European low-cost airlines fail to enforce charges and fees

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Flying around Europe on low-cost airlines over the last few months has taught me a few things. Among the most useful lessons I’ve picked up: Baggage and check-in fees and charges are enforced quite unevenly.

European low-cost carriers present their customers with a frightening thicket of charges and fees. These charges, which serve as a revenue stream for the airlines, are less readily enforced by contract agents who are not direct employees of the airlines in question, though bona fide airline employees also appear to enforce them inconsistently.

Some anecdotes from the last few months follow.

In Tel Aviv in March I tried to inform the easyJet check-in agent–clearly not an employee of easyJet–that, having failed to pay to check a bag online, I would need to cough up some shekels to do so. Not only did she refuse to take money to check my duffel bag but she clearly had no idea that I was supposed to be charged to check by bag in the first place.

Flying airBaltic between London and Finland last month, I was made to weigh my carry-on en route to Finland by an airBaltic agent. Returning, the contract employee in Oulu didn’t ask me to weigh my bag, which, at 9 kilos, was right at the weight limit.

Three events, arguably, serve as a representative sample. I flew WizzAir last week to and from the Balkans. WizzAir demands that its customers’ carry-on bags not exceed ten kilos, but neither the agent at Luton nor the at Dubrovnik on my return weighed my bag to see if it had exceeded the limit. In both cases I was very likely just over the baggage weight limit.

This is a case not so much of lessons learned than of a pattern observed. Contract check-in agents don’t appear to have been taught about the intricacies of their employers’ rules and regulations, first off. Secondly, and just possibly, if your carry-on bag looks diminutive, you may be able to get away with a few extra kilos.

That said, this is not an official Gadling recommendation to start to think of these charges and fees as inconsequential. They’re imposed to make money and they succeed in doing so for their airlines. To some degree, I’m sure I was simply lucky in these instances. But clearly the fees and charges are not being enforced as fully as they were designed to be.

[Image: Flickr | jenny-bee]

Check in (virtually) to check out later at Radisson Edwardian hotels

by McLean Robbins on

London hotel group Radisson Edwardian has just launched its new ‘Check In, Check Out Later’ promotion in honor of Social Media Day today. The feature, which will be available until July 31, gives digital-savvy guests the opportunity to extend their checkout by up to two hours by ‘checking in’ to one of Radisson Edwardian’s twelve London hotels or Manchester hotel location-based social media service Foursquare.

Once checked in, guests just need to show their smartphone at the front desk to enjoy all the benefits of a late checkout. For Foursquare, the late-check-in will be promoted using a ‘Foursquare special offer’ which customers can see when they check-in on Foursquare.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to enrich the hotel experience for our guests and this was a great opportunity to once again connect an online interaction with an offline benefit. Checking in on Facebook or Foursquare has been popular with our guests, so rewarding them with a couple of extra hours in bed seemed like a nice way to say thanks,” Amy Clarke, e-commerce manager for Radisson Edwardian, said.

As we noted yesterday, the increased attention of hotels to the consumer power of social media is encouraging – and it also benefits us, the traveler.

The hotel has also experimented with other social applications, including Quick Response (QR) codes to restaurant menus in 11 of its London hotels. The QR codes direct diners to an online video hosted on the hotel’s website to show the ‘dish of the month’ being prepared by one of the hotel’s executive chefs. The video gives tips and advice on how the dish is prepared and the ingredients used. Honestly, we’re not sure how exciting this is to the average user – we’d probably prefer to talk to our dining guests rather than watch a phone video. But still, the hotel’s level of commitment to social media and engaging guests is impressive. Let’s see if the rest of the service during a stay matches up.

Finland in London

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Week before last, I traveled to Oulu to bask in the midnight sun. Dusk and dawn were indistinguishable. I needed little sleep to feel energized. At midnight I looked north and imagined landscapes bathed in even brighter sunlight.

Back in London this past week, I was faced with rain and general drenching. The clouds were low and foreboding; the gray skies interminably soul-annihilating. London seemed to have forgotten that summer had arrived. An exaggeration? Indeed. But not by much. I began to fantasize about Finnish things to take my mind off the gray wetness of it all.

The first and easiest stop for Finland lovers in London is probably Nordic Bakery. The softly ambassadorial function of this fantastic bakery-cafe, with branches in Soho (14a Golden Square) and Marylebone (37b New Cavendish Street), cannot be undervalued. I’ve long been a fan of Nordic Bakery for its open-faced sandwiches, cinnamon pastries, and clean Nordic interior design. The menu also features savory Karelian pies, a triumphantly Finnish dish consisting of a thin rye crust typically cradling a rice filling. Egg butter (butter mixed with boiled eggs) is spread over the hot pie for extra heartiness. Karelian pies are delicious, if possibly most appropriate for subzero noshing.

Though Scandinavian Kitchen (61 Great Titchfield Street; not far from Nordic Bakery’s Marylebone branch) does not focus on Finnish products, it sells a smattering of Finnish items, notably Lapin Kulta beer.

The Finnish Church (33 Albion Street, Rotherhithe) features a cafe open seven days a week, as well as a library, Finnish satellite television, a shop selling Finnish products, a sauna (open Tuesday through Sunday, with some gender-segregated time slots), and a small and quite reasonable guesthouse. The sauna can be booked for private use.

Another resource is the Finnish-British organization Finn-Guild, which serves as a kind of cultural clearinghouse in the name of promoting Finnish culture and language in the UK. Finn-Guild publishes a quarterly magazine, coordinates English- and Finnish-language classes, sponsors cultural events, supports the Finnish Church in London, and operates a travel agency.

Also useful for an injection of Finnish culture: Finland’s UK embassy and the Finnish Institute in London. The latter, an institute receiving direct funding from the Finnish government, is a think tank with a rather heady brief, though not all of its work is serious. Last year, it commissioned London’s hugely successful pop-up Finnish restaurant HEL YES!.

[Image: Flickr | yisris]

Italian art in London

by Sean McLachlan on


One of the best collections of Italian art in the world can be found in an unlikely place: a quiet street in the London borough of Islington.

The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is housed in an elegant Georgian mansion and boasts a comprehensive collection of Italian Futurist paintings. Futurism was a style born out of the havoc of industrialization and the carnage of World War One. It emphasized the speed and technological advance of modern society.

Typical of this style is Umberto Boccio’s The City Rises, shown here courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This totally blew me away when I saw it at a special Futurist exhibition at the Estorick a few years ago. The people and buildings seem to be swept along by a windstorm of colored motion. It’s currently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Other paintings show Futurism’s trading ideas with Cubism, like Gino Severini’s Portrait of Eric Estorick, the museum’s founder. It’s more a study of angles and shading than an actual image of a man.

It’s not all Futurism here and the current exhibition, United Artists of Italy, is a collection of photographs of leading Italian artists. You can also get a taste of Italy at the cafe, where they serve up excellent cappuccinos (hard to find in London) and snacks.

St. Paul’s Cathedral in London finishes 15-year restoration

by Sean McLachlan on

After fifteen years and £40 million ($65 million), a massive restoration of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is finally finished.

The timing is perfect because it coincides with the 300th anniversary of the cathedral’s original completion.

Much of the restoration was actually a cleaning to get years of accumulated soot and grime off the structure. This dirt is acidic and can damage the fine white stone, as has happened at many historical buildings. Architectural details and interior decoration were repaired and restored to their original luster.

Located at the end of the Millennium Bridge on the north bank of the Thames, St. Paul’s is one of London’s greatest landmarks. A church has stood here since 604 AD, a time when much of England was still pagan, and this spot has remained spiritually important for Londoners ever since. A later version of the church burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666. Christopher Wren, the leading English architect of his day, was commissioned to rebuild it and made it his masterpiece.

A complete visit takes at least two hours, preferably three. One highlight is the Golden Gallery atop the dome, reached by climbing 530 steps. I think the view from here is the best in London. While the London Eye is taller, St. Paul’s is in the middle of the historic heart of London and so the view from here is more interesting.

The crypt holds the remains of many famous people such as William Blake, John Constable, and of course Christopher Wren. In his later years he used to sit in St. Paul’s and admire his masterpiece. His grave is marked by a simple plaque that reads in Latin, “Beneath lies buried the founder of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived more than 90 years, not for himself but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you,”

To celebrate the remodel, St. Paul’s is hosting a photo competition. Take a shot of the exterior of the shiny new/old building and you could see your work displayed in one of London’s most visited buildings.

[Image courtesy user Diliff via Wikimedia Commons]