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E L L I O T T ' S TRAVEL NOTES
Travel news, opinion and analysis

August 6, 2004

Is IAC About To Flame Out?
As an old Hollywood hand, IAC/InterActiveCorp chief Barry Diller knows all about edge-of-the-seat tension -- flicks like 1995's Apollo 13, for example, which reaches its climax with Tom Hanks' damaged spaceship reentering the earth's atmosphere while ground controllers wonder whether a mission that began with such promise will end with a cascade of flaming debris falling back to earth. In real life, Diller's company and other travel agencies are trying to prove they can keep growing in an improving economy -- one that's emboldening newly healthy hotel chains -- and continue to sustain the fast growth and fat profits they began to forge amid the post-September 11 travel-industry crisis. Now, weak second-quarter sales and earnings news from IAC, Priceline, and Orbitz has skeptics smelling a flameout. BusinessWeek| Posted 6:30 a.m.
• Death Of The Middleman? (New York Post)
• Investors Dump Internet Retail Stocks (AP)

"Tell me again, why should I book through an online travel agency?" a reader recently asked. With best-rate guarantees and other incentives being offered by hotels and airlines, that's a darned good question. When I had a hard time answering, I should have seen this story coming.

Kansas City Raises Traveler Taxes
Kansas City voters this week supported fee increases to fund an arena that city leaders say will help spark revitalization of the city's downtown. With 74 percent of the precincts reporting, 58 percent of the voters approved a proposal to increase hotel fees by up to $1.50 a day and car rental fees by up to $4 a day. Those fees would allow the city to issue $170 million in bonds to pay for the $225 million to $250 million arena. AP | Posted 6:35 a.m.

Mystery Fee Added To Cruises
Once upon a cruise, passengers practiced a genteel if arcane art: tipping the crew. On their last night at sea, they would slip cash into hand-lettered envelopes addressed to their cabin attendant, server, maitre d' and a flotilla of others. Although this quaint custom persists, mostly on a few luxury lines, in the last several years it has been replaced on many ships by an "automatic gratuity," typically about $10 per person per day, added to the cruise bill. Even Holland America Line, which maintained a "no tipping required" policy for 35 years, relented this spring and began adding a $10 daily charge. But here's an innovation that should be pitched overboard: a nonrefundable service charge. Not quite a gratuity but not part of the fare either, it pays for … what? I'm unclear, even after talking with its inventor. Los Angeles Times | Posted 6:45 a.m.

High-Speed Hotel Connections Don't Deliver - Arriving at the luxurious Westin Century Plaza Hotel and Spa on L.A.'s west side a few weeks ago, I hurriedly checked in and raced up to my room to get online. Stupidly, I hadn't even bothered to ask if the hotel had broadband access; I just assumed it did. Luckily, I was right. PC Week | Posted 7 a.m.

Enterprise Sued in Deadly Crash - The families of five Northern California women killed last year when their van rolled over during a trip to a religious retreat have sued Ford Motor Co. and Enterprise Rent-A-Car, saying the firms knew the vehicle was unsafe. The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court in Hayward, accuses the companies of trying to "increase corporate profits at the expense of human safety" by failing to warn the group about the dangers of the 2002 Ford Econoline E-350 that crashed in the Southern California desert. San Francisco Chronicle | Posted 7:05 a.m.

Britons May Not Smile in Passport Photos - Britons have already been told to chop down shrubs and stock up on tinned food to counter the terrorist threat, but today the Government announced another extraordinary move in the name of security. With immediate effect, no-one can be shown smiling in their passport photograph. Daily Mail | Posted 7 a.m.

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• Off the Record... talk about a lucky hotel guest. A two-year-old girl survived a 30-foot fall from a window at a Santa Fe, NM, hotel. 'Baby Survives Fall' is a newspaper headline cliché, or course, but it doesn't make this story any less remarkable. Posted 7:10 a.m. | Send us your comments.

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