Hertz has quietly dropped one of the car rental industry’s most unpopular surcharges: the cleaning fee.
The Navigator
Sizing up the sincerity of corporate apologies
Jason Landman’s stateroom on the Carnival Miracle vibrated from the moment his ship cast off in Long Beach, Calif., until it docked seven days later. “It shook and rattled literally from start to finish of the cruise,” he says.
Space wars are shifting to the human rights front
Do you have the right to room on a plane?
If you answered “no,” you’re probably with the majority of American travelers. After all, airlines are private companies, and you always have the option of paying more for an upgraded seat, don’t you?
6 car accessories to make your road trip, and driving record, smoother
Somewhere on one of my social media accounts, there’s an image of me being pulled over for speeding in Pooler, Ga.
My crime? Doing 67 mph on a stretch of Interstate 95 where the speed limit abruptly drops from 65 to 55. Gotcha!
What to do about hotel renovation hassles
As hotel renovations go, the one Robert Reich experienced was pretty extreme. The property he’d booked in Baltimore, the Mount Vernon Hotel, was being remodeled and reopening as the Hotel Indigo Baltimore — Mt. Vernon.
Are airlines about to charge your kids more?
If your blood pressure spikes when you think about the words “kids” and “plane” in the same sentence, as you just did (sorry about that), then this story may have a calming effect.
True, there’s no faster way to start a brawl on a flight or an online chat room than by putting the two together. Some passengers feel the interior of a plane should be a designated quiet zone; others treat it as a playground. It’s a conflict as old as commercial aviation.
FAA funding bill may mean big changes for fliers – or none
An impending fight in Congress this spring over the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill could affect your next flight, for better or worse.
Trade associations call the appropriations bill the most important piece of legislation in the travel industry. The last one, passed in 2012, not only funded the FAA but also turned tarmac-delay rules into law and established an advisory committee for Aviation Consumer Protection.
No more lost luggage? It’s not science fiction
Lost luggage may soon become as rare as lost airline tickets — or, at least, you’d think so when you talk to someone like Randal Collins.
Collins, a flight attendant based in Chicago, left his iPad on a recent flight. He had tagged it with a $25 device called Tile that emits a wireless signal up to 100 feet. It also uses a network of other Tile users to help owners find missing objects.
The tablet proved to be elusive, first tracking at his arrival gate. By the time he showed up to claim it, the plane had been moved to a hangar. Collins reported the iPad missing, and a few weeks later, another Tile user picked up its trail, displaying its likely location in a terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
Beware of travel industry doublespeak
It’s for your own good.
Travelers are hearing these words more often than ever, and they are being applied to increasingly unwelcome scenarios. The latest example: being unable to access WiFi in your hotel without incurring an added charge. In August, the American Hotel & Lodging Association and Marriott filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking the government for permission to block wireless devices in hotels.
Should airlines be re-regulated?
The days of a freewheeling, lightly regulated airline industry, in which a carrier can charge whatever fees and fares it pleases, may be nearing an end.
A confluence of events is pressuring government regulators to take action that, depending on your point of view, will make air travel less expensive or interfere with a free market, driving ticket prices higher.