is above our American neighbours money, what will that do to this sector of Canada’s economy (tourism that is)? More interesting that the Motor Vehicle manufacture is less than both Tourism and Agriculture? Interesting facts to keep in mind.

Funny, but strange

On the personal finance front, Best Buys has changed who does their credit card, so I went in to re-apply for their card. No, I shouldn’t have, but I wanted one, so let’s get past that part of the story (feel free to flagellate me in the comments section). I got a card for myself and my wife and asked for a relatively small credit limit, or at least I thought so, but the “Instant” credit application was DENIED. What the hey? The young lady then phoned up, and the application was approved (with a higher credit rating).

Yesterday two letters arrived, from HSBC credit (I guess they are now running the Best Buys Credit system), and the first said, we are sorry we cannot give you a card at this time. The second and third envelope included two credit cards with the higher credit limit. Funny? Strange? Worrying? Yes, all of those. I guess I had better do another credit rating check.

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Monday, back from Vacation

bigcajunman — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:37:00 +0000

I always find Vacations very confusing in terms of never getting completely relaxed and then returning to a fire storm of activity at work, but vacations are important I think.

I have been ignoring Stats Canada for a while so here are some interesting points from our amigos in the land of statistics:

Commercial Computers price index dropped again in June by 0.6% from May, which is great to see, and it still astounds me that computers continue to decrease in price, but I think I need to investigate this index more as to how they are doing their comparison. Given Apple’s drop in price of the iPhone, when is the best time to buy a computer or new piece of technology?
There is a growing business for the government in the area of Tourism? Odd topic, but evidently the income that the government attributes to Tourism (taxes on travelers and paid by tourists) has been increasing from 2000 to 2006, which is interesting.

The study found that tourism accounted for 3.9% of government revenue in 2006. This reflected the relatively high taxes on many goods and services bought by tourists, such as fuel, alcohol, and entertainment in casinos. At the same time, tourism accounted for 3.8% of all jobs in the economy and 2.0% of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Interesting to know that the government makes direct income from Tourism.
Unemployment continues to be at historically low levels, which again is a nice thing to see. Construction is the big employment boom these days, but more older folks are getting jobs as well.

In August, almost all of the employment growth for adult men and women came from those aged 55 and over. An estimated 34,000 older workers found employment in August. Since the beginning of this year, employment among the 55 and over age group has increased by 4.6%, the fastest pace of all age groups, with stronger growth for women (+5.5%) than men (+3.9%). The August employment rate for older men was its highest since 1985; the rate for older women was near the all-time high set in April of this year.

We are working later in life? I think we have talked about that before.

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No one wants to Come to Canada?

admin — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:19:00 +0000

So tourism spending in Canada is up 1.0% over the same period last year, which is a good thing, because tourism is one of the things that Canada does (all those rich Americans and their Yankee dollars coming up to buy stuff), but I guess thanks to a very strong Canadian dollar (relatively speaking that is, I remember when the Canadian dollar was worth MORE than it’s American counterpart, but that just shows how old I am), International tourism spending in Canada is lower by 2.8% .The number of American visitors dropped by 3.9% and the number of day trips by our American cousins is down sharply.

Please come back American friends, we need your cash! Given the abominable snow conditions around Ottawa and Montreal, tourism for ski’ing is going to be pretty darn poor this year too (although instead of having the world’s longest skating rink Ottawa could open the canal for swimming maybe?).

The importance of tourism to Canadians cannot be easily discounted, and it is a major contributor to the Canadian “bottom line” so it is important to promote Canada as a great place to come for vacations, like skating on the World’s Longest Skating rink in Ottawa.

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