Tag: Travel Industry

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Spirit Airlines to Start Selling Cans of Wine (Yes, You Read That Right)

June 5, 2013 at 3:36 PM | by | Comments (0)

Once upon a time we wrote that Spirit Airlines seemed set on becoming "the Ryanair of the United States." Then a month later—in the context of raising fees and amid moves to create non-reclining seats—they declared that they were really proud of being the Ryanair of the United States. True story.

Fast forward to last weekend, when the Daily Mail published a synopsis of fees charged by the airline. They found 70 of them, which the airline imposed in 2011 to the sum of $76 million in profits. Spirit charges for carry-ons. It charges for printing boarding passes at the terminal.

It even charges a $2 fee each way because the Department of Transportation passed some rules that the airline didn't like. Really. The fee is called the "Unintended Consequences of DOT Regulations Fee." It exists. Douchebags.

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South Korea Does the Obvious and Names 'Gangnam Style' Singer New Tourism Ambassador

Where: Seoul, Korea
May 3, 2013 at 4:56 PM | by | Comments (0)

CNN reported earlier this week that Psy has been named South Korea's new tourism ambassador. To which we immediately thought: ummm...he wasn't that already? Who were they using for tourism advertising instead? Because apparently it wasn't the really popular guy whose music videos have been viewed by billions of people in the recent past. And while we're not experts at this sort of thing, it seems to us like maybe they should have been using the really popular guy whose music videos have been viewed by millions of people in the recent past.

It turns out there's an answer to that question. Since October 2012 the tourism ambassador of South Korea has been Kenny G. No punchline. We're just going to let that hang there with no comment. The face of South Korean tourism for the last 6 months? Kenny G.

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Medical Tourism Now Includes Things Like 'Dialysis Cruises'

March 10, 2013 at 6:13 PM | by | Comments (0)

Today we learned that there are such things as dialysis cruises, and that they're part of a burdgeoning medical tourism industry that apparently "is increasingly recognized as an opportunity for the travel industry." We remember when tourists used to go abroad to faraway lands where they could view amazing monuments unthought of in their little parts of the planet. Now they go from Germany to Hungary to get their teeth worked on.

The Reuters article providing this insight also noted that a recent survey found that as many as 52% of Europeans could imagine themselves being medical tourists. That photo at the top of this page? It comes from the Flickr stream of Panama's tourism board, and it's there to promote the country as a medical tourism destination. Among its tags are "medical tourism," "Panama surgery," and "Panama cosmetic surgery." No but really, humanity's on the right path.

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Oh, Fun. JFK Security Workers Vote to Strike Over Holidays

December 17, 2012 at 3:56 PM | by | Comments (0)

You're a non-union employee responsible for some security at an airport, and you're trying to win public support on a controversy involving, first, your immediate working conditions and, second, your broad campaign to unionize. You need to walk the fine political line between asserting your rights and showing that you can be responsible. So what do you do?

If you're about 100 workers at JFK Terminal 3, apparently you vote to strike over the holidays starting December 20. You do this while your union supporters proudly retweet stories about disrupting family holiday plans. We're not experts in the travel industry or in public campaigning or anything, but it doesn't seem like they've thought their brilliant plan all the way through.

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How Ryanair Managed to Make a Charity Calendar into a Sexism Scandal

December 13, 2012 at 11:41 AM | by | Comments (2)

This. This right here. This is what we're talking about when we say we're giving up on the debate over Ryanair and its aggressive douchebaggery. The airline goes out of its way to insult its customers, and yet finds itself rewarded with consistent profits. So why shouldn't it treat its own staff in the same disrespectful way?

The question kind of answers itself, doesn't it?

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Southwest's Strange Response to a Lawsuit over Spilled Tea

December 10, 2012 at 2:55 PM | by | Comments (0)

We have no idea how USA Today managed to spin a 1,300+ word article out of a woman suing Southwest for $800,000 because she got burned by a cup of hot water. 43 year old Angelica Keller was sitting in the front row of the airplane and so didn't have a drop-down tray. She was trying to make herself a cup of tea by dipping a tea bag into the cup of hot water she had just been served. Only instead of doing that, she spilled the water on herself and got 2nd degree-burns. Now she's suing the Texas LCC because that's the world we live in. The End, right?

The article goes on for dozens of paragraphs after that. At first we thought the explanation for the obsessive detail was something like 'travel journalism is just magical that way.' Then we realized that very little of the article is actually about travel. It's actually a history of debates over frivolous product liability lawsuits. You just stopped reading, didn't you?

Don't go. There's actually quite a bit of travel geekery to be had here.

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Burglars Using Electronic Lock Hack to Break into Hotel Rooms, Steal Stuff

December 5, 2012 at 11:32 AM | by | Comment (1)

If you promise to follow our repeated and explicit advice about always storing your valuables in your hotel safe, you can stop reading this post and move on.

But if you insist on being obstinate and refusing to follow very basic safety travel rules, keep reading while we explain to you how millions and millions of hotel rooms in the world not only can be broken into by a simple hack, but are now actually being broken into. Our sister blog HotelChatter has been covering the hack since it was revealed, warning in July that the threat existed and in October that it was worse than previously thought.

For months hotel chains did little to nothing to fix the problem, and now it's led to real people losing real laptops and become a full-blown travel safety issue. Someone should at the very least get kind of reprimanded, don't you think?

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Australia Tourism's Very, Very Bad Week

Where: Australia
November 28, 2012 at 3:34 PM | by | Comments (0)

For travel geeks who follow the often-dry travel industry, the intrigue surrounding l'affaire Tourism Australia—which has seen Australia's national flag carrier Qantas sever an agreement with Australia's official tourism agency over charges of sabotage—is kind of entertaining.

Here's the gist of it: the airline halted a $50 million deal between it and Tourism Australia over charges that Tourism Australia's chairman was involved in a "syndicate committed to unraveling Qantas' structure and direction," and that was trying to overthrow the current management and buy out the company. The partnership had lasted 40 years. Scandalous.

If you're actually in the travel industry, let alone involved with tourism boards that try to promote travel to Australia, the situation is much less amusing. In that case you're scrambling right now to deal with the fallout and telling newspapers about all the "damage" that needs to be "contained."

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Priceline Fans, Rejoice! The Negotiator Lives On

August 23, 2012 at 9:53 AM | by | Comments (0)

We’re pretty sure that we're not the only ones who have also been very worried about The Negotiator ever since he apparently perished during a fiery bus crash back in January. We’ve still utilized Priceline here and there, but it hasn’t quite been the same without William Shatnerreminding us how much we could save by naming our own price.

In case you haven’t seen the commercial yourself, there’s been some pretty good news. Apparently our favorite celebrity travel spokesperson survived the bus crash and has dedicated his life to surfing. Thankfully he’s back to show off the Priceline mobile app, and to remind us of all the ways we can save on flights, cars, and hotels.

Sure it’s a little silly, but we can’t think of a world in which Priceline doesn’t utilize Shatner as its pitchman—long live The Negotiator.

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New Travel Marketplace Urbita.com Promises to Make You 'A Local, Worldwide'

March 19, 2012 at 3:34 PM | by | Comments (0)

Even in the world of start-ups, travel industry start-ups are notoriously difficult to pull off (quipped travel tech site TNooz last summer, "attention all start-ups: disrupting the travel industry is extremely hard"). The only thing more difficult than creating a travel start-up is creating a travel marketplace, since with a marketplace you have to get lucky enough or good enough to lock down both buyers and sellers.

So the founders of the new social media-driven travel marketplace site Urbita, which just soft-launched last week, deserve at least some credit for sheer ambition. And believe it or not—after looking around—we think this one actually has a chance.

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Priceline Kills Off Captain Kir...Err, the Priceline Negotiator

January 23, 2012 at 2:00 PM | by | Comments (0)

We're not as-a-rule opposed to seeing travel advertising mascots getting killed. Last December, when Air New Zealand murdered off their spokespuppet Rico, we even declared ourselves to be fairly pleased. The borderline rapey rat-like character had become insanely grating even (especially?) for a felt puppet. So when the airline announced a viral Whodunit game where players tried to figure out Rico's murderer, we figured that was as good an excuse as any to be rid of him.

But today we weep. For today, Priceline kills off the Priceline Negotiator. The travel industry icon, played by William Shatner, has been the face of the travel bidding and booking company for 14 years. To give you an idea of how big a business and culture story this is, it's being run everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to Perez Hilton. They sound sad too. Not as sad as we are, of course, but it's there if you read between the lines. For his part Shatner describes himself as being "in grief mode."

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Google Unveils Flight Search, Provides Helpful Instructional Video

September 14, 2011 at 4:00 PM | by | Comment (1)

Last May we told you that Google was getting into the travel business, with the Mountain View search giant having just acquired travel software company ITA. ITA provides the algorithms that power sites like Orbitz, Kayak, and CheapTickets - to say nothing of handling schedules for a bunch of airlines - and that's pretty much all it does. So Google's intentions weren't exactly inscrutable, even if the exact details of what they wanted with ITA weren't totally clear.

Then a few months later flight schedules started showing up in Google results. That wasn't particularly exciting in and of itself, but it banished any remaining doubts about whether Google was getting into the flight search game. And so no one was really surprised when, earlier this week, Google finally launched their new Google Flight Search. It's exactly what you think it is, and you can check it out here.

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