New York: new hotel tax targets online agencies

Online travel agencies and other hotel resellers will have to start paying higher taxes in New York from September. The legislation defines remarketers as anyone who "reserves, arranges for, conveys or furnishes occupancy, whether directly or indirectly, to an occupant for rent in an amount determined by the room remarketer" and requires all hotel room resellers to pay the 4% state sales tax on the retail rate, not just the wholesale rate.

Source: Travel Weekly; find article here>>.

USA: Internet travel agents sue New York City over hotel room occupancy tax

A group of major Internet travel firms as well as the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) and the U.S. Tour Operators Association (USTOA) filed a law suit against New York City to stop the extension of a hotel tax on their clients. They allege that the law extending the city's hotel room occupancy tax to "third-party travel intermediaries" is "unconstitutional and illegal" as the city "has no inherent power to tax."

Source: marketwatch.com, find article here>>.

USA: questions remaining about NewYork's hotel remarketer’s tax

The hotel remarketer tax will require any reseller of a New York hotel room to remit a tax based on the full amount paid by the customer, including service fees and charges. A representative of the city’s law department said a statement of audit procedure will provide more information about the law and give guidance related to more specific business models, including guidance on unbundling packages.

According to the memorandum, the tax on net and additional hotel room rent will apply to New York hotel rooms booked on or after Sept. 1. Hotel room resellers must complete and file a "certificate of registration" with the finance department by Sept. 3.

Source: Travel Weekly; find article here>>.

USA: Starwood v. Hilton on alledged theft of proprietary information

Starwood Hotels & Resorts has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York accusing Hilton Hotels Corp. and two former Starwood executives of corporate espionage in the development of Hilton’s new lifestyle brand "Denizen Hotels".

Starwood is seeking preliminary and permanent injunctive relief plus compensatory and punitive damages from Hilton and the individual defendants. The lawsuit seeks a court order prohibiting Hilton from using or benefiting from Starwood’s confidential information and requiring Hilton and the individual defendants to return all Starwood confidential information as well as to certify the destruction of all materials derived from Starwood confidential information, including plans for the promotion and roll-out of Hilton’s Denizen brand.

Hilton said the lawsuit was without merit and that the company would vigorously defend itself.

Source: Travel Weekly; find article here>>.

USA: New York area airports worst for late departures

A Travel Weekly analysis of airport departure times throughout the summer confirms that Airplanes taking off from New York-area airports (JFK, La Guardia, Newark) are more likely to leave late than planes departing other major regions, and that by a significant margin.

One trend common to all airports was a reasonably high on-time departure rate for early morning flights. The on-time rate then began to dip lower throughout the day, bottoming out in the late-afternoon rush hour. But deterioration in departure reliability at New York-area airports started sooner in the daily cycle, plunged deeper and lasted longer than other airports.

Due to the Port Authority, New York airports handled more than 104 million passengers last year. Since 75% of the US flight delays originate in the New York metropolitan area, the Port Authority concluded that their three airports accounted for a third of the nation's air travel delays.

Source: Travel Weekly; find full article here>>.

USA: Air Transport Association successfully challenged New York state law on passenger rights

The Air Transport Association has successfully challenged a New York state law that set minimum standards for treatment of airline passengers. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a federal law, the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, preempts the ability of states to govern such matters:
"We hold that requiring airlines to provide food, water, electricity, and restrooms to passengers during lengthy ground delays does relate to the service of an air carrier and therefore falls within the express terms of the ADA's preemption provision. (...) If New York's view regarding the scope of its regulatory authority carried the day, another state could be free to enact a law prohibiting the service of soda on flights departing from its airports, while another could require allergen-free food options on its outbound flights, unraveling the centralized federal framework for air travel. On this point, the decisions of the Fifth and Ninth Circuits finding preemption of state common law claims for failure to warn of the risk of deep vein thrombosis are instructive. "

Case Air Transport Ass’n of America v. Cuomo; find full text of decision here>> and ATA statement here>>.