So after the recent debacles with United and American, the government is getting heavy. 
Finally, we are seeing the government recognizing that consolidation is creating an arrogance in service and in amenities. After deregulation in 1978, industry charges like baggage fees and bumping passengers have been pretty much left to the airlines. And 80% of USA domestic business is now in the frightening hands of four airlines. Power to the few and less power to the consumer.
Airlines claim that overbooking helps keep fares low and provides less risk so more choice for consumers. Understood, but you have to be nice too! Honestly, whoever comes off a plane and says that they had a fab and fun experience? Now United are going to have to put their 
money where their mouth is. Dragging a guy down the aisle sounds like a bad wedding arrangement. It nearly cost them their business. CEO Munoz stated that he is committed to making things better and now overbooking as a policy is going to be phased out. Southwest, the darling of consumers, actually has the highest overbooking of any airline. They were just smarter and nicer about it.
We all get that overbooking creates more flexibility for airlines and lots take advantage of the compensation. It doesn’t take much but being nice and being smart makes the difference. Having a positive attitude and being customer friendly is key. That’s all we ask for. We are not cattle.
produce a travel magazine; essentially Airbnb Magazine. The rationale is that nobody knows better where people want to go than Airbnb does. They see it in demand and deals and have it resourced from billions of data points. As such, they can provide stories for people and places that are hot and can write about places that are trending. Savannah, for example, is one of Airbnb’s biggest sourced destinations, Porvoo in Finland is another. Go figure!
Now airports are moving into food and drink technology. Many airports have iPad ordering systems set up around bars and themed food restaurants. The deal is that you sit down, swipe your credit card, choose items from the iPad menu, and then food or drinks come flying out at you from places that you had no idea. Meanwhile, there are bartenders that you cannot order from and wait staff that appear randomly with your food in no apparent order. The basic problem with that system is that it’s not that good. Somebody has to keep coming in to manually assist and more often than not, the timing is all screwed up. Sometimes you get wine when you should’ve received coffee, or pizza when you were looking for dessert. It helps to pass the time and the idea is to simply centralize the operation center, but the problem is that it doesn’t work that well.
travel companion. However, it doesn’t get to go to Italy with me and I hate that. The cab company lobby there is just too powerful. So apart from not being able to see the sights of Ancient Rome and renaissance Florence, Uber does pretty well with me.
possibly canceled, one word of advice, pray to God that you are not stuck at LaGuardia Airport. It sucks. Watching delays unfold and getting bad updates and then inevitable cancellations are frustrating and bring out the worst in all of us. Airline staff is not helpful and nobody has a clue. Usually, they point to a gate complaint line that is a mile long and have you wait there. If you are really lucky, you get a snack voucher. As for a hotel, dream on! 
much better. It’s as if they have no training on what happens when stuff goes wrong. That’s the only time they have to worry and that’s when they can really overperform. We know the airline food is bad, the seats are cramped, and the service in general on the plane is very average, so how about excelling at this? Help passengers who are trying to figure out what to do, concentrate on the pre-
boarding service, calm people, assure people, and take a genuine interest in getting people into a good frame of mind. Maybe they should have yoga attendants at the gates helping passengers breath. It’s a shame. This is an area where you don’t have to do much. Just be service-oriented and kind. Is that too much to ask?
museums and grand theaters. I love the neighborhoods that stretch all the way from the Battery to the Bronx and the new Brooklyn, unrecognizable to my wife now who went to Bayridge High School and grew up a stone’s throw from the Verrazano Straights. New York has a busyness to it with its big, broad avenues, and trying to catch the pedestrian
dirty, and even the late-night scene is sketchy.
bites. It’s weird, New York. The transportation hubs just seem to be seedier than they need to be. Grand Central is a beautiful station but it’s confusing. The shops and kiosks around it are grim. Penn Station is even worse and is surrounded by dodgy hotels. Yet here in the thick of it is Madison Square Garden. Let’s not forget to mention LaGuardia Airport, antiquated and inefficient, with no great transportation link into town. Welcome to New York. 
wanted to show me the Cuevas de las Maravillas which is just west of La Romana and is designated a national park. I have been to a few caves in my time. I remember well the caves near Nerja in Spain and the Postos in Slovenia. Limestone plays fantastic tricks with water underground! This was going to be a bit of an adventure.
descent. Inside the cave, there are about 500 paintings and engravings on the walls all made by the Taínos, the ancient inhabitants of the island and in general, most of the Caribbean. There were human faces, animals, and geometric figures. All pretty basic stuff but all incredible given the time period. It is a rare photograph of life just before Columbus arrived. Of course, as is the case 
with all of the native Indians, they got royally (pardon the pun) screwed by either the Catholic monarchy or the diseases that the discoverer’s brought with them. So now we get to walk through their caves. For me it was a fabulous travel moment – alone, no tourists, just the guy who opened the door for us, and the only noise was the dripping of water through the stalactites that are endlessly fascinating and at the same time you wonder if today is the day that they will fall to the ground.
we made it. I was heading to one of those up-market all-inclusive resorts surrounded by golf courses, a marina, and a white sand beach. I was taking advantage of an outstanding credit on our books and it was a chance to see a little bit of the Dominican Republic.
looking surprisingly and shockingly bad. It even gave me cause to think I could return here to play golf even though I’m appalling. Unfortunately, I got lost easily and was fooled by speed bumps. The golf cart even lost its front piece somewhere on the road and I had to get out to fix it. It all became part of my routine. Take advantage of the pool in the morning, a nice breakfast, a drive in the golf cart for about an hour, and then a sunset at the beach. I didn’t take advantage of any of the main facilities mainly because I wouldn’t know how to skeet shoot, I don’t like guns, and polo was something that was way beyond my class station!
Inbound travel to the US is certainly getting impacted by Trump’s travel ban and the rhetoric that surrounds it. 
drag the airline industry in another direction. But inbound flights to the US that carried highly profitable passengers that spend serious amounts of money are not easily going to be replaced soon.
I didn’t know that this delightful town was a spectacular assemblage of Hansel and Gretel half-timbered houses that wound around the narrow streets and along the canals that crisscrossed the city. The colors of these quaint houses were amazing, almost surreal. We took what essentially was a punt boat with an electric motor and silently weaved our way 
under low bridges and gardens that backed onto the canal. It looked and reminded me of Little Venice in London. How had I missed this place on my prior travels? It’s old brick marketplace, it’s completely authentic feel, it felt, unlike any place I had ever been to. It definitely did not feel like France but they sure spoke French! It was one of those places that had been trading nationalities for well over a century. It was Alsace.
years ago. I do not recall much other than their famed Bear Pit, also known as The Bärengraben. Beyond that it was a place between somewhere you had come from to somewhere you wanted to get to. It was a stop for lunch or a break on a monotonous journey along motorways. One things for sure, it wasn’t Rome.
extraordinary that would be in harmony with the artistic movement that it represented – surrealism at the turn of the century. There are 4,000 Klee paintings in the museum amply padded with a Picasso here, a Joan Miro, or Dali there. In all, it truthfully is not much my cup of tea, although I liked the black and white photo depiction of the history of the artists and the period. There is also a children’s section where 
budding young artists are free to connect the dots between aspiration and reality. The cafe was a great place to grab lunch and surprisingly for Switzerland it was relatively a good deal. It’s worth the stop if you like this sort of thing. If surrealism is not your thing, it’s not such a bad place to pass a few hours in between where you have come from and where you are going.
All I knew about the German city of Baden Baden was that it was a famous spa town. But I also recall the English football team had boot camped there with their WAGS one infamous tournament of which there have been so many. So I equated it with failure, inevitability, and the hopelessness of England to ever be successful at soccer again after one great and surreal moment in 1966. Off I went to visit Baden Baden and try to heal the memories and expunge the dreadfulness of overpaid footie players.
gardens and people were strolling along its banks as if they were in a French impressionist painting. It was so damn civilized.
50 years. I didn’t get to go to a spa. It seemed complicated and difficult to figure out how to gain entrance. You knew the spas were somewhere but it just didn’t seem that if you wanted to go for a spa holiday, you would
credit from a canceled reservation a year ago over to a new reservation this year. So my son and I hit Telluride. I had never been before although I had heard lots about it. We both love to ski so this seemed like a perfect storm.
territories. Not more than 20 minutes from Montrose is Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The canyon is as deep as the Grand Canyon but not as wide. It was spectacular in the early morning mist to see this giant chasm in a national park right next door to a very bland, modern town like Montrose.
caught my eye. It was called 
approach it through the Bois de Boulogne. Constructed around a cascading stairway of water, it’s an assemblage of huge glass sails and blocks known as “icebergs.” Because of the glass, the trees that surround it, and the constant movement of water, it creates a continuous impression of movement depending on the time of the day and night. It is quite a sight to behold.
scattered – not just the Picasso and Matisse pieces, but Cezanne, Gauguin, you name it, he had it. Much of it thankfully ended up at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Although during the Stalin years – and there were lots of them – the viewing of his paintings were forbidden because Stalin thought that both Matisse and Picasso were seditious counter-revolutionaries. Oh dear.