Monday, April 22, 2024
Understanding What Travelers Want Most From Loyalty Programs in 2024
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Autism makes travel a challenge. Here’s how I learned to cope
Wandering hand-in-hand through the medieval streets of Bologna, my boyfriend and I were in awe of the sweeping porticoes and distinctive rust-red brickwork of the city. It was our first holiday together. We’d wanted to find somewhere beyond the obvious that would marry our respective interests in architecture and history. Bologna was the perfect fit.
We admired the Church of Santa Maria della Vita, with its imposing baroque interior, lavishly decorated in colourful frescoes and marble carvings. We caught a little red and blue express train up into the hills to the Santuario della Madonna di San Luca, and climbed the bell tower of the Basilica di San Petronio for panoramic views across the city. Continue reading...
Thousands of Canary Islands Residents Protest ‘Overtourism’
What Happened to the Trivago Guy?
Ferragamo’s Formula: Behind Portrait Milano’s Luxury Hotel Launch
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Lyme Regis: a real taste of the Dorset coast with an exciting new food scene
Lyme Regis’s charms have always been resolutely genteel and old-fashioned, from its sedate regency seafront to its fondness for fossil shops and all things antique and literary.
It is a seaside town that has never felt the need to play to the hipster crowd, thanks partly to such distinguished and familiar history: home to 19th-century palaeontologist Mary Anning; John Fowles lived here, immortalising the Cobb breakwater in The French Lieutenant’s Woman; Jane Austen loved the place, giving it a starring role in one of Persuasion’s most memorable scenes; and Turner and Whistler both painted here. Continue reading...
Have Airbnb Guest Favorites Overshadowed the Superhost Program?
-Srividya Kalyanaraman
A gentler side of the Dolomites: a summer break in Italy’s Adamello-Brenta natural park
The pool was empty – perhaps because at about 22C, the water was too cold for Italians. It was also about to close. Whatever the reason, we had the glorious Biolago di Pinzolo, a spring-fed, plant-filtered swimming lake, to ourselves. As my son and I swam, we could just make out the tiny red-roofed hermitage of San Martino on the forested slope above, where, according to legend, a hermit survived on bread provided by a tame bear.
We’d come to the mountains of northern Italy for an alternative family break, away from the honeypot cities and beach resorts further south. Continue reading...
Friday, April 19, 2024
Startups Raise $331 Million for Flying Taxi Airports and AI Expense Management
Ask Skift: What Are the Top Travel Trends in China?
How Thailand Hopes to Meet Its Goal For 1.7 Million Indian Tourists
Amsterdam Bans New Hotels
‘A water world teeming with wildlife’: readers’ favourite national parks in Europe
One of the most incredible bird scenes in Europe took place as I hiked through the Bielawa nature reserve in northern Poland, about 40 miles north of Gdansk. I had left the village of Sławoszyno via a dirt track and was heading towards Kłanino, the open countryside and fields disappearing from my sight as the hedgerows grew taller either side of me. As I stepped forward, a gap appeared in the hedge and in front of my eyes a flock of nearly 100 cranes, which had been silent, took off across the field, honking with their red-tinged heads and faces, and feathery wing feathers flapping. I could almost touch them. The 19,000-hectare (47,000-acre) park is a mix of forest, wetland and coast.
Rita Continue reading...
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Paris’ Best Hotels: Michelin Ratings Vs. Online Reviews
Hyatt Hotels Sets Sights on India’s Thriving Leisure Market
Marriott Releases Lawrence of Arabia-Inspired Promo Campaign in Saudi
Mastercard’s New App Embraces Virtual Card Trend in Corporate Travel
My bad trip: the ‘oasis’ was a fetid puddle and our tyre popped in the desert
* Follow the My bad trip series
As 2013 turned to 2014, I was a fresh escapee from a regretful, youthful and short-lived marriage and was ready to rebound into life. I had an undergraduate degree in a very niche area of the arts that “won’t put food on the table” – My dad (2010-forever).
I had passion and the opportunity to work with mentors across the world and I would not at all be basing any of my decisions on a Kiwi backpacker I had picked up one night dancing on a table in Byron Bay. I was not desperate to be loved again and I was not worried that no one would ever date a 24-year-old divorcee. Continue reading...
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Google Adding Features to Maps and Search to Promote More Sustainable Travel
Allegiant Flight Attendants Agree ‘Game-Changer’ Labor Deal, Wages to Rise up to 41.2%
Historic Thunderstorms Batter Dubai: ‘Do Not Come to the Airport’
California’s ‘Ultimate Playground’ Campaign
I took my toddler to Algeria – and we were welcomed warmly everywhere
Waking after a night at sea, I was elated to look out of the cabin window and see the city of Algiers, blazing white. The splendid capital rises from its Mediterranean bay in improbable layers, from the arches of the French colonial port to the warren of the Casbah, to the clear blue sky, all overlooked by the Martyrs’ Memorial, which represents the country’s fight for independence. “Never was town more nobly placed,” wrote Edith Wharton, who visited by yacht in 1888. In the cabin, my toddler son was still sleeping. I looked at him and thought, we’ve made it, baby: all the way from West Yorkshire to north Africa by rail and sea in 48 hours.
The journey would have been familiar to British travellers of the 19th century who arrived here by steamship, but these days few foreign tourists come to Algeria. Political unrest since the civil war of the 1990s, the administration’s focus on internal matters and a lack of infrastructure have knocked it completely off the tourist map. So when I was invited as a guest of the British Council Algeria as part of a literary exchange, I jumped at the chance. Continue reading...
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Coach service offers journeys across the UK for knockdown price of £2 each way
A transport company is offering £2 tickets for coach trips across the UK to be taken up to May 12. With a £1 service fee, that means travellers planning journeys can book long-distance tickets from £3 on the FlixBus website or app.
In England there is a government-backed scheme capping local bus tickets at £2 until December 2024, but this offer opens up longer routes and also applies to journeys into and around Wales and Scotland, where the £2 cap doesn’t exist. So, if you fancy a trip through the blossoming valleys from Bristol to Swansea, or from Glasgow to Inverness via the Cairngorms, now is the time to book. The deal is available until Sunday 21 April. Continue reading...
We revel in the remoteness: wild camping and hiking in the Scottish Highlands
It’s a relief to lay my rucksack down, plunge hot feet into the cool stream and pause to revel in the fairytale surrounds. Foxgloves stand tall against a cornflower-blue sky, ferns look almost luminous, the water glints in the early summer sunshine. A patch of moss-covered ancient forest provides shade, a cuckoo calls in the distance, mountains layer on the horizon.
I’m in Knoydart in the Highlands of western Scotland, one of the last great wildernesses in the UK, on a hiking and wild camping adventure. No roads cross the 22,000-hectare (55,000-acres) peninsula, a rugged place where a trio of Munros soar skyward, sandwiched between sea lochs Nevis and Hourn (poetically translated as heaven and hell). Over five days our group of eight will explore this land on foot, carrying our sustenance and shelter on our backs, led by two guides from The Living Project, Josh and Emily. Continue reading...
Monday, April 15, 2024
The Opportunity for Long-Haul, Low-Cost Airlines
Tell us about a favourite beach in Europe – you could win a £200 holiday voucher
What’s your idea of beach heaven? A rocky path down to a secluded Mediterranean cove which is home to a simple beach shack and not much else? A wild expanse of Atlantic beach fringed by dunes and pounded by breakers? Or an elegantly faded old seaside town with a crescent of white sand and a handful of family-run hotels and restaurants, perhaps? From the Baltic coast to the Black Sea, the Atlantic to the Adriatic, we’d love to hear about the European beaches or seaside towns that have won your heart.
If you have a relevant photo, do send it in – but it’s your words that will be judged for the competition. Continue reading...
‘This coast is saturated’: Italian village braces for post-Ripley crowds
When Andrew Scott’s eponymous character in the hit new Netflix series Ripley travels from Naples to the village of Atrani, the rickety bus has the road almost to itself; a solitary Vespa passes going the other way. When he tracks down Dickie Greenleaf at the beach, the rich American and his girlfriend are the only people sunbathing on the pristine sands.
Visitors to the Amalfi coast today will note the contrast. Unlike in 1961, the road between Positano and Salerno is now known as much for its traffic jams as for the views. Atrani may be less busy than its neighbour Amalfi, but in summer its beach is taken over by rows of umbrellas and sunbeds. A small area, perhaps a fifth of the space, is public spiaggia libera. Continue reading...
Vistara CEO’s Message To Worried Staff: You’ll Have Clarity By June
Walking in the air: Snowman creator Raymond Briggs’s favourite Sussex paths
There aren’t many people who can claim to have seen a snowman fly over their house. It may sound fantastical, but every Christmas I settle down to watch The Snowman, Raymond Briggs’s best-loved work, and watch as the red-haired boy and the plump, tangerine-nosed snowman swoop over the downs that surround the village where I live before gliding above the Royal Pavilion and Brighton Pier and on out to sea.
The Snowman, like many of Briggs’s works, unfolds against a backdrop of the East Sussex landscapes he loved, and where he lived for more than 50 years. So it’s fitting that the first exhibition of his life and work since his death in 2022 is being held not in a London gallery but at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, just a couple of miles from his house in the village of Westmeston. Original drawings and illustrations, memorabilia, photographs and framed fan letters (including one from an American pastor enraged to discover that Father Christmas included images of Santa on the loo) give a unique insight into one of the greatest illustrators Britain has ever produced. Continue reading...
Sunday, April 14, 2024
U.S. Budget Hotels Feel the Pinch: Is Inflation the Culprit?
A Wessex trail: Dorset’s Hardy Way leads to the historic Smugglers Inn
No one appreciated the rural English landscape more than a certain corn merchant’s son from Suffolk. John Constable made it his business to paint bucolic splendour, and perhaps no one has ever done it better. And when he went on holiday, on his honeymoon no less, he chose one particular village.
I’m standing there, by the old, ivy-clad church wall in Osmington, Dorset, surveying the thatched roofs ahead and the rising slope of the chalk hill beyond. Through a gateway I spot a blue plaque on the old vicarage wall: “John Constable, English Romantic Painter, 1816, lived here for three months”. Continue reading...
Saturday, April 13, 2024
Aircraft Diverted and Airspace Closed as Iran ‘Launches Attack’ on Israel
-Meghna Maharishi
Norwegian Air CEO Shares the Secret to Surviving Low-Season Lulls
From Bond to bust: a Sin City hotel’s closing mirrors the new face of Vegas
Las Vegas’s famous Tropicana hotel is no more. Its guests were abruptly asked to leave earlier this month and its gold-domed casino closed – signaling the end of an icon of classic Sin City life where glamor, celebrity and crime seemed to go hand in hand.
Now the old building will be elaborately demolished with explosives – a tradition of Nevada’s desert gambling mecca – to make way for a sports stadium, symbolizing for many modern Vegas’s image of sanitized mass tourism. Continue reading...
Summer in Scandinavia: five eco-friendly ideas to holiday like a local
With swimmable harbours in Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki and across Denmark’s cities, not to mention plenty of ways to enjoy the sea, from kayaking to urban fishing, there’s often a seaside air to Nordic cities in summer, and especially in Oslo. Continue reading...
Friday, April 12, 2024
Incentive Travel Is Growing in India as a Performance Booster
Wisconsin Tourism Taps Into Top Chef With Its First National Cable TV Ad
Why Indian OTAs Are Now Looking Towards Corporate Travel
‘Kayak across the fjord to your own secluded beach’: readers’ favourite summer trips to Scandinavia
Bergen is often referred to as “the city between seven mountains” – which encapsulates its blend of culture and nature. Lose yourself in its charming old town, fish markets, galleries and museums, then hike or take a funicular up Mount Fløyen for views and pine forest trekking. Bergen is a great base from which to day trip. Using direct buses/trains, you can go to Gudvangen to kayak across the fjord to your own secluded beach for a picnic lunch, or pop to Voss for its water sports, hiking and farm-to-fork food (Store Ringheim is my top pick).
Seb Continue reading...
‘I wanted the 17-hour trip to go slower, not faster’: readers’ favourite European journeys
Instead of a four-hour road trip from Koman to Fierzë, relax and enjoy the Albanian fjords via the Drin River. We reversed on to the Berisha ferry, which takes 10 cars, plus foot passengers. Everyone sits on deck, regardless of the weather, to take in the views, which began with an incredibly straight white line high in the rock, showing the water level during the rainy season. The scenery was magnificent with forest-clad hills and high, rocky mountains with various coloured strata. Occasionally, a remote, isolated house could be seen. After two hours, we began spotting small tourist boats and hardy kayakers before arriving at Fierzë.
Roy Messenger Continue reading...
Thursday, April 11, 2024
United Flight Attendants Picket at U.S., U.K. Airports as Contract Negotiations Stall
-Meghna Maharishi
What’s Next for Tripadvisor After Viator Chief Resigns?
Why Has Lufthansa Canceled Flights to Iran But Austrian Airlines Keeps Flying?
A scoot through Wales: Cardiff to Llandudno on a Vespa
The neglect I had shown to my native Wales over the years, while writing about the streets of Delhi, or small town life in Kansas, shamefully hit home recently while listening to music in my apartment in Hong Kong, where I have been living for much of the past 20 years. The voice of the great British singer-songwriter Ian McNabb rang out loudly: “I never saw my hometown ’til I went around the world.”
These thoughts on a day of unbearable humidity and oppressive Hong Kong heat gave the germination of the idea behind my book The Long Unwinding Road. I grew up in the south, the commercial and industrial heartland of Wales that was completely divorced, I considered, from the big green north, where people were more tied to the land, and nature had done some of her best work. Continue reading...
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
MakeMyTrip Introduces Exclusive Mumbai-Bhutan Charter Services – India Report
Who Hit the Jackpot in 2023? CEO Pay at MGM Resorts, Wynn, and Sands
My hike on the hardest trail in Europe – Corsica’s GR20
I’m on the easiest bit of one of the easiest legs of the GR20 – the self-styled hardest trek in Europe – so naturally here I am alone, lost in a cloud, with hands so cold I am seriously considering peeing on them.
In the guidebook, this was billed as a shortish, flattish day, a mere 10.2 miles (16.5km) with 670 metres of ascent. I had it circled as one to enjoy. Perhaps if it were warm, I would have a dip in Lac de Ninu, douse the fires in my calves. But when hail came, adding spikes to a slapping wind, and thunder began beating a drum behind the blank grey horizon, I thought: “Better put more layers on than take off.” I struggle with the zips, but just about find enough digital strength without resorting to anything unsanitary. Continue reading...
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
Hotel CEO Paydays Soared in 2023: Hilton’s Chief Leads with $57 Million
SAS Scandinavian Airlines Quits Star Alliance: 6 Key Questions Answered
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