The airlines have been doing it. Expect the hotels to follow suit. Over the last few years, the airlines have been adding and increasing fees on checked bags, exit row seats and more, much to the benefit of their bottom lines. And for similar reasons, hotels are likely to add more fees and more stringently enforce or even raise existing charges for cutting a stay short, for example, or for storing luggage. A new study by Bjorn Hanson, clinical professor at the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality Tourism and Sports Management at New York University, found that while total fees and surcharges collected by hotels in the United States declined to $1.55 billion in last year’s faltering economy, they will rise this year. Mr. Hanson said he expected hotel surcharges to climb back up to $1.7 billion this year as a result of an expected rise of 3 to 4 percent in occupied hotel rooms, broader adoption of fees and more aggressive enforcement of and increases in existing fees. The fees and surcharges were initially charged by high-end hotel brands in the late 1990s for access to resort amenities like the swimming pool, putting greens and […]
Members of Congress face the most anti-incumbent electorate since 1994, with less than a third of all voters saying they are inclined to support their representatives in November, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Dissatisfaction is widespread, crossing party lines, ideologies and virtually all groups of voters. Less than a quarter of independents and just three in 10 Republicans say they’re leaning toward backing an incumbent this fall. Even among Democrats, who control the House, the Senate and the White House, opinion is evenly divided on the question. ‘I’m not really happy right now with anybody’ in Washington, Sandy Davis, 64, a Republican from Decatur, Ill. said in a follow-up interview. Although she expressed ‘mixed feelings’ about a fresh crop of lawmakers, she added: ‘When the country was founded, those guys were all pretty new at it. How bad would it be?’ Still, for President Obama and his party, there are some positive signs in the poll. The public trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the major problems facing the country by a double-digit margin, giving Democrats a bigger lead than they held two months ago, when Congress was engaged in the long endgame […]
Passengers faced the prospect of confusion and delay this morning as the Icelandic volcano threw thousands of people’s flight plans into chaos. Eamon Brennan, the Irish Aviation Authority chief executive, said even though emissions from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano have been low during recent days, a north-easterly wind had pushed the plume over Ireland and the Scottish Isles, forcing the closure of airports. Iceland’s meteorological office said a change of wind direction in the past few days had sent the ash cloud south and south-east toward Europe, rather than northward. The ash is forecast to exceed the safe level agreed by the Civil Aviation Authority and airlines in the wake of the six-day shutdown in April. ‘Ireland falls within the predicted area of ash concentrations that exceed acceptable engine manufacturer tolerance levels,’ the IAA said in a statement. Based on the new regime imposed in Europe last month, officials had no choice but to impose a no-fly zone and a 60-mile buffer zone, which would effectively close Shannon and Dublin airports. The two major Irish-based airlines, Ryanair and Aer Lingus, announced more than 200 flight cancellations and said they doubted if any Irish services would resume before […]
The lawyers, accountants and restructuring experts overseeing the remains of Lehman Brothers have already racked up more than $730 million in fees and expenses, with no end in sight. Anyone wondering why total fees doled out in the Lehman bankruptcy alone could easily touch the $1 billion mark merely has to look at the bills buried among the blizzard of court documents filed in the case. They’re a Baedeker to the continuing bankruptcy bonanza, a world where the meter is always running - sometimes literally: in the months after Lehman’s collapse in September 2008, the New York law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges paid one car-service company alone more than $500 a day as limo drivers cooled their heels waiting for meetings to break (and this in a city overflowing with taxis). While most of corporate America may be just emerging from the Great Recession, bankruptcy specialists have spent the last two years enjoying an unprecedented boom. Ten of the 20 largest corporate bankruptcies in recent decades have occurred over the last three years, according to BankruptcyData.com, with Lehman snaring honors as the biggest corporate belly-flop in American history. These megacases - Lehman, General Motors, Chrysler and […]
On the day the Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against Goldman Sachs for securities fraud, shares in the company plunged 12.8 percent, closing at $160.70. The market, it seemed, was finally passing judgment on a decade of high-stakes Wall Street scammery that left America threatening Nigeria, Indonesia and Belarus on the list of the world’s most corrupt economies. A few days later, Goldman announced its first-quarter numbers. Profits were up 91 percent, to a staggering $3.4 billion. Compensation and bonuses soared to $5.5 billion, up from $4.7 billion in the first quarter of 2009. Battered in the press, Goldman was raking up on the bottom line. So investors once again leapt into Goldman’s arms, pushing the stock as high as $166.50, not far from where it was even before news of the SEC suit broke. Goldman isn’t dead – far from it. But this new SEC suit officially places it at the center of a raging national discussion about the hopelessly fucked state of American business ethics. As a halting, first-step attempt at financial regulatory reform makes its way toward a vote in the Senate, the government has finally thrown open the door and let a few […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
