Revenge at sea and compassionate travel companies. Plus, a can’t-miss rocket launch.
From the monthly archives:
March 2009
They’re the newest corporate underwriters of this Web site and e-mail newsletter. I wanted to take a moment to thank them for their support. If it weren’t for them, as well as the hundreds of individual underwriters, none of this would be possible.
Resort fees — those mandatory extra charges tacked on to your hotel bill to cover everything from beach towels to exercise rooms — are wrong on many levels. They’re nothing more than a sneaky way of raising your room rate. But until now, they’ve been in plain sight.
Stuart Harstrom applied for a Carnival Sea Miles MasterCard in 2004 and used it for most of his purchases, hoping to redeem his points for a “free” vacation. Then the cruise line pulled the plug on his plans, he says. His story is a cautionary tale about vague promises made by loyalty programs, imprecise wording on Web sites, and the fleeting nature of points.
George Fredrickson never suspected the travel insurance he bought for his transatlantic cruise last year was fake. But it was. Here are six questions to ask if you don’t want the same thing to happen to you.
The airline tickets Marianne Ellis buys for a family vacation to Tanzania are refundable with a change fee, but her online travel agent fails to tell her that the fee is about a quarter of the cost of the ticket. Now that she has to cancel, will she lose thousands of dollars?
To those of you who say airlines don’t have a heart and who think they never bend a rule for a customer in need, let me introduce Teresa Stewart. She was on a cruise vacation recently when tragedy struck, and she needed to reschedule her Continental Airlines flight.
You’ve probably heard about the extraordinary mileage promotions being offered by many legacy airlines in the United States. Earlier this week, for example, Delta Air Lines offered up to triple flown miles toward elite status on select fares purchased for travel through the summer. But that isn’t the only way in which air carriers are being more generous with their frequent fliers.
Here are two recent stories of car rental employees going the extra mile for their customers. I’m sharing them with you for two reasons: First, because car rental employees rarely get any recognition for a job well done; and second, because I just filed a column that’s critical of certain car rental franchises. Maybe I’m feeling a little guilty.
Are tourists killing tourism? And what’s the secret to better customer service from an airline?
Social media is making headlines in the travel world today, whether it’s my colleague Anita Potter’s wall-to-wall coverage of Cruisecriticgate, or my recent observations about the growing influence of travel bloggers. Both of these stories raise an interesting question: What happens when the travelers who wield new-media power are wrong?
Nothing can ruin your vacation faster than a speeding ticket, particularly if you were going just a few miles an hour over the limit. It’s almost as if the cop was waiting for you behind a tree and pulled you over because your car had out-of-state plates.
The travel industry loves to “forget” important facts about its products, whether it’s a critical airfare rule or an important paragraph in a cruise contract. And yes, these clauses are getting crazier. No surprise, then, that travel companies are being less upfront about them.
Donald Johnson accidentally reserves a nonrefundable room in Oklahoma City instead of Enid, Okla. Now his hotel wants to keep the money. Can he get a refund? Or is he stuck with a room he can’t use?
Is the Better Business Bureau an effective tool against bad airline service? The surprising answer may be: yes.
Sign up for my 
