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President Joe Biden is joining the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in taking a stance against surprise fees on hotel rooms, cable bills and concert tickets, Reuters reports. For hotels, Biden and his administration are specifically zeroing in on resort fees.

"These are junk fees," Biden said. "They benefit big corporations. Not consumers. Not working families. And that changes now."

Knocking down these fees could eliminate billions in banking fees, the news agency reports.

Hawaii officials are sending out warnings to residents of the Big Island, the largest of the 137 Hawaiian Islands, that Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano, may erupt soon, the Associated Press reports. Scientists studying the volcano say the alert is due to “a recent spike in earthquakes at the volcano’s summit.”

“Not to panic everybody, but they have to be aware of that you live on the slopes of Mauna Loa. There’s a potential for some kind of lava disaster,” said Talmadge Magno, the administrator for Hawaii County Civil Defense.

If the volcano were to erupt, it would take mere hours for the lava to reach homes, the AP reports.

Youth sports are expanding across the U.S., and it’s leading to more opportunities for hotels to grab group demand, HNN’s Dana Miller reports. Not only are there more youth sports events, but families are extending their stays to include extra days.

Mark George, senior vice president of sales and marketing at West Palm Beach, Florida-based hotel management company Island Hospitality, said room nights booked by youth sports groups have increased by 6,000 over the past year.

"There's an emergence of sports that are getting into markets that [never had them before], like hockey in the Sun Belt area," he said. "We have hockey in Dallas and Florida, but it was never that big. You always thought of hockey up north."

Shanghai ordered mass COVID-19 testing and a lockdown for its downtown Yangpu district on Friday, the Associated Press reports. Residents of the district, which is home to 1.3 million people, will have to stay at home until they receive a negative test.

Over the past few years, China has had among the strictest COVID-19 policies, regularly shutting down cities restricting people to their homes.

“The demand is an echo of measures ordered over the summer that led to a two-month lockdown of the entire city of 25 million that devastated the local economy, prompting food shortages and rare confrontations between residents and the authorities,” the AP reports.

Travel demand has remained high into the fall this year, due in part to families spending big on trips to Walt Disney World after saving up money over the pandemic and the U.S. dollar comparing favorably to the British pound, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The sustained demand is allowing both airlines and hotels to keep rates high. Alison Hoyt, senior director of consulting for STR, CoStar’s hospitality analytics firm, said September marked the first time the number of rooms sold surpassed the same month in 2019.

“There’s still some unwinding of this pent-up travel demand,” said Chuck Thackston, managing director of data science and research at Airlines Reporting Corp.

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