Hotel & Transportation Committee Update

Hi everyone,
The Hotel & Transportation Committee is committed to sharing updates more frequently with the Local to be more transparent, provide detail and quell rumours that may circulate.

One of the most common questions we receive is, “Why can’t we stay at that hotel in that city?”
The hotels selected for our layovers go through an intense review and selection process that the Committee participates in. First, a hotel will place a bid and express interest in our business.  Availability of rooms, locations, distance and other criteria are considered when we arrive at what options are viable in each city. Availability of rooms is one of the challenges we face, as properties with availability for crews becomes harder to find with travel and tourism levels increasing.  Hotels are not always able or willing to provide us with the number of rooms we need. This is especially challenging in smaller cities with less options.

After the hotels have placed their bids, the options are reviewed and we conduct site visits with the company. Our team continuously works in collaboration with TAConnections (previously known as Travelliance) and Crew Accommodations to ensure we source the best partners in the cities that we serve to meet our Members needs.

Recent Hotel Changes:
CANCUN
The Grand Fiesta is a perfect example of a hotel that no longer wished to cater to the airlines, and our contract expired last year. Our current short stay hotel, the Marriott Cancun, is also about to close for an extensive renovation and rebranding. As you may be aware, our new hotel is the Emporio and all scheduled layovers will be assigned to this hotel from March onwards until further notice.
Our Committee worked with the Company to find a hotel that could provide an all-inclusive food plan, which was based on consistent complaints with Cancun customs regulations and the strict rules regarding food with Crew Members. If you need food for your return flight, the gift shop by the front desk has to-go options or you can purchase something at the airport. Please continue to report any concerns to both us and Crew Accommodations.

ORLANDO
Our new long stay hotel in Orlando is the Courtyard Lake Buena Vista, located in Marriott Village. The decision to move to this hotel was due to concerns about The Florida Hotel being somewhat isolated for longer layovers. This new hotel has a large gym, multiple food options on-site or nearby, and shuttle service to Orlando attractions and the outlet mall. Crew Accommodations was also able to procure enough rooms so that we could extend the long stay cut off in MCO. Under most circumstances (room count dependent), crews will be at this hotel on layovers starting at 16 hours as opposed to 18. Our short stay hotel remains the same.

TAMPA
We sourced this market in January and found some interesting challenges. Tampa is the closest major city to Fort Myers, which suffered hurricane destruction and therefore is housing workers involved in the rebuilding. With low room availability (options) and the fact that these layovers will only be on weekends in March and April, the mutual decision was made to negotiate with hotels by the airport despite some overnights slightly exceeding 18 hours. You can expect an announcement regarding the hotel shortly and we will re-visit the decision regarding the location should layovers become more common in the future.

We anticipate another update in late spring regarding our European hotels as well as Tokyo.
We appreciate your engagement with our committee and continue to ask that you send in reports both good and bad through the Crew Connex app for tracking and trending.

Your CUPE 4070 Hotel and Transportation Committee (hotels@cupe4070.ca)
Ryan Jones – YYZ representative (ryan.jones@cupe4070.ca)
Tyler Thomas – YVR representative (tyler.thomas@cupe4070.ca)
Douglas Rotchell – YYC representative (douglas.rotchell@cupe4070.ca)