Simple Scam Puts One Tourist Out $2,000
Simple Scam Puts One Tourist Out $2,000
Donatas Dabravolskas/Shutterstock
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/tourist-scammed-out-of-2-000-for-kebab-in-brazil
And other travel news you may have missed.
This week in travel, we have several stories that may have flown under your radar. Among them: American Airlines issued a statement last week to dismiss the merger idea with United; five passengers volunteered to disembark an overweight plane so it could take off; an air traffic controller scolded pilots after they were heard making animal sounds on the radio; and a cruise ship rescued a stranded sailor and his cat after spotting emergency flares.
Dive into these and more as we examine the latest in travel news.
PHOTO: Benthemouse/Shutterstock
1 OF 5
American Says No to Merger With United
American Airlines denied reports of merger talks with United Airlines. Scott Kirby, CEO of United, spoke with President Donald Trump about a possible merger with rival American Airlines. The news came out last week and raised concerns about negative consequences on consumers, including less competition and fewer flights. But American Airlines has now clarified that it has not engaged with its rival regarding a merger and it is not on the cards.
“American Airlines is not engaged with or interested in any discussions regarding a merger with United Airlines. While changes in the broader airline marketplace may be necessary, a combination with United would be negative for competition and for consumers, and therefore inconsistent with our understanding of the Administration’s philosophy toward the industry and principles of antitrust law,” it said.
PHOTO: Chris Ainsworth/Unsplash
2 OF 5
Cruise Ship Rescues Sailor and Cat
Cruisers aboard Carnival Legend were part of a happy rescue last week. The ship disembarked from Galveston, Texas, when the crew spotted emergency flares from a sailboat in distress. In videos shared by passengers, a sailboat without sails is seen bobbing in the water. The cruise responded to the emergency, and an announcement was made to passengers to remain in their cabins. The crew brought the sailor and his cat, Delilah, to the cruise after launching a rescue boat.
The man’s identity was not revealed, but he was not injured and has since disembarked. The cruise has continued its journey to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
PHOTO: Manja Vitolic on Unsplash
3 OF 5
ATC Scolds Pilots For Making Meow Sounds
Two pilots were heard making meow sounds on an air traffic control frequency over Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The audio was recorded, and someone else, supposedly an air traffic controller, is heard telling them to be professional. This was met with more meows and barks. Then the controller remarked, “This is why you still fly an RJ,” with RJ referring to regional jets that early career pilots begin with.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the agency will investigate the conduct. Pilots are prohibited from “engaging in non-essential conversations when they’re below 10,000 feet altitude,” and the agency investigates all instances where pilots may have broken the rules.
PHOTO: Aleksandar Todorovic/Shutterstock
4 OF 5
British Tourist Pays Scammer $2,000 for Kebab in Rio
A British tourist was scammed into paying 10,000 reais ($2,000) for a kebab on a beach in Rio. The swindler and his accomplice manipulated a payment terminal to overcharge the tourist, and the tourist ended up paying thousands instead of 10 reais ($2). The scammer was later arrested by the police.
Scammers are hitting the famous Copacabana Beach in Rio. In recent months, many such instances have come to notice: scammers tried to get two Argentine tourists to pay 7,000 reais ($1,400) for cups of acai, while a woman paid over 20,000 reais ($4,000) for corn on the cob instead of 20 reais ($4).
PHOTO: Adam Klis/iStock
5 OF 5
EasyJet Passengers Voluntarily Deboard Due to Overweight Flight
An EasyJet flight from London to Malaga had to leave behind five passengers over safety issues regarding its weight. Five people volunteered to disembark so the flight could make the journey, and they were met with cheers from other passengers.
The incident happened on Saturday when the flight crossed the weight limit due to the weather conditions and the runway length. Passengers were given the options: six passengers volunteered to deboard, the luggage was offloaded, or the flight was cancelled. Five passengers took the offer, and EasyJet gave them a later flight and transport.
Although not very common, there are instances when airlines request passengers to volunteer to bump off if the flight is overweight. They may also decide which passengers to boot off a flight depending on check-in times and fare type. Passengers can negotiate compensation with airlines and if lucky, get a good deal out of it.
Delayed hotel bookings, tough draws define World Cup lead-up in Mexico and Canada
Domestic travel will offset some headwinds
Hoteliers in Mexico and Canada say they are seeing small booking windows for the World Cup. (Photo by Elizabeth Ruiz Ruiz/Getty Images)
https://www.costar.com/article/11697749/delayed-hotel-bookings-tough-draws-define-world-cup-lead-up-in-mexico-and-canada
Hoteliers in Mexico and Canada's 2026 FIFA World Cup host cities are feeling pains similar to their U.S. counterparts — generally lower-than-anticipated hotel demand on the books, with the tournament set to begin in less than two months.
Some of the same factors plaguing the tournament's outlook in the United States — a much shorter booking window than anticipated and geopolitical conflicts raising prices worldwide — also are creating problems for its neighboring host countries.
Beyond those universal concerns, Mexico and Canada each have their own opportunities and challenges when it comes to attracting fans for the big event this summer.
Setting the stage
North America will host the quadrennial soccer tournament for the first time since 1994. It will span 39 days, beginning on June 11, 2026, and concluding on July 19, 2026.
Mexico has three World Cup host markets: Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. In total, the three cities will host 10 group stage matches and three knockout stage matches.
All three of the country's knockout stage matches are in the round of 32 or round of 16; the United States will host all of the matches from that point on.
Toronto and Vancouver represent Canada's two World Cup host markets. The two cities will host five group stage matches apiece, and Toronto will host one knockout stage match while Vancouver hosts two. This is the first time in history that Canada will host World Cup matches.
Like Mexico, all of Canada's knockout stage matches are in either the round of 32 or the round of 16.
In total, Mexico and Canada will host 26 of the 104 World Cup matches, with the United States extending its hospitality for the remaining 78 — including the final eight matches.
Demand is slow, but gaining ground
Patricia Boo, area director of Latin America at STR, CoStar's hotel data analytics firm, said hotel demand in Mexico for the tournament is currently "a big uncertainty."
Occupancy on the books is sitting around 20% to 40%, below what was expected.
Mexico City is hosting the Mexican team's first match of the tournament against South Africa on June 11. Occupancy on the books in the city is currently reaching no more than 30%, said Stefania Maroso, senior sales executive in Mexico and Panama at STR.
The lack of pickup less than two months out from the start of the tournament is "very concerning for the hoteliers," Boo said. This is leading to more caution on rate pricing compared to other major sporting events such as the Olympics.
"I think the biggest story is that this is very unusual," she said.
Hoteliers in Canada are seeing the same slow pickup.
Sukhdev Toor, president and CEO of Manga Hotel Group, which owns and operates 11 hotels in the greater Toronto area, said expectations and hype were very high back in December when the initial schedule was released, but demand hasn't played out as expected as early as anticipated.
On one hand, early international travel demand for all World Cup matches has been muted, in large part due to the war in the Middle East spiking oil prices and air fares, Toor said.
But despite demand falling behind schedule, it's still there and timing is becoming more important.
"The rates are firm, and it's still much better than normal years we have, but it's not like a Taylor Swift kind of show," Toor said.
Nessi Behar, general manager of the 32-room luxury hotel Casona Roma Norte in Mexico City, said business for the tournament is steady and growing.
"We are confident we can manage easily a 90% occupancy during the month of June," he said.
While high prices and less early demand from overseas visitors play a role, Behar said it's also a matter of scheduling.
He attributes some of the initial slow pickup to the fact that the field of 48 teams was just finalized a few weeks ago. With all of the matchups now set, he said he expects demand to start picking up by the beginning of May.
Michelle Fridman Hirsch, secretary of tourism for Jalisco, said in an email interview that travel demand to Guadalajara continues to build and they are "very confident."
"Booking patterns have accelerated in recent weeks, and we’re especially encouraged by the level of interest from first-time visitors choosing Guadalajara specifically because of the World Cup," she said.
Playing the cards as they were dealt
Yes, many hoteliers in World Cup host cities across North America are feeling the slowdown of demand from overseas visitors. But Mexico and Canada also are dealing with somewhat of a bad hand.
The Mexican and Canadian teams will play all of their group stage matches in their respective home countries, sure to garner immense attraction from their home-country fans. But outside of those matches, Mexico and Canada didn't receive a favorable draw relative to past travel patterns from international fan bases.
Tourism Economics highlighted England, France, Brazil, Argentina and Portugal as the fan bases most likely to have the largest impact on hotel market performance for this World Cup. None of those countries have a single group stage match in Mexico or Canada.
While that theoretically puts the two countries at a strategic disadvantage compared to the United States, there are other factors giving them an edge.
First, perception: Fans traveling for the World Cup will go wherever their team plays. But if their team has a match in the United States and a match in either Mexico or Canada, they may prefer the latter option due to the hurdles in place to get into the U.S. and the general global sentiment surrounding the country.
In the group stage, of the 48 teams participating in the World Cup, 20 will play all of their matches in the U.S.; 15 will play at least one match in the U.S. and Canada; 10 will play at least one match in the U.S. and Mexico; two will play all of their matches in Mexico; and one will play all of its matches in Canada.
"The news around customs, border patrol, ICE agents, all that certainly doesn't shed a positive light on [the U.S.]," Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality market analytics at CoStar, said. "It's possible that some international customers looking to see their team play, given the choice of a U.S. venue and a non-U.S. venue, may have said, 'Oh, Toronto is as easy for us to get to as is New York or Boston.'"
Toor agreed, pointing out how Manga Hotel Group's Canadian portfolio has already benefitted from weakening sentiment in the U.S. Last year, the company grew revenue by 4% in Canada.
"People worldwide feel that [the U.S.] is not an inviting place anymore," he said. "We're attracting more international travel, we are more friendly, and there are no issues here, no restrictions. We expect that to continue."
Domestic demand will be key
Another positive: Four of the five Mexican and Canadian cities will host a group stage match featuring their home country team, which bodes well for domestic travel. Meanwhile, the United States team will play in only two of the 11 U.S. host cities.
"I would expect a lot of interregional [travel]," Boo said. "We'll see Canadians traveling within their two host cities, in the U.S. a lot of U.S. multi-city traveling, and Mexicans will travel within Mexico for sure."
Nooshi Akhavan, vice president of commercial strategy at hotel brand and operator Coast Hotels Limited, said Coast's Vancouver-area hotels are seeing the benefits of Canada playing two group stage matches in the city.
"Matches involving Team Canada are acting as key compression dates, driving a measurable uplift in domestic bookings," she said in an email interview. "These games are generating strong travel intent, with many guests planning trips specifically around match dates."
Hotel owners, operators size up investment shifts in Nordics
Luxury segment will work if international brands show the way
Luxury has its limits in the Nordics, but there are international firms that have moved into the market such as M&L Group, which opened the 116-room Waldorf Astoria Helsinki in October 2025. (Hilton)
https://www.costar.com/article/467469827/hotel-owners-operators-size-up-investment-shifts-in-nordics?
BERLIN — The Nordic region, which includes Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland, has long been considered a difficult market for international hotel ownership and management firms to enter, but that is changing.
Strategic, long-term-oriented, international capital is expanding as non-Nordic private equity is slowly moving into the lease market in the region.
Eduard Elias, chief operating officer for Europe and the United Kingdom at Singapore-based M&L Group, said his firm is receiving many more opportunities in the Nordics.
“There are multiple reasons for this,” he said during a panel at the recent International Hospitality Investment Forum EMEA. He added that the Nordic region is “not explored for leisure travel as much as it could be. … For some, now it is too warm in summer in Spain.”
Fredrik Andersson, vice president of investments at Nicosia, Cyprus-based Mohari Hospitality, said the Nordics always had an emphasis on experiential and wellness travel, long before those terms were popular.
“For the Northern lights, foraging, the region feels like a blank canvas, and it is backed by [its country always being voted as the] happiest place to live. There also are [the advantages of] equality and ease of business,” he said.
Robin Stenlund, investment director and portfolio manager at Helsinki-based CapMan Real Estate, said domestic hotel owners and operators are seeing a little movement away from the playing field being dominated only by leases, although that model remains the favorite.
“Urban hotels with revenue-based leases give us a very good risk-adjusted return, allowing us to concentrate on the real estate and operators on their business,” he said.
International brand penetration remains very low in the Nordics.
“It is possible to do a hotel management agreement in the region, although that still limits [sellers] on the exit, but it will add to the region,” Stenlund added.
Stefan Giesemann, managing director of hotel capital markets for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at JLL, said in the main Nordic cities, there's an appetite for hotel management agreements from international brands.
“A lot of institutional investors outside of the Nordics are coming in, from Germany, from France. The currency play is still a barrier, but investors are getting creative to get in,” he said.
Christian Kielgast, partner at Nordic Hotel Consulting, said the recent fall in value of local currencies has helped this development. He added hotel financing in the region is becoming more accretive, and there is more aggression when it comes to securing margins.
“Hand-holding and more education are required. It is still tough for international players to make a move,” Giesemann said. He added he has seen some urgency from international firms to take advantage of first-mover dynamics.
Luxury play
The Nordic countries might not be suited for an explosion of luxury hotels and reports across the region, but there's space for the segment in some of its capital cities.
M&L Group launched its first expansion into the Nordics in July when it acquired the Hotel Maria from Samla Capital. M&L Group then announced a partnership with Hilton to reopen the asset as the 116-room Waldorf Astoria Helsinki.
The Nordics have “been a pretty closed market, so this is where the opportunity is, to bring in high-end luxury. There is space for that, for the international brands that are not there to bring in an influx of new guests,” Elias said.
The opportunity for luxury hotels exists only in a handful of Nordic markets, Mohari Hospitality’s Andersson said.
“There will not be 20 luxury hotels in the market. There is momentum, but this will never be a full-blown luxury market,” he said.
For luxury hotels to be successful throughout Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, the region would require international guests, who in turn would require the same standards of luxury they are accustomed to in the U.S., Southeast Asia and the Middle East, Elias said.
“They expect the same quality and service as they get in London or Paris, and they have a choice between London and Paris or Stockholm and Oslo,” he added.
The Nordics region has excellent local hotel brands and operators, Elias said, but “if you have diversity, that will bring more demand. Do not be afraid of diversity.”
The domestic hotel market in the Nordics would raise an eyebrow if it charged average daily rates of €1,500 and more, Andersson said, whereas guests heading to London and Paris might already be paying those rates now.
“You need confidence to create a luxury product [in the Nordics] that you can charge three times as much. It will come, but you need international brands to come in and show that this is possible,” he said.
Hotels keep losing group bookings to OTAs—and it’s not about price
https://hotelsmag.com/news/hotels-keep-losing-group-bookings-to-otas-and-its-not-about-price/
by Yvette Jong
OTAs collect anywhere from 15–30% in commissions on hotel bookings. The industry knows this. For fifteen years, I’ve been telling hotel owners and developers that direct relationships are the foundation of a sustainable hospitality business. And yet I’ll admit something that pains me to say: I recently booked a 24-room block for a family reunion through one of them. I know exactly what that commission represents, and I handed one to an OTA without a second thought.
Here’s why. I didn’t want to negotiate. I didn’t want a sales call. I didn’t want to explain my dates, my room types, my budget and my flexibility to a human being whose job is to extract the best possible outcome for their property while I try to do the same for my family. I wanted to see the options, pick the rooms and be done in ten minutes. It let me do exactly that. Two reservations. Twenty-four rooms. 24-hour cancellation policy. No conversation required. The hotel’s own website would have sent me to a sales inquiry form, and a negotiation would likely have ended with an attrition clause for no-shows and a cancellation policy nowhere near as flexible. This is not always a pricing problem. It’s a friction problem.
A few months after booking, I did something most guests would never bother to do—I reached out to the hotel’s sales team directly and offered to move the business back to them. Not because I was looking for a better rate. Not to negotiate. Simply because I wanted to save them the commission and have a direct relationship with the property.
What happened next is the part that should concern every hotel operator and investor reading this.
They asked me for the dates and room types again. What I didn’t know at the time (and what nobody explained) was that OTAs don’t share guest data with properties. The hotel had no access to my existing reservation, but they also didn’t tell me it was the reason I had to share my information all over again. That’s a structural gap the industry still hasn’t solved. But the fix at that moment was free—one sentence explaining why they needed the information again would have changed everything. Instead, what felt like a favor to the hotel began to feel like another burden.
This isn’t a failure of rate strategy. It’s a failure of infrastructure—and in this case, a failure of communication. And it’s costing hotels far more than the commission they’re trying to avoid.
If we can automate revenue management, why are we still hand-selling room blocks?
The Sales Paradox
Our industry has spent decades automating its most complex pricing decisions. Revenue management systems now adjust rates in real time across hundreds of variables. And yet a family wanting 20 rooms for a reunion still must fill out a form and wait for a callback.
The argument for keeping group sales human has always been complex—and some of it is legitimate. A large room block with a 24-hour cancellation policy is a real inventory risk. Twenty-four rooms dumped back into available inventory the night before arrival with no penalty is a revenue management problem that’s genuinely hard to solve at scale. Attrition clauses and stricter cancellation terms exist for good reasons. But for a 20-room family reunion, the question is whether that level of contractual protection is proportionate, and whether the friction it creates is worth the business it costs. In the current climate where travel plans are subject to last-minute changes, flight cancellations, and geopolitical uncertainty, flexibility isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a deciding factor.
In the months since I made this booking, two family members traveling from abroad and one domestic guest have already decided not to come. A single room booked directly often comes with a 24-hour cancellation policy. Move into group territory, and suddenly the rules change. With this OTA, I got the competitive rate, the discount, and the cancellation flexibility. The hotel’s direct booking process couldn’t have offered me two of those three things even if it had wanted to.
There’s a legitimate reason hotels want group business outside standard transient terms: 24 rooms cancelled last minute with no penalty is a real inventory risk. But that risk deserves a smarter solution than a sales inquiry form. The barrier to automating small group bookings directly isn’t capability—it’s the complexity of getting CRS, PMS, RMS, and sales systems talking to each other in real time. That’s a solvable problem. It just requires the will to solve it. A guest who books direct and has a frictionless experience is worth multiples of the commission saved. A guest who books through an OTA and never has a reason to go direct is a recurring cost.
The real issue is friction. And hotels are full of it.
An industry that prides itself on service somehow still manages to put the burden on guests when they should be relaxing. The upsell at check-in. The guilt of declining the room upgrade. The resort fee. The group sales process makes you feel like you’re applying for something rather than spending money. For me, the OTA removed the pain point that might make me feel like a sales opportunity.
So what would it take to win it back?
Small group and block bookings are available online, with tiered discounts built in, without a sales inquiry form in sight. Technology that can automate small group bookings directly—presenting options, pricing, and flexible cancellation terms without a human in the loop. None of this is conceptually complex. The technology is harder than it should be, but it’s not impossible.
The OTA won my family reunion booking not because it was cheaper, but because it was easier. And in 2026, for a guest who has options, easier wins almost every time. The commission was the cost of that lesson. The question is whether the industry is paying attention or not.
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