The Ferðastofan Newsletter

 

Previous newsletters: August 2009 May 2009 December 2008 August 2008 May 2008

FERÐASTOFAN NEWSLETTER — DECEMBER 2009

Dear readers,

Welcome to the latest Ferðastofan newsletter! You can expect to hear from me again in February, when the Ferðastofan travel guidebook will come out, updated for 2010.

I am always looking for new sponsors for Ferðastofan. Sponsors' names and logos are listed in the right-hand column of the web site. Any suggestions are very welcome.

Happy travels! — Ian

Icelandair or Iceland Express?

I flew Iceland Express to Copenhagen and Icelandair to Heathrow on successive weeks this fall and had a chance to compare their services.

Overall I have to give my vote to Icelandair. But I'm not quite happy saying that.

Icelandair offers free music and movies (bring your own headphones, or buy them on board); free flight progress displays; free water, juice, and soft drinks (only one, so you might want to bring more on); and frequent flyer miles for my account.

Iceland Express charges even for water, there wasn't any onboard entertainment, and they don't have a frequent flyer program. And they aren't really any cheaper.

The problem is that Icelandair is still the dominant player in Iceland and they have a lot of market power. So I feel like recommending them is like aiding and abetting a monopoly.

I'd like to see a more competitive Iceland Express – with lower fares, better service, and yes, maybe even the plague of a frequent flyer program – that would give Icelandair a full run for its money.

For now, Iceland Express seems unable to compete on price. They charge about the same as Icelandair. And that means that anyone traveling on business who is a member of Icelandair's frequent flyer program stands to gain personally by encouraging their corporate travel purchasers to use Icelandair. Icelandair doesn't cost the company any more, but the person actually flying gets frequent flyer points. That's a hurdle that's really hard for Iceland Express to overcome.

As long as Iceland Express has no frequent flyer program, there's an argument that Iceland’s competition authorities should consider restricting Icelandair’s ability to award frequent flyer points for routes where Icelandair and Iceland Express are in competition. That would mean there wouldn't be any frequent flyer points for some Icelandair flights. Norway’s Konkurransetilsynet has restricted SAS’s EuroBonus program on similar grounds since 2002, and the Norwegian authorities claim that this has had a positive effect on the market (for more, see the article on EuroBonus in Wikipedia or this Norwegian newspaper article).

Delays in implementing Eurotariff, as predicted

August 30th was the deadline for European phone companies to lower their roaming prices (for mobile calls within Europe) to the new Eurotariff caps. In the last newsletter I speculated how Icelandic phone companies would respond. And how did they respond? On the whole, slowly. Most of them dawdled like a two-year-old.

The new caps (including Icelandic VAT) are €0,535 per minute for calls made abroad and €0,236 for calls received abroad. At the exchange rate of €1 = 183,5 kr., this translates into approximately 98 kr. per minute to make a call and 43 kr. per minute to receive a call.

On September 12th, I checked the websites of the four Icelandic phone companies and found that only one (Síminn) listed prices that were compliant with the new rules. On October 7th, I checked again, and found that Síminn and Vodafone listed compliant prices, but Tal and Nova did not. In my next pass, on November 10th, I found that Nova had started to list compliant prices, but Tal had not. On my last check, on December 8th, I found that Tal’s prices were still not compliant. Tal, which bases its rates on the euro, was charging €0,574 for calls made and €0,276 for calls received.

At that point I sent an e-mail to Iceland's telephone regulatory authority. They in turn notified Tal. Tal's posted prices were changed the next day.

Vodafone and Nova were actually not strictly in compliance with the law either; they were charging €0,54 and €0,24. To be in full compliance, they should have rounded their prices down rather than up from the cap levels, or carried them to an extra digit.

The cap levels will go up slightly when Iceland's VAT level rises from 24,5 to 25,5% on January 1, 2010. Then they will decrease again at the end of August 2010.

No water for Icelandic airline travelers

There are no water fountains inside Leifsstöð, Iceland's international air terminal in Keflavík.

And as we all know, you can't bring water or any other liquids through security into the terminal.

You pretty much have to buy water from the shops in the terminal. They have a captive market, and a monopoly on the product.

If you were thinking of just waiting until you get on the plane, there's no free water on Iceland Express flights either. (Icelandair does give passengers limited free water.)

Oh, but there's a way around this, I hear you say. You can just bring an empty bottle into the terminal and fill it up from the sinks in the bathroom, then drink it or take it on the plane. Or just cup your hands under the faucet.

Well, I've got bad news. It's a little more complicated than that.

The bathroom sinks in Leifsstöð are shallow. There's little room to put a water bottle beneath the tap. You have to tilt the bottle and let half the water stream bounce off the lip into the bottle. And the only way to turn on the tap is to wave your hand in front of the sensor and keep waving it (otherwise the tap shuts off very quickly). But the real game-changer is that there's only one temperature for the water – lukewarm. There's no turning the tap all the way to cold. And one kind of worries that half of the mix is sulfurous hot water.

I tried the bathroom water and it tasted OK to me. But I wanted to know more about it, and especially whether it's officially drinkable. So I tried repeatedly to reach Ómar Ingvarsson, director of operations at Leifsstöð, by e-mail and voice mail. He didn't respond.

Some might say that having to buy water is a small thing. But for a family of four, buying four 200 kr water bottles in the airport starts to become a real expense. And isn't it wasteful to make people buy plastic with their water?

You could also say that there's no reason why we should expect to get free water in airport terminals. Sure, but we expect and get free light, free bathrooms (with running water), free chairs, and free curbside dropoff lanes. In Iceland, it's a trivial thing to provide free drinking water as well. And don't forget that we all pay an airport fee as part of our ticket price.

To anyone who says that it's a very American thing to want free water and that I should stop kvetching, I say: Here are photographs of public water fountains at two very non-American airports, Frankfurt and Heathrow. Why not in Iceland?

By the way, Kári Harðarson has also written about the lack of access to water at Leifsstöð here.

If I had to design a system to frustrate peoples' desire for free water, well, I couldn't have done it better myself than the folks at Leifsstöð. So here's my last question: To what extent do airport owners see creating a water monopoly as part of the service that they provide to their tenants, the shops? Is there an evil master airport designer or airport management consultant who holds conferences on maximizing beverage revenue from passengers through limiting access to water? Or is the lack of access to water at Keflavík due more to carelessness than sinister intelligence?

Using your laptop at Leifsstöð

OK, and speaking of free, I want to share a piece of precious knowledge with you. I know some of you have those new laptops that go for nine hours on one battery charge. But mine is a bit older. If I ran it off batteries while waiting to board the plane there wouldn't be any juice left for the plane trip.

I have found one publicly accessible electrical plug inside security at Leifstöð. It is along a wall towards the northwest corner of the main hall, near the Leonard jewelry shop, directly under a fire extinguisher. The last time I looked, there were three chairs conveniently next to it. You'll find me there every now and then between about 6 and 7 in the morning. I've noticed that other people have discovered this plug too. If any of you know of more outlets and are willing to share your secret knowledge, please write!

Review: Vodafone Passport

Vodafone has been advertising its “Passport” service heavily, among other things at the luggage carousels at Keflavík airport. They promise that signing up for the service will reduce your phone bill when traveling abroad. I checked out how the service works so that you can know whether to use it or not.

Basically, the Passport service lowers the per minute charge for making calls when abroad, at the cost of imposing a higher per-call fee. Actually, the per-call fee repeats every twenty minutes, so it's not really right to call it a per-call fee. It's a timed charge that repeats in 20-minute increments instead of one-minute or one-second increments. For making or receiving calls in Europe, this per-20-minute charge is €0,99.

I compared the rates you'd pay under Passport with the Eurotariff rates you’d get normally. Here’s what I found. If you are receiving a call while in Europe, you will save with Passport if the call is at least four minutes long; you will lose money if the call is less than four minutes long. If you are making a local call while abroad in Europe, you will save with Passport on calls of at least two minutes; you will lose money on calls that are less than two minutes long.

So Passport is good if you make relatively long calls. But what's the average length of consumer mobile phone calls? Just under two minutes, it seems. I tracked down a study by British and Portuguese phone regulators. They found an average call length of 101-109 seconds. 77% of phone calls were less than 120 seconds long.*

That means that the average person will pay Vodafone more with Passport than they would without Passport.

I'm sure Vodafone has done their math, and wouldn't have introduced the Passport scheme unless they felt they stood to profit from it. (If anyone has good statistics on the average length of calls, they surely do!)

Just think about how many phone calls you make are short because the person is busy, or you get the wrong number, or you can't hear the other person.

It looks like for the average customer, Passport isn't a good deal.

* Lukasz Grzybowski and Pedro Pereira, “The consumer loss of the minimum duration for mobile telephone calls,” Telecommunications Policy 33 (2009): 200-206.

Icelandair cancels a flight – the passenger pays the bill

When we buy an airline ticket, most of us think of the ticket as a fairly guaranteed thing around which we can build other commitments, like meetings, onward transportation, hotel bookings, and the like. We know not to expect that we will arrive exactly on time – we expect that we might be an hour late, or even a few hours late – but we generally assume that the flight will go that day and that we'll get to our destination.

The European Union's passenger rights guarantee, passed in 2004, was aimed at helping people whose flights are cancelled or delayed. There are real teeth in the regulation. Airlines have to pay real compensation to passengers. The regulation was adopted in the EFTA countries too and applies fully to Iceland. If you show up at the airport and find that your flight is delayed overnight, the airline really does have to pay for your hotel and meals, and if they refuse, you can appeal to Iceland's civil aviation board, Flugmálastjórn.

But the regulation mostly applies to flights which are cancelled or delayed on short notice – the day of the flight, or a few days before. There are still a lot of circumstances where passengers take the full risk of the money they put into the commitments they made around their airline tickets.

And that risk can be considerable. Especially now that more and more travel services, such as hotels, car rentals, train, and bus operators, are offering nonrefundable fares which don't permit exchanges or date changes.

Here's my story.

In September, I bought a ticket to Frankfurt on Icelandair for November 16th. I also bought a nonrefundable train ticket for the three-hour trip from Frankfurt airport to Augsburg. I left a good amount of time between the plane's scheduled arrival in Frankfurt and the train's departure.

Some days later I received a letter from Icelandair saying that the flight was being cancelled. I was offered the choice of flying on November 15th, November 19th, or getting a full refund.

The least bad option for me was to fly on November 15th. That left me with two options – I could spend the night in Frankfurt waiting for my train, or I could book a new train ticket for the afternoon of November 15th to get me to Augsburg, where I wouldn't have to pay for my lodgings. (I chose the second option. It cost me €54, as the cheap nonrefundable fares were sold out.)

Is Icelandair responsible for the cost of my overnighting in Frankfurt for a night? Morally, of course. But legally, no.

The EU regulation is really oriented towards passengers who don’t find out about a delay before they show up at the airport. It only forces Icelandair to offer me a hotel room if the departure of the flight is at least the day following the originally scheduled departure. It doesn't say anything about passengers who are forced to fly the day before the originally scheduled departure.

So when Icelandair made the business decision to cancel this flight, they knew they didn't have to take into account the costs to their passengers conntected to having to cancel their trip, or fly on a different day.

Icelandair could say that I also had the option to receive a full refund. But we all know that that's not much of an option. Many airline trips are booked as part of a process involving many interdependent decisions. And there aren’t a lot of flight options between Iceland and Germany in November aside from Icelandair.

The EU has been reviewing the regulation. I hope they add in language that motivates the airlines to consider passengers' costs when flights are cancelled many days in advance, not just the day of the flight.

Updates

Iceland Express has started flying to Stansted again. That’s a boon for Icelandic travelers who want to take advantage of Stansted’s many low-fare flights to European destinations.

Iceland Express will also fly to New York City in summer 2010. They’ll use Newark Airport rather than JFK. Newark is right on the main New York-Washington train line. Flights start in June and are scheduled four times a week (Monday through Thursday).

Icelandair is finally going to start flying to Brussels. There will be two flights a week starting in June 2010.

Elderhostel, the non-profit educational tour marketer, has changed its name to Exploritas. They are trying to market tours to all ages now. They are based in Boston and have some of the most interesting itineraries in the business. They don’t run their own tours, but rather market tours run by smaller companies.

FERÐASTOFAN NEWSLETTER — AUGUST 2009

Dear readers,

Welcome to this summer's Ferðastofan newsletter! You can expect to hear from me again in December, and then after the new year the updated Ferðastofan travel guidebook will come out.

You can also read this newsletter on the Web, either by going to www.ferdastofan.is and clicking on "English" and then "Newsletter," or with this direct link.

I am trying to make time to find some new sponsors for Ferðastofan. Sponsors' names and logos are listed in the right-hand column of the web site. Any suggestions are very welcome.

Do let friends and acquaintances know about the newsletter if you think they would like to suscribe.

Happy travels! — Ian

P.S. You can take your name off this mailing list at any time by replying to this e-mail and letting me know.

The Flybus changes its ticket structure

The Flybus to Keflavík airport has come up with a new and improved ticket system.

If you just want to go between the airport and BSÍ, you'll pay 1700 kr. (or 3000 kr. round-trip). But if you want to continue from BSÍ to one of the hotels that the Flybus serves, then you'll pay 500 kr. extra (2200 kr. one-way or 4000 kr. round-trip; this is called Flybus Plus).

I think this is a good move, because it means that passengers pay for the service that they actually receive, and it makes it clearer what you get for your money. It also means that those of us who live close to the hotels that the Flybus serves can now take the bus to a hotel near our home without pretending to be a foreign tourist who is staying there – we just have to pay an extra 500 kr. (cheaper than a taxi).

For more information, see www.re.is/Flybus/Flugrutan. The list of hotels served is at www.re.is/Flybus/PickUp.

Bringing meat to Iceland ... and knives

I was on my way from Germany to Iceland in June. Just before my flight I was in the supermarket at Frankfurt airport and was thinking of buying some good German dried ham to bring back home. I remembered that I had read something about how the ban on bringing in uncooked meat had been lifted.

It so happened that I didn't buy the ham and I was lucky I didn't. I was picked out of the crowd at Keflavík and my bags were x-rayed. The customs officer checked through the shopping bag where I had my purchases from the supermarket and asked specially about meat. I was able to say honestly that I didn't have any with me.

I was absolutely right in remembering that I had read a news item about the lifting of the ban on importing uncooked meat. Here it is, from April 2008: www.mbl.is/mm/gagnasafn/grein.html?radnr=1204912. But you know what: the bill never got passed. It never got out of committee in Parliament (see www.althingi.is/altext/135/s/0825.html).

So importing uncooked meat is still illegal in Iceland. I'm not sure whether the ban extends to cheeses made with raw (unpasteurized) milk.

On a related note, people sometimes ask about the knife ban. It says on the Tollstjórinn website that it is "forbidden to import knives with a blade longer than 12 cm." Indeed, I knew a foreign exchange student who had a knife that was taken away from him when he arrived in Iceland. Does that mean that you can't buy a good knife set for your kitchen when you're traveling abroad?

It seems like you can, actually. The law states that it is "forbidden to bring into the country ... cutting instruments with a blade longer than 12 cm, which are not intended for use in a household or in the course of employment" (30 gr. laga 16/1998). So a knife which is obviously intended for your kitchen ought to be OK.

New Eurotariff price caps for roaming calls take effect on August 30

Two years ago the European Parliament set price caps on the per-minute rate for mobile phone calls within Europe, the so-called Eurotariff. These price caps also apply to the EFTA countries and were formally adopted by Iceland in the fall of 2008. The price cap decreases each year and on August 30, 2009, it is set to come down to €0.43 (for originated calls) og €0.19 (for calls received), not including VAT, which means that Icelandic telephone companies may not charge more than €0.535 and €0.236 (instead of €0.57 and €0.27 previously). (See the text of the regulation here. The cap amounts are listed in Article 4, section 2.)

So what can we expect at the end of the month? Perhaps Síminn, Vodafone, Tal, and Nova will have prepared everything carefully, and their staff will stay awake until late at night on August 31st with their fingers poised. When the clock strikes twelve they will press the magic button and the prices will change.

Or maybe it'll be like last time. In spring 2009, the telephone companies still weren't completely in compliance with Eurotariff. Yours truly got in touch with the Post and Telecom Authority and discovered that they had misunderstood part of the Eurotariff regulation. Then I got in touch with the two companies who still hadn't posted Eurotariff-compliant rates, and shortly thereafter they finally did so.

We'll see whether the phone companies pay more attention to detail this time!

Norræna

The good ship Norræna's last visit to Seyðisfjörður this year will be on September 30th. After that it won't be possible to sail to Europe until after the new year (in February if the 2010 schedule is similar to the 2009 one). More information: www.smyril-line.is.

Norræna has posted a reminder to Icelandic customers who want to take a leased vehicle abroad; you need to have written permission from the leaseholder to do so.

Dualphone and Skype

People who often travel abroad usually call abroad frequently as well. I have followed the market for international phone calls from Iceland for a long time and have written a couple articles about it (here and here). I've used Skype for a lot of my calls abroad since 2004 or 2005. I never call "normally," just picking up the phone and dialing in the good old way, because it costs too much. If the person I'm calling is also a Skype user then it's free to talk to them over Skype. Calls to land lines in major developed countries cost about €0,017/minute, and there's also a per call fee of €0,039. Call quality to land lines through Skype is not quite as good as with the "good old system," but it is adequate. When it's important to have really good quality, I have a prepaid telephone card that I use, which is the next-cheapest way to call abroad.

When one uses Skype a lot, the big question because what kind of headphones and microphone one should use. For a long time I used a headphone with an included microphone that I connected to my computer. One can also use a so-called USB phone. The problem with these approaches is that your computer has to be turned on and the headphones have to be connected. But sometimes my laptop is at work, or in my bag, or turned off, and even when it is turned on it is a bother to always have to plug in the headset in order to start speaking. It's possible to run Skype on a desktop and keep the headset plugged in, but our home is a laptop-only zone now and I don't want to have a desktop just for Skype (it would take a lot of space and energy and make a lot of noise).

We found a solution: a so-called Skype phone which is connected directly into the net by Ethernet cable. That means you don't have use a computer at all. The phone is always connected to the router that one gets from Síminn, Vodafone, or Tal. I bought a Dualphone 3088, which costs €129 and can be bought from amazon.de or skype.com. This is a cordless phone, produced by a Danish company, which also connects to your land line, so that you can use just one phone both for Skype calls and "regular" calls. The phone is a little expensive, but this is the first solution that has really been popular with the whole household and that everyone finds simple to use. There are also Skype phones that are only for Skype and not for your land line (e.g. Netgear SPH200D), but I think it's a big advantage to be able to have only one phone at home.

"Free tours" aren't free

The last few years, especially in the larger European cities, advertisements have been cropping up for so-called "free" walking tours around town. These tours are rather controversial and have caused much debate.

The first thing is that they aren't free. The guides would never show up for work if they didn't get tips from tour participants, who are reminded at the beginning of the tour that one "may" tip the guide afterwards. These are actually tours for tips, not tours for nothing.

Another issue is that it's very difficult to be sure that guides on free tours are declaring their tip income to the local tax authorities.

Various groups and institutions are starting to give the free-tour companies a hard time: the tax authorities, who want their money; established walking-tour companies, who accuse the "free" tours of misleading advertising; the tour guide associations in southern Europe, who never give up on trying to ban "unqualified" guides from speaking in public; and city authorities, who are tired of the free tours' pushy advertising style. It could be that "free" tours will be gone as quickly as they came.

But I have to say that the guiding on these tours can be very entertaining, and that the old guard of city guides could really learn something from it. Still, on ethical grounds I can't recommend taking a "free" walking tour. I believe it's important for guides to pay income and social security taxes on their wages and I think it's important to be able to trust advertising messages. If these tours were promoted with the slogan "Tours for Tips" instead of "Free Tours," I'd be able to support them.

A laugh to end on

Canadian musician Dave Carroll flew to Nebraska with United Airlines and checked, as baggage, his guitar, which he got back damaged afterwards. When United refused to pay for the damage, he composed this great song about his experiences. The video has been watched more than 4 million times on YouTube and has received more than 30,000 reviews!

FERÐASTOFAN NEWSLETTER — MAY 2009

Dear readers,

Welcome! This is the fourth Ferðastofan newsletter and the first one to come out bilingually. The updated Ferðastofan travel guidebook came out in February and I will send out another newsletter at the end of the summer.

You can also read this newsletter on the Web, either by going to www.ferdastofan.is and clicking on "English" and then "Newsletter," or with this direct link.

Do let friends and acquaintances know about this website if you think they would find it of interest. It is great to get recommendations about good hotels, interesting destinations or new things going on in the Icelandic travel world. You can reply to this e-mail, or use the comment form on the website.

Happy travels! — Ian

P.S. You can take your name off this mailing list at any time by replying to this e-mail and letting me know.

A true story about collision damage insurance for rental cars

I was driving 70 miles per hour (110 km/h), the legal maximum, down the expressway in Michigan in the U.S.A. in a rental car when a deer suddenly ran out and tried to cross the road in front of me. There was no time to brake. There was a tremendous thud as the deer hit, but we were lucky that it bounced off the front corner rather than landing on the windshield. I steered the car over onto the shoulder and brought it to a stop. My wife and little son were both in the car and we were all unhurt, but the front end was pretty well banged up. A strange sound came from the engine and liquid was leaking onto the ground. I called the police (who arrived within a few minutes), the rental car company (which arranged for a tow truck), and my sister, who came to pick us up.

A few weeks later I got a bill from the rental car company for the repairs. All together they cost more than $3000.

But I didn't have to pay a cent – there wasn't even any deductible. Why not? I was wise to the way rental car insurance works. When I rented the car, I knew the rules and I protected myself by following them.

This unpleasant experience was a reminder that one should never rent a car without collision damage insurance – never. Rental cars always come with basic liability insurance, which covers injuries to other people and damage to their property. But renters have to purchase extra insurance to cover damage to the rental car itself. This is called collision damage insurance (kaskótrygging bílaleigubíls in Icelandic). Without it you take responsibility for the entire value of the car, even if it is damaged in an accident which was not your fault, like in my case. And deer collisions are, unfortunately, fairly common in the United States.

There are two ways to get collision damage insurance. One is to buy it from the rental company, but this is relatively expensive (US$10/€10 per day is a typical price). The other is to pay for the rental car with a credit card that includes collision damage insurance as a perk of card membership. In Iceland, only credit cards with high annual fees offer this perk. If you pay for the rental with this kind of credit card, you need to decline, in writing, the collision damage insurance that the rental company offers. This is what I did, and after the accident I got in touch right away with the credit card company and they explained what paperwork I needed to submit to them. It took three months before the claim was paid, but the process wasn't so difficult, and the most important thing was that I didn't have to pay a cent.

Except, I have to mention, to the phone company! I hadn't yet bought an American chip for my mobile phone (I though I wouldn't need it during the first few days of the trip). Fourteen minutes on the phone to the car rental company and to my sister, using my Icelandic number, cost more than 6.000 kr.

Connecting flights and the Icelandair website

A year ago I wrote about Icelandair's website and the difficulties it creates when booking connecting flights. The search engine doesn't always display the most sensible connections between two points, and it is very difficult to compare the different options for the same route. Earlier this spring, an Icelandic university student in Minnesota, Arnar Hjartarson, booked a flight from Minneapolis to Keflavík on the Icelandair website. It wasn't until after he had completed the booking that he noticed that he was supposed to fly from Minneapolis to Newark and then from JFK to Keflavík. The flight from JFK took off three hours after the flight to Newark landed. It isn't possible to get from Newark to JFK in such a short time.

Arnar contacted Icelandair, who said that he would have to pay a USD 160 change fee (as well as the fare difference) to change his itinerary. He felt he didn't have any choice but to agree, since he needed to get to home to Iceland, but he wrote to the consumer travel website elliott.org about his experience, and a long discussion on the site ensued. I think (as did many others) that Icelandair owes Arnar $160. It was through Icelandair's negligence that the search engine showed Arnar an impossible itinerary and allowed him to book it. Icelandair has a responsibility to sell products that are usable. It is difficult to view connecting flight information on the Icelandair website and this case shows why Icelandair really needs to fix the problem. If you're interested, read the whole discussion on the elliott.org website.

An Icelandic home exchange website

I've written here before about home exchange, for example through the website homeexchange.org. A family who lives in Reykjavík, for example, can switch houses for two weeks with a family that lives in Germany or Florida. The other day I got an e-mail from Martin Olesen, a Dane who lives in Iceland. Together with several others he has started a website specially for Icelanders who want to exchange homes, both here in Iceland (between, say, Reykjavík and Akureyri) and abroad. The address is www.husaskipti.is.

Eurotariff finally comes to Iceland

All the Icelandic telecoms companies have finally implemented Eurotariff for roaming calls. That means that if you travel with an Icelandic mobile phone number within "Europe" (which means the EU, Norway, and Switzerland), you won't pay more than €0,27 per minute (about 46 kr.) to receive a telephone call outside Iceland, and never more than €0,57 per minute (about 97 kr.) to call to another European country (for example, from Denmark to Sweden or Iceland). From the point that the European Parliament passed the Eurotariff law, it took almost two years before it came into effect in Iceland via the EEA treaty. (Norway, in contrast, managed the same process in a little over half a year.) In any case, this is good news for travelers. I recommend not registering for any of the other roaming plans, like Vodafone Passport or Síminn's "Þú í útlöndum", without doing a careful cost analysis.

Iceland Express to Gatwick, Icelandair to Seattle

Iceland Express has stopped flying to London Stansted and the only London airport it will now serve is Gatwick. This is a big change, and will particularly affect connecting flight options. There aren't as many low-fare airlines flying out of Gatwick, although one of the biggest ones, EasyJet, does have its hub there. US Airways and British Airways also fly from Gatwick to New York, Philadelphia and Charlotte in the USA. Those who need to travel between Gatwick and central London can take a fast train or an inexpensive bus. I recommend staying overnight in London if you are planning to catch a connecting flight. There is a fine list of accommodations near Gatwick at www.londontoolkit.com/travel/gatwick_hotels.htm. For more information on Gatwick, see: www.gatwickairport.com.

Icelandair will start flying to Seattle (in the northwest corner of the lower 48 United States) in July. Icelandair succeeds SAS, which quit the Seattle route after many years, but historic connections between Seattle and Scandinavia should assure Icelandair a basic level of demand. The plan is to fly four times a week year-round; the flight takes eight hours. Seattle is an interesting city and the flight will be convenient for travelers on their way to British Columbia, Oregon, California and even Alaska and Hawaii. Icelandair's last attempt to fly to the west coast of North America didn't work out, but let's hope this attempt works better!

Southwest adds flights from Minneapolis and Boston

Southwest, arguably the best American low-fare airline, has started flying from Minneapolis (to Chicago and Denver) and Boston (to Baltimore/Washington and Chicago). This is good news which opens new connecting flight possibilities for Icelanders. Southwest has also started flying from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Baltimore and Chicago. Southwest has an especially good reputation among low-fare airlines because it doesn't charge extra for bags, its website is honest and simple, and the company nevertheless turns a profit. Their website is www.southwest.com and there's a route map at www.southwest.com/travel_center/routemap_dyn.html.

Are trains a worthwhile option in the United States?

When traveling in the U.S., its tempting to take the train to avoid the bother of flying or renting a car. Especially on the east coast, where trains run frequently enough to make good travel sense, getting between places on rails sounds like a good option. But what's it really like to take the train in America? In December, with wife and one-year-old son, I took the train from Rochester to Boston and here's a short report on our experience.

First the positives:

  • There's a lot of room on the train. One doesn't feel like a sardine. The seats are wide and you can always walk up and down the cars to stretch your legs.
  • The service is friendly. The conductors and other staff are relaxed and polite.
  • You can check luggage on American trains (though only between certain major stations). You can check many more bags than when you're flying, which is a big plus for travelers who shop.
  • There was a real restaurant on the train with a real menu. There was also a cafe which was open longer.
  • By every seat was an electrical plug for your computer or DVD player.
  • There's no security nonsense at train stations. You just show up and get on board.
  • The price was really low. The trip from Rochester to Boston, which takes 11 hours, cost $108 for all three of us (our son went for free). In fact it cost $99, because we got a 10% discount for being members in an auto club (FÍB). If we had flown the same route we would have paid three to four times more.

And now the negatives, somewhat serious ones:

  • The train was late. And I'm not talking about 15 minutes here, rather six hours. We were supposed to leave Rochester at 11:00 and get to Boston at 22:00. Instead we left Rochester at 14:00 and got to Boston at 4:00 in the morning!!
  • The conductors acted as if this kind of delay was the most normal thing in the world. For example, when the train stopped for an hour somewhere between Albany and Pittsfield, they didn't give the passengers any information about why. When I asked, one conductor said it was because we had to wait for a freight train which had priority.
  • In general, trains in the U.S. don't go very fast. One reason is that most of the tracks haven't been electrified (in contrast to European trains). Amtrak uses diesel engines which don't go much faster than the old steam locomotives. President Obama has promised to put money into a high-speed rail network, but this is still a long way off.
  • When we got on board there were no signs on the train or on the platform. There was no way to know that the train on the platform was the one we were supposed to take. We knew that the train would divide part way along but there was no information about which cars were going to Boston and which to New York.
  • It's impossible to reserve your seat in advance on Amtrak. When we got on board we had to search for a long time (carrying our luggage, stroller, and other baby stuff) before we found two seats together. Actually we had to ask people to move in order to make two adjacent seats free. After we had managed to do this one of the conductors came and ushered us into another car where he had a good spot for us. One does need to reserve one's ticket ahead of time on the train, so I wonder whether it wouldn't be possible to allow reserving particular seats as well.

I like taking the train. And if one is lucky, trains in the U.S. can be comfortable and cheap. Especially along the East Coast, between Washington, New York, and Boston, trains can be a good option. But it's easy to be ever optimistic and to forget that the main drawback of taking the train in America is delays, especially on the less traveled routes. After arriving in Boston at 4 in the morning, I wished we'd just rented a car.

FERÐASTOFAN NEWSLETTER — DECEMBER 2008

Dear readers:

Happy holidays to all and welcome to Ferðastofan's third newsletter! The financial crisis in Iceland has made it even more important to save money on travel. Six months ago, Icelanders still thought it uncool to consider price when purchasing everything from airfares to guidebooks to travel clothing. Now that we've returned to financial reality, there's more of a need than ever for guidance on smart travel shopping.

The next newsletter won't be until May, but I'm planning on finishing the 2009 update of the Ferðastofan travel guidebook in February, and I'll send out an announcement when it's ready.

This newsletter is also available on the web, either by going to www.ferdastofan.is and clicking on "Fréttabréf," or via this direct link.

Please mention the newsletter and website to your friends if you think they would enjoy it. Please share your tips, suggestions, and travel experiences with me and other readers! Let us know of a favorite hotel or B&B, a smart travel strategy, or a great destination. E-mail me back or get in touch via the suggestion board on the website!

Happy travels! — Ian

P.S. If you want to unsubscribe for any reason, just reply to this e-mail and let me know.

How do Iceland's new capital controls affect Icelandic travelers?

Instead of trying to explain the whole sad business myself, let me refer you to the multi-page FAQs which Seðlabanki Íslands has issued about the new limitations on Icelanders' ability to exchange krónur for foreign currency. The first came out on November 28, then another on December 4, and an announcement of new regulations was issued on December 16. The Landsbanki website also has a short FAQ that might be worth looking at.

But the basic deal is that Icelandic residents can exchange up to 500.000 kr. per month into foreign currency at an Icelandic bank and can only do it by showing proof that they are traveling.

I called my bank to ask them whether my Icelandic credit and debit cards will work abroad. They assured me that they do work abroad, of course only up to the daily withdrawal limit on my debit card and the credit limit on my credit card. That would seem to be an alternative way to get foreign currency, indeed even more than 500.000 kr. worth. I haven't experimented myself with card transactions, though, so I hesitate to assure readers of anything before I know a little more.

Should you get an American Express card?

Although now is probably a rotten time to try selling Icelanders credit cards, Icelandair, Kreditkort hf., and Borgun are marketing American Express cards on the Icelandair website under the heading "Kortið sem kemur þér út!"

The basic "Classic" card is a typical rebate card which offers 10 frequent flyer miles per 1000 kr. in spending – less valuable than it sounds (that means that even if you spend a million crowns a year, you get just 10.000 points, which gets you nowhere). The card has a 5.200 kr. annual fee (rebated by a 5.000 mile bonus the first year).

The up side: after clicking through several screens, it appears that the basic card offers collision damage insurance for rental cars through Sjóvá, with a US $100 deductible, up to a maximum of US $50.000. If true, that would make it the cheapest credit card on the Icelandic market to offer collision damage insurance on rental cars.

Here's the down side: the American Express card just isn't very well accepted internationally, especially in Europe. You are still going to need a Visa or Mastercard credit card. I can't see much good reason to pay annual fees for yet another card beyond that unless you rent cars abroad really often. (And if you do, you might prefer paying the annual fee for a single Visa or Mastercard that includes collision damage insurance.) I found American Express's website typically consumer-unfriendly and had trouble getting straight answers from it about the card's fine print.

Another issue with American Express is that the fees it charges merchants are higher than Visa or Mastercard, 3,9% as opposed to 1-1,95% (see www.borgun.is/seljendur/gjaldskra). This ,means that only stores with thick margins have an incentive to accept American Express and it drives up prices at those stores which do accept the card.

I contacted an American Express representative to ask about the exchange rate at which foreign charges are converted into Icelandic crowns. The response was that the rate is set by American Express Global and isn't published (another minus), but is similar to the Mastercard rate (listed at www.borgun.is/mastercardgengi).

Overall, I'm not impressed, and my answer is "no." But for more info on the card, go straight to americanexpress.is.

Töskuviðgerðin on Ármúli can fix your luggage cheaply

Instead of throwing out your old luggage, you can give it new life by taking it to Töskuviðgerðin, at Ármúli 34 in Reykjavík (tel. 581-4303, open Monday-Thursday 10:00-18:00, Friday 10:00-17:00, closed Sat-Sun). I've gotten prompt and competent service there twice, and most recently paid a reasonable 1.400 kr. to have a bag of mine restitched.

Eurotariff is now law in Iceland. What's the reality?

Iceland's parliament passed a law implementing Eurotariff on 11 September 2008, but Iceland's major telephone companies are still not advertising rates that are Eurotariff-compliant.

Eurotariff, passed by the European Parliament in May 2007, is a law that caps the cost of mobile phone calls within the EU and EFTA countries that are made while roaming outside one's home country. As of summer 2008, the price caps (not including VAT) are €0,22 for calls received abroad and €0.46 for calls made abroad to another European country, which translates into €0,27 and €0,57 including 24,5% Icelandic VAT.

The law was not the final measure needed to bring about lower rates for those making mobile phone calls while abroad within Europe. Iceland's Minister of Transport needed to issue a regulation which essentially restated the law. This did not happen until 28 October, and the regulation was not published until 17 November.

You might think that would be enough to make companies change their pricing. But as of 9 December 2008, all three of Iceland's largest telephone companies (Síminn, Tal, and Vodafone) were advertising non-compliant rates. I checked each company's rate for 1) a call from Denmark to Sweden, 2) a call from Denmark to Iceland, and 3) an incoming call while in Denmark. Vodafone's rates were compliant in the last two cases, but for a call from Denmark to Sweden, they charge €1,23 instead of €0,57. Tal's crates were compliant in only the second case; they charge €1,28 for a call from Denmark to Sweden and €0,29 to receive a call in Denmark. None of Síminn's rates were compliant; they are charging €1,58 for a call from Denmark to Sweden, €0,73 for a call from Denmark to Iceland, and €0,35 to receive a call in Denmark. (Vodafone and Tal quote their rates in euros; Síminn quotes its rates in Icelandic crowns, which were converted at the current rate of 143,76 kr/€). The advertised rates of the smallest mobile operator, Nova, are difficult to interpret and I couldn't include them in this comparison.

The telephone companies make money with every day that implementation of Eurotariff is delayed. The chronology below shows how much longer it has taken to implement Eurotariff in Iceland than in other EU and EFTA countries. While the debate over European Union membership in Iceland has many complexities, this is one area where Icelandic consumers would clearly have benefited from being inside the EU.

  • 23 May 2007: The European Parliament passes the Eurotariff law
  • 30 June 2007: Eurotariff goes into effect inside the EU
  • 30 September 2007: Deadline for full compliance with Eurotariff inside the EU
  • 22 December 2007: EFTA/EU Joint Committee defines the law as applicable to the EFTA area
  • 15 January 2008: Norway adopts Eurotariff
  • 11 September 2008: Iceland passes law 118/2008
  • 28 October 2008: Iceland's Minister of Transport issues reglugerð 1046/2008
  • 17 November 2008: Reglugerð 1046/2008 is published in Stjórnartíðindi
  • Still in the future: The major telephone companies actually implement the law in their pricing

The European Parliament is now about to go after SMS pricing. For the time being, telephone companies have hiked international SMS prices up to a level that's approximately the same as a one-minute call. Use voice instead if you can.

From January 12th, Icelandic travelers to the U.S. will need to go online and get an electronic entry authorization

In the last edition of this newsletter I reported on the United States' planned system of entry authorization for citizens of so-called "visa waiver countries," like Iceland. The new news is that this system will be mandatory as of January 12, 2009 (though unofficially, there are rumors that it will be delayed). Basically what this means is that if you are an Icelandic citizen going to the United States, you need to go to a website at least 72 hours before your trip starts, put in your details, and get approved before boarding your plane. (This doesn't apply if you have a visa – for example, if you are a student planning a longer stay.)

While some people are up in arms about this system, I'm not: it's basically just an electronic version of the same forms that Icelanders visiting the U.S. have had to fill out for years. Australia has had a similar program in place for many years with no fuss.

What's more, the forms are available in multiple languages, including Icelandic. For more information on the system, go to cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/id_visa/esta. To use the system in Icelandic, go to esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/esta.html?language=is.

There is a scandal here, though, which is that the United States Congress is also thinking of making visitors from visa waiver countries pay a fee when they enter the U.S.A. It's not clear how the fee would be collected, or how much it would be, beyond that it would be at least $10. The fee is linked to a proposal to create a marketing organization for tourism to America. The idea is that the marketing organization won't have to be funded by Americans themselves, but rather by travelers. If this sounds like a strange idea to you, you are not alone. Travel writer Arthur Frommer has called it "loony." After all, most businesses see marketing costs as a core expense, funded by their own capital, and justified because they lead to an increase in overall revenue.

I can think of few worse ways to promote tourism from abroad, and few measures designed to create worse bureaucratic tangles, than the imposition of an entry fee on travelers from countries like Iceland who have been specifically exempted from other entry hassles. The only good news is that while the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill (called the "Travel Promotion Act of 2008") at the end of September, it has not yet been approved by the Senate (the other chamber of Congress). I sincerely hope it never will be. Unfortunately, incoming president Barack Obama was a co-sponsor of the bill. I am very curious about how so many intelligent people were convinced to support this measure.

Who's recommending your travel?

American travel blogger Chris Elliott (elliott.org) asked in a recent posting: "As a leisure traveler, this may be a good time to ask if your travel agent is on your side. Are you being steered toward a particular cruise or hotel because it’s the best one for you — or because it’s the best one for your agent?"

Sometimes, the person who makes your travel decisions is a travel agency that you buy a package from. Let's say you book a flight-plus-hotel package off the brochure of an Icelandic travel agency. I'm not saying you shouldn't consider doing this. But if you do, remember that you are then choosing from only the hotels that the travel agency has contracted with. Their choices may serve their own interests more than yours. You can buy just a flight and book the hotel on your own. Sure, it may take you more time to find a hotel on your own, but you may save a lot of money and have a more special experience.

At other times, the person who makes your travel decisions is someone who just gives you information. But it's important to think criticially about the information your receive. I know an Icelandic travel site which says its goal is to inform independent travelers. But if you look at the website, most of the information it presents consists of affiliate links to car rentals, hotels, and the like. The website receives a fee or a commission if you click on the link and then book a service. This means that the website's content choices are driven only indirectly by the interests of you, the consumer. You're only receiving information about those choices that promise to reward the website financially.

In the old days, the best advice to individual travelers was: pay for objective information and then make decisions yourself. Buy a guidebook, and you are paying for the writer's time in sifting through what the market offers and finding the really good deals. That still works, but in the Internet age, there's another approach: don't spend money on information, but rather visit websites, like the one you're reading now, which have a business model that separates content from advertising. With either strategy, you're relying on people who publish objective analyses of the market rather than simply steering you to services from which they take a cut.

FERÐASTOFAN NEWSLETTER — AUGUST 2008

Happy end of summer to you all and welcome to the second Ferðastofan newsletter! The news from Ferðastofan is that the website is bigger and better, and that all the structure of the website (though not the content yet) is now available in both Icelandic and English. I also want to welcome our first sponsor to the site, Elding. You'll see their ferry service to Viðey island advertised in the right sidebar. And as an experiment, I've also added Google Ads to the travel guidebook pages. As you know, my policy is not to take any advertising from the companies I review (nor any commissions) so that I can keep the site 100% honest and objective.

Happy travels! — Ian

The USA's new electronic entry form system is online and will be mandatory soon

The USA has started its electronic entry approval system for citizens of visa waiver countries (those countries, like Iceland, whose citizens don't require visas for business or pleasure trips to the USA). The system, called ESTA, is similar to the one that travelers to Australia have had to use for many years. The US Customs and Border Patrol has put a good FAQ about the system up on the web, but here are the basics:

  • Using the system will be made mandatory soon, probably as of January 12, 2009.
  • Until then, even if you get an ESTA authorization, you still have to fill out the I-94W form on the plane, so there's really no point in bothering with the system for trips before January 12.
  • Once you get an ESTA authorization, it is valid for two years. You don't have to get another one for your next trip within that time, unless you change your address.
  • ESTA requires you to give basically the same information as on the old I-94W forms.
  • You can take a peek at how the system works by going to https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov.

How to avoid checked-bag fees in the USA and Canada

At first it was just that people had to pay for a second checked bag. Now air travelers on most of the legacy North American airlines (like United, Delta, and Northwest) have to pay extra for checking any luggage at all. US Airways, for example, charges $15 for the first bag and $25 for the second bag.

The first line of defense: Look more closely into booking a single ticket all the way to your final destination in North America, using Icelandair's website. Travelers on an itinerary that includes Europe or Asia are exempt from the baggage charges on their connecting flights within the USA. And this savings amounts to real money now. What's more, with a through ticket, you also get a guaranteed connection if the first leg of your flight is late.

If you have to book your trip as two separate tickets, try to fly on one of the low-fare airlines, such as Southwest, JetBlue, and AirTran. Southwest still allows travelers to take extra bags for free. AirTran and JetBlue charge nothing for the first bag and only $20 for the second bag.

Remember as well that both Icelandair and almost all American airlines now charge extra for bags that weigh more than 50 pounds (23 kilos). On American airlines, it's usually a flat fee of aroudnd $25-30 per bag. But on Icelandair flights to the USA, the fee is now $72-90 per bag. Put your bags on the bathroom scale before you leave home.

Check out Internet access when choosing a hotel

Internet service is becoming the latest competition battleground at hotels and hostels all over the world. Using the Internet at a hotel is not just about being able to surf the net. For many people, it's about e-mail, banking, and using the computer for telephone service. Telephone calls from abroad were once an expensive hassle, requiring phone cards or pricey hotel surcharges. But now, if you have a laptop, Skype and a decent connection, making a call from your hotel room is easy and free or very cheap.

That means that Internet service at hotels provides a lot of value to travelers. So how much do hotels charge for this? Interestingly, many hotels, guesthouses, and hostels are now offering Internet service for free. From the hotel's point of view, since the marginal cost of providing Internet service is low, it's simpler to just provide Internet service for free rather than going through the bother of administering a payment system. Ask at check-in and you'll get a slip with the wireless net password. (Some hotels charge a small registration fee for giving you the password, but then don't meter your usage.)

However, there are a lot of hotels which charge a lot for Internet, and meter usage by the hour or the day. In Germany, where I was in June, I noticed two types of hotels which charge for Internet use. The first type includes the many (mostly medium-sized) hotels which have made the mistake of outsourcing Internet access to T-Mobile, Germany's wireless operator. T-Mobile will happily come into a hotel and set up their wireless "Hotspot" Internet access system, where customers pay €8 a day or €18/day to connect. The second group is the hotels in the otherwise good-value Ibis chain, which charge a hefty €25/day for Internet access.

Obviously, if you're going to make phone calls through Skype, you don't want to stay at these hotels, or at least you want to figure the Internet price into the room price when comparison shopping, just as you'd check whether a hotel includes breakfast or not.

What's going to happen in the future? The way I see it, things could go two ways: either more and more hotels will start providing free Internet access, or more and more hotels will start to charge real money. I'm hoping for the former. But whatever happens, the price of Internet service is now something that you really have to think about when booking a room.

Stalled Eurotariff law means high roaming prices for Icelandic GSM customers

Say you're in England, and you want to make a call to France on your Icelandic mobile phone. If your service is through Vodafone or Tal, you will pay 145 kr. per minute for this call. If you have Síminn, you'll pay much less — 69 kr. a minute.

What's going on here? When the Alþingi adjourned for summer break at the end of May, it left many bills unresolved. One was the European Parliament's Eurotariff legislation, which would cap the costs that mobile operators can charge for roaming calls like this within Europe. This gives Iceland the dubious honor of being the only country in the EU/EEA where the Eurotariff legislation has not taken effect, and where consumers are still paying high roaming rates.

The bill has support from both the government and the opposition. The delay in its passage, though, is a victory for the big phone companies, and especially for Vodafone. They are playing a waiting game: the longer they can delay passage, the more money they make off unnecessarily high roaming rates that customers can't practically avoid.

Telephone carriers in the EU countries were required to implement Eurotariff in the summer of 2007. The EU/EEA Joint Committee formally ruled that Eurotariff applied to the EEA countries as well on 22 December 2007, leaving the last step as the adoption of the Eurotariff law by the parliaments of Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. Norway adopted the law less than a month after the Joint Committee's decision, on 15 January 2008. Liechtenstein's GSM operator has also dropped their roaming rates to Eurotariff levels. That leaves Iceland. We are the only ones left. We will be more than a year behind the rest of Europe.

Now, the two major Icelandic phone companies have responded to Eurotariff in very different ways. Síminn has lowered their European roaming rates to the Eurotariff-mandated levels. They did this of their own free will — since the law hadn't yet been passed by the Alþingi, they didn't have to. But Vodafone continues to charge very high rates for European roaming. (Tal's pricing is identical to Vodafone's.)

Just to make a ballpark guess, say that there are 200.000 adult Icelanders, that 75.000 of them have GSM service from Vodafone, that each Vodafone customer has made an average of 10 minutes of roaming phone calls per person in Europe since December 22, and that their calling rates would have been 70 kr. per minute less if Vodafone adopted Eurotariff pricing. That would mean that the delay in adopting Eurotariff has allowed Vodafone to make 52.500.000 kr. in free money off Icelandic customers. Even if these figures are high — and they could just as well be low — Parliament's delays have handed Vodafone a check for millions of crowns.

Let's hope Alþingi passes the Eurotariff bill as soon as possible and makes it go into effect immediately.

High-speed trains in Italy: not worth it for me

We were in Italy (with six-month old baby and baby carriage) in March, a nice time to travel there. We had the chance to take a variety of different trains between Rome, Naples, and La Spezia, and to ride in both first and second class. My advice: think twice before paying extra for the high-speed Italian trains, and reduce your expectations if you plan to ride in first class.

We took the high-speed Alta Velocità train from Rome to Naples, and bought second-class tickets. Our train left at 7:25 and was due to arrive at 8:52 — 1 hour and 27 minutes. On the way back that evening, we took the Intercity Plus train, which takes 2 hours and 9 minutes. A second-class ticket on the high speed train cost €30; on the Intercity Plus train, €15. Was it worth it?

Second class on the high-speed train was an open seating car with two seats on either side of the aisle. The bathrooms hadn't been well cleaned and there was no toilet paper. The train car didn't feel especially new. There was no good place to stow the baby carriage. We had to leave it by the bathroom and the doors, which meant that when our son wanted to sleep, we had to stand by the carriage.

Second class on the Intercity Plus train was a compartment car with six seats per compartment. The bathrooms weren't especially clean either, but there was toilet paper. The train wasn't very full and we were able to roll the baby carriage into one of the compartments. That meant he was always with us, whether asleep or awake, and yet the carriage wasn't blocking the aisle.

The high-speed train wasn't quite as high-speed as advertised — it arrived in Naples nine minutes late, while the Intercity Plus arrived one minute early. So all in all, aside from the speed, the high-speed train doesn't give passengers much extra value, and for us in particular, the Intercity Plus train was actually more comfortable and way better value.

Though I like taking the train in Italy, even the best trains offer an experience far below what, say, Deutsche Bahn offers. The cars are old and need repair, the restaurant cars are dingy, and the bathrooms are poorly cleaned. Looking for those special child and wheelchair spaces (Kleinkindabteil) that one finds on Deutsche Bahn trains? You won't find them in Italy. I always feel a bit of jealousy when I see an Italian train conductor taking an entire six-seat compartment for himself and his work. The newer German trains have been redesigned with an efficient little mini-office for the conductor, which doesn't rob room from passengers. Italy has a long way to go before it can be as proud of its high-speed service as Germany is of its ICE trains.

Advance purchase pays on Swedish trains

On a trip to Sweden in June, I learned that it really pays to buy your Swedish train ticket ahead of time, even on short routes.

A ticket from Stockholm to Eskilstuna (a one-hour trip) cost 59 Swedish crowns when bought several weeks in advance, 85 Swedish crowns when bought several days in advance, and 113 Swedish crowns when bought shortly before departure.

But the catch is that, like in Germany, advance purchase tickets in Sweden require you to take a particular train and then to pay if you have to change that choice. So those connecting from airplane flights -- who cannot really count on arriving on time or getting their luggage promptly -- are forced to take a large risk if they save money and buy their tickets in advance.

The best approach is to book in advance, but to give yourself a very comfortable margin, allowing several hours between the time when you are scheduled to arrive at the train station and when your train departs. This saves money and reduces your risk, but increases travel time.

Ian's articles in Morgunblaðið and Neytendablaðið

If you've read this far, you'll enjoy my other articles. Together with Margrét Gunnarsdóttir of ferdalangur.net, I've now written seven monthly travel columns in Morgunblaðið from January to August 2008. I also have an article in the June 2008 issue of Neytendablaðið about whether it is really cheaper to shop at the duty-free store in Keflavík Airport. (The short answer is: definitely for alcohol, but it's not worth making a special effort to buy candy there.) If you'd like to read more, here are links to all the Morgunblaðið articles so far this year:

FERÐASTOFAN NEWSLETTER — MAY 2008

Dear readers:

This is the first (May 2008) edition of the Ferðastofan newsletter. Thanks to all the new subscribers who have joined in the past few months for putting your trust in Ferðastofan. I am planning another newsletter at the end of the summer, and will be updating the Ferðastofan travel guidebook again in the winter of 2008-2009. This newsletter is still in English only, which allows me to write more quickly and entertainingly, but I am still planning to go fully bilingual as soon as time and demand allows.

As some of you might know, I also write a travel column in Morgunblaðið, write occasionally for Neytendablaðið, and serve on the advisory board for Iceland's consumer spokesman. In this spirit, all the information in this newsletter is independent and aims at being objective. There are no affiliate links or plugs for my friends. All of my listings are designed at helping Icelandic consumers understand the travel industry and find the best buys within it.

Happy travels!
Ian

New Keflavík parking pricing: fairer, but still weird

The long-term parking lot at Keflavík has introduced a new price structure and I had fun trying to figure out how it is organized. Here's the low-down:

The first 7 days (more precisely, the first seven 24-hour periods or fraction thereof) cost 630 kr. apiece. The eighth to eleventh days cost 200 kr. apiece. The twelfth to fourteenth days cost 470 kr. apiece. The fifteenth to twentieth days cost 110 kr. apiece. The twenty-first and all subsequent days cost 350 kr. apiece.

This is a very weird system and it is hard to understand the rationale behind the varying cost per day. However, it is nevertheless probably fairer than the previous pricing, in which one paid 4200 kr. for seven days and 3600 kr. for eight days, among other absurdities!

Full information: www.airport.is/menu/samgongur/bilastaedi

Iceland Express flies to Gatwick: pluses and minuses for travelers

With British Airways having ended its experiment in the Icelandic market, Iceland Express has stepped in with flights to Gatwick. Their morning flights will be into Stansted and evening flights into Gatwick. It's nice to see all three main London airports served. On the other hand, I think this will actually increase the number of overnight layovers that Iceland Express passengers require when connecting to another flight. It used to be that when flying to, say, Barcelona, one could take a morning Iceland Express flight to Stansted and then an evening flight onwards to Barcelona. On the return one could pair a morning flight from Barcelona to Stansted with an evening flight back to Reykjavík. This won't work any more and, may result in more passengers going through Heathrow with Icelandair and guaranteed connections. See this article for more info on the Gatwick flights.

First practical wine bottle carrier on market; mixed reviews

In my travel guidebook I talked about the difficulties of bringing wine bottles back to Iceland and said I was waiting for a cheap made-in-China checked-luggage wine-bottle carrier to come on the market. Well, there's now a new American company called BottleWise which is selling two-bottle carriers for $48.95. David Rowell, who writes the Travel Insider blog, gives it mixed reviews and suggests purchasing only the internal pouches ($19.95 each) rather than the entire carrier. This new carrier is a step forward, but this market has some maturing to do and prices will surely come down even further.

My favorite consumer travel blogs

There are a lot of good people writing about the travel industry on the Internet. My two favorites: Arthur Frommer and Joe Brancatelli. Arthur Frommer has done well in the guidebook industry and could probably spend his retirement sipping margaritas on a private island in the Caribbean. Instead, he chooses to spend his days continuing to analyze the travel market from an unflinchingly pro-consumer point of view. His articles are available for free at www.frommers.com/blog. Joe Brancatelli, a longtime business journalist, runs a super website called joesentme.com which focuses on American business travel. It's available only by subscription ($49 per year) but one article per week by Joe is available for free at portfolio.com.

U.S. airlines charging for second bag – does this affect Icelanders?

In the past few weeks airlines in America have started charging passengers for checking more than one piece of luggage. This means that checked baggage rules in America are now even more divergent from those in Europe (which are based on weight and usually don't take any account of how many items are involved). The new rules obviously apply if you are on a totally internal U.S. flight, but do they apply if you are on an internal flight connecting to a flight abroad? Apparently not. I was assured by Icelandair that passengers who, for example, fly from Washington to New York and then on to Keflavík will be able to check two bags in Washington for free. US Airways' policy says that "passengers traveling to and from Europe, or to and from Asia" are exempt from the charge for a second bag. The most natural reading of this sentence would include passengers who are on a domestic flight connecting to a flight Europe, although there is just enough ambiguity there to possibly lead to a few check-in desk confrontations.

A report from the cheap hotel frontier in France

For years I have heard about the budget hotel chains that are common in France, like Formule 1, Kyriad, and Premiere Classe. (I'm not counting Ibis, which is a little more upscale and has spread far beyond France.) Now I've actually had the chance to try one.

Actually, it started because I had a one-day conference to attend in Paris and was looking for a hotel for the nights before and after. I could have gotten a single room for about €90 a night at any number of small hotels in central Paris (some of which I know from my days leading tour groups).

I went on line, though, to see whether I might be able to do better. I didn't really care whether I was in central Paris or not, but I needed to be on a public transport line which was reasonably convenient to both the airport and to central Paris. I searched for hotels in Paris (in this case I used the web search engine at priceline.com) and ordered the results by price.

Up came prices like €40 and €50 per night. The trick with the listings was to evaluate the locations. The name of the hotel's location doesn't tell you how far the hotel is from the nearest RER or metro stop. Even full hotel listings on the web can be vague about where the hotel actually is.

I used Google Maps to zero in on hotels near the RER B line that runs out to the airport. Several of them were at Parc des Expositions, one stop from the airport. One of them, the Premiere Classe Villepinte-Parc des Expositions, was advertising a rock-bottom rate that was available on the dates I was going to be in Paris: €26 per night. Others, such as the Kyriad, were a little more expensive.

I checked the web sites that collect hotel ratings. There were quite mixed ratings for the Premiere Classe hotel, and only slightly better ones for the more expensive ones. I was a little bit leery, but I decided to book the cheap hotel. For two nights, it couldn't be so bad.

I was prepared for the worst. But it was actually totally normal. My very small room had all the basics: a very small private bathroom, a desk, a television (all the channels were in French), and a double bed (of the narrowest kind -- couples might prefer reserving a room with two single beds). There was no phone in the room, but there was free wireless Internet access in the lobby (and an unexpected bonus: a weak but usable signal in my room). There was no minibar, but the staff stored some food I had bought in the hotel refrigerator.

It was really interesting to see how the hotel had been designed to save the absolute maximum on space and building costs. Everything was built to be functional and no more than that. But I had everything that I needed. There were some scratches and scuff marks on the walls, floor, and sink, but everything was clean.

The hotel surroundings were quiet and green. Most of the guests seemed to be families, young couples, and school groups. The RER stop was two minutes' walk away. The trip into central Paris took 25 minutes and cost €7 round-trip. €3 extra (€10 total) got me a pass for the whole day on both the RER and metro.

I may have been luckier than average with my room, but I'd stay there again.

Some people think of the hotel that they stay as a measure of their status. Others have freed themeselves of this kind of thinking, which some would call psychologically burdensome. I belong to the latter class. I spent the €60 or so that I saved over staying in central Paris on good French cheese which I brought back to Iceland and am still eating. I'm happy with the bargain!

Icelandair's self check-in at Keflavík

If you haven't tried self-checkin through Icelandair at Keflavík airport, you should. For my last flight, I checked in the evening before on the Internet, got my seat number, and printed out my boarding pass (at right; click for larger image). When I got to the airport, I went to the self-checkin kiosks and put in my confirmation number, which allowed me to print tags for my luggage. Then I went to the luggage drop-off line for self-checkin passengers, where there was only one person ahead of me. Net effect: I did all of the work that the check-in agent would normally do, but I didn't have to wait in the Big Line. And If I hadn't been checking luggage, I would have been able to go straight up the escalators to the security line, saving even more time.

Booking connecting flights on Icelandair

Recently I booked a connecting flight through Icelandair's website and ran into one of the biggest remaining bugs on the site. Try to book a flight, say, from Reykjavík to Rome, or Chicago to Reykjavík, and the system will throw up a box with five connecting-flight options and ask you to choose. But it doesn't tell you which airport you are connecting at, and if you want to pick an option that's not among the five, there is no way to call up more connections. In my case (Rochester to Reykjavík), for some reason, the site didn't list the most obvious and inexpensive routing on the outbound leg of the journey, a routing which was listed first by websites like Expedia and Orbitz.

I was reduced to calling up the Icelandair reservations line in order to book the flight. The reservations agent was in a candid mood and told me that this bug is the bane of their existence and that they haven't been able to get the programmers to fix it. You have no idea, I was told, how many times we've had to scramble to rescue people who have, without noticing or meaning to, booked “connecting” flights requiring an impossible change of airports (e.g. Heathrow to Gatwick or JFK to LaGuardia within a couple hours). Generously, she issued me the ticket without charging me the normal fee for a phone reservation.

If Icelandair wants to be a real option for connecting flight bookings, they need to fix this bug. In the process, it would also be nice to make it easier for customers booking connecting flights a faster way to compare the prices of the five options that the system throws up. The only way to do it now is by trial and error.

Another novelty at Icelandair in recent months has been the rise of (supposedly) completely non-refundable tickets that cannot be changed or refunded. I haven't learned exactly how these work out in practice, but it's yet one more development in the increasing unbundling and commoditization of flexibility in both flight and train bookings. Here's my question: to what extent does the tie between ticket price and ticket flexibility reflect actual costs? To what extent is it just the newest fashion in revenue-maximizing strategy?

An instructive article on guaranteed connections

Connecting flights, and especially the issue of guaranteed connections, are a big issue for Icelanders. Anybody interested in the topic will benefit from reading this article about a hapless couple from Los Angeles who bought separate tickets for two legs of their journey to Italy and didn't realize that nobody was guaranteeing their connection. They wound up paying an extra $10,000 to make the group tour that they had booked.