U.S. Passport Changes are Coming
Passport changes are coming, and if you plan on traveling in the future — especially if you’re among the 49 million Americans whose passports will expire in the next few years — you need to know what passport changes are in store.
While it may seem easy enough to acquire or renew a passport if and when you plan a trip, the State Department says there’s about to be a massive backlog of passport applications. (More on that in a minute.) Plus, passports themselves are going to change. Here’s what you should know about both the expected passport application delays and the passport changes coming in the years ahead.
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New Scanners and Conveyors Could Make Airline Security Faster and Safer
The plastic explosive was molded into a thin sheet and hidden inside a laptop, the kind of hard-to-detect bomb that keeps airport security chiefs awake at night.
Terrorist devices such as this are the reason fliers have to remove laptops from carry-on bags at security checkpoints before boarding airplanes. But at a lab in an industrial park outside Boston, a new generation scanner spotted the mock "bomb" hidden in a suitcase within seconds, alerting test screeners by turning its image magenta on a computer.
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Hyatt Just Changed Its Loyalty Program to be More Like the Airlines
Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels announced changes to its loyalty program late last week that take a page out of the airline playbook. Starting in the 2018, earning elite status in the newly named World of Hyatt rewards program can partially be based on how much a consumer spends with the hotel, making top-tier status much harder to attain for budget travelers.
The changes are part of a broad-scale overhaul to Gold Passport, the chain’s current rewards program. At large, the new World of Hyatt program planned for 2018 (with qualification in 2017) will present a wider spectrum of options over more elite tiers than Gold Passport.
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