Google's Hotel Finder . . . can find the ideal accommodation for a particular user based on a few different priorities, such as location and budget. For example, when searching for where to stay, the user can draw shapes around neighborhoods using a mouse rather than searching by individual addresses.
The airline is calling them "Celestial Bars," and plans to add one to first class and two to business. Oh, did I not mention coach? That's because all of us in the cheap seats are going to have to buy our liquor from the trolley as we always have.
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| One of Korean Airlines new A380 bars |
The Celestial Bars in business will be self service and, since cocktails in the upper tiers are usually comped, that could make for some pretty inebriated passengers. First class will get a bartender. Of Korea Air's 10 A380 planes, it's uncertainly how many will get all liquored up.Anyone for a drink?
The messages started popping up in recent days and there are already hundreds of variants on the same theme: A hotel wrongly charged a credit card number and the victim is supposed to fill out an attached form to process the refund.
"Please see the attached form. You need to fill it out and contact your bank for return of funds," read one such message, titled "Hotel Breakers Palm Beach made wrong transaction."The 'refund' form is actaully a nasty Trojan horse virus that attempts to install bogus antivirus sofware on your computer, which provides annoying alerts to phantom security problems on your computer. It then keeps pestering you until you pay some money to buy a phony antivirus product.
The hotel, designated a landmark in 1966, put up for sale in 2010, has walls "caked with art" by former and current hotel residents, like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Willem De Kooning. That art has been vanishing, piece by piece, either taken away with evicted owners, thrown away, or just "going missing." Ed Hamilton, who writes Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog, was tipped off that several of Brett Whiteley's paintings, which sell for millions, "were observed being carted out of the hotel last Wednesday and taken away in a van."
On Friday, Congress failed to approve the extension of a bill to keep the Federal Aviation Administration running. Among other things, that meant the agency no longer had the authority to impose the various federal taxes that airlines add to the price of each ticket.Scource: NYTimes
So as of 12:01 a.m. Saturday, the federal government began losing an estimated $25 million a day in tax revenue.
But did airlines simply pass on this savings to customers?
No, they did not.
Last week, evidently in anticipation of the tax’s expiring, some airlines quietly began raising fares — on average, roughly by the same amount as the federal taxes. Others did the same over the weekend, and most of the rest joined in on Monday.
Now I see passengers jockeying for overhead space wearing pajamas and flip-flops, and sometimes it looks as if their clothing hasn't seen soap and water for a very long time. They're all lugging on everything they own in a steamer trunk or a Hefty trash bag.
For the airlines of the nation are in trouble. Boom business has jammed air facilities from the reservation telephones on through the whole system and into the air. The major airports are getting close to the absolute maximum of traffic that can be handled safely. Whenever the weather gets bad, the specter of mid-air collisions above the inadequate airports haunts the entire industry. The coming winter is dreaded.
Hawaiian Airlines representatives from both Australia and the airline’s head office in Honolulu will visit over 100 travel agencies during next week’s sales blitz, as well as attending a range of other events.If you want to leave now on Hawaiian - then fares from $1,438 economy, or $3,048 business this month. Currently 4 flights a wek, but changing to 5 flights a week in August.
As well as selling the destination of Hawaii, the airline will be promoting its generous luggage allowance, in which every one of its passengers flying from Australia can check up to two pieces, each weighing up to 32 kilograms – ideal for carrying home the bargains from a strong dollar shopping spree in Honolulu.
“You’ll know us,” said Robinson. “Among the locals rugged up against the cold, we’ll be the ones in the Hawaiian shirts, selling the Aloha spirit!”
QANTAS travel centres have become the latest victims of the internet as the airline closes all but one of its shopfronts with the loss of 60 jobs.Just one more thing Qantas has cut, add it to the list:
The airline will close travel centres in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Cairns and Townsville because they are no longer profitable. It will keep open a centre in the remote Top End town of Nhulunbuy, which serves mining interests and acts as a corporate centre.
The airline had already shut travel centres in Darwin, Canberra and Surfers Paradise as the increasing use of online booking engines sounded the death knell for the "bricks and mortar" operations.
About 70 per cent of domestic bookings are now made through Qantas.com and about 33 per cent of international tickets.
Customers can walk in off the street and buy fonts loaded on USBs that resemble little credit cards. The shop also sells a ragbag of typographic gifts and paraphernalia, including T-shirts, posters, and even wine (no idea if it's any good, but the bottle sure looks purdy) -- all in a space done up in a lovely black-and-white motif that is itself a monument to typography. Think of it as the type geek's equivalent of an Apple store. More
