Christopher Elliott

Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that empowers consumers to solve their problems and helps those who can't. He's the author of numerous books on consumer advocacy and writes three nationally syndicated columns. He also publishes the Elliott Report, a news site for consumers, and Elliott Confidential, a critically acclaimed newsletter about customer service. If you have a consumer problem you can't solve, contact him directly through his advocacy website. You can also follow him on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or sign up for his daily newsletter.
Cartoon of smiling sardines packed upright into narrow airplane seats in a tightly spaced cabin, illustrating how shrinking economy legroom crams travelers in like sardines.

Premium creep: How the travel industry downgraded you for profit 

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Remember when you could check a bag, choose your seat, and stretch your legs on a flight without paying extra? It is not an urban legend. You used to be able to do all three at no additional charge. A 34-inch seat pitch was once standard in economy class. Today the industry calls that same space premium economy and charges you more for it, while the 30-inch squeeze becomes the new normal. Call it premium creep, the quiet industry-wide pattern where yesterday’s basics quietly become today’s luxuries, wrapped in marketing language about choice and flexibility. And it is not just airlines: hotels, cruise lines, and even car rental companies have all found ways to strip out what used to be included and sell it back to you. Which raises the question worth sitting with the next time you compare two fares: are you buying an upgrade, or just paying to undo a downgrade the company handed you in the first place?

Black and white editorial cartoon of an alarmed man at a desktop computer as a hand reaches out of the monitor screen and snatches cash from in front of him, illustrating online booking scams that drain travelers' money.

Are travel companies doing enough to protect your booking data?

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The message arrives by WhatsApp and feels completely real, because it is built from real information: your hotel, your dates, your confirmation number. Someone claiming to manage the property warns that your room is at risk unless you verify your card right away. Security researchers call this reservation hijacking, a targeted phishing scheme that leans on details only you and your hotel should know. The data has to come from somewhere, and the travel industry keeps springing leaks, with booking platforms, cruise lines, and airlines all disclosing breaches that mostly trace back to a third party rather than the company’s own front door. Which raises the question travelers can no longer avoid: when a company collects your whole itinerary and a leak in its network turns that data into a weapon aimed at you, who is responsible for what happens next?

Cartoon illustration of a worried traveler holding a soaked passport beside a washing machine after it accidentally went through the laundry.

It’s time to kill the passport

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A U.S. passport went through the wash during a week in Singapore, half a cycle on heavy duty before its owner remembered it was in a back pocket. State Department guidance is clear that significant damage, including water exposure, voids a passport, which means applying in person at a U.S. embassy, paying a $130 fee, and racing to get a replacement before an upcoming border crossing into Malaysia. The mishap raises a larger question: why do travelers still depend on a fragile paper booklet at all? Hundreds of thousands of U.S. passports are reported lost or stolen each year, and modern borders already scan faces, fingerprints, and travel history in milliseconds. More than 150 countries now issue electronic passports with embedded chips, yet those documents remain physical objects vulnerable to washing machines and pickpockets. A few countries have started clearing travelers with facial and biometric checks alone, suggesting the chip, not the booklet, has become the real document. The question is what it would take for the United States to follow.

Illustration of a worried young traveler sitting inside an airport as smoke, flames, and panicked crowds appear outside the windows.

When your vacation turns dangerous: How do you know it’s time to leave?

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Kate McCulley, a journalist based in Prague, knew it was time to leave Madagascar. Flights were getting canceled, protests had moved outside her hotel in Antananarivo, and the country was on the verge of a military coup. The police blanketed the neighborhood in tear gas. After several days of trying, she finally caught a flight to Réunion. Most travelers face a much harder version of her call. After months of planning and thousands of dollars spent, deciding whether to cut a vacation short when conditions shift is rarely simple. Civil unrest, a natural disaster, a sudden spike in crime, or a slow drift in local sentiment can each push a manageable risk toward a real threat. Government advisories often lag behind reality on the ground, tour operators have an interest in downplaying risk, and standard travel insurance generally will not cover a trip cut short on fear alone. There is no algorithm for the stay-or-leave decision, but security professionals point to clear early triggers that separate a manageable situation from a dangerous one, if travelers know what to watch for.

Illustration of a worried man on the phone holding a credit card while a concert crowd watches performers on stage, representing a StubHub ticket refund dispute.

This StubHub rep’s “help” with Coldplay tickets cost me $3,000!

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Paul Avron’s daughter bought three Coldplay tickets at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami for $1,027, nine months before the show, as a birthday gift for her best friend and the friend’s dad. On the day of the concert, the StubHub app said the tickets were being released, but they never appeared. With the show already starting, the family called StubHub in a panic and asked for the tickets or replacements so the group could get in. The last representative refused to provide replacement tickets and said they had to buy new ones, promising StubHub would refund the original $1,027. The rep said he saw three tickets for just $1 more than the original purchase and sent a link. The tickets were actually $1,000 each, and StubHub charged the credit card $3,000. The family disputed the charge with their credit card company and contacted StubHub directly, but both representatives said they would not credit the account. The family never accepted or used the expensive tickets and never attended the concert. StubHub’s FanProtect Guarantee promises valid tickets or your money back, and says StubHub will find comparable replacement tickets when possible.

Illustration of an Aer Lingus representative offering a voucher to a frustrated customer checking his watch, with the caption “One year later…”

Aer Lingus issued her voucher but ghosted her husband for over a year

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After a death in the family, Beatrijs Albarran and her husband Jorge had to cancel their Aer Lingus flights. The airline issued their refunds as vouchers, $938 for her and $925 for him, and emailed that both had been processed. But when Beatrijs called the next month to book a new trip, an agent told her Jorge’s voucher was never actually issued. The couple, who live in Buffalo, New York, wanted to fly from Toronto to Scotland because the fares are better, and asked whether the vouchers could be reissued in Canadian dollars. Beatrijs received hers in U.S. dollars within a reasonable time. Jorge’s never arrived. For more than a year she called repeatedly, hearing the same response that a supervisor was working on it, while automated emails said the case was under review. More than 15 months after Aer Lingus said it processed the voucher, it still had not appeared. Under Aer Lingus policy, vouchers are issued in the same currency as the original booking, so no conversion was needed to book from a Canadian airport, and the Department of Transportation requires airlines to process refund and credit requests promptly.

An angry airline passenger stands with a suitcase while holding a $10 voucher after a flight delay.

The delay tax: Why your airline voucher barely covers your expenses anymore 

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When a flight is delayed or canceled, airlines cover only what they call duty of care: a meal voucher, sometimes a hotel, or a refund if the flight is canceled. Angela Justice received a $10 voucher after her Boston to Chicago flight was canceled. The real cost, the delay tax, is far larger. It includes nonrefundable hotels travelers cannot reach, lost wages, child care that keeps ticking, and the replacement flights passengers must book themselves when the airline’s rescheduling timeline proves useless. Airlines calculate compensation based on what it costs them to reschedule a flight, not what it costs the traveler to miss the reason they flew in the first place. The official story is that duty of care solves the problem and the Department of Transportation signs off. But the law was written in a different era, when travel was simpler and airlines were more generous, and regulators have not caught up now that delays are chronic and carriers watch every penny.

Fear of travel is at a high, but the data tells a different story. Here's why your summer vacation is still a safe bet, from peace rankings to airline risk.

No, your summer vacation isn’t going to kill you

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Fear of travel is running high this summer. A reader named Cindy Smith nearly canceled a Danube river cruise and a week in Croatia after reading headlines about a cruise hantavirus outbreak and crew arrests. She is not alone. In a recent Global Rescue survey, less than 1 percent of respondents said their concerns about personal safety abroad had eased since last year, while 56 percent said they felt more concerned. Travelers cite three recurring fears: airlines collapsing mid-trip, dangerous conditions abroad, and anti-American sentiment. Yet the major U.S. carriers such as Delta, United, American, and Southwest remain profitable, and a conflict on one side of a continent does not make the other side unsafe.

Simple hand-drawn Bauhaus-inspired minimalist illustration on a white background showing a black line-drawing of an airplane taking off on the upper left and a small black line-drawing of a car on the lower right, separated by a single bold red diagonal line running corner to corner, symbolizing the widening divide between affluent air travelers spending more per trip and budget-conscious travelers priced out of summer vacations this year

The summer travel divide: How to find affordable vacations this year

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Summer travel intent has hit its lowest point since the pandemic. Deloitte’s latest summer travel survey found only 45 percent of travelers plan a summer vacation with paid lodging this year, the lowest figure in six years. Travel intent fell across every income bracket, but the drop among households earning under $100,000 was twice as steep as the decline among middle- and high-income earners, an 8-point drop versus 4 points each. The travelers still going plan to spend $4,069 on their summer vacations, up 17 percent from last year. Deloitte’s broader 2026 outlook calls this a bifurcation of standard and luxury travel and frames competition for the high-spending traveler as one of the year’s defining trends. Travelers earning between $100,000 and $199,000 show the biggest booking gap, with 37 percent fully booked versus 45 percent last year, leaving a large amount of unsold late-May inventory that revenue managers are aware of.