I have been thinking a lot about service over the past year. What is it? How is it best done? Why is it important?. While I haven't come to many hard and fast rules there is one VERY important thing that keeps coming up. Completely empower and trust those who interact directly with your guests.

I have always liked Enterprise Rent-A-Car. I had a great experience with them at the Toronto Airport a number of years ago and other than a slight slip up here on PEI they have consistently had fantastic and friendly service. I didn't know how fantastic until yesterday.

Becky and I were flying home from Boston to Charlottetown yesterday morning. We had a 9:40am flight out of Boston to Montreal and then home to Charlottetown. I woke up at 6:45am to an email from Air Canada informing us that our flight from Boston to Montreal was cancelled and couldn't be rebooked. We would have to call or go online to rebook a flight. Being the techno-nerds that we are, we quickly went online.

Air Canada had two options for us:

• A flight that left at 8am to Halifax, and on to Charlottetown that afternoon.
• A flight to Ottawa later in the day with an overnight before heading home.

Not wanting to spend another day on the road we decided to go for the flight that left in an hour (it was 7:00am by now). As the flight left so close to the current time we were unable to book online and were forced to call in as we drove to the airport. We had a 15-20 minute drive to get to the airport where we would then have to return our rental car to Enterprise and take a shuttle to our terminal. It was going to be almost impossible to make the flight.

7:20am - As we pulled into Enterprise's return lot at Boston's Logan international we could see it wasn't busy. We were only the second car returned that day. We pulled up, jumped out and began to scramble to get our luggage out. The guy with the hand-held receipt maker asked how our day was. We said "Not great. Flight was cancelled and now we're desperately trying to make the only flight that gets us home today. Oh, and we didn't get a chance to top-up the gas tank." Without any hesitation he says:

"Get back in the car. I'll drive you straight to your terminal."

We throw our bags back in the trunk and he jumps in the driver's seat. He drives us straight to our terminal, jumps out of the car and grabs our luggage out of the trunk. He hands us our luggage and the receipt for the rental.

"Don't worry about the gas. I took care of it. Good luck."

Needless to say we thanked him profusely. Thanks to him we made our flight with no time to spare and ultimately made it home.

It was obvious that this guy had the authority to take care of us. He didn't have to check with a manager to leave the lot. He didn't have to get authorization for waving gas fees. He had all of the power he needed to make sure that were amply taken care of.

Well done Enterprise.

Since I last updated you were were waiting in a Malaysian airport to fly to Langkawi. We did in fact make it.

Langkawi was the pinch hitter for the beaches of southern Vietnam. Thankfully we had friends who had been to Langkawi a little while ago and we remembered them singing it’s praises.

Why Langkawi? That is a very simple, yet complicated question. The simple answer is that it is relaxing. The complex answer involves venn diagrams and list of pros and cons.

We cherish our vacation and travel time (who doesn’t.?). Four or five years ago we began thinking about and discussing the types of trips we take. What do we get out of them? What do we need at certain points of the years? What is the latest research on happiness and travel? This led us to developing a general idea of the ideal type of trip for us.

So for our post-summer (a.k.a. Post crazy work schedule) trip we have a few requirements:

• The first of the trip must be relaxing and a time to unwind.
• Sun and heat are a must.
• Not a mind numbing resort.
• Not cheap but not Four Seasons crazy expensive.
• Not one of the usual spots North Americans go.
• Opportunity for adventure.
• Not a place with vast amounts of historical/famous places to see. We don’t want to feel like we are missing something when we just read all day.
• Monkeys are a plus (we love monkeys).
• Great food.
• A scooter.

So with all of that in mind, and our first choice of southern Vietnam out of the game, we set our sites on the tropical Malaysian island of Langkawi. We did well.

We were originally going to spend 5 or 6 nights on the island. We ended staying 10. After two days we simply extended our reservation, one of the benefits of having nothing planned.

We stayed at the classy, yet surprisingly affordable Berjaya Resort. We somehow scored another free upgrade and ended up with a unit over the water… Well at least at high tide it was.

Berjaya is the type of place that could suck you in so that you spend all of your time on the hotel grounds being pampered. It is NOT an all inclusive though. The restaurants on the resort are ones you have to pay for, and thanks be to the traveling gods, that you don’t have to wear a bracelet. It was just a great place to stay and unwind.

Our unit was what we would call a one bedroom cottage. It had a covered deck, a king size bed, A/C, and a fridge. There were towel swans on our bed every day. It had Internet that only seemed to work when the stars were aligned a certain way.

Our first day on Langkawi involved getting a scooter. The hotel rented them but after they told us we needed a motorcycle license (bahahahah) and that they cost 70 ringgits (about $21) per day we decided to shop elsewhere. A quick Internet search revealed a place just a 20 minute walk away.

We walked in the sweltering heat (about 33 degrees daily) and saw some monkeys, Becky saw a giant lizard, and we came to the rental spot. A guy sauntered out and we agreed on 35 Ringgits per day. I filled out my own rental form, nothing was mentioned about a license, and we were off.

The scooting on Langkawi was fantastic. Roads are in great shape, people drive very cautiously for South East Asia, and as long as you can remember to drive on the left side if the road it’s as easy as it gets.

With scooter acquired we did a quick tour of the local area and headed back to read, get sunburnt, and eat.

This cycle of sleep, eat, scoot, burn, read, eat, sleep repeated itself for the time we were on Langkawi. We managed to scoot the entire island multiple times and ate some amazing, amazing meals.

We achieved exactly what we had hoped for on this first segment of our trip: Relaxation. We left Langkawi knowing that we would be back.

From Langawi we set off by plane to Kuala Lumpur.

Becky and I are not rookie travellers. We are by no means the lean, mean, backpack around the world for 3 dollars a day types, but we’ve been around. For the most part we pride ourselves in our planning and preparations. We rarely wind up in a travel logistics situation that we didn’t at least think about once.

This trip it all changed. For those of you who know us know that for the past 7 months we have been furiously running a resort, and I have been pulling double job duty. We have been exhausted to the bone. As a result of the exhaustion we haven’t had the time to do the usual per-trip research. We just booked flights, booked a few places to stay, and said “we’ll figure it out as we go”.

This trip was particulary epic. I have been wanting to fly around the world for a long, long, time. I was finally going to get a chance to do it. The plan was:

Fly Charlottetown to Chicago (via Toronto)
Fly Chicago to Ho Chi Minh (via Tokyo)
Stay in Southern Vietnam for ~10 days
Fly to Singapore
Travel from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by land
Fly from Kuala Lumpur to Bali
Spend ~10 days in Bali
Fly to Phuket Thailand for 2 days
Fly to Rome (via Bangkok) for 4 days
Fly home

On Saturday we excitedly packed up, said a tearful good bye to Gilbert, and we hit the skies. The flights from Charlottetown to Toronto, and Toronto to Chicago were flawless.

We checked into the Chicago Hilton Airport hotel (sweet Priceline deal) and ate a great lamb burger at the hotel sports pub. We went to bed feeling giddy about the upcoming adventure. It was the first time in months that we could relax.

The next morning we got up at 7 and made our way to the ANA check-in counter. We we kindly greeted and asked for our passport and Visas to check in to our flight from Chicago to Tokyo and on to Ho Chi Minh. We passed over our passports and our CIBC visa credit card. The agent looked at us and said, “not your credit card, your entrance visas to Vietnam”. We, for lack of a better term, shit our pants. We stammered out a confusing string of English words that made it clear to the agent that we had no idea what he was talking about. We said we’d just get the visas when we landed (as most countries allow tourists to do this). He politely informed us that was not a possibility for Vietnam.

The agent, who may have been the nicest man in Chicago called over his even nice supervisor and they tried to make a few phone calls. No one answered as it was 8:30 on a Sunday morning. They said they could check us in for the Chicago to Tokyo part of the flight but we would have to figure out something after that. We had about an hour before the flight left.

We sat a few feet away from the check-in counter and wondered aloud what the heck just happened? Was this a new policy? We whipped out an IPad and our Vietnam guide book. Sure enough, the first paragraph of the section titled “Getting There” stated that all visitors needed to apply for a tourist visa before entering the country and it can take up to a week to process the application. It was confirmed. We we just stupid.

We quickly weighed our options. Vietnam was just off the table. There was no way we could easily get visas issued without wasting days somewhere. We decided to just “get to south-east Asia”. I called Aeroplan (who we booked tickets with) and was talking with a very helpful chap within a few minutes. He pulled up our reservations and said “So you are leaving in…. An hour!!”. He asked what we wanted to do. I just said, get us to South East Asia.

He quickly found that our two best options were Bangkok and Singapore. As the former is mostly underwater, and we are very familiar with the latter, we chose Singapore. He re-issued the tickets (for a small change fee) and wished us luck.

With that done we went back to the check in counter and started the check in process. This took 4 staff and another 25 minutes as our re-issued tickets were confusing for the system so close to the departure date.

We returned to our seats by the counter and began frantically canceling hotels and domestic travel bookings. We also made sure to book a hotel in Singapore for the night we arrived (we were to land at midnight).

The nice man brought us our boarding passes through to Singapore and we went through security. We even had a nice few minutes to email a family member about the change before the plane boarded for Tokyo.

We are lucky and were traveling business class to Tokyo. Sleeper beds, champagne, the whole deal. It was sweet.

We spent a few hours in the Tokyo Narita airport then boarded a flight to Singapore. We arrived at our Singapore hotel sometime around 1am on November 15th a full 26 hours from Chicago. We split a small tin of hotel minibar Pringles and tried to sleep.

The next day we spent wandering the familiar streets of Singapore. Between wandering and checking out of our hotel we managed to book another hotel in the city for another 2 nights while we battled jet lag and rearranged our trip.

We ended up at the Festive Hotel on Singapore’s entertainment island, Sentosa. This is apparently a family hotel. Thanks to some well timed oral-surgery antibiotic caused unwellness, Becky scored us an early check in and a free upgrade to a family suite. In addition to the king size bed we also got an awesome bunk bed perched 12 feet off the ground.

We, through very sketchy Internet, managed to rebook our plans for the next two weeks. We were now:

– Flying to Lengkawi, Malaysia – Gradually making our way south over two weeks to Kuala Lumpur. – Picking up our original travel plans in Bali.

At this writing we are killing time in a 7 hour airport stop over in Penang, Malaysia. Two very, very sweet Malaysian children are watching me type on my iPad just like everyone stared at at Michael J Fox when he was wearing his “life preserver” in Back To The Future.

More travel updates to come. The moral of the story: read at least the first page of your guidebooks!

Business and personal travel takes me to the US multiple times each year. As you probably know, the data, phone, and SMS rates for roaming in the US are astonishing (almost criminal).

For a few years I’ve been trying to patch together a system/solution that allows me to have 3G data on my factory unlocked iPhone. This is what I now use.

Step 1 – Acquire an AT&T sim card that fits your phone (micro sim for an iphone). It doesn’t seem to matter what type of card you get. Where do you get such things? Ebay, Any Apple store in the US, AT&T stores, Walmart (buy the AT&T go phone for $10, throw out the cheap phone and keep the sim). For micro sim users it may be easiest to buy one through Ebay or get one at an AT&T store or Apple store once you’re stateside.

Step 2 – Activate your sim card. The easiest way is to do this online. If you are using an iPhone then when you are asked to enter an IMEI number just use one, or find one, on the internet that is not an iPhone’s. They don’t allow iPhone IMEIs. It doesn’t seem to matter which IMEI you enter other than that. This one, 490154203237518, which is from this wikipedia page, will probably work.

Step 3 – Add your personal information. Pick a zip code you want to use (i.e. 90210) and give yourself an American address. I prefer to use a hotel, Apple Store, or AT&T store address. Use your real email address.

Step 4 – Pick your plan. I pick the 10 cents a minute option. I add data on later. Once you are done this step you’ll be given your phone number. I usually do this before my trip so I can forward my local numbers appropriately.

Step 5 – Add credit to your account. You can do this via AT&T’s web system but you’ll most likely run into issues with having to use an american credit card. There are three solutions to this:

1. Buy a Visa/MasterCard gift card at a pharmacy or grocery store. Use it. Again, use an American address of a hotel, etc. For “name on card” i always write what is written on the card for extra hilarity (i.e. Gift Card Recipient).
2. Buy physical top-up cards in pharmacies/grocery stores. Add those to your account with the web tools or through your phone.
3. Use pinzoo.com (my preferred method). Simply check how much you want in credit for which carrier (AT&T Go phone) and checkout using a credit card or paypal. They will then give you a pin and you can enter that pin into AT&T’s system. It’s important to note that they are very particular with how much you buy. If you buy too much (like three 50.00 cards) they will have to call you to verify your purchase.

Step 6 – Change your APNt settings. Using Unlockit.co.nz set your APN to US - ATT Cingular.

Once you have money in your pre-paid account you can add plans and packages onto your account.

Data packages are currently as follows:

• $5 for 10 MB
• $15 for 100 MB
• $25 for 500 MB

You have 30 days to use what you buy.

Major Annoyance. - Sim cards de-activate in 60 days unless you keep adding money to your account. They can not be reactivated.

Last night I made a car rental reservation at Enterprises’ website. It all went as expected. I entered my dates, chose my location, picked a type of car, and confirmed my reservation by logging in to my account with them. I then received a helpful email confirmation of my reservation.

This morning my phone rings, it is the local Enterprise office. There has been a problem. Some sort of computer glitch made it seem (and is making it still seem) like they have cars for rent when in fact they don’t. The lady on the phone was very nice and put me to the “top” of their waiting list and told me to call back at 11am.

I called back at 11am. Still no update. She told me to call back at 2:30 (I was supposed to pick up the car at 2). I did. There was no answer after two phone calls. So I called their competitor and I’m getting a car from them. I called back at 3:00 and was able to speak with a manager. When I asked for details on what happened he said “we were not prepared for your reservation”.

This is all very reminiscent of a great Seinfeld skit.

I’ve been involved in a reservation based business for the past 25 years. We rent accommodations, not cars, but a “unit” is a unit. We are not experts by any means but we have learned a few things about reservations:

• 
  Mistakes happen. With dozens of units, 3-5 people taking reservations, and 3 online manually updated systems it is only a matter of time before a mistake happens and we double book or over book our property.
• 
  People understand that mistakes happen. For the most part people completely understand when you make a mistake.
• 
  People rarely get very upset about the initial mistake. It’s not usually the double booking that really upsets a guest.
• 
  It’s everything that happens after the double booking that upsets guests.
• 
  We define a mistake as “ours” as anything outside of our guest’s control. If a third party reservation site messes up, that is our mistake, not our guests.
• 
  Any mistake that is ours is 100% our responsibility to remedy. We juggle other reservations to make room (free upgrades, etc), we book accommodations with our competitors (our rule of thumb is to book the nicest accommodation we can to compensate for the mistake). We pay the bill. The guest only pays a maximum of what they agreed but never more and often less.
• 
  Over communicate. For people wondering where they are going to sleep tonight even a “we’re still working on it” is comforting and lets them know they still important. When dealing with guest services no news is always bad news.
• 
  Say you are sorry. Even if it’s not really your fault, apologize.
• 
  Follow up. Call them at the other hotel and ask if there is anything you can do for them.

Really, it’s all very simple taking-care-of-people stuff.

So what could have Enterprise done today? It’s very, very simple. This morning when they realized their mistake they could have called Budget (only 2 blocks away), and booked me a car. They then could have called me to let me know there was a mistake but that they found me a car and I was taken care of. Yes, a loss of income for Enterprise of $162.00 but they would have one very satisfied customer.

No, I'm not interested in buying any diamonds today but my friend Chet in marketing might be interested. Let me transfer you to him. Hilarity ensues. Make sure you listen all the way to the end as it's the best part.

Chet may retire after such a great call. I think I might create Bradley in accounting this afternoon. He's going to hate his job and has it out for the company. He's going to spend every dime he can to bleed this place dry.

It’s true. A hurricane is coming and I’ve been unusually quiet. I’ll chalk it up to a very busy summer. I thought I would take some time and sift through all of the crazy news/rumours out there to give you a better idea of what to expect this weekend when Earl visits.

Hurricane Earl is, at this time, a category 2 hurricane. It is expected that Earl will continue to weaken as it approaches Atlantic Canada. When it reaches PEI it will most likely be a tropical storm. Please keep in mind that there is only a 1mph difference in wind speed between a strong tropical storm and a category 1 hurricane.

There are a few variables that are giving the forecast a bit of uncertainty aside from the usual fact that hurricanes are, by their nature, hard to predict.

• High water temperature. The waters surrounding Atlantic Canada are warmer than usual. In fact they are much warmer than usual (2 to 4 degrees C). Hurricanes/storms feed off of warm water temperatures and these warmer waters could keep Earl alive longer than normally would happen.
• Hot, hot, weather. The weather in Atlantic Canada for the past few days is much like the weather Earl is used to down near the equator. This hot and humid air mass will, for lack of a better analogy, make him feel more at home.

How bad will it be? What can I expect for weather?
As Earl begins to dissipate its winds will begin to expand out from the centre. Think of it like a figure skater in a tight spin who extends their arms to slow themselves down. As the wind speeds diminish they will stretch further out from the eye of the storm. By the time Earl reaches Atlantic Canada the winds will reach much further afield than they currently are down in North Carolina. This means that the public’s current fascination with the exact track of the hurricane is a bit foolish. However, the track is good for determining what part of the storm will affect you the most.

If you live to the east of the storm’s track (Queens & Kings county PEI, Most of Nova Scotia) you will experience higher winds and less rain. If you live towards the west of the track you can expect less dramatic winds and quite a bit more rain.

How much wind and how much rain?
Make no mistake: It’s going to blow and it’s going to pour. It’s just a question of speed and amounts. To be classified as a tropical storm the 1 minute average wind speed needs to be between 39 and 73mph (~60-110km/h). My guess is that if you’re just east of the storm track you’ll see winds in the higher part of that range. I would also guess that we might see wind gusts over 110km/h in western parts of Nova Scotia and Queens County PEI.

It won’t rain as much as it did last week, but it might rain harder at times causing some flash flooding. Moncton will probably see the most rain.

Expected damage:
There will be localized power outages. With this much foliage and the predicted winds it’s almost guaranteed that some power lines are going to be affected. The maple leaf fungus may have helped a little by getting rid of some leaves. There will also be some localized flooding where the worst rains occur (west of the track – e.g. Moncton). Due to the tides storm surges will not be as high as in previous storms. Southern Nova Scotia will get a pounding from the waves and it's possible the Northumberland Straight will also see some surge. This is not expected to be major.

Necessary Preparations:
Don’t eat all of the meat in your freezer just yet. It’s not going to be end-times type weather.

I would (and am):

• Take in all outside furniture/stuff that can blow away
• Check to make sure the sump pumps in my basement are in good working order
• Tie things down that can’t be taken in but could take off in the wind
• Grab a few days worth of food (don’t forget this is a long weekend)
• Have some extra batteries for your flashlight
• Have a battery powered radio on hand
• Fill up the car/truck up with gas
• Charge your camera batteries to document the awesomness

Of course I could be completely wrong and this could be the worst thing ever or just a light breeze.

If you live around Charlottetown you've probably noticed we're upgrading the outside of our office. We're midway through. All in all things are going very well and we're on track to pretty much finish the exterior this season.

Here is what we've done to date:

• Ripped off three walls of old siding and wall boards
• Sucked out ~200 full garbage bags of cellulose insulation from the wall cavities
• Installed 2 doors, one of them new (a French door going from my office to a soon-to-be deck!)
• Replaced all but one corner post due to rot
• Re-wired ~1/2 of the building
• Had 1/2 pound spray foam put in 3 of 4 walls (a highly recommended contractor)
• Sheathed 3/4 walls with 1/2 in plywood
• Installed 17 windows. ~7 new sills included
• Installed ~12 awesome deck brackets
• Blueskinned (waterproof membrane) all of the corners, windows, and ground level sheathing
• Tyvek'd 3 of 4 walls

So far all has been going to plan (except for the rotten framing....) We will be setting up staging on the front of the building this week. This should set the stage for the final few days of demolition.

We get a lot of people stopping by when we're out working on the building. Feel free to do so. We'd be more than glad to show you what we're up to.