Overcoming a slump in enrollment during the years of the recent financial crisis (2008 to 2010), the two major programs of summer vacation learning -- Cornell's Adult University and St. John's Summer Classics -- have now recovered their popularity to such an extent that their summer programs are more extensive than ever.
Cornell's Adult University, in Ithaca, New York, will be operating four successive, one-week sessions from early July to early August, and will be offering a choice of seven different weeklong classes (meeting morning and evening for five days a week) in each such summer week (more than ever before). Classes, presented by top members of the Cornell faculty, range from the fun topics (one five-day course is "The One-Hour Gourmet," teaching you how to prepare meals in less than 60 minutes; The Tennis Clinic; The Sailing Clinic; The Wines Course) to the seriously profound (like: The Bronte Sisters, 1847-48; The Dynamics of Human Attachment; Film Portrayals of Crises of Vocation; The Joys of Classical Music; and more).
I attended a weeklong session of Cornell's Adult University last summer, called Great Political Trials (it was taught by Glenn Altschuler, renowned professor of history at Cornell, and by Faust Rossi, an equally renowned professor at the Cornell Law School) and it was for me one of the most exciting intellectual adventures. I stayed at a nearby hotel, took my meals in a student dining room on the campus, and was able to participate as well in evening lectures and events that added entertainment to the heavy and heady thinking that the daytime classes entailed. Fellow students were a cross-section of American adults of all ages and professional backgrounds, and the discussion was of a level that matched anything I had experienced in previous summers at the adult summer courses at Oxford University in Great Britain.
You'll find a detailed listing of the Cornell program at www.cau.cornell.edu. Costs run as low as $1,631 per person for a full week of tuition, accommodations, three meals daily (the meals are copious and excellent), coffee breaks, hospitality hours, parking, and full access to all normal student facilities. For families attending Cornell's Adult University, the school offers a full-scale parallel program of courses for young children-to-teenagers, keeping the latter fully engaged while their parents go back to college.
The other important, U.S.-based program of summer learning vacations is at St. John's College, the "Great Books" school of American education. St. John's has two campuses, and the one in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has for several years been offering three successive, one-week sessions of reading and discussing two or more of the acknowledged great books of the western tradition. This summer, St. John's will be offering the same three weeks -- from July 9 until July 27 -- but with an unprecedented number of options, allowing vacationers to choose from several different themes, each presented under the supervision of the "tutors" (instructors) of St. John's. The program is described at www.stjohnscollege.edu.
And for the very first time, the program will also be offered, for one week (beginning June 4), at St. John's other campus in Annapolis, Maryland. There, adults of all ages -- without entrance requirements, tests, examinations or grades -- will choose to discuss such works as The Odyssey (in versions by Homer, Sophocles and Euripides), Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, and various Greek tragedies, both ancient and modern (Sophocles and August Wilson). Costs are around the same as at Cornell. Go to St. John's website for details.
I have been to two of the St. John's programs, and can't sufficiently convey my enthusiasm for them; they are among the finest summer vacations that you might ever enjoy.
A number of listeners to The Travel Show, presented by my daughter and myself (www.wor710.com/arthur-frommer), have expressed concern that they may need to pay federal taxes on the mileage points they've earned either through flying or racking up purchases on a points-related credit card. The panic results from Citibank reportedly mailing form 1099s to clients who have received points by using that bank's credit card. The fact that Citibank has taken that surprising step was mentioned on our program by Brian Kelly, the man behind The Points Guy (www.thepointsguy.com).
Although you'll have to consult your own attorney if you're worried about incurring tax obligations on the points you earn, and I can only cite a very offhand, flimsy, and possibly incorrect opinion, I have often regarded such fears as unfounded, for the following two reasons:
First, if you have earned points from a purchase of some sort that you have made with your own money, those points are best considered as a discount that you have received and not as the receipt of income. It is only when you earn points by taking a flight that someone else (like your employer) has paid for, that it could be argued that you have received extra income and owe taxes on the value of such points. I have often spoken about corporate executives who take many, many flights each year that were paid for by their corporation, but for which they obtained the points -- which they then use to take their family to Hawaii on vacation. On that kind of transaction, it seems that an argument could be made that income has been received on which taxes should be paid.
But the argument, in my view, will never be made by government tax officials for a very simple reason (the second explanation as to why no one pays tax on points earned). The largest recipients of points (or frequent flyer miles, as they used to be called) are Members of Congress, who each receive government-paid air tickets on numerous occasions throughout the year to return periodically to their districts. I've been told that such Congress people are rolling in points, drowning in points, receiving incredible numbers of points based on all the free flights (40 a year?) that the rules of Congress allow them to receive and which are paid out of the Federal treasury. Such members of Congress would be apoplectic if the Internal Revenue Service were to send them a tax bill for the value of such points.
So that's why, in my untutored, hesitant viewpoint, the IRS will never tax the use of points. And the act of Citibank in mailing out 1099s relating to such points seems beyond belief.
Is there anything I am missing here? Should users of points they have earned, and then converted into flights, record such transactions on their tax returns?
Its previous, off-season sale offered a stunning price of $599 round-trip to Istanbul and from several U.S. cities. They have now upped the round-trip price to $672, but it again includes all taxes and fees, and that mind-boggling figure is at least $500 less than you'd normally pay at this time for a round-trip flight to a European destination as far away as Istanbul. Unlike the previous sale, this one is from New York City only, but the period for booking the flights has been extended until March 31 and the flights themselves can take place as late as March 31.
I've searched the Turkish Airlines website and can't find any "catches" to the offer, so must assume that $672 is the final, all-in price. Assuming it is, it provides you with a remarkable opportunity to tour the highlights of this colorful country in the month of March.
You can buy your tickets online at www.turkishairlines.com or from their sales office at tel. 800/874-8875.
When Google announced more than a year ago that it was acquiring ITA Software (an database of airline flights and prices), the news sent shivers up the spines, and sweat onto the brows, of just about every existing airfare search engine. And a fierce battle broke out (which Google ultimately won) over Google's right to make the purchase. Although they didn't actually say so, most competitive services were terrified that mighty Google could proceed to grab off a healthy percentage -- indeed, maybe even a majority -- of the searches that people make for their airline flights.
A Google announcement this past weekend shows just how well grounded those fears were. Google has announced that commencing immediately, its Flight Search features would be available not simply on computers (as in the past) but on mobile devices running Google's Android operating system and Apple's iOS. And they'll be available not just visually, but by voice. Users can now search on-the-go by speaking into their phones! Readers of this Blog can test the claim by searching for "flights from X to Y" on their devices.
But that's not all. In an e-mail to me from Sean Carlson, the youthful director of Google's travel services, whom my daughter and I interviewed on a recent broadcast of The Travel Show, it was also pointed out that the Google Search box is already full of other cool tricks. Currently, on your Android phone, you can:
Get currency conversions (just type "10 dollars in Euros" into Google Search);
Translate words and phrases (try "translate where is the bathroom to Spanish")
Track flights (just type the airline and flight number, like "usair231"); and
Check time zones (like "time in Denver")
Quite obviously, Google is making a big commitment to travel and flight information. Stay tuned.
The New York Times Travel Show, probably the most prestigious of all these events, is less than two weeks away. On the weekend of March 2 to 4 (Friday March 2 is confined to persons in the travel industry, Saturday and Sunday March 3 and 4 are for the public at large), my daughter Pauline and I will be speaking at 11am (about "Major New Developments in Travel") and again on Saturday March 3 at 3pm (about our "Top Spots in 2012"). Following each hourlong presentation, we'll then be signing books at a nearby booth, and we hope to meet a great many of the readers of Frommers.com at that time
The situation of a cut-rate airline called Iceland Express gets curioser and curioser. Back in the fall of 2011, it was announced that the company that hired Iceland Express to fly trans-Atlantic between New York and Europe (via Reykjavik) had ceased operations, and it was widely assumed that Iceland Express would stop doing business, too. Yet lo and behold, Iceland Express is flying again from April through October, but this time only between Reykjavik and various European cities, and not between Reykjavik and the United States. To take advantage of its low rates (and they are quite low indeed), you'll have to book a flight on long-established Icelandair or Delta Airlines between the U.S. and Reykjavik, and then book a separate flight on Iceland Express to the European city of your choice. This will involve quite a juggling act, but if you'll look up the fares of Iceland Express (www.icelandexpress.com), you may find that juggling those two bookings will save you some money. Lots of luck.
The ranks of companies operating shore excursions for cruiseship passengers has just been expanded by one (and now consists of four separate companies). A new firm called Shore Excursions Group (tel. 866/999-6590; www.shoreexcursionsgroup.com), headed by a former executive vice president of luxury-minded Abercrombie & Kent, has recently gone live on the web, offering shore excursions even for as few as four people traveling together, in every major port city visited by the cruiselines other than those in Asia. Booking your next cruise, you might want to compare its prices and features with those of ShoreTrips (www.shoretrips.com), PortCompass (www.portcompass.com), and PortPromotions.com (www.portpromotions.com), operators of tours making use of 12-passenger vans in most instances. All four of these companies will now offer an advantage in both quality and price, in my view, over the shore excursions offered by the cruiselines, which are usually operated in 45-passenger motorcoaches
The big travel event of the month was the opening last week of the Mob Museum in a former federal courthouse of Las Vegas, Nevada. It will henceforth join the list of must sees in Vegas (for an $18 adult entrance fee), introducing its visitors to the history of organized crime (Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, John Gotti, et al) in cities all over the country. Though many residents of Las Vegas were outraged at this initiative by former Las Vegas mayor, Oscar Goodman (i.e., the founding of such a museum in a city that largely denies its criminal past), and felt that the new museum would tarnish the reputation of Sin City (ahem!), the inclusion of exhibits making a nationwide phenomenon out of organized crime has apparently removed the local sting. According to my daughter Pauline, who visited the museum last week and interviewed former Mayor Goodman (himself a former mob attorney), its exhibits are well worth a visit, although young children should be kept away from its blood-spattered depictions of past violence (and they should also be kept away from Vegas, in my view).
Though bookings on Carnival Cruises and Royal Caribbean Cruises fell sharply in the days immediately following the sinking of the Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy, the cruiseship business has apparently recovered, according to two, Miami-based cruiseship experts whom I interviewed yesterday over the phone. According to them, neither the warm winter weather of the northeast, nor the well-publicized outbreak of the norovirus on several ships of Princess Cruises, have had any lasting impact, and much to the amazement of the cruiseship officials themselves, bookings snapped back following a short-lived drop in the ten-days-or-so immediately following the Costa Concordia tragedy
Most difficult question to answer on last week's Sunday radio program presented by my daughter, Pauline, and myself? It was from a woman inquiring how she could arrange to view the mountain gorillas of Rwanda. I gave her the name of World Primate Safaris (www.worldprimatesafaris.com), of Kigali, Rwanda, which arranges the experience, but caused great sadness by pointing out that the government of Rwanda a.) limits the viewing experience to one hour, and b.) charges a fee of $500 for the privilege of creeping up to the apes. Hopefully the proceeds of those accumulated fees will be used to help preserve the lives of these stately animals.
A three-year-old website called Workaway.info (www.workaway.info) is suddenly attracting a great deal of attention among would-be American travelers, probably because of favorable word-of-mouth comments from the people who have thus far used it (Workaway is British-headquartered, but also employs staff ranging as far afield as Buenos Aires). It attempts to satisfy the age-old urge to travel for free, which multitudes of Americans certainly have. Using the services of Workaway, you can receive free room and board for various lengths of time in exchange for your willingness to work for four to five hours a day for your host in a wide range of countries.
Note that Workaway differs subtly from the traditional volunteer vacation. People who sign up for the latter are usually contributing their labor to a worthwhile social cause: they help dig a well for an African village, or teach English to persons who need that language skill to obtain poverty-avoiding jobs.
By contrast, Workaway signs you to work for people with a purely commercial need for workers, or private families seeking someone to help with the children or around the house. You agree to contribute those four or five daily hours for five or six days a week -- on a farm, in a shop, hostel or small hotel, in a business or laboratory, in a home -- and your international host then treats you like a member of the family. You sleep free-of-charge on the premises, eat three meals a day with your host, raid the icebox as often as you wish.
No money changes hands. You simply exchange labor for room and board, and commit yourself for at least three weeks (although you can often stay at the effort for almost as many months as you wish).
Are these exchanges of work-for-room-and-board entirely legal according to the rules of the destination nation? Workaway heatedly insists they are, and includes a discussion on their website of the visa requirements in some of the countries they handle. I would guess that the absence of any cash payment for what you do results in most governments paying no attention at all, but Workaway guards its flanks by pointing out that persons planning to work in numerous countries are required to apply for a work visa to do so. Whether every client of Workaway does this is unknown to me, and I can render no judgment on the lawfulness of the entire activity.
Last Sunday on our weekly radio show, my daughter and I interviewed a Buenos Aires employee of Workaway, reached by phone in Argentina, and we were impressed by the enthusiasm and idealism she displayed. Quite obviously, Workawaybelieves its has created a major network of international hosts who hold the key to the fulfillment of your own dream to live for free -- for several months, at least -- in a foreign nation. According to our radio guest, over 3,000 such work-activities are now in the website's inventory, and the possibilities exist for some avid participants to live for free for many, many months on end.
Recently, the New York Times carried an article by Seth Kugel in which he reached the unsurprising conclusion that ethnic travel agents specializing in one destination can get better airfares for you than are accessed from the internet's airfare search engines. Going to Zagreb, Croatia? Going to Shenzhen, China? Visit (or phone) a live Croatian-American travel agent for the former or a live Chinese-American travel agent for the latter, and they will get you a fare costing considerably less than you'd obtain from Expedia, Travelocity, or Orbitz. Since these are human beings sending hundreds of people to a single destination, they have obviously negotiated better airfares with the airlines going to their exotic hub cities.
To that conclusion, I'd like to add a personal discovery. Going to a standard, mass-volume destination -- like London or Paris or Denver or Cancun -- no one service, neither a search engine website nor a live travel agent, will always get you the best fare. I've been amazed in recent tests of the Internet to discover how fickle they all are. On one test to a particular city, Orbitz will have the best fare. Or another test to a different city, Dohop.com will have the best fare, on still another, Kayak will have the best fare. For reasons hard to explain, there's no science or logical explanation of why particular websites are the occasional price leaders to one city but not to another.
And as I've recently discovered, the airfare aggregators like Momondo or Dohop.com or Skyscanner.com will usually have better airfares than the giant search engines like Expedia or Travelocity -- but not always. Sometimes, and occasionally, in a crazy alternation of customary roles, such giants as Expedia or Orbitz or Travelocity will actually be the price leaders!
So what does this all mean, in terms of your own tactics in obtaining a good airfare to your next vacation destination? It means that you can't quickly find such a fare; you must, instead, spend an hour or so going to all the sources -- to places like CheapTickets.com and CheapOAir.com and Kayak and Momondo and Orbitz -- to fully take advantage of the crazy structure of airfares. Different services have different airfares, and any claim that they all discover the same opportunities is totally mistaken. The lazy would-be traveler pays the most; the person willing to spend an hour or so at the task of searching for a bargain -- will often find one.
Am I right in reaching that conclusion? Has your own experience been different? Is there any one airfare search engine that always (or usually) leads the field? I'd be grateful for your comments.
The steady, recent, increase in the value of the Chinese currency, the Yuan, coupled with a strong rate of inflation within that country, has had the result that I predicted several months ago: the cost of travel to China is no longer quite the same bargain it was. As one example, the tour known as "Historic China" operated by China Focus Travel (www.chinafocustravel.com), no longer visits five Chinese cities in nine days; it goes to only four Chinese cities in eight days, and no longer costs a breathtaking $1,499 (including round-trip airfare to China from San Francisco); it now costs as much as $2,199 and $2,299 per person (for a tour renamed "Historic China by Bullet Train"). Although $1,499 was the winter price for "Historic China," the increased price for travel in the spring is far greater than it was in previous years, and although even $2,199 is a relative value, it is no longer a breathtaking bargain.
The Chinese continue under pressure from the rest of the world to increase the value of the Yuan further; and Chinese inflation remains high. If you continue to put off your own Chinese trip, you will pay a heavy price for doing so. And you should now examine the prices of other tour operators to China, especially China Spree (www.chinaspree.com), to see whether occasional bargains are still being offered. Some companies may cut the mark-up of their costs in order to increase their market share.
Travelers might also consider booking the tours that go to fewer Chinese cities, and provide fewer features, and thus remain nearly as affordable as in the past.
The year has been marked so far by a steady drumbeat of announcements from the tourist board of Las Vegas that business in Sin City is spectacular -- specifically, that 2011 was the second best time in years, that hotel occupancy is up and that restaurants are jammed.
The people I talk to, who have recently been to Las Vegas, tell me otherwise. And the hotel situation in Las Vegas is better determined not from the p.r. releases, but by looking at the extent of the discounting offered by Vegas' deluxe hotels. If you will go to the booking charts of the super-elegant Aria Hotel, in the City Center development on the Strip (a property whose rates for a suite go up to as much as $399 during peak times), you will find that the Aria is offering nightly rates for a deluxe suite of $109, $119 and $129 on 13 different dates in the month of March; and that it is already offering rates of $129 a night on no fewer than 18 dates in April -- more than half the month.
As for the deluxe Venetian and Palazzo hotels, they are heavily advertising rates of $109 a night, per room, for stays in March and April. And when you then move on to the sub-deluxe category, you find that such hotels as the Luxor are asking as little as $28 a night per room.
Those actual prices are a far better indicator of the depressed level of America's gambling capital, affected not simply by a slow economy but by the increased competition for gamblers that is now offered in numerous states that have legalized casino gambling. Objectively, it appears that Las Vegas is offering spectacular deals to sharp-eyed visitors who search for the bargains.
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.
