Travel services provider Carlson has opened its 30th hotel in India, the 201-room Radisson Hotel Indore.

Situated in the business hub of Indore and a 20-minute drive from the Devi Ahilyabai airport, the new hotel features 18 suites and 183 rooms.

Dining Options
Radisson Hotel Indore offers multiple dining options including The Creative Kitchen, an all-day restaurant serving global cuisine; The Great Kabab Factory, an Indian specialty restaurant; The Lobby Bar; and The Cakewalk for pastries and cakes.

For conferences, meetings and social gatherings, the hotel offers a 38,000 square feet area that can accommodate up to 1,000 people.

Radisson Hotel Indore is owned by Carlson partner Bestech Hospitalities Private Limited.

A Consumer Travel Alliance analysis has found that hidden fees levied by airlines on popular routes can boost the base cost of an airline ticket by an average of 54% for a typical traveler with two checked bags and extra legroom, or by an average of 26% for a comparable one-bag traveler.

Consumer Travel Alliance conducted the analysis by examining base fares and extra charges for nine major airlines for a typical October flight itinerary on four popular routes – New York-Los Angeles, Boston-Washington, Chicago-Miami, and Washington-Orlando.

By the way, the analysis included just two of the many common fees now charged by the airlines: checked baggage and extra legroom.

The folks at India’s Oberoi hotel chain are blowing the trumpet that Oberoi Vanyavilas in Ranthambhore has been ranked the best hotel in the world in Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards 2010 readers’ survey.

In all, four Oberoi hotels were ranked amongst the first fifteen in the world – Oberoi Vanyavilas, Oberoi Amarvilas, Oberoi Rajvilas and Oberoi Udaivilas were ranked 1st, 5th, 13th and 15th respectively in the world.

The magazine’s readers rated their experiences and evaluated hotels across the world on rooms and facilities, location, service, restaurants and food and value.

Update:
But the Oberoi Vanyavilas is not cheap.

A few minutes back, we went to the hotel’s web site to check out the rates.

By golly, the hotel is frightfully expensive. A one-night stay at the Oberoi Vanyavilas (check in October 2 and check out October 3, 2010) pulls up a rate of $954.526 (Rs 44,500.00).

In our not-so-humble view, no hotel is worth that kind of tariff.

Southwest Airlines on Sunday started its new nonstop service between Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) and Boston Logan International Airport (BOS).

Southwest is starting with five daily nonstops between the two cities.

On August 14, 2010, Southwest plans to add three additional BOS-PHL daily nonstops to the schedule, bringing the total to eight daily nonstops to/from Boston Logan and PHL.

Aircell is now letting flyers purchase a monthly subscription for its Gogo inflight Internet access service before they even get on the plane.

The service may now be purchased at the Gogo web site. Previously, the service could be purchased on the flight only.

To kick off the launch, Aircell is offering a promotional price of $19.95 for the first month, a 40% discount from the regular $34.95 price.

Gogo Subscription too Costly
We think Gogo’s monthly $34.95 price is too expensive and won’t fly.

A reasonable rate would be no more than $19.95 a month.

Launched in April 2010, Gogo Unlimited monthly subscription provides travelers unlimited Internet via any Wi-Fi enabled device on all Gogo-equipped flights.

Aircell says the monthly subscription can be canceled at any time.  Thank God, there are no yearly or two-year contracts like the ripoff cellphone contracts.

Besides the unlimited monthly subscription, Aircell offers Gogo passes for single flight segments that start at $4.95.

Gogo is currently available on all AirTran Airways and Virgin America flights and on select Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, US Airways and United Airlines flights.

Aircell rival Row 44 is providing the technology for Southwest Airlines.

A survey of 2,100 flyers found Delta/Northwest to be the worst performer when it comes to rude flight attendants and bad food.

In the Airfarewatchdog 2010 survey, 23% of respondents felt Delta/Northwest had the rudest flight attendants followed by United (18%) and American (14%).

Not surprisingly, Southwest’s flight attendants were voted the friendliest (39%), followed by Delta/Northwest (8.1%), JetBlue (6.9%), and American (4.6%).

AirTran Airways today launched a sale for travel to all of its destinations.

Travelers may purchase these sale fares on AirTran’s web site, from their travel agent or via AirTran’s reservations system at 1-800-AIR-TRAN. For Spanish, call 1-877-581-9842.

The special fares are available for purchase through June 29, 2010, and good for travel from June 25, 2010-November 17, 2010.

Lowest fares are available for travel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Additional sale fares are valid for travel on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

As part of its expansion drive to 9 new cities from Philadelphia from July 21, Megabus is offering 10,000 free seats from Philly.

Effective July 21, Philadelphia residents can travel to Atlantic City, N.J.; Baltimore; Boston; Buffalo, N.Y.; Harrisburg, Penn.; Pittsburgh; State College, Penn.; Syracuse, N.Y.; and Toronto in Canada.

Megabus has also added five more trips to the existing Philadelphia to Washington DC route, increasing departures to approximately every two hours.

Frontier Airlines has launched two daily nonstop round trip flight service between Santa Barbara airport and Denver international airport.

The new nonstop services uses the 99-seat Embraer 190 aircraft.

The daily nonstop service from Santa Barbara to Denver is at 6:30 am and 3:00 pm. While the 3:00 pm service is available daily,  the 6:00 am service from Santa Barbara is available Monday through Saturday.

The return service from Denver to Santa Barbara is at 12:35 pm and 9:10 pm. The 12:35 pm service is available daily and the 9:10 pm service is daily except Saturday.

United Airlines today introduced Zune inflight audio on all its aircraft.

Zune, Microsoft’s digital entertainment service, will allow United to offer its customers a broader selection of music with up to 21 separate playlists.

United’s full channel line-ups can be found in its in-flight magazine, Hemispheres.