Friday, March 13, 2009

Transportation


A huge part of my internship has been helping operate/ coordinate transportation for clients and attendees. Most often our first point of contact with the attendees is when they arrive at the airport. They come down from the gate and are immediately greeted by me or one of the other hired guides. We hold a sign with their company name and logo or program logo. Our manifest tells us what flight they were on and we are able to use the terminal monitors to find out what gate they are coming from (this only matters in terminal 4 because there are gates A-D that come down from 2 different sides) and what carousel their luggage will be arriving on. We inform them that once they get all of their luggage they should meet at a specific location where we will take them to their transportation. The "lead" guide is always at terminal 4 and they are in charge of managing all of the vehicles. If I'm in terminal 2, I call the lead when I first make contact with the guest and then again when they have all of their bags. The lead will let me know when I should walk the guest out to the curb to be picked up. The same goes for terminal 3 except there are different pick-up areas for different sized vehicles. A motor coach cannot pick up in the Blue Diamond Area where sedans and vans are allowed. There is always something different with each group because the client determines in the contract how long the attendees are allowed to wait "with bags in hand". The common wait time once they have all of their luggage is 20 minutes, but some clients prefer to be cheap and make the attendees wait for over an hour. In cases like this we inform the attendee that they can go get lunch in the terminal or they can take a taxi at their own expense. If an attendees luggage is lost then we help them resolve the issue with the airline. Airport transportation is very detailed and is the most difficult aspect of transportation that we handle. We also arrange transportation to and from off-site events and activities, and airport departures.

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