The cat has seen the itinerary. The cat did not approve it. (Illustration by Dustin Elliott)
🐾 Nobody asked the cat — Airlines and hotels will let you pay extra to bring an animal along, but is that a good idea? Maybe, maybe not. A dog named Bubble boarded a Korean Air cargo hold in Guangzhou last month and came off the plane in Incheon dead. Join the debate.
On Backchannel, Mohamed Alsaidi returned a Volvo to Avis at Westchester County Airport, and the damage claim that followed has since doubled to $19,970.
For Members Only: A Turo host billed a Utah renter $500 for a tire she says was fine when she dropped the car off, then added a $165 smoking fee for a woman who doesn’t smoke. How will this one end? And how do you photograph a rental car so a host can’t invent the damage? — Christopher Elliott
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FEATURED ARTICLE
No, your pet doesn’t want to go on vacation with you
The travel industry will gladly take your money to bring an animal along. But it's almost always a bad idea. Here’s why. (Note: For those of you offended by this story, don’t worry — I’m working on an article about why and when you should bring your pet on vacation.)
ELLIOTT CONFIDENTIAL
Is It Animal Abuse to Bring Your Pet on Vacation?
(Warning: This episode contains gratuitous references to cats, small dogs eating deadly Mexican street food, and pets overdosing on drugs. Listener discretion is strongly advised.)
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Medjet is the top-rated air-medical transport, travel security and crisis response membership program for travelers. The medical evacuation benefits of most travel insurance only get you to the “nearest adequate” hospital. A Medjet membership gets you to a hospital AT HOME. Add 24/7 security and crisis response benefits for the ultimate peace of mind. Elliott.org readers enjoy discounted rates. Travel safer with Medjet.
📌 Here’s what you missed this week
Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report
No, your pet doesn’t want to go on vacation with you
I’ve never heard a pet ask to go on vacation, and unless you’ve been taking hallucinogenic drugs, neither have you.
Is your hotel room safe? The mistake you’re making right now
Nala Fox left a balcony door cracked at a five-star resort in Negril, Jamaica, and woke from a nap to find her carry-on and passport gone, with the security desk telling her this sometimes happens. Hotel security consultants call the condition resort security amnesia, and it shows up in cloned key cards, key sleeves with the room number printed on them and balconies an intruder can cross at night.
Holland America canceled my cruise because of a pricing error. Can it do that?
Cindy Woodring booked a 10-day Zuiderdam sailing at $479 a person, applied a $200 credit and paid the $758 balance in full. Three days later Holland America called the fare a pricing error and billed her $1,530 more, then offered a complimentary stateroom upgrade to anyone willing to pay it.
Hells bells! How did these AC/DC tickets go from front stage to the worst seats in the house?
Jerry Auer paid $506 for AC/DC tickets at Notre Dame Stadium after StubHub’s seating chart showed Section 121 beside the stage, and the official venue map put those seats behind it. StubHub fixed the flipped map the day after he reported it, then used the corrected version to tell him he had bought precisely what he ordered.
Triple-stacking and high-low tracking: New strategies for preventing luggage loss
Virgin Australia scanned my son’s purple Peak Design rollaboard in Queenstown and again in Melbourne, then lost track of it for almost 48 hours. Travel experts now recommend stacking trackers on separate networks, adding a battery-free QR tag and photographing the 10-digit barcode on your bag tag at check-in.
Resort fees have been “dead” for a year. Did anyone notice?
The FTC’s fee rule has required hotels and booking sites to put the full price in the first number an American traveler sees, with taxes and optional add-ons the only things allowed to appear later. It stops at the border, so a room booked on a non-U.S. site sits outside the whole system.
Rising hotel taxes need better disclosure. Here’s the fix.
Topeka’s transient guest tax rises to 8.5% on Jan. 1 to help fund tourism marketing, a theater and a planned downtown ice rink, and the deputy mayor has noted that residents don’t pay it unless they stay in a hotel. The hotel industry generated $85.1 billion in taxes last year, and your folio still reports the whole stack on a single line marked “taxes.”
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💬 What you’re saying on Backchannel
Avis sent me the wrong bill.
Mohamed Alsaidi returned a 2026 Volvo XC90 to Avis at Westchester County Airport with 5,115 miles on the odometer, and the appraisal the company produced later shows 5,808 miles on a different model entirely. Avis has since raised its damage demand from $9,647 to $19,970, months after a recovery specialist told him in writing that no further supplements were coming. Does he owe any of it? Here’s our team’s advice on Backchannel.
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Surf Air Mobility is a California-based air mobility platform. With its AI-enabled SurfOS software and electrification programs, Surf Air Mobility provides technology designed to support the modernization of air operations and the adoption of next-generation aircraft. Surf Air Mobility currently operates one of the largest commuter airlines in the United States by scheduled departures, which provides operational scale and real-world operating data to validate and deploy its software.
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