Editor’s note: Columnist Brett Snyder is the founder of air travel assistance site Cranky Concierge, and he writes the consumer air travel blog The Cranky Flier.

(CNN) – When you look to buy airline tickets later this week, it might seem like prices have shot up. For once, that’s not actually the case.

Higher advertised fares are the result of new Department of Transportation rules that are going into effect under the banner “Enhancing Airline Passenger Protections #2.”

Higher prices shown up front is one of the four main changes that you’ll see when the the new rules go into effect starting Tuesday, so let’s talk about what will happen.

Full fare advertising

On some airline websites and in ads, you’ve probably seen fares displayed as a certain amount plus taxes and fees. That’s a pretty common thing throughout society, but the DOT has decided that it’s unacceptable for airline travelers. Beginning Thursday, the advertised price has to be the total price including any mandatory per passenger taxes and fees.

Let’s say that there’s a sale for $59 each way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now, the airline can advertise it as $59 each way plus taxes and fees.  On Thursday, it will have to be shown as $69.80 each way. This applies to advertisements, but more importantly, it applies to reservation websites. They can no longer show just the base fare in the search results.

This may seem a little strange since it’s not the case in other industries. Hotels still show base rate before taxes and fees, for example. But this is how the DOT wants the airline industry to work.

Wondering what exactly is included in this new fare? Fuel surcharges must be included in the rate (as has been the case for years anyway) and any mandatory fees. Of course, most of the fees people see adding up today are optional fees, like baggage charges, and those can still be broken out. There are, however, a slew of regulations impacting them as well.

Fees become more prominent and standardized

The DOT has decided to regulate optional fee disclosure to make pricing clearer, but unfortunately, the new rules might end up doing the exact opposite.

A couple of things make good sense. If there is a change in bag fees or baggage allowances, the airlines must prominently display a link to the change on their homepages for at least three months. Airlines will also have to make available a complete list of rates for all optional services, from pillows to food and drinks.  

While airlines have to get into specifics for bag fees, the rest can be listed in ranges of fees, making the information somewhat less useful. These changes sound good, but then the DOT steps up disclosure where it might hit the point of overload.

Under the new rules, anytime a fare quote is given, airlines have to let passengers know that “bag fees may apply.” In addition, when a ticket is purchased, the airline must include in the e-ticket receipt, a complete list of all possible bag fees and allowances.

That means detailing different rules for elite frequent fliers, different rules by class of service, etc. If you’re wondering where they’ll put it, it will undoubtedly go into the fine print at the bottom that nobody reads anyway because there are already too many disclosures down there.

One actual victory for travelers here centers around which bag fees get charged when a traveler is booked on codesharing airlines for trips beginning or ending in the U.S. Today, if you buy a ticket on, say, American, but your first flight is on its codeshare partner Etihad, then the baggage rules on Etihad usually apply.  

The new rule means that the policies of the marketing airline, in this case American, apply regardless of who is operating the flight. That sounds good, but in practice it’s going to be very difficult to implement and enforce.

No more opt-out

If you’ve ever bought a ticket from an ultra low-cost airline like Allegiant or Spirit, you might have found yourself frustrated by the dreaded “opt-out” procedure. You know how it works. The travel insurance or some other optional service might be automatically checked. If you don’t want it, you have to uncheck it before you continue or it will be charged. This rule makes that illegal going forward.  All optional services will be “opt-in” only.

No price increases after you buy

This might sound silly, but fares can no longer be increased after tickets have been purchased. Has this been a problem? No. But it does prevent Allegiant from doing something that travelers might have liked.

Allegiant had discussed the idea of giving travelers the choice of two fares. One would be higher, but would not change. The other would be lower, but would go up if the price of fuel went up. So it would simply tie a piece of the fare to the cost of fuel. If people wanted to take a gamble on fuel prices, they could buy the lower fares. That, however, is no longer an option. But it really is minor since the option wasn’t yet offered anyway.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Brett Snyder

Instead, the DOT said it will be lenient in the enforcement of the new rules until airlines can modify their reservations and check-in systems to comply. 

The move affects two of several new consumer rules developed last year that are slated to become effective on Jan. 26. 

The first requires that airlines disclose, in online receipts and on e-ticket confirmations, the specific fees and allowances that apply to the particular itinerary for carry-on items and the first and second checked bag, including information on how the fees are affected by the traveler’s frequent flyer-status, affinity card usage or other circumstances. 

The second rule stipulates that the baggage allowances and fees on multi-carrier itineraries must be the same throughout, governed by the first carrier on the itinerary or, in the case of codeshares, the marketing carrier whose code is displayed. 

Airlines from around the world deluged the DOT with comments and affidavits in November claiming that their systems cannot be modified in time to comply for numerous technical reasons. 

It turns out, for example, that many widely used airport check-in systems cannot access information about previous carriers on an itinerary in order to apply their baggage policies and fees. 

In an order issued late last week the DOT acknowledged that technical hurdles remain, but refused to change the effective date. It said carriers have already had many months to program their systems to comply, and passengers deserve the protection that the rules are intended to provide. 

According to the DOT, it should be no problem for airlines to apply the two rules to their own itineraries and to connecting itineraries that involve regional affiliates or alliance partners. 

As for other types of itineraries, the DOT said it will suspend enforcement of the rule for six months on interline itineraries and international codeshares if two conditions are met. 

First, carriers must provide a link on the e-ticket confirmation to websites of codeshare or interline partners, where passengers can find the applicable baggage allowance and fee information. 

Second, carriers must reimburse passengers upon request if the airlines’ failure to apply the same fees throughout an itinerary results in an overcharge. 

In a related action, the DOT said recently that it will suspend enforcement of another provision of the new consumer rules that prohibits airlines from increasing the prices of ancillary services after the passengers purchases a ticket. 

This provision is under review by the U.S. Court of Appeals because some airlines claim the DOT lacks the authority and/or the justification to freeze the price for services such as meals and WiFi at the rates in effect when the passenger books, if these items are not purchased with the ticket. 

The DOT said in a recent advisory that it has decided to “revisit” the issue and will suspend enforcement, except with respect to baggage fees, pending a new rulemaking on the matter. 

This means that effective Jan. 26, a passenger’s baggage fees will be those in effect on the date the ticket was purchased, but the fees for other ancillary services will be those in effect at the time the services are purchased.

Several industry watchers pinned last week’s widely adopted $6 roundtrip transatlantic fare increase on the European Union’s new Emissions Trading Scheme. If analyst expectations come to pass, the airlines have only just begun.

While the ETS program‘s expense for individual airlines varies greatly, OAG in an analysis released this week estimated that carriers would need to bump up fares by 3 percent on average to counter the new cost item. As such, OAG predicted “a significant proportion of ETS costs” would be passed on to air passengers.

OAG is not alone in that assessment. Deutsche Bank airline analyst Michael Linenberg this week wrote that he expects airlines “to raise air fares as a means to preserve their razor-thin profit margins.”

Several major airlines last week matched a $6 roundtrip transatlantic surcharge imposed by Delta Air Lines and some SkyTeam partners, according to FareCompare.com CEO Rick Seaney. They included Air Canada, Air France-KLM, Alitalia, American Airlines, British Airways, Lufthansa, United and US Airways, according to FareCompare.com data. Virgin Atlantic remained a notable holdout. Although Seaney and various media reports attributed the increase to ETS, airlines generally have not commented on the rationale. Before matching Delta, Lufthansa said it would pass along the cost of ETS and that its fuel surcharges would “reflect both the price of oil and the cost of acquiring emission rights.”

Still, a $6 roundtrip increase falls well short of the 3 percent fare increase anticipated by OAG, which therefore expects additional, incremental price increases in the future. “The potential effect of the EU ETS on the airline industry in 2012 will be small as this will be a probationary year for carriers, but cost pressure will rise in 2013 as the emissions cap (and therefore the amount of free allowances) is tightened,” the company wrote. The International Air Transport Association estimated the 2012 cost of ETS at €900 million, growing to €2.8 billion by 2020.

While fare increases likely would be the first response by airlines looking to mitigate the additional expense of ETS, OAG noted they also could modify route networks to avoid connections through increasingly costly EU-based points.

“Whilst this is not an option for EU-based passengers, European airports may become less competitive for passengers coming from outside the EU to transit through to an end destination outside Europe,” according to OAG. “This would benefit those airports in non-ETS affected countries just outside the EU as well as those airports such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha that have configured their businesses around the transfer of passengers across the globe.”

To be known as “meet and seat,” the online service will give passengers access to the profiles of their fellow fliers’ Facebook and LinkedIn pages, from where they may choose – using guidelines such as looks, interests and career fields – which passengers they’d most like to sit next to.

The airline has thus-far refused to say if the new “matchmaking” service will involve a fee, but many airlines currently charge passengers to decide seat preferences – via widely available seat maps – in advance.

The Independent reports the new service could have many beneficial aspects, from the ability to avoid the “traveler from hell,” to finding business connections, to stumbling upon a love interest.

Though this service would be a firm step outside the box, airlines are now heavily involved in social networking, with British Airways boasting more than 136,000 Twitter followers and regularly running competitions on Facebook.

A recent poll by a flight comparison website found that of 1,000 flyers surveyed, some 45 percent admitted flirting whilst airborne. One third of those polled said the chance meeting lead to further contact once the plane reached its destination, with eight percent claiming it led to a relationship, the Independent reports.

Our summer vacations were modest in nature, but explain that to a 4-year-old. They were my first epiphany that a whole world existed outside my small-town bubble in upstate New York. 

That impression was cemented for life when I traveled to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to visit a Dominican friend who lived there with her large and welcoming family. Years later, I would visit the gorgeous resorts and golf meccas lining the country’s coastline, but during that first trip to the nation’s capital — at 15, it was the first stamp in my first passport — I dwelled in luxury of another kind: total immersion in a vibrant Latino culture about which I knew next to nothing. 

This was my first aha! moment, when I discovered that travel opens up your world and can change your life. I was hooked. 

I have had countless aha! moments since then, the most special of which fill the pages of my book “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” (Workman Publishing). No one was more shocked than I at the immediate and international response to the book when it was released in 2003. Apparently, its popularity across all demographics was telling me, the world loved to travel as much as I did’

One of the book’s major hooks was the inclusion of practical information for travelers: Most of the thousand entries end with suggestions and prices for hotels, both high-end and modest, with telephone listings and website information, plus when-to-go suggestions for best weather as well as local festivals. We also suggested tour operators and others who specialize in destinations less frequently visited by Westerners, where independent travel might be a challenge (Africa, Asia, etc.). 

When I wrote the first edition, there were those who asked me how I would ever find enough places to hit the 1,000 mark. Did people really think there were so few places on this earth worth the journey? All those destinations that sadly didn’t make the final cut for the original book due to space restrictions — Italy’s Piedmont wine region, Tel Aviv’s White City, the stunning Amritsar in India’s Punjab state — were stored away in a safe corner of my mind and would become the beginnings of the new edition, published last month, with hundreds of additions. 

No sooner was the ink dry on the first edition than I took a breath and set off again, out to add to my list of the world’s wonders. I stumbled upon remarkable places that had simply not been on my radar (the clutch of Unesco-protected Byzantine monasteries in Cyprus’ Troodos Mountains, Greenland, the monumental ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon) and finally made it to places that had long been on my own dream list. I am still pinching myself following a recent visit to the Sing Sing Festival of Papua New Guinea. As surreal journeys go, this one easily takes the blue ribbon. 

Since beginning research in the mid-1990s for the first “1,000 Places” book (it would take me eight years to complete, despite my publisher’s innocent suggestion of one — and two if needed), the world has changed in ways both staggering and small. 

Staggering when I think of the number of former Soviet Bloc countries now open for business and touting their attractions. Once perceived as dark and unwelcoming, and for the most part deservedly so, they were grappling with their nascent independence but with a promise and rich history that was being allowed to shine again. 

In those first years of my research, the intrepid and curious flocked to Berlin, Prague, Budapest and Moscow, some of the first cities to welcome tourism; they made a modest appearance in the original edition of “1,000 Places.” Tourists were few, and the Soviet legacy was both palpable and visible, at once disquieting and quasi-threatening but always with an underpinning of excitement. 

Bragging rights played a role for those who arrived in those heady years following the fall of the Wall in 1989. With half-empty grocery store shelves and dim-bulbed eateries serving uninspired food, it was as close as many of us would come to experiencing how life must have been behind the Iron Curtain. Hotels were modest at best, and guest services was an exotic concept not yet heard of, much less embraced. It was worth every effort to get there before the Golden Arches did. 

Fast-forward two decades, and many of those cities are today unrecognizable — in a positive way, for the most part. The newly unified Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and Russia warranted rewritten and expanded chapters to reflect the work-in-progress infrastructure evident today in these increasingly popular destinations. 

Add to them the inclusions of other former Eastern Bloc nations that didn’t make the original book: the charming and history-rich Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, easy to visit in a single north-to-south sweep. At the heart of their flourishing capital cities are historical centers that have been designated World Heritage Sites and are some of the largest and best preserved in Europe. South of there, the Balkan countries of Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro, exiting the series of wars from 1991 to 1995, are enjoying increasing numbers of in-the-know visitors, promising a tantalizing corner of the eastern Mediterranean with vestiges of Venice’s one-time maritime power and frequented by today’s international glamorous set. 

These and others, including Vanuatu, Mauritius, Tajikistan and Ghana, make up the second edition’s 28 new countries that have helped bring the revamped “1,000 Places” up to snuff. 

Keeping up with emerging or changing destinations is a challenge in a world where the attention span of a fruit fly is commonplace. Those places that enjoy a lot of press are hard to miss: Who isn’t aware that Rio will host the 2014 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, with the 2016 Summer Olympics fast on its heels? Ukraine will have its 15 minutes when it co-hosts the Euro 2012 soccer tournament; Belfast is curiously using 2012, the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, built in the city’s famous shipyards (“It was fine when it left here!”), to shine a spotlight on this once-again vibrant city, eager to move beyond the global impression left by the decades-long period known as the Troubles. 

Extravagant beauty campaigns funded by boards of tourism convince us that India, Chile and Mexico must be seen before we die (I concur), while box-office films set in Bruges, Bora Bora and Tuscany as interpreted by Merchant Ivory portray a setting and scenery that often steal the show and are the true protagonists. 

Some of my first airplane tickets were impulsively purchased after seeing the emerald green backdrop of “Ryan’s Daughter” (Ireland), “Lawrence of Arabia” (Jordan’s Wadi Rum), “Out of Africa, “Indochine” (Vietnam and Malaysia), “Passage to India” and “Brave Heart” (Ireland filling in for the Highlands of Scotland). 

The story line will fade over time, but I can conjure the scenes and almost smell the heather (rush-hour fumes, ocean air, etc.) in a film where the star, to me, was often the scenery. Who can remember what Leonardo DiCaprio was doing on Koh Phi Phi Island in “The Beach”? Yet who can forget the translucent waters of that gorgeous Thai island and the Technicolor sunsets that seemed too beautiful to be real? 

Other destinations might not profit from the same marketing savvy, deep coffers or Hollywood connections. They stand by quietly, waiting for their close-up, for a little attention from the glossy magazines or a nod from a celebrity visitor. (Turks and Caicos benefited when Demi and Ashton recently chose the island to stage a last-ditch tryst to save their marriage. It didn’t work, but the world learned about the sandy slice of heaven where they gave it a go.) 

Keeping my ear to the ground and an eye on any publication even remotely travel-related, I try not to bypass the places that deserve our attention: Colombia is no doubt happy to be absent from the headlines these days. But it is also no doubt frustrated that the travel world doesn’t acknowledge that its drug-cartel era is a thing of the past and recognize it as one of South America’s most charming and intoxicating locales, something that anyone who has ever visited can confirm. 

Lebanon’s lack of press, too, can be interpreted favorably: Surrounded by bordering nations caught up in the Arab Spring, its capital city of Beirut feels light years away from a region beset by emotional protest and revolt-related risk. A visit here reveals a quasi-European pace and style, with a host of excellent restaurants open till late and a few choice hotels that can easily make the world’s best-of list. 

Nearby Jordan, too, has managed to maintain an image of calm and welcomes a slight stream of tourism. 

But elsewhere, the situation in neighboring Syria and Yemen is serious enough to discourage any form of tourism. Still, I have left them in the revision, two of my favorite countries anywhere, as informative and evocative armchair reads while the world prays for a quick resolution of their situation. 

Every day they remind me of the urgency implied in the title of my book. While the fragility of our own lives should never be ignored, nor can we overlook the ephemeral nature of the world’s wonders: One tsunami, one volcanic eruption, one wave of revolution across the Arab world, and the map of travel possibilities can change in a second. 

There are no guarantees that just because the pyramids are older than time, they will always be available to us. Carpe diem and postpone no pleasure. 

Those who don’t relish running up against the unpredictability of the world when far from home, or those impoverished of time and budget, might consider joining the 70% or so of Americans who don’t hold a passport and adhere to the notion that “there’s no place like home.” 

I became officially in awe of the wealth of possibilities within America’s borders when writing “1,000 Places to See in the USA & Canada Before You Die” (Workman Publishing), and it is from this “short list” that I whittled it down even further. The revision of “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” has a U.S. chapter that is a glorious mixed bag of the predictable (Mount Rushmore, the Pacific Coast Highway, Monument Valley), and the unexpected (the Iowa State Fair; Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail; and Shipshewana, Ind., America’s third-largest Amish community). 

But seeing what awaits us in our own backyard can only make sense if seen within the perspective of the big picture. “1,000 Places” encourages readers to assume that basing your views of the world and life as drawn from travels within the U.S. alone should never be considered an option. 

If Shakespeare thought that all the world is a stage, I would humbly add that it might also be considered a classroom. Although one without walls, it promises legions of teachers and invaluable life lessons of all shapes and sizes. For travelers who subscribe to the notion that it is never too late to learn, the lessons are countless, and the rewards invaluable. 

Travel will open you up to all of that. It will open your eyes and your head and your heart and change you in ways both profound and subtle. Or you can opt for the less strenuous, less expensive and immeasurably more comfortable option of the staycation, an absurd idea that never really appealed to me. I don’t think St. Augustine would have cared for it, either. 

“Life is like a book,” he said, “and he who does not travel, reads just one page.”

The airlines say they are trying to develop the technology to comply but cannot do so by Jan. 24, the current effective date. In addition to asking for another year, they are asking for further clarification of some of the fine points of the new rules, which are apparently turning out to be more complicated than originally envisioned. 

When the DOT adopted the rules in April, it set an August effective date, then changed that to January when carriers claimed they needed more time to reprogram their systems. 

Now the airlines are saying the five-month delay was not nearly enough. 
At issue are two related provisions. One would require airlines to disclose, in online receipts and on e-ticket confirmations, the specific fees and allowances that apply to a particular itinerary. 

The DOT has stated that the disclosure cannot be a mere list of the standard fees and allowances, which are already posted on airline websites. Instead, they must explain the various factors, such as credit card usage or frequent-flyer status, that can affect the policy toward carry-on items or the first and second bag. 

The second rule stipulates that on multi-segment itineraries to, from or within the U.S., the same allowances and fees must apply throughout. 
There are two variations. 

On interline itineraries in general, the rule states that the entire itinerary is to be governed by the policies of the first carrier shown on the ticket, even if the rules of a downline carrier are more advantageous to the passenger. 

In the case of codeshares, the rules of the marketing carrier (i.e., the carrier whose code is on the reservation) take precedence over the rules of the operating carrier. 

In the case of the first rule, according to the airlines, automated systems do not provide ticketing carriers with the specific information required to be disclosed when it pertains to the baggage policies of other airlines. 

As for the second rule, airport check-in systems do not provide the transporting carriers with information that would enable them to apply the baggage policies of other carriers on the itinerary. 

The carriers limited their request to the two baggage provisions, and are not seeking a delay of the new full-fare advertising rule, which will require them and other travel sellers to include all taxes and mandatory fees in all advertising and fare quotes. 

Affidavits 

The petition was filed by the four major associations — IATA, Airlines for America (formerly the Air Transport Association), the Regional Airline Association and the Air Carrier Association. 

The petition included sworn affidavits and statements from 11 airline IT, customer-service and marketing-automation officials explaining the technical challenges. 

A central issue is that many airport check-in systems used in and outside the U.S. are not Internet-enabled and lack any way to identify airlines that handled the passenger on previous segments, or to access any database to verify the baggage policies and fees of other airlines whose policies are to govern the itinerary. 

An example provided by JetBlue explained that the airline has an interline relationship with South African Airways but has no active partnership with Kenya Airways. Yet it is theoretically possible, JetBlue said, for South African or one of its agents to issue a single ticket for travel originating on Kenya, connecting to South African, and then to JetBlue. 

If the itinerary included multiple stops within the U.S. on JetBlue, there would be no way for a check-in agent on one of those segments even to know that the itinerary had originated on Kenya Airways. 

As a United official explained it in a sworn affidavit, “United’s and Continental’s check-in systems were developed to handle a customer’s itinerary on the day of check-in, plus the customer’s downline connection only. These systems … do not have and cannot access the passenger’s preceding itinerary” to determine the rules of the originating carrier. 

Alaska, Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, Lufthansa, Delta, Cathay Pacific and other airlines submitted similar statements. 

Alaska Airlines’ director of airport technology, in an affidavit sworn under penalty of perjury, stated that the company is working with its provider, Sabre, to modify its systems but will not be able to meet the deadline because, in essence, the technology to do so does not exist. 

Global data  

ATPCO, the airline-owned company that manages the industry database of fares and rules, is still developing a central repository of information about baggage fees and rules. Once it is complete, airlines say they will need to build software solutions enabling their particular systems to access that repository. 

The complexity of that task varies from carrier to carrier. Some systems, such as Delta’s, are based on 1960s technology. 

As Delta explained it to the DOT, “Deltamatic’s core structure did not include the programming to accommodate first and second checked-bag fees, and the important exceptions to them, such as exemptions for frequent flyers. 

“This functionality has been achieved in Deltamatic through extensive coding of line-item statements within the programs for each respective bag-fee scenario (commonly referred to as “hard-coding” if-then statements). These statements are read in sequential order to determine which statement to apply to the given passenger.” 

According to Delta, “The core structure within the Deltamatic baggage programs must now be re-engineered.” 

Virgin Atlantic said its Shares legacy system, originally an EDS product that is now managed by Hewlett-Packard, will require 3,000 hours of programming. 

The airlines also submitted a statement from Daniel Friedli, Hewlett-Packard’s transportation product manager, who said that merely pulling baggage data from a central database and printing it on the confirmation is an imperfect solution because “any downline person or system will not be aware of the exact charges, conditions and other baggage-related information that was presented to the passenger.

“If the rules are not stored in the [e-ticket] itself, they will never be known to any of the downline carriers, making it impossible to know or enforce the rules, and reproduce a receipt with the same information.” 

He continued, “For this to work through all instances, and also in follow-up transactions such as [e-ticket] exchanges, all data must be stored in the [e-ticket],” a step that would entail still more delay. 

‘Clarifications’ 

In addition to the fundamental technology issues, the airlines appear to be confronting complexities inherent in various clarifications that the DOT has issued to cover exceptions and circumstances not envisioned in the original language of the rule. 

For example, the DOT had to clarify that if a bag becomes overweight when a passenger goes on a shopping spree during a stopover in a foreign country, the next transporting carrier must assess the excess fee of the originating carrier. 

The DOT added that it can do so in local currency, but any foreign government tax on that fee would have to have been disclosed on the original e-ticket confirmation. 

The DOT has also offered this explanation of how to handle a two-carrier itinerary from Miami to New York via Washington, included in an FAQ distributed to airlines earlier this year: 

“Carrier A operates the Miami-Washington and New York-Miami segments, and Carrier B operates the Washington-New York segment. However, Carrier B’s code and flight number are shown on the ticket for the Miami-Washington and Washington-New York segments, and Carrier A’s code and light number are shown for the New York-Miami segment. 

“Because the first flight is a codeshare and Carrier B is the marketing carrier for that flight, Carrier B’s baggage allowances and fees apply throughout the itinerary.” 

Carriers have advised the DOT that the application of Carrier B’s policies in this instance could conflict with industrywide practices governed by IATA Resolution 302, which states that the rules of the “most significant carrier” should govern on carrier itineraries when one airline has a comparatively minor role. 

The airlines have asked the DOT to give them the flexibility, which the regulation does not offer, to rely on the globally recognized IATA resolution or to abide by the practices of the airline whose policies are more advantageous to the passenger.

The first quick-charge station also opened, where drivers pull in, charge up and get back on the road quickly.

Three taxis were in the initial fleet, but a total of 100 are expected by year’s end.

The Leaf is a four-door hatchback that runs entirely on an electric motor, with a maximum range of 100 miles per charge.

Nissan said that the fleet of 100 Leaf taxis, based on a daily taxi run of 180 miles, would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by five tons per day.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has championed the use of alternative forms of transportation through programs such as the share-bicycle Eco-Bici, where bikes can be picked up or dropped off with a smart card at stations in the downtown area.

Leaf taxis currently are in use in New York, Toronto, Belfast, Osaka and other cities, according to Nissan.

All that is left of many business centers is a small room with a few computers and printers, used mainly by travelers who have a document or boarding pass to print, or who need to check e-mail and do not have a laptop or smartphone. Guests usually get in and out quickly, rather than spending hours working there.

The Silver Cloud Hotel Seattle-Broadway, part of a 10-hotel chain in the Northwest, offers two workstations and two printers — “and business people barely use them,” said the hotel’s general manager, Chauncey DeVitis. Free Wi-Fi and the copy machine behind the front desk seem adequate for most business travelers these days, he said.

The needs of business travelers have “changed significantly in the past few years,” said Monika Nerger, Mandarin Oriental’s chief information officer. So while the hotel chain maintains its business centers, it also employs mobile “tech butlers” to help guests in lobbies and guest rooms, and keeps a supply of power cords and other items a guest might need.

Greg Schwartz, chief revenue officer of Zillow, said he stayed in hotels about 100 nights a year, and his favorite place to work on the road was in a comfortable lobby chair looking out at the street. When he needs to make a conference call, Mr. Schwartz said, he finds, “a nice quiet spot behind a potted plant.”

He says he rarely visits hotel business centers but has noticed they are more likely to offer just three or four computers, rather than a set of cubicles with 10 or 15 workspaces.

Business travelers do not want to go to a windowless business center, said Niki Leondakis, president and chief operating officer of the Kimpton hotel chain, but they do need to use their computers, make calls and print documents. She said Kimpton had refurbished many guest rooms to include bigger desks with improved lighting and an ergonomic rolling chair, rather than an armchair.

“It’s just about everything that used to be in a business center except the printer,” she said. Guests use their room for conference calls as well as individual work, she said.

At the Peninsula Hotel in Tokyo, guest rooms are equipped with fax and printing capabilities, and televisions that can connect to laptop computers. A business center in the basement houses three computer booths and a printer, and while an employee currently works there, the hotel is considering leaving it unstaffed because few guests use it.

The Four Seasons Hotel in Beirut has two computers in its business center, and provides translating services there — a feature offered by many international hotels.

As part of a large survey project, Holiday Inn gave guests a journal to record what they did in the hotel and where they spent their time. The company found that business travelers used the hotel’s high-speed Internet connections and printing to help them get work done, but did not want to leave the lobby.

“Guests are social,” said Verchele Wiggins, vice president of global brand management for Holiday Inn. “They want to be productive, but they like to be around other people.”

This spring, Holiday Inn removed the business center at its hotel in Atlanta and introduced “The Hub” to test the concept of a lobby that also acts as a business center, living room and place to eat. “Travelers are multitasking all the time,” Ms. Wiggins said. They may be checking their e-mail while they are drinking their morning cappuccino, or printing a boarding pass while waiting for a taxi to the airport.
The lobby offers free Wi-Fi, power outlets to charge computers and phones, and a small row of computers and wireless printing. A so-called eBar allows business people to meet over cocktails, surrounded by library shelves.

“It’s the environment they want,” Ms. Wiggins said.

While many of the new services for business travelers are inspired by research and surveys, others are serendipitous. As part of the Hub, Holiday Inn installed a Wii game console for families to use, but it found that business travelers were using it more than leisure travelers. “We had to install another Wii for the business people,” Ms. Wiggins said.

Franchise owners around the country have seen the concept and are requesting a Hub on their property, Ms. Wiggins said, and any property that gets one will have its business center removed.

Many new hotels are being designed with scaled-down business centers or none at all. The Four Seasons Hotel Denver, which opened in 2010, has a business center with three workstations and one printer. And the Hyatt Olive 8 in Seattle, which opened in 2009, has a kiosk for printing boarding passes in the lobby but no dedicated room with equipment. The coffee bar offers free Wi-Fi, and there is a laptop at the front desk that hotel guests can borrow.

Other hotels are also changing their idea of a business center. Mandarin Oriental has designed a business lounge in its new hotel in Milan. Currently under construction, it will be a place for business travelers to meet, get work done, borrow an iPad or play games on Microsoft surface tables. The space is designed to “reduce the sense of isolation that business travelers may feel when working alone in a hotel room,” Ms. Nerger said.

Shangri-La Hotels, which plans to build about 40 new luxury hotels over the next five years, mostly in Asia, is designing its new business centers with just a few computers and printers, and intends to offer more lounge spaces and small meeting rooms.

Mr. Schwartz of Zillow said he did not miss working in a traditional hotel business center. “Inevitably I’d be grinding though a strategy document and some guy in the next cubicle would be talking loudly on a call, and I couldn’t get away from it,” he said.

Now, Mr. Schwartz said, he just moves to another part of the lobby or behind a different potted plant.