Elon Musk Wants to Buy a Hotel in D.C. (Reportedly)
Plus, a limit on drinks at airport bars, Japan's staggering numbers, Sofia Coppola's potential hotel project, and bad airline food collabs.
Greetings from Peru! I’m here in Lima resting before heading on a boat in the Amazon River. It’s been a dream trip for me for years, so am very excited! This week’s newsletter is broken into two. The first went out this morning to paid subscribers and is the latest destination guide, this time on the spectacular Tucson, Arizona (which the BBC just dubbed “The US's ancient, underrated culinary capital”). Past destination guides include: Menorca, Paris, Newport, Antwerp, and Montreal. As I’ve mentioned before, you can always sign up for a monthly subscription to get access to the ones you want and then go back to free.) The second part is this missive for free subscribers and has this week’s Department of Grievances and Industry News.
DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES
I want this newsletter to be a refuge from politics, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Eater DC reported a couple days ago that the frontrunner to buy the Line Hotel in Washington, D.C. is Elon Musk. The controversial billionaire reportedly has plans to buy the financially beleaguered hotel when it goes to auction this week and turn it into a private members’ club. The Line is sort of a sad tale. When the 220-room hotel opened nearly a decade ago, it filled a massive gap in the D.C. market—a hotel people wanted to hang out in. Unfortunately, it never recovered from COVID, and more hotels opened or stepped up their offerings in response. If this all turns out to be true, my first read is that it’s kind of bizarre. It’s not close to the White House and Adams Morgan isn’t exactly a bastion of Republicans. They tend to end up at The Wharf or Glover Park. The one caveat is the proximity to Kalorama. For the unfamiliar, it’s a neighborhood of detached Gilded Age mansions in the heart of the city where the Obamas, Bezos, and Ivanka and Jared have lived.
If you’re planning to go to Spain this summer from other parts of Europe, buy your flights now. RyanAir announced this week that as a result of its spat with Spanish airports over fees, it is reducing its flight schedule by 18 percent. That’s a pretty significant percentage, and even if you aren’t flying RyanAir, the airline keeps prices down at other carriers meaning you’ll likely see prices rise due to less competition.
Speaking of RyanAir, I mentioned last week the airline had filed a first-time civil suit over an unruly passenger. Now, the airline is defying Irish stereotypes and asking for rules on how much airport bars can serve customers. While I do think it’s ironic when companies who dislike regulation ask for regulations, I hope this is seriously considered. The antisocial outbursts that regularly occur on planes have to be dealt with head-on. We can’t get to a point where we just accept that this is part of dealing with airports and flying. And making sure people aren’t getting drunk in airports seems like an obvious step to take.
Your pool swim in Greece might soon feel a little different. The country is considering a new law that will allow hotels to pump seawater into their pools instead of fresh water. The country faces severe water shortages and so is trying to think creatively. I’m far from an expert on this but it seems like a pretty sensible solution. It sounds like the main concern is what happens to the water after it’s used. Will the hotels be able to just dump the chemically treated water right back in?
Feel like everybody you know has been in Japan? You’re not crazy. The country just set a record for visitors in a year, blowing past the previous record set in 2019. That year, just shy of 32 million people visited. In 2024, a staggering 36.8 million tourists visited the country. And with airlines continuing to add capacity and the exchange rate still favorable, I have a feeling 2025 will surpass that. Spain also announced it shattered its previous record, hitting 94 million visitors last year.
Southwest passengers will soon be able to book international flights thanks to the airline’s now-official deal with Icelandair. Starting in February, travelers can to connect at BWI (Baltimore-Washington) from Southwest flights to Icelandair flights. A similar connection will later be available at Denver and Nashville. On the one hand, kudos to Southwest for getting creative and reacting to the seemingly insatiable demand Americans have to go to Europe. The biggest lesson of the past two years was how much worse airlines focused on the domestic market fared. That being said, this whole thing sounds miserable. Flying to BWI to then fly to Iceland to then fly to Europe sounds brutal and not worth the couple hundred dollars you’re saving.
Italy is considering a law to require ID to review a restaurant or hotel to crack down on fake reviews. On the one hand, given the proliferation of BS on the internet, the intentions here are great. But I think the details of the proposed law (provide ID, proof of visit, reviews posted within 15 days, and “must be relevant and detailed”) mean that only good ones the restaurants want to leave unchallenged will stay up. Or, only unhinged people who want to go through all that will be posting which will make the reviews less and less relevant.
The food on United has gotten significantly better the last handful of long-haul flights I’ve taken but good lord can they stop the collaboration with Milk Bar? The packaged desserts are, no exaggeration, gross. And I think it does a disservice to both brands.
…While on the topic of airline food collaborations, I enjoyed this Substack on the perils of those partnerships.
A high-speed rail between Chicago and Minneapolis is a no-brainer…
I’m not the target demographic, but when I think of scents I want to be around more, an airplane isn’t one of them. Yet Air France just launched its first signature home fragrance, AF001. Has anybody tried it? Or plan to?
One of the biggest criticisms of the AI industry is that a lot of it provides services that nobody has asked for or wants. That’s certainly how I’d classify this gimmick by Qatar Airways which just debuted “the world’s first AI-powered digital crew member influencer on Instagram” to engage with people there and inspire trips. I can’t think of anything less appealing in the current environment.
TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS
San Vicente Bungalows New York is delayed until March
This NYC train station just won an award from the UN for interior design
Starbucks to require people who sit inside or use bathrooms to be paying customers
TSA says you need your Real ID by May (and they insist they’re serious this time)
Turkish Airlines resumes flights to Benghazi for first time in ten years
Vail Resorts gives credit to customers affected by the strike
The U.S. government fined Frontier and sued Southwest over chronically late flights
Sofia Coppola is looking into doing a hotel project
Gol and Azul are proposing a merger
The death toll from a plague of counterfeit alcohol in Turkey is rising