Richard Turen:
Lessons from Prince Edward
Island’s gamble on cruising.
P. 117
www.travelweekly.com
A rnie Weissmann:
New jets are making interior
cities international gateways.
P. 12
section 1 of 2
IN THE HOT SEAT:
Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed
Al-Maktoum, Emirates Airline
P. 4
THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY
DECEMBER 10, 2007
[ FIRST ENERGY-RELATED, DESTINATION-WIDE FEE FOR HOTELS]
Jamaican hotels can add fuel surcharge
By Gay Nagle Myers
Effective Dec. 15, hotels in Jamaica will have
the option of adding an energy surcharge
to their daily rates to help combat the rising costs of energy and oil, according to the
Jamaica Hotel & Tourist Association, which
supports the surcharge.
In what is believed to be the first destination-wide surcharge for land-based facilities, the JHTA advised hotels to calculate the
charge on market assessment and cost structure but recommended that the maximum
should not exceed $10 per room, per night.
Several Bahamas hotels have imposed a
surcharge for the past two years, but these
types of fees are typically associated with
airlines, cruise lines and other fuel-powered
forms of transportation.
The first to respond was Sandals and
Beaches Resorts, which will roll out a surcharge on Jan. 1 of $4 per person per night,
to a maximum of $8 per room per night, at
its 10 all-inclusive properties on the island.
Couples’ three resorts have no plans “at
this time” to institute a surcharge, said Randy
Johnson, chief romance officer.
Wayne Cummings, JHTA president, said
that hoteliers had experienced oil price increases “of approximately 53% since January.” He recommended that hotels remove
their fee if oil prices come down.
Although Jamaica’s official Web site at
www.visitjamaica.com and the hotel association site at www.jhta.org plan to post the
surcharge information for consumers, agents
and operators, no such notice had appeared
at press time, a day after the announcement.
Likewise, Jamaican hoteliers appeared to
have been caught off guard by the news.
Basil Smith, director of the Jamaica Tourist Board, said the tourist board would
“make every effort to inform visitors prior to
travel.”
SEE
PAGE
39
7 states, cities want EPA
to limit airline emissions
By Andrew Compart
Seven states and cities filed a petition on
Dec. 5 asking the Environmental Protection
Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions
from aircraft.
Until now, the public
pressure on airlines to reduce their contributions to
global warming has been
primarily a European phenomenon, leading many
U.S. airlines to argue that
the issue was not, and would
not become, a significant issue here.
But the EPA petition included some heavy
hitters. The petition was filed by the states of
California, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New
Jersey and New Mexico as well as the cities
of New York and Washington and Southern California’s South Coast Air Quality
Management District. In a coordinated action, Friends of the Earth,
Oceana and the Center for
Biological Diversity filed a
similar but separate petition on the same day.
The petitions are
the first step in a process that requires the
EPA to evaluate the current impact of aircraft
emissions, seek public comment and either develop rules to reduce the emissions
See EMISSIONS on Page 118
‘Aviation is a large
and rapidly growing
source of green-
house gases.’
- Jerry Brown, California A.G.
