Author (#2)May 2008 Archives

A Beijing-based charter company is planning to begin six weekly nonstop flights to Honolulu this year in what will be the first direct air service between China and Hawaii.

It will offer three flights from Tianjin, tentatively beginning July 28, and the same number from Hangzhou in October.

Mega Global Airway will use Boeing 767 airliners that can carry 220 to 240 passengers on the flights, which will continue on to Las Vegas. It says the first six months already are sold out.

Mega Global's new Hawaii service will come a month after a pact between China and the United States allowing Chinese group leisure travel to the U.S. for the first time.

American Airlines has announced that it will start charging $15 for the first checked bag. The Fort Worth-based airline, the nation's largest carrier, said it needs extra revenue to cover fuel costs, which it says have soared by billions of dollars in the last few years.

American said Wednesday that the fee for the first checked bag starts June 15, and it will raise other fees for services ranging from reservation help to oversized bags. Those fees could cost between $5 to $50.

The first-bag fee will be charged to everyone except people who belong to elite levels of its frequent flyer program, those who bought full-fare tickets, and those traveling overseas.
JetBlue Airways Corp., the Forest Hills-based discount carrier, has started selling extra legroom, for a fee, starting at $10 for short flights, $15 on medium-haul flights and $20 on long-hauls. For the extra money, passengers get seats with 38 inches of pitch instead of 34 inches on other seats.

United Airlines, the nation's No. 2 carrier, is "seriously studying" imposing its own fee on first bags. Delta Air Lines, the third-largest, has no current plans for a fee but is considering all options, spokeswoman Betsy Talton said. AirTran Airways and Northwest Airlines said they were weighing their response.

Last month, American joined other carriers in charging $25 for a second bag checked by passengers. The major airlines have also raised fares about a dozen times in recent months.

According to Travel Hawaii LLC, Hawaii's hotels are still adjusting to the comprehensive smoking ban that the State of Hawaii put in place in November of 2006. One of the outcomes of these adjustments are high and often mandatory cleaning charges, imposed by many hotels should a guest light up in a non-smoking hotel room. "The Aqua Palms & Spa in Waikiki has the highest charge we know of at present," said John Lindelow, owner of Travel Hawaii, a Hawaii-based Internet retailer. "They charge a $500 cleaning fee should they find that a client has been smoking in one of their rooms."

Other Aqua hotels in Waikiki charge a $200 to $300 cleaning fee, sometimes adjusted for the "severity" of the offense. Outrigger, with 25 hotels and condos in Hawaii, charges a $250 cleaning fee, and ResortQuest (29 hotels) charges $425.

Travel Hawaii maintains an online database of smoking policies at Hawaii Hotels, which can be found at Travel-Hawaii.com. "This is a rapidly changing area of hotel policy, so we make a lot of phone calls to stay on top of what the hotels are doing," said Lindelow. Some hotels have no smoking in any room or in any other part of the hotel. Others ban smoking in rooms but allow it in designated areas around the hotel, for example the Waikoloa Marriott, which allows smoking "next to the luau area, next to tennis courts, and at the cabana."

In addition to continual changes, said Lindelow, there's sometimes significant variance between the stated policy of the hotel chains and the reality on the ground. "For example, ResortQuest has a corporate-wide non-smoking policy for all their hotels. However, we found that two of their hotels, when we call them, do offer smoking rooms, these being the Waikiki Joy in Waikiki and the Aloha Beach Hotel on Kauai. I guess they didn't get the memo."

Travel Hawaii has had to change their database to accommodate the evolving situation with smoking policies at Hawaii hotels. Formerly, they simply tracked whether a hotel allowed smoking. Now they track whether smoking is allowed in some rooms, whether smoking is allowed in other areas of the hotel, additional details on either of these policies, and any cleaning fees hotels may assess on violators.

"Our Japanese clients - more of whom are smokers - have shown a keen interest in our smoking database," said Lindelow, "so we've translated the entire database into Japanese on our Japanese site." The Japanese version of the database can be found at Japan-Hawaii-Travel.com.

Hawaiian Airlines has canceled an online travel insurance program. The airline briefly instituted the program for online ticket reservations.

The program on www.hawaiianair.com automatically assessed a $19 charge for insurance when making reservations unless users opted out by clicking on an option that canceled the insurance.

Hawaiian  introduced the program May 5 to streamline the booking process for Mainland-originating customers who Hawaiian said "are increasingly wanting trip insurance to protect against change fees and other restrictions that apply to nonrefundable tickets when plans change."

E-mails began circulating last weekend between people who were troubled by the automatic charge.The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and travel agencies received inquiries about it.

A Hawaiian spokesman said the e-mails were "full of misinformation," but the airline decided to pull the program last Friday because it "wasn't communicated properly" and caused confusion. 

As airlines are increasing their rates to offset rising fuel costs, few expect to see much of a decrease in the number of travelers this summer.

The Air Transport Association is predicting that more than 211 million passengers will travel on domestic carriers between June 1 and Aug. 31. That would represent only a 1.3 percent drop from last summer.

The ATA also says airlines are reducing their carrying capacity amid slower economic growth and rising jet fuel prices. The group says planes will be nearly 85 percent full, and that delays emanating from New York-area airports will remain a problem.

American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines all raised rates by $20 per round-trip last week in the form of a fuel surcharge. The ATA says further fare hikes this summer are "inevitable."

The Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) approved $3 million in emergency funds for the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau to increase tourism promotion in the U.S. and Canada.

Rex Johnson, HTA's president and CEO, made the announcement this week at Travel Weekly's Leadership Forum in Honolulu.

The comprehensive effort includes cooperative marketing programs and online efforts with airline, hotel and wholesaler partners.

The money is needed for programs to head off visitor misperceptions about Hawaii's airline seat availability and rising costs in light of the recent shutdowns of Aloha Airlines and ATA.