San Antonio has joined a host of cities that are suing internet travel companies (Hotels.com, Travelweb, and Travelocity) for failure to pay local taxes for hotel room rentals. While I am not a big fan of these taxes, I do not blame the cities for trying to get the back taxes and leveling the playing field.

Spokesmen for Hotels.com, Travelweb and Travelocity were not immediately available for comment.
The suit was filed in federal district court in San Antonio Monday morning, said Steve Wolens, of the Dallas office of Baron & Budd P.C., who is working with the city of San Antonio.
Other U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and San Diego, are pursuing similar lawsuits to recover taxes that have been siphoned away from the cities’ important tourism industries, the release said.
Art Sackler, the spokesman for Interactive Travel Service Association, the group that represents online travel sites, said the suit is misdirected.
“The law applies to hotel operators,” Sackler said. “The online travel companies are not hotel operators.”
Many large Texas cities like San Antonio rely on hotel occupancy taxes that come directly from local convention and tourism industries, according to a release from the city of San Antonio. For example, there are more than 33,000 hotel rooms in Dallas that generate millions of dollars in taxes for the city each year. It is estimated that Dallas loses $1 million to $1.6 million every year in unpaid hotel occupancy taxes.  via Dallas Business Journal:.

My wife, the flight attendant, stays in hotels 2 to 3 nights a week and it is amazing the difference in quality of the hotel rooms she stays as she travels around the country. One night she will be in a 4 star hotel in downtown San Francisco and the next she will be at a less than stellar hotel/motel with no other businesses within range of the property.

Now with a reinvigorated hotel industry, many hotels are not  bidding on the  contracts for flight crew rooms. The rates airlines are paying for hotel rooms are closely guarded secrets as they do not want other companies to see these rates or other hotels in the area to bid on the contracts. The rates are not high, but crew rooms tend to be the worst in the hotel (think ice machines and elevators) and they are  filled year round.

Unless a hotel is running at 80 percent occupancy or better, it’s not a bad idea to have some flight crews, Berger said. The advantage they offer is that they are in the hotel seven days a week and 365 days a year, and that means some income for hotels during, say, Christmas, Thanksgiving and the dead of winter, when they otherwise might be relatively empty.  via Sacramento Business Journal

I will be curious to see the difference between the availability and convenience of the hotels that used by the flight crews. It could be a vicious circle for the airlines as room rates are going up and quality of the hotels that will bid on their business is going down. The  flight crews may  have to adjust to being in lower end properties in this time of airline bankruptcies and discord.

The cost of business travel has been steadily increasing held down only by the low airfare as the airline industry was in transition and the battle for market share. Now that Southwest has raised their airfares, it seems that all sectors of business travel are increasing. Higher gas prices have pushed up car rentals, and high demand coupled with increased building costs has led to higher hotel costs.

This all combined to tell business travelers will be paying a fair bit more in 2006.

“For 2006, however, the pricing trend lines indicate that corporate travel buyers will face a tough negotiating environment across the board,” American Express Business Travel North America General Manager Andy McGraw said.
The past year has been especially good to U.S. hoteliers, who have been able to steadily increase room rates as business travel increased in a growing economy and supply growth slowed due to high construction costs.
Domestic airlines, on the other hand, have not been able to increase fares enough despite high fuel costs because of competition from discount carriers.
The study, which tracked 329 domestic city pairs, said the annual average air fare paid for business travel had declined since the end of 2000 to a low of $216 last year. via MSNBC.com.

The Four Seasons Hotel company posted significant losses of over 37 million dollars in the 4th quarter last year. Revenue was down 11 million dollars and writedowns of 25 million dollars added to the losses. The chain says publicly that the issues are of a short term nature, but it has to be disconcerting to the properties that they manage to see such a dramatic drop in sales in a very hot hotel market.

I have not seen their presence on the internet very often, and I am not an expert, but could the company not been adverturesome enough to engage the internet marketplace? Old line successful companies often have trouble making these transitions and it could be the undoing of such a historic enterprise.

The Toronto-based global luxury hotel operator, which reports in U.S. dollars, said Thursday its revenue was $58.5 million in the final three months of 2005, down from $69.5 million a year earlier. The net loss amounted to $1.03 per share, compared with year-ago earnings of $12.8 million, 34 cents per share.

“These unfavorable comparisons should not cloud the long-term strength of our business and our compelling industry position,” Kathleen Taylor, president of worldwide business operations, told analysts in a conference call. She defended the $25.3 million in accounting writedowns and provisions, much of which she said doesn’t reflect ongoing value.

“While we would prefer never to have writedowns on these types of assets, even given what we know today I think we would make the same investment decisions based on the total returns we expect to receive from these investments as the long-term fee streams remain intact.” via BREITBART.COM

It looks like the combination of increased travel and very few hotel rooms being built are going to contribute to a significant increase in the cost of hotel rooms in the United States in 2006. It is amazing how cyclical the price of hotel rooms and airline tickets are. They are the true examples of the laws of supply and demand.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the consulting firm, predicts that the average daily hotel rate nationwide will rise by 5.8 percent this year, after an increase of 5.3 percent last year, and that in many major business travel cities, the increases will be even higher. In New York, according to a new report from the firm, the average price for a hotel room is projected to go up by 14 percent; in Miami, the figure is 9.1 percent, and in Chicago, 7.6 percent.
“The only things that will slow down the rate increase would be a severe economic slowdown and a lot of new hotel supply,” said Michael Rietbrock, who follows the hotel industry for Citigroup Investment Research. “There is not a lot of new supply coming.”  via New York Times.

Following a hotel industry trend, smoking will be banned at all Disneyland Resorts as of March 1st, 2006. Presently, 95 percent of the rooms are smoke free at Disneyland.

Smart move by the company and organization.

Disneyland has announced plans to make all 2,224 rooms at its Anaheim, Calif., resort smoke-free as of March 1.
Disney Vice President Rob Doughty said the company has been receiving “steadily declining requests” for smokers’ rooms at the resort’s three hotels, USA Today reported Wednesday. In fact, he said only 35 smoking rooms are have been reserved through 2010. via The Post Chronicle.

A geeky tool, RSS, is entering the mainstream, and the travel industry is learning that it can be very useful for pushing out deals and bargains on specific cities and flights for travel.

Travel sites are, like many other Internet companies, stuck using the acronym RSS, which computer geeks have dubbed this process. The acronym stands for “Really Simple Syndication” - a term that is not particularly user friendly; “grabbing” is a more appropriate word.
Regardless, for now users must look for the little orange (usually) RSS box, as on the front page of Orbitz.com or Sidestep.com, or type in the Web address of the site’s RSS feature (for example, rss.travelocity.com) to which they want to subscribe.
From there, the process is often as simple as billed. On Orbitz’s RSS page, for instance, you click on the category of deals you want featured on your MyYahoo page, like flight deals or hotel and vacation deals to a specific destination. After signing into your personalized page once, those deals appear and are updated according to the schedule of the travel site. via New York Times.

If you are interested in  RSS, or using it already, do not forget  to click on the orange RSS logo on our sidebar to sign up for The Travel Bloggers Feed. We  put the whole feed into your RSS reader every day.

The Super Bowl Madness is hitting Denver, and most likely Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Carolina. Those wishing to go need to be ready to ante up some serious dollars for a tour package. The general rate is approximately $4,000 and will include a ticket to the game.

“You know there’s a regret there. I never saw John Elway play his last game and I wish I had done that,” said Cindy Tovrea, a lifetime Bronco fan. She said she was not about to pass up another chance to see her Broncos in a Super Bowl. “As soon as they win, I’ll be calling and booking my tickets to go so I’m very excited about that,” Tovrea said.

At Mile Hi Tours, booking agents were already taking calls about their new Super Bowl packages. The 3-night deal including airfare, hotel, and game tickets costs about $4,000 per person. “They have to be able to afford it, but I think people mortgage their homes sometimes to go,” said Pam Murdock, president of Mile Hi Tours.

Any reservations made before Sunday’s game are fully refundable if Denver loses. However, if the Broncos win, there are no refunds. via cbs4denver.com

Mile High Tours has packages for all 4 teams, which includes:

Super Bowl XL (Your Team Here) 3 Night Package

• Round trip flight from Winning Teams City to Detroit
  • Friday, Feb. 3rd: Departs Seattle at 8AM and arrives in Detroit at 4PM
  • Monday, Feb. 6th: Departs Detroit at 8AM and arrives in Seattle at 1PM
• Three nights accommodations in Detroit
• Upper level end zone Super Bowl XL ticket
• Pre-game tailgate party
• Round trip game day transfers from the hotel to Ford Field
• Round trip airport transfers

The needs of the hotel lobby have changed greatly in the last few years. In the past, it was a meeting place. Now with Wi-Fi and other technological advances, the hotel lobby is many things. Marriott is ahead of this trend, and has announces a new initiative to revamp its lobbies.

“Hotels generally invest a significant amount of money in their lobbies — but the traditional use is very limited, like a formal living room that’s no longer popular,” said Mike Jannini, Marriott International’s executive vice president of brand management. “With our great room concept, guests can tailor the use of these marvelous spaces to their own needs, just like they do in their own homes.”
The “welcome zone” will be transformed into more than a place to check-in at the front desk, by offering local information, personalized concierge services and retail offerings.
And the business zone will include a multi-funtional boardroom complete with audio/visual equipment and a revamped business center. via The Business Journal of Phoenix .