Skift Business Traveler: Hotels Look at A La Carte Pricing

What to Know Now

The world of à la carte pricing that the airline industry hates so much may be bleeding into the hotel industry, says a new report from Skift and Travel Tripper. The concept would be familiar to the current airline model in place: your basic fare gets you your plane ticket or your hotel room and everything else comes with a fee.

Thinking through the obnoxious things that the airline industry can currently charge for it’s easy to think of what hotels can do. Internet. TV. Soap. Extra pillows. How about air conditioning? The gouging is limitless.

The report profiles two hotels (in France and Malaysia) currently testing the model, but if the program works, others could catch on. Perhaps soon, we’ll all be packing our own bath towels and shampoo for business trips.

Social Quote of the Day

NBC didn’t want to use the term “hate-selling” coz they thought too strong, used “upselling” which isn’t the same thing.

–@rafat | Rafat Ali, Skift Founder and CEO 

Airlines

Finnair Is Doubling Down on Its Asia Strategy With New Fleet of Planes: Finnair Oyj is looking at adding routes to Chinese cities not currently connected to Europe as it takes delivery of the region’s newest wide-body jet fleet. Read more at Skift

The Indian Airline That’s Giving Away Seats to Compete With Low-Cost Carriers: Singapore Airlines Ltd.’s premium Indian carrier Vistara has resorted to free tickets as intense competition and low fares add to the task of wooing passengers. Read more at Skift

Scheduled Airline Service to Cuba Could Be in Place Before the End of 2015: U.S. airlines such as American and JetBlue have been flying charters to Cuba for an extended period but now the Obama administration is hoping to renew scheduled service between the U.S. and Cuba as soon as December. Read more at Skift

Delta and Spirit Called Out for Hate-Selling, We Mean Upselling, Tactics: Following his post on hate-selling tactics in the travel industry, Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali appeared this morning on an NBC Today segment that criticized some of the upselling tactics of Delta and Spirit airlines. Read more at Skift

Airports

Getting Into the Airport Lounge Is About to Get More Difficult: With air carriers back to operating at full steam and passengers filling up a record number of seats, airlines are looking to new ways to cut back on crowding in airport lounges. Read more at Skift

Interview: JFK Terminal 4’s CEO on Making Flying Into New York Better: Outside of a small group of masochists, nobody really likes flying in and out of New York City’s three airports. Read more at Skift

United’s Having Troubles Getting Approval To Expand in Shanghai: United Airlines postponed a second daily San Francisco-to-Shanghai flight for the third time this year because of landing restrictions in the Chinese city. Read more at Skift

Tech

5 New Travel Startups Making the Trip-Planning Process Smarter: There are the travelers who have checklists of everything they want to see during their two-week trip to Europe with flights pre-booked, check-ins time-stamped and restaurants already preselected. And then there are those who just want to escape the hustle of their daily routines for the week of vacation they’re allotted each year and don’t want an itinerary, deadlines and bulleted items they need to see or else. Read more at Skift

European Booking Sites Call Lufthansa’s Distribution Surcharge Illegal: A group of European booking sites has penned a statement calling Lufthansa Group’s planned surcharge on bookings outside its direct channels “manifestly illegal.” Read more at Skift

Conference Attendees Get Relief as FCC Fines Wi-Fi Provider for Blocking Personal Hotspots: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission scored another victory this week in its crusade to quash Wi-Fi blocking wherever it can when it handed out a $750,000 fine to Smart City Holdings, one of the nation’s largest convention Wi-Fi providers. Read more at Skift

Yelp Partners With U.S. Federal Government on User Reviews: You can now rate the Internal Revenue Service or a Transportation Security Administration airport checkpoint just like you would a local diner or plumber. Read more at Skift

Hotels

How Motels, Zepplins and Sky Girls Impacted Business Travel Over the Last 100 Years: For female flight attendants over 40 years old who cringe at the thought of being called a stewardess, they may or may not take comfort in the fact that it could be worse. Read more at Skift

Will Unbundled Amenities be the Future for Budget Hotels?: The mid-range to low-end hotel sector hasn’t had an easy ride of things recently. With the popularity of vacation rental sites like Airbnb growing, hotels have decided they need fresh new ways to compete. Read more at Skift

Starwood Hopes Its New Sheraton Grand Will Revive the Overall Brand: Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has launched its newest premier-tier brand, Sheraton Grand, and it hopes the designation will help have a positive impact throughout the overall Sheraton brand. Read more at Skift

Your Turn

CBC’s Wiretap is saying farewell. We will miss it dearly. See their departure video here.

Tips and Comments

Can be sent to gm[at]skift[dot]com or to @grantkmartin

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