Travel in city Expensive

InterContinental Hotels Group’s lowest-price guarantee used to be pretty straightforward.

Every year, The Economist publishes a list of the most expensive cities in the world, and the 2023 rankings are in. To determine which metropolises will snag a spot, the publication looks at the cost of living index, which compares prices of hundreds of products and services in 172 cities around the globe. In addition to looking at how different locales ranked against each other, The Economist’s data found that inflation remains extremely high across the board, with the cost of goods and services rising on average by 7.4%.

Hilton announced early this year that there were significant changes coming to the Honors program, set to take effect on April 3. This is a reminder of what’s coming, and how it’s likely to affect you.

Update from IHG, including effect date for new prices: “All reservations booked beginning Jan. 16, 2018, will use the new Reward Nights point prices. This is part of an annual review into the number of points needed for a Reward Night, and we’ll communicate to members through our regular channels, including email and our website.”

How high can mandatory resort fees go? Sky high, apparently.

Consumer Reports is in the business of rating and ranking everything, from refrigerators to running shoes. In a shift from its normal product-review routine, where the publication’s in-house experts do the testing and comparisons, Consumer Reports turned to its readers for a review of U.S. airlines.

Editor’s Note: For the latest version of this story, see The World’s Most and Least Expensive Cities, Ranked.

Warren Buffett, one of the world’s best known and most successful investors, has a wildly variable relationship with the airline industry, dating back to his ill-timed investment in USAir, in 1989, which underperformed his return-on-investment expectations. He’s been a fierce critic of the industry ever since, regularly fulminating against airline investments, as he did in this 2002 interview with The Telegraph:

Effective immediately—or whenever it was that Delta posted the new rule to its website, with no notice to SkyMiles members—SkyMiles award tickets for travel that doesn’t begin or end in the U.S. or Canada must be booked at least three days in advance.

The IHG Rewards Club MasterCard, issued by Chase, has long been a favorite of the frequent-traveler crowd. For good reasons:

Fly roundtrip within the continental U.S. for as few as 13,000 Delta miles in coach.

When Aer Lingus launches its new service between Dublin and Seattle on May 18, it won’t be going it alone.

With strong demand in most parts of the world, the cost of travel has only one place to go: up. No big surprise there. If there’s anything surprising about the price creep, it’s how modest at least one analyst expects it to be.

Looking for the best cities to live in or retire abroad? The world’s most livable city is once again Vienna, Austria, according to The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s annual Most Livable Cities ranking.

As any seasoned traveler knows, your dollar goes much further in some places than it does in others. I’ll never forget reviewing my credit card account after my first trip to Copenhagen and realizing all those to-go cups of coffee came to $6 each. Or, conversely, how affordable a beer is in Berlin.