109 – Travel Troubles: New Hotel, Airline, & Rental Car ‘Gotcha Fees’

• 60 Strategies for Finding the Best Travel Deals and Avoiding Trouble
• Do You Need Travel Insurance? (Spoiler: For Most Trips, Probably Not)
• Hotel Intel: How to Find the Best Rates for Rooms
• Cell Phone Services: How to Avoid a Big Bill When Traveling Abroad
• Tips for Traveling with a Pet

It’s going to be a busy summer for travel, especially for those headed abroad. It’s late in the booking season, but some deals may still be available.

In this episode, we’ll look at what you can expect to pay for airfare, hotel rooms, and rental cars. Plus, tips from travel experts Haley Berg of Hopper.com and Christopher Elliott of the “On Travel” column on how to deal with crowds and other peak-season hassles.

Other Consumerpedia travel episodes:

⁠17 – Travel Tips: How to Find the Best Deals on Airfare⁠

⁠41 – Hotel Intel: Finding the Best Rates⁠

⁠60 – How to Avoid a Big Cell Phone Bill When Traveling Abroad⁠

Additional Resource:

⁠Elliott Advocacy⁠ is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that empowers consumers to solve their problems and helps those who can’t.

Support our podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/consumerpedia/support

Travel outside the U.S. and you’ll need to make sure your cell phone works wherever you’re headed. With a little advance planning, you can also lower the cost of using your phone on that trip—in some cases, by $100 a line a week or more.

In this episode, what the major phone companies charge to use their roaming services when you’re in a foreign country, and how to pay less by switching to a local wireless carrier at your destination. Plus, the pros and cons of turning off your cell service and relying on Wi-Fi.

Read Checkbook’s full report on how to save money while using a phone internationally.

Support our podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/consumerpedia/support

There’s a lot to consider when booking a hotel room: location, amenities, and quality. But for most of us, the deciding factor is price. In many cases, your room will cost significantly more than your flights. So, how do you find the best deal? Consumers’ Checkbook did nearly 2,000 searches looking for the best hotel rates.

In this episode, find out what our researchers discovered when shopping for hotel rooms. Does it make sense to book with the hotel or an online travel agency, like Expedia or Travelocity? What sorts of tricks do travel websites use to get you to book now? Does it pay to call the hotel directly? And what do you have to do to get an honest-to-goodness lower price? The lessons we learned should help you the next time you plan a trip.

⁠Read Checkbook’s full report on how to find the best hotel room rates⁠.

Support our podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/consumerpedia/support

Demand for plane tickets, hotel rooms, vacation rentals, and other travel services is up—way up. If your summer getaway involves flights, brace yourself for problems; like last year, planes will be packed, and the system will be stretched to its limits.

In this episode, advice from someone who loves to travel—and makes his living doing it. Christopher Elliott writes the syndicated “On Travel” and “The Travel Troubleshooter” columns. We caught up with him in New Zealand.

Additional Resources:

60 Strategies for Finding the Best Travel Deals and Avoiding Trouble

Do You Need Travel Insurance? (Spoiler: For Most Trips, Probably Not)

Why Use a Travel Agent?

U.S. airlines are failing their customers by prioritizing profits over realistic schedules, resulting in too many cancellations and long delays, according to consumer advocates. They say more could and should be done to protect passengers.

In this episode, we explain what domestic airlines are required to do when your flight is delayed or canceled (spoiler: not much). We also discuss how the Department of Transportation has failed to effectively oversee the airlines, and what consumer advocates want done to protect the flying public.

Our special guest, Bill McGee, is an award-winning travel journalist, and author of the book, Attention All Passengers. Currently, he’s senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit that works to fight monopolistic practices in the U.S. economy.

Additional resources:

Consumer Advocates Want the Department of Transportation to Fix Our Broken Airline System

New Proposed Rules Would Require Airlines to Disclose ‘True Cost’ of Tickets, Including Fees