I did the Today show on Monday morning on the last great places where the U.S. dollar is still maybe king and where you can still get an affordable experience this summer. Those destinations range from South Africa, Argentina, Estonia, and Thailand.

Also, there is a very interesting situation with what’s going on in the Caribbean.

As airlines are reducing capacity, especially in the Caribbean, and fares are going up, the resorts down there are dying because of the airlift situation.

They’re worried. They just can’t adjust if people can’t get down there.

So one group, Sandals—in places like Jamaica and St. Lucia—is offering air rebates if you go down there of up to $550 per person. That should give you an idea of how hard hit places are that are so dependent on airlift.

I traveled from New York to Houston last week to continue work on a report on the Concorde special that you’ll see on Dateline, most likely in September. Then I went back to New York for a piece on the Today show called “Vacations from the Heart” or “Vacations that Heal.” It’s an amazing trend that really celebrates the human spirit and the community and it’s all based around travel.

NICKEL-AND-DIMING AWARDS, CONTINUED

Now that the fuel prices have gone down a little bit, does that make anything better for you? Unfortunately the answer is no. Airlines are still playing a big game of catch-up and they are trying to sock us with every kind of fee imaginable.

And when I say every kind of fee imaginable, I’m not making that up. Spirit Airlines is actually charging a “convenience fee” of $10 if you book with them online.

Allegiant Air ups the ante at $11.50. What’s convenient? And if you talk to a human being, they’ll probably sock you even higher. It’s getting worse and worse and worse.

AIRLINE EXECS AND BUSINESS TRAVELERS

This week, I’m at the National Business Travel Association convention. Last year I was on stage interviewing two former CEOs of the airlines, Robert Crandall from American and Gordon Bethune from Continental, and I asked them point blank when they’d be installing pay toilets on the airplanes. Of course they laughed, but nobody’s laughing anymore.

Today, I’ll be back out there with a number of other airline executives onstage including Richard Anderson from Delta, which is about to merge with Northwest, and Montie Brewer of Air Canada.

It should be a lively session because last year, the two airline CEOs that I interviewed of course had retired and they were floating free, they were cracking jokes and having fun. There’s not a lot of fun out there right now so we are going to try to at least liven it up a little bit.

When I say “not a lot of fun,” read what Robert Crandall is now writing in The New York Times about how screwed up the airline business is. The man who basically embraced deregulation is basically almost calling for re-regulation.

FREQUENT-FLIER GAMES
Here’s another little news item that should surprise you: United Airlines made a deal with J.P. Morgan Chase, the guys that issue those Visa credit cards, the ones that are tied in with their frequent-flier programs. United Airlines, in renewing the deal with Visa, got an immediate infusion of cash.

This is how much money the airlines make—by selling mileage that you can’t ever use. They made an immediate infusion of cash of $600 million just for selling miles that everybody knows, if they’re being honest, have about as much likelihood of being redeemed as S&H green stamps in the year 2010.

It’s a pretty wild business out there when you consider the fact that the market valuation of the American Airlines frequent-flier program is over $6 billion, but the entire market capitalization of the corporation is only $5 billion. That should tell you how crazy it is.

And, there is a lawsuit going on now. A Manhattan lawyer, yep, it’s a Manhattan lawyer, is suing Delta Airlines for $5 million charging that the airline wouldn’t repay him for a canceled flight from France. Pretty wild, huh? This will be interesting to see what happens.

NORTHERN IRAQ IS THE PLACE TO BE

Last but not least, I used to joke that the best job I could ever get, because I could not fail, is minister to tourism in Iraq. If one person went my numbers would go up 100 percent.

Well, they’ve got a minister of tourism, they are opening a new airport, and they are actually trying to get tourists to Iraq. Can you go? It might surprise you but the answer is yes, you can, especially if you go to northern Iraq in places like Erbil where airlines like Austrian Air have daily service from Vienna.

And people are actually going. Minister of Tourism from Iraq, a can’t-fail job … because you can’t get any worse.

From Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio

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