On the Road: Registered Traveler lanes closed; new hotels open

By Joe Brancatelli

SECURITY WATCH

All Airport Registered-Traveler Lanes Are Now Closed: Now you can write a definitive obituary for registered traveler programs. The last two players in the game, Flo and Vigilant, have now closed their airport lanes after Clear, the biggest operatorof airport-bypass services, folded in June. Flo, which operated line-jump lanes in Reno, and Vigilant, which operated in Jacksonville, Florida, and Louisville, Kentucky, insisted that they would continue to man their stations after Clear’s collapse. However, both operations have quietly disappeared and Jacksonville Airport authorities say Vigilant skipped out on bills of around $250,000. As with Clear, neither Flo nor Vigilant are expected to refund membership dues.

HOTEL HOT SHEET

Washington Gets a W Hotel:

Starwood, the worldwide hotel giant, has also opened a 317-room W Washington, D.C. on 15th and E streets in Washington, Sheraton hotels at Toronto/Pearson and Vancouver airports in Canada; and a 130-room Four Points across from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Meanwhile, Hilton has opened a Hilton Garden Inn in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, and a Hampton Inn in Yonkers, the Westchester County suburb north of New York City.
Radisson’s new stand is the 100-room Radisson Plaza Mississauga near Toronto/Pearson Airport.
A former 194-room Ramada Inn near General Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee has been reflagged as a Crowne Plaza hotel after a $14 million renovation.

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

How About a Hotel Suite in an Old Russian Jet? They make hotels out of all sorts of buildings these days: office buildings, prisons, printing plants, warehouses and, in Akron, Ohio, abandoned grain silos. But this one may take the room-service cake: The Airplane Suite is carved out of an Ilyushin 18 built in the old Soviet Union in 1960. The 40-meter-long aircraft has been turned into a suite for two people at a renovation cost of about $650,000. It sits at the end of a runway at the airport in Teuge, just outside of Amsterdam. The suite costs 350 euros a night.