Andrea Sachs
Andrea Sachs is a staff writer at the Washington Post who covers the business and logistics of travel, focusing on how transportation systems, rules and destinations affect everyday travelers. Her reporting follows the traveler through security checkpoints, flights, hotels, trains and national parks, explaining policy changes, pricing shifts and operational quirks in clear, service-driven stories. She has written for the Travel section since 2000, building a long-running beat that combines industry coverage with on-the-ground experience across nearby and far-flung places.
TSA officers must now stand up on the job
Sachs covers security and airport policy as a lived experience, using rule changes to show how travel infrastructure touches individual passengers. In recent coverage she explains Transportation Security Administration decisions, such as requiring officers to stand at document-checking stations, by detailing what the change looks like in practice and how it alters time spent in line and at checkpoints. She writes about new passport features and design shifts in pieces that walk readers through specific changes, including added security elements and technology updates, and then translates those into concrete implications for travel planning and border control. Her work often highlights operational pain points such as chaotic connections, long queues and confusing layouts, including analysis of the worst airports for tight layovers and stories about travelers ending up at the wrong airport. She also pays attention to security-adjacent risks, covering cyber travel scams and how to avoid them in a way that blends expert advice with clear examples of fraud tactics.
Even when the subject is a narrow rule, Sachs places it in the wider system of aviation and border management. She writes about new remote screening setups and checkpoints that allow travelers to bypass traditional bottlenecks and head straight to their gate, using those developments to show how airports experiment with flow and capacity.
Across these pieces she treats policy not as abstract regulation but as a set of instructions travelers must navigate, and she anchors each story in the traveler’s path from curb to gate.
How to make your flight when TSA lines are miserably long
Sachs regularly turns systemic problems into practical guides, especially around making flights and surviving delays. In articles about missing flights or almost missing them, she reconstructs a travel day step by step, including small decisions such as lingering over a cup of coffee, to show how minor choices compound into major disruptions. Pieces on long TSA lines and crowded checkpoints combine interviews with officials and on-the-ground reporting with specific strategies for arrival times, lane selection and backup plans.
She extends this service approach to extreme situations, including guides on adding disaster preparation to travel plans that cover fires, floods and other crises at popular destinations.
Sachs often uses first-person narratives to examine her own travel mistakes, including multi-hour layovers and long stretches of flight delays, and then distills those experiences into advice on what to do right and what to avoid. She writes about cleaning travel gear, handling trip-length layovers and managing sudden schedule changes with checklists and clear, sequential steps that reflect her background as a seasoned traveler. Across these stories, she combines a candid, sometimes self-critical perspective with concrete, actionable guidance, giving readers both a relatable anecdote and a set of tools they can apply on their next trip.
Why are hotels so expensive now, and why are the cheap ones so bad?
On the lodging side of the travel business, Sachs dissects pricing trends and value gaps in the hotel market. Her reporting on the disappearing midrange room and rising prices asks what happened to the familiar price points travelers relied on and explains why cheaper options often come with significant trade-offs in cleanliness, location or amenities. These pieces typically combine industry data, expert commentary and specific hotel examples to connect macroeconomic shifts with the choices a traveler sees when searching for a room.
Sachs also explores how preferences and policies shape the guest experience, from stories about hotels’ bias against cats to coverage of lodging that emphasizes gardens, wildlife watching or agritourism.
She covers alternative forms of stay such as farmstays, safari tents and hot springs retreats, showing how these models diversify revenue for hosts while offering different kinds of value to guests. Her destination-focused hotel and resort stories often tie back to cost, crowding and access, examining whether a property or area justifies its price once travel time, local regulations and seasonal patterns are factored in.
Through this work Sachs provides a bridge between hospitality industry decisions and traveler expectations, giving readers context for why a room costs what it does and what they actually get for their money.
These national parks dropped summer reservations. Here’s how to avoid crowds
Sachs reports extensively on public lands and outdoor tourism, focusing on how policy changes and visitor management affect trips to national parks and other natural sites. In coverage of parks dropping summer reservation systems, she explains how access rules have evolved, what that means for crowd levels and how traveler behavior must adapt in response.
She pairs these policy stories with guides on visiting crowded parks more efficiently, offering strategies for timing, route selection and lesser-known viewpoints that help readers experience popular places without spending the day in a queue.
Her destination features range from reopened areas such as Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove to hot springs across North America and scenic train rides through fall foliage. She writes about specific places, including small towns centered on wildflowers, Gothic cathedrals in France and islands linked to classic films, using detailed local scenes to convey why a destination matters culturally as well as visually. These pieces often highlight the tension between tourism demand and conservation or local life, noting how crowds, infrastructure and national policies shape what a visitor sees and how they move through the landscape.
Taken together, her national park and destination reporting shows a consistent interest in how rules, capacity and geography intersect to create the real experience of a trip.
Over two decades on the travel beat, Sachs has built a portfolio that connects policy, pricing and place, with a particular emphasis on the friction points of modern travel. She writes across formats, from video segments on problematic airports to long-form narratives and quick-hit service explainers, maintaining a clear focus on how systems and decisions translate into the day-to-day realities of traveling. Her work gives readers a practical, grounded view of travel as an industry and an activity, making her a consistent voice on the business, logistics and human side of being on the move.
4 more business journalists.
Aaron Karp
Aaron Karp is distinct for connecting airline networks, airport infrastructure, air cargo and policy. He is a senior editor at Air Transport World and has covered aviation since 1999. He has also worked as an editor for cargo-focused and daily aviation publications. His real beat is how airlines and airports respond to growth, regulation, trade conditions, sustainability pressures and technology changes. He covers route planning, network development, airport capacity, infrastructure, cargo flows, trade lanes, safety, air traffic control and future technology. He reports through news, features, opinion pieces, briefings and podcasts. He uses data, executive insight and industry conference reporting to explain market changes. His work links cargo metrics and trade policy to carrier strategy, and connects infrastructure and sustainability decisions to resilience, costs and long-term growth.
Adrienne Roberts
Adrienne Roberts is a business journalist at the Detroit Free Press who covers how policy, regulation and corporate decisions affect Michigan’s cannabis market, jobs, universities and health systems. She has a sustained focus on cannabis taxes, licensing, sales, product rules, consumer safety and local tax revenue. She also reports on unemployment, worker protections, corporate settlements, hiring, higher education, student safety, housing, data centers, health care access and economic forecasts. Roberts joined the Detroit Free Press in 2020 after covering automotive retail, dealers and labor issues for The Wall Street Journal. She explains complex business and regulatory changes with data, legal detail and on-the-ground voices. Her stories focus on practical effects for workers, students, consumers and communities, showing both the numbers and the people behind them.
Alex Bronzini-Vender
Alex Bronzini-Vender is a business reporter who focuses on how economic forces and corporate decisions shape specific communities and industries. He covers business for the Washington Monthly, writing reported pieces at the intersection of commerce and public life. His work reflects the magazine’s emphasis on linking markets and money to power, policy, and everyday experience. He treats business not as balance sheets and deals but as choices that affect local realities. In “Fear and Loathing in Palo Alto,” he uses a city tied to the tech sector to examine how a powerful industry influences a community. He grounds his business beat in on-the-ground consequences rather than treating corporate and financial developments in isolation.
Alex DeMarban
Alex DeMarban stands out for tracking major energy projects over time while showing how economic shifts affect local businesses. He reports for the Anchorage Daily News on business, oil and gas, and general assignments. His coverage focuses on Alaska LNG, long-haul energy projects, mining, ports, transportation infrastructure, and the everyday businesses that keep the state running. He examines financing, tax legislation, labor agreements, regulatory approvals, timelines and costs, and connects government and corporate decisions to workers, communities and consumers. He also reports on restaurant closures, grocery stores, breweries, meaderies, parking and trade disputes. His past coverage includes an open-pit mine near the proposed Ambler road, federal port grants and competitive elections. He reports through dollar figures, project details, public records, business owners and affected workers, showing how policy and resource development play out on the ground.