Equity "Dos"

By Joanne Borts, Chorus Councillor and Flora Stamatiades, National Director, Organizing & Special Projects

Planning a family trip?
This month's column will help you make travel choices that are both union-friendly and economical. Most of us have used search engines such as Expedia to help plan trips, but there is a similar service that is union-friendly. Check out www.unionplustravel.com to use the Union Plus! Travel Center.

What about DisneyWorld this fall?
First, let's search for flights for a family of four (two adults and two children) traveling to Orlando from New York from October 5-October 8 (Columbus Day weekend). Our search will include departures from LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark, directly to Orlando. (All searches were done on August 22, 2007, between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m.)

**Quick travel tip: Searching more than 30 days in advance, especially to popular destinations, and for holiday travel, greatly improves your chances of getting good rates.**

Guess what? Searching on Union Plus! finds fares for nonstop flights starting at $208 per person.

During the same search on Expedia found nonstop fares starting at $203 per person-and that great fare was on one of the union airlines searched by Union Plus! So, searching Union Plus! first helped us determine which airlines fall under our union-friendly guidelines.

And Travelocity's fares split the difference-with far fewer choices at the low rates.

**Quick travel tip: After using a general search engine, you can often match or beat their lowest fares by going directly to the airline's website. Buying directly from the airline also helps you deal with problems, changes, delays, and so on, as the airline often has more severe limitations on tickets not purchased directly. We learned this one the hard way!**

In our example, using the quick travel tip above, we got the best fare yet directly on the airline's website. It was $198.80 per person.

Where am I going to stay?
All the search engines above also allow you to search for hotels. In addition, you can check the union status of a hotel in any city by going to www.hotelworkersrising.com/HotelGuide.

Hotels are often more difficult to choose than flights-there are so many options, and the price ranges very much more. We've found it's best to locate a few hotels in which you are interested, and then check them against the Hotel Guide site. In Orlando specifically, there are many union properties, ranging from lower priced hotels with few amenities, to the top of the line. (As Disney is actually in Lake Buena Vista, that's the city you would search for your trip.) You may notice that almost all of the union properties in Lake Buena Vista and environs are Disney properties-and of course you know that the Actors you see at the parks are represented by Equity.

**Quick travel tip: Many hotels will give you a small refrigerator in your room for free or for a nominal fee. However, in order to arrange this, you may need to call the hotel directly.**

What about a rental car?
Once again, all the search engines can help you here in comparing rates. Then, go to Equity's website, and in our Member Discounts section, check the discounts available to you with Enterprise and Hertz.

What if the union options are too expensive/too inconvenient/don't even exist?
All of these are real issues. In fact, there are cities in the United States that have NO union hotels. And there are cities that have only a few, and those few are very expensive.

Sometimes your choices are driven by other issues than union status. One thing we do in such situations is look for a family-owned and operated business. That will at least keep your money in the community to which you are traveling.

Remember what we said in our first column: It's about Choices. We hope you will use these tools to make the choices that work for you.

Contact us! If you have ideas for this series, please email Flora Stamatiades at flora@actorsequity.org, or call (212) 869-8530, extension 419.

The opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the authors and do not reflect those of Actors' Equity Association, its leadership, its Council, or its employees.

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