Prices tips

Your summer holiday might be more expensive this year if you are planning on flying with some European companies.

TUI, one of Europe’s largest tourism companies, detailed the operational challenges posed by ongoing Boeing delivery delays during an earnings call on Wednesday.

The European Commission has submitted a proposal to increase the basic fee for a Schengen visa in 2024.

Italy’s price cap on flights to Sicily and Sardinia is “illegal and unenforceable”, Ryanair group CEO Michael O’Leary told Reuters on Tuesday, adding the budget airline had lodged a complaint with the European Commission.

An elderly couple travelling with Ryanair recently went viral after they were charged €129 to have their boarding passes printed at airport check-in.

A group of companies operating prominent hotels on the Las Vegas strip on Monday asked a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by tourists accusing them of conspiring to keep room rental rates artificially high through a revenue management platform.

Despite rising prices and economic uncertainty, many U.S. travelers seem to be ring-fencing their travel budgets from spending cuts, according to the latest survey by Skift Research.

You see it everyday on hotel price comparison platforms such as Google: There’s the hotel’s official price on its website, and in swoops Singapore-based online travel agency Agoda with a lower rate, that’s $20 or $30 lower.

Hotel bookings will continue to boom despite inflation. A lack of hotel construction is giving pricing power to existing hotels. At the same time, rising demand from corporate group events and international travelers from China and India are tailwinds supporting the sector.

Palestinian pilgrim Abu Anas Abu Rahal was hoping to find cheaper lodgings for a week-long stay in Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia, as the minimum cost for the hajj pilgrimage climbed to 26,000 riyals ($7,000) this year. His options were limited.

Occupancy is at its lowest, losses are mounting, and the company announced another round of layoffs last month. Despite this, the luxury hospitality brand Inspirato has a few wins, including a new partnership with Capital One, and a rewards program launch.

The post-pandemic travel boom and the high ticket prices that come with it show no signs of slowing well into next year, despite economic uncertainty and dwindling household savings.

In the travel industry, nothing signals the end of summer like shoulder-season airfares. Domestic roundtrip airfares have already started to dip, down 2% from an average of $274 in July to $267 in August, according to Hopper’s latest pricing data released Tuesday.

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.

A key selling point of rideshare services like Uber and Lyft is their transparency. Users know where their ride is, how soon it will arrive to pick them up, and how much the fare will be to their destination.

Marriott has just published its list of award-price changes for 2016. As Marriott Rewards members have come to expect from these annual pronouncements, the news amounts to yet another decrease in the value of their points.

Hilton this week posted upcoming changes to HHonors award prices. While such announcements are almost never good news—and are sometimes positively gut-wrenching—this round of changes is so modest in scope that it’s practically a non-event.

The only thing worse than an increase in award prices: an award-price increase with no advance notice.

With Marriott’s pending acquisition of Starwood, there’s reason to expect that as the former goes, so will go the latter.

Since its unannounced implementation on a Friday evening last February—strategically timed to avoid public notice and minimize media scrutiny—Delta’s policy of not publishing award charts has been a source of consumer frustration and outrage.

Just a week after Hilton announced decidedly benign changes to its award pricing, Hyatt is doing the same.