A Thank You to Two Travel Companies, In the Wake of Sandy

Apologies that "daily briefings" weren't possible last week. Like many on the East Coast, I was stripped by Sandy of my access to electricity (not to mention school for my kids, heat and hot water). For this return post, I wanted to send a shout out to two travel companies who acted with particular kindness during Hurricane Sandy.

The first is JetBlue, which quietly and with little fanfare, sent food trucks to my powerless neighborhoods which distributed free (and delicious!) bahn mi sandwiches, blue potato chips (of course!) and cookies to anybody who was hungry. I haven't seen any coverage of JetBlue's actions (though I may have missed it, as I've been without power) and wanted to make sure it was acknowledged.

The second company is AirBnB, which waived its booking fees for more than 20,000 listings in Sandy-affected areas. Free booking will continue through November 7. The company also reached out to its members to encourage them to lower nightly prices and even waive them entirely for people in need. No word on how many AirBnBers heeded the call to charity, but as someone who's stayed in quite a few AirBnB apartments, my guess is that a lot did (the hosts tend to be delightful, generous folks).

I'll be on the lookout for other travel companies to praise in the upcoming days.