Smarter Travel

When you choose a vacation destination, what’s your number one reason for going? Is it a cheap flight, the scenery, or the culture? Well, according to a new survey commissioned by Harry & David, most Americans plan their trips around food.

Southwest is getting out of the overbooking game. Following the recent “incident” involving United Airlines, Southwest will heretofore only sell as many tickets as it has seats.

For $85 and a little bit of legwork, TSA PreCheck lets you skip the airport security line on domestic flights. It’s a nice service for frequent travelers wanting to save time, and a privilege, you’d think, worth paying for.

If you have a prepaid travel accommodation you find you can’t use, TransferTravel will list it for a possible resale to someone else. Although based in the U.K., TransferTravel is targeting an international market including the U.S. and Canada. The idea sounds great, but the travel industry throws up a lot of roadblocks to any sort of trade.

It’s been almost 15 years since Richard Reid, better known as the shoe bomber, failed in his attempt to bring down an American Airlines flight with an explosive hidden in his shoe. And yet here we are, all these years later, still shuffling through TSA checkpoints in our socks or bare feet. Why, you might ask, are we still forced to do this?

Over the past decade, language apps like Google Translate have unsurprisingly failed to make language learning obsolete. Unfortunately for monolinguals, (which make up about three-quarters of the United States) speaking another language isn’t quite as simple as typing a sentence into your smartphone.

Beginning on June 1, Spirit will become the third airline to pull out of the Cuba market altogether, joining Frontier and Silver Airways. Two other airlines, American and JetBlue, have cut capacity on their Cuba flights, either by reducing frequency or downgrading to smaller planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has responded to a court order seeking airline seat size minimums by saying it does not have a responsibility to regulate airline cabins in such a capacity. The court order was brought in response to action by an independent consumerist organization called Flyers Rights, which requested the FAA take on the issue.

As changes to hotel-program award prices go, the latest for InterContinental’s IHG Rewards are decidedly modest: Prices for award nights at 400 hotels will change by either 5,000 or 10,000 points, half moving up, half moving down. If it were just that 50-50 split, Rewards members might dismiss it as a wash and count their blessings. After all, “It could have been worse.”

Hilton’s durable HHonors program has a new name: Honors. The second “H,” which stood for Hilton, was deemed unnecessary and apparently caused confusion when it came to pronouncing the program’s name.

You may remember the 100,000-mile bonus for new British Airways credit card sign-ups in 2010.

The 26-country no-border-control Schengen area is in danger of collapsing under the migration threat. Presumably, the new border controls will be for no more than two years. But for now, you have to figure on reverting to the bad old days of mind-numbing border hassles within the area.

Tired of squeezing your ever-expanding frame into those ever-shrinking coach-class seats? So is Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Aviation. And he wants the government to do something about it.

One of the oldest cities in Italy, Naples has many amazing museums and a wonderful local food culture. It is, after all, where pizza was invented. But while Naples has been a tourist attraction for centuries, it has also gained a reputation as a slightly seedy and possibly dangerous place. Here’s what to watch out for. [viator_tour destination

When Muslim Advocates and the NAACP issue a joint letter accusing the U.S. airline industry of racism, it’s big news. And when the NAACP, the “nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization,” follows that up with an advisory specifically questioning the racial policies of the nation’s largest airline, American, it’s nothing less than a media firestorm. Indeed, all the major news media covered the story exhaustively. And “American Airlines” has been a trending Twitter topic for several days.

Starwood’s systemwide “Triple Up” bonus-points offer ends on July 31, and to date there’s been no word of a successor campaign for late summer and early fall stays.

There are many things to do in Colombo because of its diversity, nice beaches, and its history. In the past, it was ruled by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and then the British who all left their mark on the city, which now combines with the vibrant independence of the Sri Lankan people. Beaches Mount Lav

At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, cruise giant Carnival Corporation introduced “the world’s first interactive guest experience platform capable of transforming vacation travel into a highly personalized and elevated level of customized service for millions of guests.”

New airline passenger protections have passed for our neighbor to the north, offering increased Canadian air rights for travelers impacted by delays and other air travel inconveniences. But advocates on both sides—the airlines and some consumer groups—are not happy with the new rules.

Best Western isn’t known for its generous loyalty-program promotions. The rewards tend to be low value, and the offers have been hobbled by niggling restrictions.

“Hey Siri, I’m going to bed. Turn up the air conditioning, close the blinds, and turn off the lights.”