Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report

Can Princess Cruises charge you more after you paid in full?
Deborah Keck paid $1,449 to upgrade to a suite on the Star Princess and got a confirmation marked paid in full with a zero balance. Princess added $3,967 to the booking months later, then told her to pay it, give up the cabin or lose the cruise.

Frontier Airlines baggage fees: When the sizer says yes but the agent says no
Benjamin Khoury measured his carry-on before a Frontier Airlines flight from Dallas to Phoenix and photographed it sitting inside the gate sizer. Frontier charged him $99 for an oversized personal item, then spent three months not answering questions about the photo.

Analog travel: why film cameras and paper maps are back
Bob Gourley shot a trip to Muscat, Oman, on 36 frames of film and hired a travel advisor instead of booking it himself. New research from ALG Vacations found that among travelers who use AI to plan a trip, about 77 percent still want a human making the final call.

A maintenance delay is the airline’s problem. That’s about to change.
A Transportation Department rule taking effect Oct. 19 moves 10 causes of delay and cancellation out of the airline’s column in federal reporting, and unscheduled maintenance is on the list. Europe answered the same question in 2008 and answered it the other way.

An air travel watchdog woke up after three years. It wants to bark at posters.
A federal advisory committee that hasn’t met since January 2023 returns on Sept. 22 with three items on its agenda, all of them disclosure documents Congress already ordered. It won’t vote on a single recommendation, and none of the consumer protections the Transportation Department rolled back while the committee was dark made the list.

These New Zealand eco-lodges are redefining sustainability (and reaching for the stars)
Two lodges at the head of Lake Whakatipu on New Zealand’s South Island have pushed sustainability well past recycled materials and refillable soap dispensers. One generates more power over a year than it uses and sends all of its profit to a community trust, and the other is wiring an 1868 pioneer tavern into a 500-kilowatt solar microgrid.

Help! Amazon said “yes” to a $179 refund—and then it said “no”
Andrew Greenman bought $179 sneakers from a third-party seller on Amazon and injured his ankle before he had worn them out. An Amazon agent emailed him a written promise of the money back within 48 hours, and the company’s executive customer relations office later ruled that its own agent’s promise didn’t comply with policy.

I’m working on a story about the things American travelers do overseas that don’t go over well: tipping in countries that never wanted tips, expecting English at the counter, wearing beach clothes into a mosque. I want to hear from anyone who figured out too late that something they did was out of line, and from anyone who has changed how they tip, dress or introduce themselves in the past year. Where were you, and what happened? Come tell us on Backchannel.