Tag Archives for water.
Guests at a Marriott in Newport Beach say the hotel shut off the water for repairs—leaving rooms with no working toilets or showers and sending people to an outhouse in the parking lot. A reader says there was no advance warning before arrival, and when they complained they were offered 10,000 Marriott points, even as the hotel continued charging full price for a stay without a functioning bathroom.
On a 5 a.m. Spirit flight, a passenger ordered the Ghirardelli hot chocolate—and says she was sweating, nauseous, and vomiting within minutes, with severe diarrhea for the rest of the flight. The timing makes classic food poisoning unlikely, which raises a more interesting question: was it something she consumed earlier, the stress of an all-nighter, or the reality of making “hot chocolate” with airline tank water?
That inflight coffee isn’t brewed from a kitchen faucet—it’s made with water drawn from an aircraft tank. A new analysis of three years of EPA aircraft-water records tallied 35,000+ test locations and graded airlines A to F: one carrier scored perfect, while American and JetBlue landed in D territory. Here’s what’s behind the grades, what the data can (and can’t) prove, and what you should take away before you order your next drink onboard.
A Marriott hotel got so tired of elite guests demanding free bottled water that it put up a blunt sign: you are not entitled to it. And while the message is rude, it is also basically correct—pointing to what’s wrong with how Bonvoy works.
Over the summer British Airways tested removing water from meal trays in coach on long haul flights. Instead of water bottles, passengers had to request water in small plastic cups.
British Airways has cut back on water for passengers on its long haul flights, in a test that runs through Sunday. They’ve eliminated individual water bottles from the economy and premium economy cabins, leaving customers reliant on flight crew to provide them with water in paper cups poured from larger plastic bottles.
The Aria Las Vegas charges guests so much for water that it strikes down a fundamental precept in economics that has held for 150 years. As one guest writes to me, a bottle of water in the room there costs $26!
It appears that the water inside the bottle is complimentary – but the bottle is $12 if you take it with you.
Often gratuitous bag checking – the can of beer, the loose deoderant – is done by passengers taking advantage of their free baggage allowance. Of course, just because you can doesn’t mean you should! But who’s in for showing up at an American Airlines ticket counter, insisting on checking 5 liters of water for free?
The U.K. government claims the move is not in response to a specific security threat.
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 »
