This weekend we take a look at sandwiches across America, Priceline’s new last-minute booking tool and Lufthansa’s new thin coach seats. Guess you can say we are covering news about eating, sleeping and sitting; that covers a lot of travel activities.
A while ago www.good.is requested nominations from Web readers for their selections for the best sandwich in their state. They got lots of responses and have put together a fascinating interactive map of the results. Scrolling around the country in search of a great sandwich can be a good time.
Here is the article with a state-by-state sandwich breakout of their findings, notes and nominations.
Priceline.com launches Tonight-Only Deals
Priceline announced that they now have discounted hotels for last-minute bookers. The service is currently available in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Ft. Lauderdale, Honolulu, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Washington, DC with more cities will be added. Deals are around 30-35 percent off rack rates.
“Usage trends show that approximately 70% of priceline.com’s mobile customers are booking hotels for same-day check-in, so there’s a clear market need for the Tonight-Only Deals service,” said John Caine, priceline.com’s Senior Vice President, Marketing.
The Tonight-Only Deals will display all available hotels along with description, photos, maps, available discounts and reviews from past guests.
An airline eases seat squeeze; will others follow?
Lufthansa is reconfiguring its cabins using lighter, thinner seats. This means that they can pack eight percent more seats into their current planes. But, the airline claims that passengers find the same amount of legroom with less pitch because of the “thinness” of the seats. Lufthansa claims passengers love the new seats.
A next generation of ultra-thin airplane seats creates extra inches of space by using strong mesh similar to fancy office chairs instead of inches of foam padding. Tricks such as moving magazine pockets to the top of the seatback also leave more space for knees. The result benefits both passengers, who get extra space, and Lufthansa, which gets more room to add seats—and boosts revenue potential.
The seats, which will make their way into airplane cabins around the world, throw into question something airlines and savvy travelers watch closely: “seat pitch,” a standard measurement of the distance from a point on a seat to the same point on the next row. Most airlines post seat pitch on their websites so passengers can make legroom comparisons.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
