Problems with group booking

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Q

quilttours

Train Attendant
Joined
Feb 8, 2017
Messages
17
I am working on a group booking that I had canceled from 2020 trip wanting to reschedule for 2021. Everyone on my trip has been most patient and I simply wanted to duplicate the trip for 2021. I called exactly 11 months from the day of departure. My group agent was most kind and got me all but one bedroom I needed. I then had to wait until 11 months out for my return group reservation. I called at 11 months out again. I was unable to get the number of rooms I needed and had to go outside the group realm and secure some on the public side. About a week later, I called groups before I paid for my public tickets only to find out the western train routes had decided to go to limited service and my days had been cancelled. I am a tour company, we offer this tour each year...I had already begun my itinerary and securing hotel rooms. Now I had to change the date and add two nights to the trip. And I still couldn't get all my rooms. Now they say groups can only have 12 rooms. So here I sit with a group scheduled from last year, not able to get all the rooms and a new date and schedule. I have been working on this since Aug 3 and today aug 27, I might get some answers - they said they had already sent everything - for the third time (first trip, then rescheduled trip but had a mistake with departure points and now the groups corrections with the right departure stations)- but someone used a wrong email address and i am told I should see this today. I need to know what I have to make sure I get enough rooms on the public side. I will probably never do another Amtrak trip if I can only have 12rooms. that is not enough to make my business worthwhile. Most groups are 30-50 people. I would be fine with 30. I would hope Amtrak takes another look at what you are doing to the small tour companies. Its kind of like everything else in this covid world, only the big will survive. I have a 5000.00 voucher from last year that they kindly extended for 2021. With the problems I have run into and my aggravations, I would like to cash this in and probably cancel my trip for 2021. Sad as it totals around 25,000.00 income for Amtrak as have all my other trips...last year i had a 34,000.00 bill. Do you think customer service will let me cash in the voucher?
 
Many Superliner trains only have 40 rooms total. 2 sleepers, with a combined 2 Handicapped rooms, 2 Family rooms, 26 revenue roomettes (2 out of the total 28 being reserved for the attendants) and 10 Bedrooms. Take out the handicapped rooms and that leaves 38.

Blocking any one group from grabbing more than just over 30% of the total available space strikes me as a good and fair policy. As a solo independent traveler, I am glad they implemented it.

Amtrak has no trouble selling out their sleeper space in peak periods. You needn't concern yourself about their lost revenue from you. Using yield management (their "buckets") they can probably produce more revenue from the remaining inventory from individual travelers.
 
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I understand what you are saying, and I am sure it is nicer for individuals to have a chance to get rooms...but limiting us to only 12 is just a little tight...and 15 or 16 rooms makes it more desirable for small group travel companies. I know if I was a big company, the rules change, but that is life. They say there is a discount for groups, but I have had to add some in the public side and there is no difference in the price. So Amtrak makes the same amount either way as I am not a ticketing agent. I now got my paperwork and they have created two different reservations calling them micro groups and the one leg has only 2 sleeping rooms and the rest coach, which I can't use, but putting the two groups together I get all but 2 rooms...if i fall under the 16 count, I can't be a group and all my tickets get thrown back to public and i have to chase them down...this is such a mess...when simply they can put it all on one trip now as we have gone past the 11 month deadline and then I will be fine with getting my last two rooms in the public side. and I don't hold up the coach with seats I don't need and I don't have to worry about how do I make that last leg qualify? I only have 8 seats and they are trying to sell me 15. are you confused yet? :) in total i have 34 travelers, but if i can't get the rooms in group and have to go to public side for 2 rooms, i fall below the blessed micro number of 16 in each group. The regular group number is 20, so I would have no problem with that...so I sit and wait for my agent, who has been most patient, to work through this and see if we can combine the group, just like we had it to begin with when if first started...yikes...and will they honor my original contract as they stated and the original quoted pricing?
 
So what you are saying is you would like to be able to grab 40 to 42% of available sleeper space instead of being limited to about 30%?

Just a few more rooms actually amounts to a significant chunk of inventory, as that inventory is very limited.

With that said, I do sympathize with your problems with Amtrak's bureaucracy and I do agree your group should be treated as a whole for all reservations handled through the group desk for pricing and qualifications, and not divided into arbitrary subsets. You should be able to change your group composition, within a reasonable deadline prior to departure, without creating separate groups by virtue of the change, as long as the aggregate limit on sleeper inventory consumption remains intact. Those reservations made through the public reservations channel should remain separate, though, to maintain an even playing field with the rest of us.

However, I still think limiting the ability for any one group to book to no more than roughly 30% of capacity is a fair, reasonable, and equitable policy. Not so 40%.

By the way, you really do not have any more right to that space than I or any other travelers do. It isn't a matter of being "nicer". It is a matter of maintaining relative fairness in access.
 
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Too bad Amtrak is not nimble enough to just assign another sleeper to the train you are booking. Then sell the space you are not using in that car ! Cancellation fees if too close to departure would apply. It may be you are going to some how get to higher ups that would have authority. Start right away with separate emails to Flynn, gardner, and on down the corporate ladder to sales.
 
west point said:
Too bad Amtrak is not nimble enough to just assign another sleeper to the train you are booking. Then sell the space you are not using in that car ! Cancellation fees if too close to departure would apply. It may be you are going to some how get to higher ups that would have authority. Start right away with separate emails to Flynn, gardner, and on down the corporate ladder to sales.
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Basically agree, but there is one big and one smaller issue with it.

The big one is lack of equipment. Amtrak has very little excess equipment, particularly Superliner sleepers. They pretty much run the wheels off everything they have to support the current schedules and don't really have what I would regard as even sufficient "protection" equipment to robustly support their schedules, let alone spare capacity. Back in the day, the railroads had ample protection equipment and surge capacity. They were much more nimble in being able to add equipment. I am sure Burlington, for example, would have been willing, able, and perhaps eager, even late in the game, to add an extra car to accommodate the additional demand of a group. They had the capacity, plus they were backed up by the Pullman Pool. Amtrak in many cases simply does not have the rolling stock.

Second, in my view Amtrak management appears to have a very cost containment centric outlook and reward structure. Revenue enhancement, not so much. The extra costs in adding another car on a one time basis stand out to them, the extra revenue is not as visible, and is also not rewarded as far as I can see.
 
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west point said:
Too bad Amtrak is not nimble enough to just assign another sleeper to the train you are booking. Then sell the space you are not using in that car ! Cancellation fees if too close to departure would apply. It may be you are going to some how get to higher ups that would have authority. Start right away with separate emails to Flynn, gardner, and on down the corporate ladder to sales.
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For various reasons Amtrak (and VIA?) treat trains as if they are airplanes with a fixed amount of space. I'm old enough to have picked up the telephone in San Francisco and booked an extra sleeper on CN from Vancouver, BC to Jasper for my Japanese employers. We switched most of our tours to CN then, and dearly as I loved Glacier National / Waterton National Parks, we definitely did not use Amtrak. CP was so-so, and VIA took over after I left the SF office.
 
west point said:
Too bad Amtrak is not nimble enough to just assign another sleeper to the train you are booking. Then sell the space you are not using in that car ! Cancellation fees if too close to departure would apply. It may be you are going to some how get to higher ups that would have authority. Start right away with separate emails to Flynn, gardner, and on down the corporate ladder to sales.
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I agree. But it would be better to not sell any rooms in that sleeper until all the others are full so if the tour is cancelled, Amtrak can eliminate the extra sleeper without a loss.

Amtrak is too inflexible to come up with solutions because cost cutting is more important than revenue. With the new sleepers coming, one would think they could free up Superliner cars with refurbed old sleepers to convert, say, the CONO to viewliner and possibly lease coach cars from private varnish but, it doesn't matter whether those ideas are practical as the interest is not there in their part.
 
zephyr17 said:
Many Superliner trains only have 40 rooms total. 2 sleepers, with a combined 2 Handicapped rooms, 2 Family rooms, 26 revenue roomettes (2 out of the total 28 being reserved for the attendants) and 10 Bedrooms. Take out the handicapped rooms and that leaves 38.

Blocking any one group from grabbing more than just over 30% of the total available space strikes me as a good and fair policy. As a solo independent traveler, I am glad they implemented it.

Amtrak has no trouble selling out their sleeper space in peak periods. You needn't concern yourself about their lost revenue from you. Using yield management (their "buckets") they can probably produce more revenue from the remaining inventory from individual travelers.
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I wasn't thinking completely when i responded before. If I did a micro group, I could get 6 roomettes and 2 bedrooms in each group. plus any coach number. and the group department does more than one group for each train. as i was told. So there could easily be 2 micro groups or one large group and one micro group. and then i was instructed to go to public to get the rest of my rooms...so it all boils down to the same thing as far as my having more than the 30%. from what i understand, the 30% is per group, not per group sales..it just makes it all so complicated and then when we get on the train, it gets even worse.
 

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