Last year at about this time, I profiled the most influential and inspiring travel blogs of 2007. This year, I’ve combined them into a single list of blogs I can’t live without.
From the monthly archives:
December 2008
You can’t talk about the worst holiday travel experiences without mentioning the movie “Planes, Trains & Automobiles.” The 1987 comedy, starring Steve Martin and John Candy, is about one frazzled business traveler’s struggle to get home in time for Thanksgiving. It’s a textbook holiday travel nightmare, featuring snowstorms, flight diversions and almost every imaginable delay. Art has a way of imitating life.
Donald Dinsmore’s daughter and son-in-law cancel their Mexico trip and are promised a refund by Apple Vacations. But even though they bought cancellation insurance, they’re only being offered a fraction of the price they paid. What can they do?
The all-inclusive Mexico vacation fax scam is nothing new. Is this one — or not?
When Matt Ginsberg found an undisclosed dropoff fee on his National rental car bill a few years ago, he disputed the charge on his credit card. It worked. His credit card company sided with him. Case closed. Or was it?
It must be I Love Airlines Week. Today’s do-good carrier is American Airlines which rescheduled one passenger’s flight from Atlanta to Kolkata, India, leaving her with a long layover.
Connie Fournier finally has her Northwest Airlines frequent flier miles and a partial refund this morning. In order to get them, she had to fight the airline for more than a month, appeal her case to a supervisor, and enlist my help. That shouldn’t have been necessary. Not at a time like this.
Fake airline certificates, the forgotten masses of travelers, harmful airline alliances and “naycations.”
When United Airlines sent Amrita Deshmukh a $75 certificate after a recent flight, she was delighted by the airline’s goodwill gesture. But when the certificate didn’t work, and United refused to help her, it cast serious doubts on the airline’s good will.
Americans drove about 3 trillion miles last year. They flew only 829 billion miles. But you could be forgiven for thinking it was the other way around — particularly if you turn on your TV, pick up a travel magazine or read a blog.
Southwest Airlines is the top air carrier in the United States. No, wait, it’s American Airlines. Hang on — make that Virgin America. The best hotel? The Peninsula Chicago. No, no. It’s The Waldorf Astoria in New York.
Christina Stansbury’s fiance is headed to Las Vegas with his best man for a bachelor party. Or are they? When they get to the airport, it turns out their airline has stopped flying to Sin City, and now their online agency is balking at a refund. Can this trip be saved?
Here are three tips for a better holiday trip. How to save money on lodging, have a sane flight, and pay less for your trip.
In the final hours of the Bush administration, airlines are quietly lobbying for approval of a new kind of alliance that could potentially change the way airline tickets are bought and sold. But are these corporate hook-ups good for passengers? Absolutely not, says a brief filed by two groups representing travel agencies.
Remember “no waivers, no favors,” the onerous post-9/11 policy that prevented airline employees from bending the rules? You’d think that with the advent of new baggage fees, we were looking at a sequel to the “no waivers” policy. Not so.
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