Hotels manipulate photos for their Web sites
Hotels manipulate photos for their Web sites — As you dream about your next vacation and look at photos of the hotel and beaches on the Internet, can you trust that the photo is reality? It depends. Many hotels are doctoring the photos they post online. Some may just accentuate their amenities, while others may be downright lying. (Beacon Journal)
Gas prices are falling — Good news at the gas pump — gasoline prices fell more than 6 cents per gallon in the past two weeks, according to a survey of about 7,000 gas stations nationwide. The Lundberg Survey’s average nationwide price of a gallon of self-serve regular fell 6.4 cents per gallon, to $2.15 per gallon, said publisher Trilby Lundberg. (CNN)
Airline deal is riddled with ‘ifs’ — Doug Parker must feel something like the fellow they found rolling naked in a bed of cactus. As bystanders pulled the cactus spines out of him, one asked why he did it. The fellow replied: “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the moment.” I can assure Parker, chief executive officer of America West Airlines, that such a feeling will reoccur from time to time over the next year. (Arizona Republic)
Travelers spend less time in airport lines — Travelers have faced fewer excruciatingly long waits in airport security lines this year than they faced a year ago, an analysis of federal records shows. Even so, a long backup occurred almost every day from June through March in at least one airport in the USA. Almost half came during peak travel periods: 6:30-8:30 a.m. and 3:30-5 p.m., records show. (USA Today)
‘Virtual’ border doesn’t work — Although the government has already spent or budgeted about $1 billion for the US-VISIT program, the new system is being built on top of aging computer databases and software that government scientists concluded two years ago are out of date, poorly coordinated and ineffective. Among them is a fingerprint system that does not use the government’s state-of-the-art biometric standard. (Post)
Watch where you point that camera — If you pull out a camera on a New Jersey train, you will have company - law enforcement company. If you size up a shot on the New York subway, you’ll probably be questioned by security and told to keep the lens cap tightly on. Even if you plan to snap some innocuous bank building from a public sidewalk, you might find guards telling you it’s not allowed. “Is photography becoming illegal in the United States?” asks Jim McGee, in a column for the online photo magazine Vivid Light Photography. (Christian Science Monitor)
KLM passenger in cholera scare — Dutch airline KLM has warned 237 passengers to undergo medical tests due to the slight chance they have been infected with cholera. The passengers were on a flight from New Delhi to Amsterdam on Sunday. A boy on the plane was found to have developed symptoms of cholera. (Expatica)
Will a Marriott continue to run Marriott? — At the hotel chain his parents founded, 73-year-old chief executive J.W. “Bill” Marriott Jr. is known for inspecting hotels down to the toilet seats and base boards. But when his son John, a rising Marriott executive, knelt to peer under beds while touring luxurious Ritz-Carltons in Osaka and Hong Kong five years ago, managers complained. “It’s an insulting thing,” says an executive who fielded gripes from managers offended at the notion that their hotels could be dirty. “His father used to do it, but that was a different day.” (WSJ)
Southwest passenger dies enroute to Little Rock — Nobody knew Bettye Bailey was dead until her flight from Baltimore landed Saturday at Little Rock National Airport. The 74-year-old Arkansas woman apparently died sometime during the Southwest Airlines flight, Pulaski County Coroner Mark Malcolm said. Passengers and flight attendants found her unresponsive when the plane arrived in Little Rock. (AP)
Airport protester throws cake at Minister — Transport Secretary Alistair Darling was hit by a creamy carrot cake thrown by an anti-airport protester today. A woman opposing development at Heathrow hurled the cake at the minister in London as he stood up to make a speech at the launch of a new group supporting expansion at the west London airport. According to anti-expansion supporters protesting outside the event at the CBI headquarters, the woman shouted: “Alistair Darling’s presence at the launch of this pressure group stinks.†(Scotsman)
2 dead, 10 injured in Italian hotel fire — Notimex reports the blaze took place at the hotel, Le Carpinete, in the north central region of Emilia-Romana. The blaze ignited in the early morning hours Sunday after a lit cigarette was left, and forgotten, in one of the rooms. (AHN)
Who says there is no free lunch? — EVERYONE knows that the airline business is a mess. United Airlines, operating in bankruptcy, just succeeded in punting four employee pension plans, covering 122,000 people, to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation - and, hence, taxpayers. Delta Airlines lost $5.2 billion last year, its worst performance in 70 years of operations. Other airlines, including American, have been allowed by Congress to defer up to 80 percent of their pension obligations. Pretty dire, all around. So when an American Airlines flight attendant stood up at the company’s annual meeting last Wednesday and suggested how the company could save an estimated $50 million a year, you’d think its executives would have leapt out of their seats with joy. Instead, they hemmed, hawed, said they were looking into the idea and shortly thereafter declared the meeting over.(New York Times)
New low-cost scheme from BMI — Airline BMI is to turn most of its Heathrow service into a low cost operation by scrapping business class on all but four of its routes. The company plans to introduce low fares - starting at £25 one way - and charge for on-board food on 13 of its routes from the airport. (BBC)
Contributing: Leslie Friedman, Don Galbreath, Amy Langfield, Mary Staley.