Resort Fees are Evil (and Actionable), Arming the TSA, New Hotel Bonus Promotion

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About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. I imagine that the director of the charitable gaming commission was not in direct contact with machete wielding maniacs, so it’s a bit of a different situation. Not at least acknowledging that the TSA does work in a dangerous environment where guns are unfortunately necessary is a gaping hole in your logic.

  2. To be clear, it’s the head of the union which represents bargaining-unit TSA employees that is advocating arming some (not all) TSA employees. At this time DHS/TSA isn’t making any similar call.

    I would wholeheartedly oppose any such arming of TSA employees – it’s completely unnecessary and any growth to TSA powers or scope is bad IMHO. Hopefully the idea goes nowhere!

  3. @Askia there are plenty of guns held by airport law enforcement already. putting those in the hands of tsa doesn’t change law enforcement’s access to weapons on the scene.

  4. I really think the “resort fees” are a different type of deceptive practice than most, since you can’t get out of them, and they cause a property to list as cheaper than it really is in searches. It is a case of the bad driving out the good, since a property not wanting to deceive its customers is penalized by appearing to be more expensive by comparison in search results. Regulators should not allow travel providers to assess any add on costs that are not imposed by some outside governmental or taxing authority, unless they are actually optional to the customer (such as bag fees, GPS system, wifi where there’s a charge, etc.). The real prices should be required at first search otherwise.

  5. Arming the TSA, even “select” personnel is not a good idea. Let’s not overreact because of one nut bag with a machete. Honestly I lost my faith (or what was left of it) when PreCheck became a place to dump non seasoned (and non vetted) travelers for whatever reason.

  6. I agree with DaveS. This is just like how airlines used to price flights and when you went to check out it was totally different. They changed the law to require airlines to include all the fees, taxes, etc. (well, most), and it’s now much easier to compare apples and apples. Let’s do the same thing for hotels. (Especially since some cities have such insane taxes that the cost is more than 20% over what you are quoted).

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