An anonymous airline executive who has spent the last 10 years working in public and customer relations has spilled the beans as reported by CNN.

Consumers marvel at the ease and convenience of booking through an online travel site like Expedia or Orbitz, but airlines have to pay those sites as much as $10 per flight for the booking. It’s no wonder that the lowest fares are usually found on the airline’s own Web site.

I’ve written that before and debunked some other travel myths. The rest of the confessions in the article are no new news (like luggage gets lost and don’t expect refunds for non-refundable tickets), but good common sense advice.

[photo by: AtomFilms]

The free Web application Dopplr is a convenient way to see where your friends are going and when.

Great for the frequent traveler, you can log your upcoming trips so that you contacts can where you’ll be without you having to email, Myspace, or Facebook the bejesus out of everyone.

Sign-up to Dopplr only requires a name and email address. To keep track of events back home, download the Firefox extensions SportsFox (for NBA, NFL, etc. scores) and FoxClocks for timezones.

[via Lifehacker]

The United States is the only major country in the world to which travel has declined during the midst of this most recent travel boom, Fareed Zakaria writes.

In a world of expedited travel, getting a visa to enter the United States has become a laborious process. It takes, on average, 69 days in Mumbai, 65 days in S�o Paolo and 44 days in Shanghai? simply to process a request. It’s no wonder that quick business trips to America are a thing of the past. Business travel to the United States declined by 10 percent between 2004 and 2005 (the most recent data available), while similar travel to Europe increased by 8 percent.

The resulting loss isn’t just cultural, it’s also economic. Since 9/11 the 17% drop in tourism has resulted $94 billion in lost tourism revenue, 200,000 lost jobs and $16 billion in lost tax revenue.

[photo by: ThaiKimberly]