News and notes from around the interweb:
- San Francisco Marriott Marquis has been found to have illegally kept $9 million in tips. In California, service charges that customers believe are tips belong to workers.
This is the same hotel that gave away a guest’s luggage to a thief, and fought in court to avoid compensation.
- Starting May 15 Air Canada will offer free inflight messaging. This doesn’t do free wifi, but is interesting mostly because it restricts access to Aeroplan members (so is a way to encourage a marketing relationship) and also ‘strategic partner airline loyalty members’ who associate United, Lufthansa, or Emirates accounts with their Air Canada reservation. This is being financed by phone partner Bell, who will provide free mobile SIM cards to visitors to Canada on “select inbound international flights.”
- Hotel in trouble for offering special citrus drink fermented with bacteria on employees’ hands (HT: Paul H)
- Early details of the new DFW airport master lease agreement
- Probably better than much of what they’ve been serving in premium cabins, to be honest.
@Delta a little extra rubber band in my meal today… at least I didn’t eat it… Ugh! pic.twitter.com/N6A2XnkeGm
— D Hawkins (@gwsnnpnvwc) May 2, 2023
- American Airlines mechanic convicted of stashing $320K of cocaine under cockpit of plane
- Frontier Airlines would consider buying Spirit Airlines again if the Department of Justice kills JetBlue’s Spirit deal (paywall). Of course if the deal closes, for instance if there’s a settlement, Frontier is probably best-positioned to pick up any divested assets at a discount.
After Spirit jilted Frontier for a more lucrative, if more complicated, offer from JetBlue, Franke said he instructed Frontier management to move on and grow the airline organically. But, if the transaction fails in court, as seems possible, Franke said Frontier could be interested. Still, he made no guarantees.
“If their transaction failed and Spirit wanted to renew the conversation, we would take a look at that,” Franke said.
“The hotel added 23% to 24% to banquet customers’ bills for what their contracts described as a service charge. Starting in April 2017, Marriott added language to its contracts specifying that part of the fee was a “house charge” that covered expenses and should not be considered a “gratuity,” or tip.”
Is this the banquet equivalent of a resort fee? Unbelievable.
Bonvoy!
Is this the new Marriott Corporate Mission Statement?
We take great pride in Bonvoying our guests and employees at Marriott International Inc to maximize shareholder profitability.
To my way of thinking, this is criminal. No different than robbing their employees at gun point after they cash their pay checks.
Marriott should be very ashamed!