Lawmaker Targets ‘Deceptive Hotel Fees’

When The White Lotus chose a breathtaking cliffside resort—the Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel—in Sicily as the playground for all the drama of the second season, they unintentionally raised the bar for what is considered impressive when it comes to Italian hotels. But one hotel in Milan doesn’t feel the need to compete: Hotel Principe di Savoia.

I felt an instant pang of regret on my most recent Target shopping spree. 

1 Hotel Mayfair, is the first European property for the American-based, sustainable hotel group. The location is great, with Green Park across the road, museums like the Royal Academy down the road and the stylish shops of Bond street and Burlington Arcade nearby. This chic new luxury hotel claims to be London’s very first sustainable luxury hotel, a big assertion indeed but one that does appear to have substance. From the moment you walk through the doors, you’re surrounded by living things, natural materials and textures, complemented by muted colors from nature. Over 1,300 plants from 200 species can be found throughout the hotel.

Vegas has come a long way, baby. No longer a Mecca for gambling and other less licit activities, the city has become synonymous with family fun, world-class dining, and big-name entertainment.

It’s a fact of loyalty-program life: Airline and hotel programs periodically adjust their award prices. Of course, those adjustments amount to price hikes more often than not. And, all things being equal, higher award prices amount to an overall devaluation of the program.

In a first for a U.S. airline loyalty program, Alaska Airlines is offering members of its Mileage Plan program the option to redeem miles to pay for TSA PreCheck service.

For U.S. News & World Report, the road from weekly news magazine to publisher of company rankings has been a long and winding one. The key, though, to its shift toward data-driven ratings of companies and institutions was its 1983 publication of “America’s Best Colleges.”

North American travelers looking for bargain transatlantic fares will have lots more options this summer, as European-based low-fare lines expand their reach. Three lines have announced aggressive moves:

Raising questions of both ethics and law, the chief executive of Donald Trump’s hotel company, Trump Hotels, has announced plans to significantly expand the company’s presence in the U.S.

The traditional taxi business is far from dead, but the ever-burgeoning popularity of rideshare services like Uber and Lyft is a clear threat to the survival of the yellow cabs that for decades have been a mainstay of big-city transportation. It’s fair to say that the rise of Uber and its ilk have led to the erosion of taxis, and could eventually lead to their outright demise (or, perhaps, their radical transformation).

This week, Hilton revealed the newest addition to its brand arsenal with Tru by Hilton, a so-called “revolutionary midscale brand.” While it bills itself as filling a void in the midscale hotel category , it comes across more like a way of competing with boutique hotels and shared accommodation platforms such as Airbnb.

How, you ask? Apparently thieves figure that tourists typically are (1) likely to be carrying more valuable stuff in their cars than typical locals; (2) once parked, likely to leave their cars unattended for extended time periods; (3) less likely to know local “avoid” spots; (4) more likely to be conned into doing something stupid; and (5) likely to want to keep to their schedules and leave an area rather than stick around to file police reports, ID perps, or testify at hearings or trials. And a rental car is a high-probability sign of a tourist.