A great many publications have failed to draw attention to the fact that the President's budget for Fiscal Year 2013 contains the first appropriation of a five-year plan to allocate between $35 and $50 billion for the development of high-speed rail in the United States. At last, our nation would take decisive steps to fund a high-speed rail corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco, another along the west coast of Florida, one in the state of Michigan, and in other important and heavily populated areas. That kind of economic stimulus would not only create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but would set us on the path towards becoming a modern, efficient and prosperous nation in the field of transportation.
 
It should be noted, in my view, that this is not a partisan issue. A great many Republicans, including the one Republican cabinet member in the Administration, Secretary of Transportation Ray La Hood, enthusiastically support this national initiative. This week, Ray La Hood is in California, urging that legislators of both parties there stay firm in their insistence on creation of a high-speed rail corridor along the coast of California.  
 
So we are at a turning point.  Are we to remain a horse-and-buggy nation, mired for hours on end in traffic jams, condemned to waste valuable time at crowded airports with planes stacked up in the skies, or are we to become a modern, efficient, economically-prosperous nation of sensible transportation? This, to me, is not a partisan goal, but should be advanced by people of all political persuasions.   

Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris and Alexander Payne's The Descendants (starring George Clooney) were mainly intended to depict a failed engagement (Midnight in Paris) and a failed marriage (The Descendants). But both of them are such magnificent travelogues of the key attractions of Paris and Hawaii that they should be seen not necessarily for their plots but by anyone even vaguely contemplating a trip to the two destinations.

Midnight in Paris is a virtual valentine tribute to the City of Light, taking you up and down its boulevards, bridges and parks, its main museums (The Rodin Sculptures are given special attention) and the suburban Palace of Versailles. Anyone interested in a trip to Paris will greatly benefit from an advance look at one of the most awesome cities on earth.

The Descendants depicts the paradise that is Hawaii, not so much in its filming of tourist-popular areas (which get minor attention) but in taking its cameras to the lovely residential districts and outlying sections of Oahu, Kauai and The Big Island. If you have ever simply wandered by car through the Oahu neighborhoods where residents actually live (as I have), you will have an instant sensation of recognition when you see many of the scenes in the movie depicting the lives of Clooney and his two daughters. And you will also be treated to various panoramic glimpses of the undeveloped Hawaii, the few beaches and coastal sections where resort hotels haven't yet been erected.

I left a showing of The Descendants last night yearning to return to Hawaii. And though the current betting is for The Artist to win as Best Picture, I find it interesting that two travelogues should also be competing for that honor.

Spring Break is coming up, and Mexico is an obvious destination for collegiate vacationers: it is wonderfully hot, relatively cheap, exotic and different, and sufficiently large to absorb the invasion of spring breakers without changing its character. And therefore it's important to note that in the latest State Department advisory about the dangers of traveling within several areas of drug-related conflict, four distinct and large sections of Mexico get a free pass: the State Department doesn't even mention them as places to avoid.
 
These are, first and foremost, Cancun and the Maya Riviera, including Tulum. No significant threats to the safety of tourists have been encountered or are presently feared in this favorite resort area of millions of yearly visitors.
 
Second, Cabo San Lucas at the southernmost tip of the Baja peninsula. West coast Americans can vacation there in safety.
 
Third, Mexico City and the colonial cities (San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato) reached by bus from the north bus station of the capital. A great many retired Americans continue to live there.
 
And finally, Puerto Vallarta and the adjoining Nayarit district. Those tourist-heavy resort areas have so far been spared any drug-related violence, and continue to be popular.
 
I must say that these omissions from the State Department's list of danger areas have been confirmed to me by numerous tourists who have gone to Cancun, Cabo san Lucas, Mexico City, and Puerto Vallarta. These recent travellers are usually strong in their opinions that Americans can continue to vacation safely in a country that has otherwise been badly affected by violence in other areas, especially near the border with the United States.

Last week was full of important travel events, some good some bad. Let's deal quickly with the poor developments first, so that we can devote most attention to the positive.
 
The eruption of violence in Egypt, following the deaths of 70 spectators at a soccer march in Port Said, was of a wholly different nature than previous outbreaks of that sort and it has radically changed the safety situation in that country. Protestors accused not simply the military but the local police of being complicit in the soccer riot, and physically attacked police posts and police officers, who generally withdrew from the scene (and are no longer functioning as an effective police force). It became undeniable, last week, that Egypt for the time being does not have an effective, local police presence, on which the tourist can rely for safety in a whole range of situations. And I must therefore withdraw the expressions of confidence I have previously made and alter my belief that Egypt is currently safe to visit. For the time being, it isn't, and a great country has, temporarily at least, been removed from the list of potential travel destinations.
 
In a childish response to the Department of Transportation's new pro-consumer regulations, requiring (among other things) that passengers may cancel a booking within 24 hours, without incurring penalties, the equally childish Spirit Airlines announced last week that it will add a $2 "unintended consequences" surcharge to all its air tickets, designed to reimburse that poor, deserving airline for the alleged damage it will suffer from the new rule. (Actually, prior to the new rule-making, several large airlines, including industry leader Delta, had themselves voluntarily announced that passengers would be permitted to cancel without penalty within 24 hours of booking a flight). Let me voice an angry opinion. The President of Spirit Airlines, who is also the author of numerous other extra, pesky, and unique-to-Spirit charges and fees imposed upon passengers, is a real piece of work from whom we have come to expect such petty retaliations. How much longer will consumers regard Spirit as a source of inexpensive flights?
 
Last week, too, Malev Airlines of Hungary went bankrupt, removing a popular carrier from a number of both trans-Atlantic and intra-European flights. Though Malev's routes may now be flown by Ryanair, it won't be the same, and we must all mourn the loss of a once-popular carrier.
 
But greatly overcoming these dire developments was the fact that the Department of Transportation, under the leadership of Secretary Ray LaHood, succeeded last week in turning aside various airline-sponsored lawsuits designed to prevent the Department's latest pro-consumer regulations from going into effect. And therefore, last week, they became operative: hence, airlines will be required to include all fees and government taxes in the airfares they advertise. And, as you've already heard, passengers will be permitted to cancel their reservations without penalty, within 24 hours of making them.
 
As for those taxes and fees, they are sometimes almost as high as the airfare itself, and numerous travelers have been shocked to learn -- too late in the booking process -- that the $350 flight they thought they had booked was really costing $700 including all mandatory fees and taxes. The new regulations will enable all of us to have a clearer (and valuable) understanding of the cost of travel.

Remember XL Airways? They're the strange but apparently responsible and well-established French airline -- a carrier specializing in long-distance routes, like Paris to Phuket, Thailand -- that tantalized the American traveler last summer with trans-Atlantic airfares between New York (or Las Vegas) and Paris at prices several hundreds of dollars below the normal range.
 
But it was devillishly hard to obtain those fares (although a fair number of Americans did). Though XL did maintain a website, it was not for booking flights (you were asked to contact your GDS -- meaning a travel agent -- for that purpose), and most of the time you were directed to the airline's French-language site for further information, which again emphasized Paris-originating flights. And you received ambiguous instructions from XL's office in New Jersey.
 
It was obvious (at least to me) that XL was mainly interested in filling its trans-Atlantic service with passengers from France. They even seemed to feel that it was possible to fill all its seats with itineraries originating in France. And yet, several of my friends, on varying occasions, succeeded in obtaining a flight and did, successfully, fly round-trip at great rates between New York and Paris on XL. (I no of no one who booked it from Las Vegas).
 
Well, XL Airways is back to its old tricks for summer of 2012. It has just circulated a notice that it will begin flying trans-Atlantic in May ("Our low airfares to Paris are back!"). And this year, it has added San Francisco to its list of U.S. cities, that are otherwise limited to New York and Las Vegas. It has even listed a phone number (tel. 877/496-9889) and an English-language website (www.xlairways.com). But when you call that number, you are told that fares and flights will be disclosed "shortly" (whenever that is), and you get no greater information from the English-language website, which hasn't yet gone live. (When you access the French-language website, which is simply www.xl.com, you are advised of a couple of round-trip flights between Paris and San Francisco, with the extremely good airfares for a flight of that distance).
 
In everything that XL advises online, you are told to contact a travel agent to actually book your flight. One alternative tactic you might use is to access "Customer Service" when you call the XL phone number, and thus speak with a friendly gentleman who will offer to look up prices on the French-language site for you.
 
I'll keep after XL to get more hard-and-fast news, although I know from previous experience that this will be an arduous (if not awesome) task.

It's fascinating to compare the different ways in which TripAdvisor is regarded by (a) the press and the regulators of Britain, and (b) the press and the regulators of the United States. Here in America, no one seriously challenges the claims of TripAdvisor to provide accurate reflections of hotels and resorts. Over there in Great Britain, the opposite is the case. Last week, the Advertising Standard Authority of Great Britain issued an extraordinary ruling that TripAdvisor can no longer claim that all of its reviews are "honest, real or trusted" or that all its reviews are by "real travellers." The ASA has demanded that TripAdvisor make big changes to its advertising.
 
Side by side with the regulators, the British press keeps up a steady drum-beat of vehement exposés of reviews appearing in TripAdvisor. This week, the Telegraph has printed a long critique, pointing out that TripAdvisor's reviews can frequently combine, in the same review, both a five-star rave about a particular hotel with a statement that the same hotel "is the worst in the world".
 
"The time has come," the British newspaper continues, "for a re-think on how they [TripAdvisor] verify their reviews. At the very least, anyone that wants to leave a review must prove that they have stayed or eaten at the given hotel or restaurant. All the ASA ruling has done is highlight the need for such a change."
 
Meantime, the Irish Times of Dublin has printed an even more damning indictment. It tells how an employee at the Carlton Hotel Group of Ireland  e-mailed dozens of its employees, asking them to take photos of various rooms to be inserted into fake reviews submitted to TripAdvisor. That way, a mass of favorable reviews would appear in each of the write-ups of the chain's hotels. Employees were cautioned to use crude cellphone cameras for taking the shots, and to send in the reviews on computers that had no association with the hotels or the group. (When Carlton's lawyers heard of these instructions, they apparently forced a withdrawal of the pronouncement.)
 
To all these reports, TripAdvisor has responded with sanctimonious claims of the extreme measures they allegedly take to weed out phony comments from their website, comments either pro or con. No convincing proof is offered of their ability to spot these invented claims. But they apparently continue to oppose any demand that they require their reviewers to show proof that they have actually stayed as guests at the hotels in question, and such a procedure is the only one that could cut down drastically on false raves or critiques.
 
I have earlier written of my own inability to make heads or tails out of various TripAdvisor reviews that I have read. How do you reach a judgment about a hotel if ten people call it a sheer wonder and ten other people call it a fleabag? Even when such contrasts are absent from a particular review, how wise is it to rely on the judgment of a sheer amateur who has been, once in their lives, in a particular hotel--and has been to no other nearby hotels?
 
I will continue to seek out the appraisals of experienced critics who have a reputation for the worth of their opinions.

You may recall a recent blog post in which I described March departures from New York and Washington, D.C., of a one-week African safari to Kenya costing $2,499 per person, including round-trip airfare, fuel surcharge, and all government fees and taxes. The trip in question ("Kenya on Sale"), operated by Lion World Tours (tel. 800/387-2706; www.lionworldtours.com), is virtually all-inclusive, goes to four different games lodges in Kenya, and includes all three meals daily on each day of the tour.
 
To my surprise, Lion World has just announced that it will be offering the very same tour in May and June from Los Angeles, for $2,699 per person (a pretty unique bargain for readers residing on or near the West Coast). This, to my knowledge, is the first such air-and-land packages in eons to be operated at that price, which also includes fuel surcharge and all government fees and taxes. May and June are high season to Africa. And kids are out of school at that time and get to go on safari before camp starts.
 
Air transportation from Los Angeles is on Emirates Airlines to Nairobi, via Dubai; transportation on daily games drives is in a seven-seater safari minibus with pop-up roof; the supplement for singles traveling alone is $250; and the exact departure dates are May 17 and 24 and June 14 and 21 of 2012.
 
This is a big one, a unique value, and you might want to contact them for further information or to book.

When I was a tour operator several years ago, I was constantly amused by the way in which my competitors would fudge the facts in responding to questions from journalists about how business was. The theory was that if you answered truthfully that business was lousy, you ran the risk of leaving the impression that your company was in trouble and about to go under. So instead, you responded: business is great, we're inundated with bookings.
 
I thought about this all-too-human reaction when I read the recent statements by several cruise brokers that cruise bookings had actually firmed up in the wake of the Costa Concordia tragedy, and that prices were now 1% higher. Something closer to the truth was revealed last week by Carnival Cruises (owner of Costa Cruises, operator of the ill-fated Costa Concordia) in a required 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a document that had to be submitted under oath. In it, Carnival admitted that future cruise bookings on all its ships had declined in the "mid-teens" in the immediate aftermath of the Costa Concordia sinking. It went on to admit that bookings of cruises on Costa Line's ships in particular were "down significantly."
 
All this was further emphasized in a recent comment in USA Today by a perceptive cruise journalist, Gene Sloan (a Frommers travel guide author, among other things), in which he pointed out that advance bookings for summer cruises in the Mediterranean were soft.
 
So what does this all have to do with us? I have earlier pointed out that the safety record of the cruise industry is actually pretty good; out of the multitudes of passengers who have taken cruises in recent years (over a hundred million of them?), only an infinitesimally small number have been injured or killed. All forms of transportation are of course potentially dangerous, but the single most dangerous activity of transportation for U.S. travelers is driving a car on the highways and streets of America. So I would doubt that anyone would put off their cruise plans because of the Costa Concordia tragedy.
 
And it should be pointed out, in particular, that if Mediterranean cruises are significantly down in popularity, that this would be an excellent time to book a Mediterranean cruise in summer: prices will be low and discounts rampant. Beyond that, Mediterranean cruises are different from the kind of cruise you encounter in the Caribbean. Passengers are interested in observing the foreign life in the Mediterranean port cities and less interested in the fun-and-games features on those amusement parks masquerading as Caribbean cruise ships.