The first improvement we may benefit from is the appointment of an Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections. This group would advise officials on customer service improvements and monitor changes.

Also there will be mandatory timeframes for follow-up on customer complaints combined with new regulation for how the complaints are handled. A study currently underway will increase the possibility of the airlines reimbursing travelers for delayed or lost baggage.

Another item on the bill would offer discounts to military passengers and their families. If you travel with a carseat or child safety seat, the airline will be required to post the maximum dimensions prior to a flight on their website. It will also be decided shortly, if travelers with smaller musical instruments can avoid checking them and take them aboard as a carry-on.

Cell phone users will be happy to know that the new bill requires the airline to begin a study that reveals whether usage actually has an impact on airline communication and decides if cell phone use will be permitted during flights. Of course the new bill reasserts that no smoking is allowed on any flights.

Customers who do have complaints can file them with the new DOT hotline, a dedicated line right to the department from the airline.

All and all it sounds like the new bill orders that many things be studied and investigated rather than calling for immediate change. The good news is that it does cover some legitimate territory. Hopefully the friendly skies are about to become a lot more friendly.

YouTube Vacationer, as they christened it, is an archive of video footage compiled from sources like National Geographic and LonelyPlanet. Have a look at their promotional video to get excited.

The channel is currently categorized into how you plan to vacate your normal life. Some choices proffered by YouTube are Spring Break destinations, Road Trips, Family Spots, or places that are just good to go and stuff your face (Food Spots, that is). Once you’ve decided on what type of vacation you have in mind, you can browse through a carousel of videos collected under that category to help you decide on where to go. Alternately, if you’re more of a map-minded traveler, you can choose to view the videos on an integrated Google Map that displays pinned locations of each of the videos

I foresee this site being less of a planner for a vacation you’ve already worked out and more of vacation eye candy that’s going to inspire you to spontaneously plan a long getaway weekend soon. Even then, if the worse thing this new channel does is make you wanna take a vacation, hopefully you’ve got the time and means to follow through with that urge. Get outta town, people.

Aerospace engineer and senior member of the technical staff at The Charles Draper Laboratory’s Human Centered Engineering Group or TCDLHCG for those pressed for time, Kevin R. Duda had this to say about space walking:

“When people go into space, they encounter weightlessness, which provides less resistance to their muscles and skeleton, causing muscle atrophy and bone loss.”

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, spoke about low gravity environments and astronauts, saying:

“Astronauts who are exposed to low gravity for long periods suffer from what we call musculoskeletal de-conditioning. This involves a 30-percent rise in muscle atrophy, a 40 percent reduction in muscle strength, as well as 1 to 2 percent loss in bone-mineral density each month.”

Having said that, Duda, Newman and a team of other researchers are working on a project to develop a new spacesuit that can help combat these “space threats” as well as combat some other similar problems such as bulk and weight.

Txchnologist.com says In the future, when astronauts prepare for EVAs also known as Extravehicular Activities, they will be able to sport new suits that are much lighter, flexible and less bulky than previous suits.

Current standard suits encapsulate users in full pressure environments that allow them to breathe fully without being exposed to the dangerous vacuum of space. However, the drawback of these current suits is their resistance to movement, which causes users to tire much quicker than they should.

The aforementioned research team led by Newman is currently combatting the current suits with a new “Squeeze Suit”. The new suits would give users a much better range of motion. The currently patented “BioSuit” is a mechanical counterpressure suit that will supply oxygen to the user’s helmet, but would elsewhere use tight bands to compress the body at certain points to counteract external pressure.

The BioSuit is constructed of a fabric made of spandex, nylon, and other plastic materials to replace compressed air, which, in turn, makes the suit more lightweight and maneuverable.

Newman commented on the the creation of the suit, saying:

“So far we have proven the technical feasibility of the BioSuit. We would need another three to five years of funding to produce a flight-worthy system.”

In addition to being used in space, these new suits could have several applications right here on Earth. Researchers say children suffering from cerebral palsy could benefit from wearing these compression suits. The “motion-control gyroscopes” could help keep a patient from moving in an otherwise unsafe manner or help them correct movements that would otherwise harm them. Duda had this to say:

“The units could be programmed to help you learn, or re-learn, specific motions.”

Almost 90% of these travelers expect free Wi-Fi to be available as part of their accomodations. Over 40% report that they have never paid for Wi-Fi in a hotel and 65% report that they have used Wi-Fi in hotel lobby’s and other common areas to avoid additional room charges for the service.

93% of the hotel representatives surveyed reported that they do offer some variety of free Wi-Fi for customers. Also of interest, over 50% of travelers claim they have canceled reservations because they found other places to stay that did offer free Wi-Fi.

The second most important factor in deciding to stay at a hotel was whether breakfast was included in the stay, followed by the availability of guest loyalty points. The number four factor was the availability of nearby restaurants. And finally, the number five deciding factor was the availability of some form of shuttle service.

Hotel representatives and customers alike, rated the above five items as the most important factors in deciding what hotels to stay at. This reveals, at least in the hotels surveyed, that representatives truly understand their customer’s needs.

The most striking figure that Airbnb now boasts is 5 million+ nights booked through the service. Out of all of those bookings, a quarter consisted of arrangements from a U.S. guest and a U.S. host. The rest of the bookings had either guests, hosts, or both from other countries. In the last year, the amount of booked nights has increased 500%.

Airbnb is now in 19,000+ cities and 192 different countries. They have seen off-the-charts growth in places like Italy, Spain, The UK, and France.

The growth has been so substantial, that Airbnb has announced in their blog post that they will be expanding. This means news offices in six different locations – Barcelona, Copenhagen, Milan, Moscow, Paris, and Sao Paulo. Airbnb already has offices in Berlin, Hamburg, London, and San Francisco.

Founder Joe Gebbia had this to say: “Being closer to our hosts and guests is a natural response. The next chapter will be about spreading the culture and values of Airbnb to our widest international communities.”

In May 2011, Ashton Kutcher invested in the company and joined the team as a “strategic advisor.” In July, they received $112 million in series b financing.

Airbnb tackled a little bit of controversy recently, as a couple of customers reported that their house had been burglarized and that Airbnb’s response was less than helpful. Airbnb apologized for the incidents, and by the looks of these figures, they haven’t done any lasting harm to the company.

Check out their infographic below:

“In a sense, the millions of people who come to Expedia® are now serving as your own personal travel agent, helping you find the best and most popular deals from your home city,” said Joe Megibow, vice president and general manager, Expedia.com. “So many customers travel with Expedia every month that it puts us in a great position to deliver this type of service to our customers. With Last-Minute Deals, you can get the best deals available by letting everyone else do your research for you.”

The deals are part of a new program by Expedia titled ASAP (A Sudden Amazing Price).

The project is dubbed Curators of Sweden, and in just about a month of existence has more than doubled the country’s official Twitter presence.

Here’s how it works. Every week, a new Swedish citizen take the wheel of @Sweden, the official Twitter account of the country’s tourism initiative. During that week, the average, everyday citizen gets to converse with other Twitter users and share their thoughts on the country. They also have the opportunity to share photos and tidbits about their favorite places to go and things to do where they live.

The idea with Curators of Sweden is that each curator will share both their own and relevant third party’s thoughts, stories, information and other content that is somehow linked to Sweden. The idea is that the curators, through their tweets, create interest and arouse curiosity for Sweden and the wide range the country has to offer. The expectation is that the curators will paint a picture of Sweden, different to that usually obtained through traditional media.

The project, an initiative of the National Board for the Promotion of Sweden (VisitSweden), is basically looking to market travel with the human element. Ask anyone who specializes in social media marketing – they will tell you that the more personal and human-like you can make your company’s social media accounts, the better. Sweden hopes that by giving people the chance to see the country through vastly different sets of eyes, they will inspire curiosity.

The initiative started on December 10th, and the first “Curator” was a writer and editor named Jack Werner. Since then there have been 5 other faces of Sweden, ranging from an advertising exec to an organic sheep farmer. The current voice of Sweden’s Twitter account in Hanna, who describes herself as an “average lesbian truck-driver.”

As you can see, the content of the account is pretty personal. The Swedes who run the account appear to face little to no censorship, as not all of the tweets coming from @Sweden praise the country and not all of the tweets would be considered “PC.”

Former tweeter Hasan Ramic tweeted that “the current Swedish welfare system is a bad joke compared to what it once was” and current tweeter Hanna had this to say regarding a certain archaic medical practice that’s still alive in her country:

So the @Sweden Twitter account feels like a mishmash of personal reflections, public declarations, and tourism promotion. And I guess that’s what the folks at VisitSweden want.

OK, that pretty much goes on all year ‘round.

Earlier this month, Google began showing its flight info (introduced back in September as the product of the company’s acquisition of ITA Software) right in regular search results for certain travel-related queries. Flight search was initially available via the left-hand navigation panel on Google searh result pages, but now these kinds of results are just the default search experience when Google thinks the users is looking for this kind of information.

“For example, if you search for [flights from San Francisco to Las Vegas] you’ll see a table that shows available flights, including duration and prices,” explained Emmet Connolly, UX designer on Google’s Flight Search feature. “You can adjust dates on the page, or click any flight to further research and book your trip.”

A new Wall Street Journal report says that the “top travel websites,” rely on Google for 10% to 20% of their traffic, citing Compete data, and that these sites are being pushed down Google’s SERPs in favor of Google’s own Flight search info. Obviously, they’re not happy about this.

There’s another interesting snippet from that report, talking about how Google said in talks with the Department of Justice around its ITA acquisition, that it would “build tools that drive more traffic to airline and online travel agency sites, and that competitors think Google is not living up to this promise. The report says:

Google acknowledges it has failed to make good on assurances it would link to the travel sites, but the company says it had no choice. “The airlines told us that they would not give us [travel data] if we provided booking links to” online travel agencies, Jeremy Wertheimer, ITA’s founder and now a Google vice president, said at an online travel conference last month.

It’s important to note that the DoJ did not require Google to link to the travel sites.

Google has been in antitrust discussions with regulators throughout the year, and last week, Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee put together a letter calling for an FTC investigation of Google, with an emphasis on the company’s search results. You can read that here.

Google paid $700 million to acquire ITA Software.

“Travelers passing through or delayed in over 50 airports across the country,” Skype’s Shadi Mahassel says, “will be able to access third-party hotspots using Skype WiFi and connect with loved ones via a Skype video or voice call for free.”

Here’s a look at the locations:

Included are airports in: Spokane, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Monterey, Burbank, Scottsdale, Juneau, Billings, Jackson Hole, Denver, Aspen, Durango, El Paso, Austin, Houston, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Des Moines, St. Louis, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Miami, Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago, South Bend, Kalamazoo, Mosinee (Central Wisconsin Airport), Detroit, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Albany, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Norfolk, Newport News, and more.

Mouseover the Skype logos to see all cities.

“The holidays are all about connecting with those you love,” says Mahassel. “Skype is excited to help you maintain these meaningful connections wherever you may be this holiday season. A voice or video call via Skype when you can’t be together for the holidays is the next best thing to being there.”

While you’re using your free Skype WiFi, Skype is asking users to tweet about their experience using the #freeskypewifi hashtag.

Lonely Planet, one of the most popular producers of travel guides around, it offering a 3-day special: you can download their guide to New York City for free through December 14th.

The Lonely Planet iOS app is free, but the actual travel guides cost a few bucks (usually $5.99 each). There are free “lite” guides to big cities like Paris, Rome, Las Vegas and yes, New York. But these are of course simply sample guides and won’t provide anything close to a comprehensive walkthrough.

The Lonely Planet app requires that the guides be downloaded, which is both good and bad in a way. Once you grab the guides, they are obviously accessible offline. But then again, they can be kind of large. For example, the NYC guide is about 45 MB.

The Lonely Planet app has over 70 city guides available for download, and a couple of cities like London and Paris even have their own audio walking tours. It also contains audio phrasebooks for over 25 different languages.

I took a Lonely Planet guide with me when I first visited New Orleans, and it was well worth the money. If you think you just might travel to NYC sometime soon, it would be ridiculous not to take advantage of the free offering of this incredibly comprehensive guide.

[Via The Next Web]