Announcing that the land on which it sits has now been definitely sold, Maho Bay Camps on the exquisite island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands has now advised its fans that it will now be definitely closing on May 15 of this year. We can expect a condo development, or a series of gated homes, to go up in its place, which is a tropical hillside enjoying one of the most enthralling views in all the Caribbean.
Maho Bay, for those unfamiliar with this unique resort, is a collection of tented bungalows spread across the hillside that I've just described. It is perhaps the most environmentally-sensitive resort in all the world, a place erected without disturbing the foliage on which it sits, with each canvas bungalow connected to an outdoor dining space and other bungalows by wooden walkways elevated from the land. Its rates are half what you'd normally pay in the Caribbean, and its mostly-vegetarian meals are unusually tasty. It is also patronized by a broad cross-section of interesting Americans of all ages and incomes. You can learn more at Maho.org.
And by going to its website, you will also learn about the substitute resort that is currently being expanded in another section of the island almost as desirable. The continuation of Maho Bay is called Estate Concordia, and its lodgings are bungalows that make almost no use of fossil fuels for their illumination and power. Here, too, a unique blend of intellectually-curious, environmentally-sensitive, Americans are the clientele, and you are guaranteed a fine vacation.
As you can see, I'm an enthusiast for the kind of tropical holiday that the founder of Maho Bay -- Stanley Selengut -- has devoted his life to creating. I urge you to study the website and give serious thought to choosing either Maho Bay for your most imminent next vacation or Estate Concordia (now called Concordia Eco Resort) for one scheduled further out.
The questions posed to my daughter and myself by listeners to The Travel Show every Sunday (noon to two, wor710.com) are not simply of interest to the people asking them, but have a broader significance, in my view, by exposing the travel concerns that large numbers of people have. I'm quoting a number of them, in the hope that these will prompt dealing with those concerns.
Q. You have several times cited the travel warnings (against going to particular countries) of the British Foreign Office. How do we access those warnings?
A. Go to fco.gov.uk/travel. A great many people regard these British reports as superior to those of our own State Department, in terms of the clarity with which they are stated.
Q. We've been told that an Italian firm named "Adventure Belissime" is excellent to use for a trip we are planning to Venice. Are they reliable?
A. The only way you will be able to answer that question is by requesting references from that company -- the names and phone numbers of other American travelers who have used them in the past. In this way, you follow the same course as if your were choosing a dentist or an accountant. You ask for references in any number of these travel situations.
Q. Is there Wi-Fi in India?
A. The big hotels in India have Wi-Fi to the same extent as any large hotel anywhere in the world would have Wi-Fi.
Q. Who shall I use for obtaining an air-and-land package to Hawaii?
A. PleasantHolidays.com is the largest tour operator to Hawaii and has a broad range of well-priced air-and-land packages.
Q. We'd like to rent a vacation home for our stay in [and here they name a resort area in the sunbelt]. Whom shall we contact?
Q. I'm taking a group of 20 girls from Newark to Orlando, and back. An agent we've consulted claims that $985 per person is the least we can pay for round-trip airfare.
A. Change travel agents.
Q. We had planned to visit our son, who is working in Thailand, by taking a flight there via Tokyo. But our son claims there are unacceptable levels of radiation in Tokyo.
A. If there were, hundreds of thousands of affluent Japanese would have emigrated from Tokyo, but they haven't. Draw the right conclusion.
Q. Our daughter, who is engaged to be married, wants to register for a trip with a firm that accepts wedding gifts of cash to be used towards their honeymoon. Can you recommend anyone?
A. A great many such companies (and local travel agents) perform that function. Try TravelersJoy.com for starters.
Q. Does anyone in the U.S. operate cheap, legal trips to Cuba?
A. Cheap? No. But YMT Vacations (tel. 800/922-9000) has the least costly packages to Havana, including round-trip airfare there from Miami.
Q. Do I buy Euros in advance of a trip to Europe, or once there?
A. Once there. The exchange rates here are horrendously unfavorable, and beyond that you don't want to be walking about with large amounts of cash. Use your ATM card (and four-digit pin number) to obtain Euros once there, and take out only a small amount at a time.
Q. How far in advance should we book airfares in order to get the cheapest price?
A. Experts differ, to the same extent as financial experts differ over buying bonds versus stocks. Some say six weeks in advance. Others recommend three and a half months for domestic fares, and five and a half months for international ones. There's unanimity that you don't book them longer than the above periods in advance, and you certainly don't book them just a couple of weeks in advance.
Q. We're in our 40s. Can we stay at low-cost hostels in Europe?
A. Absolutely, and a great many people of all ages do so. For a large array of hostels from which to choose, go to HostelWorld.com, Hostels.com or Hostelz.com.
Q. I have been booked for several months for a trip to China/Tibet, but Tibet has now been closed out to us, and the city of Kunming substituted. Should I cancel?
A. Kunming, like a great many other Chinese cities, has a population of some seven milloin persons, and is full of museums, theaters and colorful malls. It's in a zone of moderate climate, and will afford you a unique view of a typical Chinese metropolis.
In my New Year's Resolutions relating to travel, appearing a week ago on this website, I listed 12 plans for improving my vacations in the year ahead. Those were four less than I proposed a year ago for the New Year of 2012, and a discussion of the reason for the omissions might be appropriate.
I will make very effort to travel to countries whose demonstrations and protests have been for the purpose of achieving democracy, but occasionally at the cost of losing their tourism. Egypt is among the nations deserving our visits, and for other reasons the Asian nation of Myanmar -- at last moving towards decency -- deserves our tourism, too.
I have recently concluded that tourism to Egypt is not yet reliably safe, primarilybecause of a breakdown in policing -- and this, despite the fact that a great manyrecent visitors report that their own trips have proceeded without incident. Ifeverything goes well on a trip to Egypt, it appear superficially that conditions arenormal for tourism. But the moment an emergency occurs -- an accident, a threat, a possibility of being robbed or hurt -- it appears that the local police of that nation are simply not available to protect the tourist. This is because the police are so hated by much of the population that they generally stay out of sight and unavailable. I would myself not travel to Egypt at this time, and I can't recommend that others do so.
As for Myanmar, the path to democracy in that country has proven uneven and with considerable bumps, and it is not yet certain the military will really give up their total power. Too much sporadic violence occurs, too great a tension is now felt there, to enable most people to make the trip. And in terms of finding accommodations for your stay, it appears that Myanmar's limited hotel capacity is totally filled by various avaricious entrepreneurs hoping to make favorable deals (for mineral rights and the like) with the powers that be. I will myself wait until further evidence is had that Myanmar is now an acceptably safe destination.
Two other of my travel resolutions for 2012 -- both of them, admittedly, made somewhat in jest -- have been criticized (and rightly so) by a number of readers. One was a pledge that I would occasionally change into pajamas on an overnight, transatlantic trip. That suggestion wasn't found to be realistic. And the other, more reasonable one, read that:
I will try to emulate my daughter's policy of limiting her luggage to one small carry-on bag. I will remember that on numerous trips, I have actually worn only a fraction of the items that I have carried with me in a large suitcase.
Too many readers have responded that they simply would not want to make even a short, week-long trip with only one change of clothing, which was the inevitable prospect of my resolution. And I, on reflection, tend to agree.
So there you have the reasons for a more limited list this year. And I will look forward to reading any further travel resolutions that you may have.
If you have access to the few major newspapers that gave extensive coverage to the latest Chinese achievement in high-speed rail, then you will already have learned many of the details. The Chinese have just opened the longest high-speed rail route ever, permitting trains to travel 1,200 miles from Beijing to Guangzhou in eight hours. That's the equivalent distance of Boston, Massachusetts, to Key West, Florida.
Imagine being able to make the trip from the northeast to south Florida in eight train hours, instead of the seven and eight hours needed to check in to a northeastern airport a couple of hours in advance of departure (in addition to spending an hour going to a distant airport), then fly to Miami, and spend another two-hours-or-so retrieving your luggage and taking a bus or taxi into the center of town.
By building these new high-speed tracks parallel to existing tracks, China also has eased the traffic load on the tracks now used for freight and traditional passenger trains, enabling freight to be delivered far more efficiently (and also easing the burden of car and truck traffic on highway routes). By building this new high-speed route (one of several now in construction), China also put 100,000 men and women to work on each of those new lines, a stimulus that did much to offset what otherwise would have been a sharp economic decline. And by shifting to energy-efficient rail transportation, China has greatly reduced the emission of carbon that every prestigious scientist has blamed for harmful climate change, in addition to easing pollution in Chinese cities (by reducing car and truck traffic on the highways of that nation).
Now I know all the arguments that have thus far blocked most projects of high-speed rail in the United States. We -- who will soon be a nation of 400,000,000 people (greater than the current population of western Europe) -- just don't have the population density needed to support high-speed rail, say the critics. We are a country of individualists, and we would rather stew in traffic jams along highways currently approaching their capacity limits, than subject ourselves to such collectivist experiences as a train involves. Building high-speed rail will also require tax increases of the sort that we have vowed to oppose.
How long will we permit these Luddite arguments to block needed investments in our nation's infrastructure? How long will we mortgage our future to satisfy fans of Ayn Rand? As we crowd into airports, and get stranded by storms, and require more than two hours to travel 50 miles on overburdened highways (as I recently did), how long will we permit habitual nay-sayers to block economic advances that every respected observer supports? How long will we permit China to outpace ourselves in economic development?
In drawing up a list of New Year's Resolutions in Travel, I recently came close to omiitting a pledge to use every opportunity to advocate for high-speed rail, all in a misguided effort to be less controversial. I've now resisted that urge. And somehow I feel that a majority of quiet Americans share my viewpoints.
What were the chief travel trends of 2012? I count at least eight of them.
The Nickel-and-Diming of Airline Passengers: The single most evident travel trend in 2012 was the effort by airlines to imitate their controversial British cousin, Ryanair, in imposing unexpected fees, charges and penalties on the most innocent acts of air transportation, like checking a suitcase or making a reservation over the phone. While federal regulatory agencies are now starting to require that the airlines fold some of these charges into the advertised price of their flights, deception continues apace, and shell-shocked flyers discover that the price of almost any ticket is higher than they expected.
The Commercialization of the Airline and Cruiseship Activity: The cruiseships started this trend, but it moved to the airlines in 2012, with the announcement by a major aviation executive that he was planning to turn his passenger airplanes into "airborne shopping malls." Apparently, flight attendants will now parade through the aisles on numerous occasions in the course of the flight, hawking dresses and sweaters, Swiss wristwatches, and dining room place settings. Already, aboard the cheaper of the cruiseships, constant loudspeaker announcements urge passengers to buy the same items in the course of the trip. And menu items in the main dining room, like steaks and lobsters, will now carry an extra charge, and waiters and waitresses will push their purchase because of an automatic gratuity attached to each such choice.
The Substitution of Apartments and Vacation Homes for Hotel Rooms: This smart trend has been discussed so often in this blog that I won't again emphasize the growth of Homeaway.com, VRBO.com, FlipKey.com, EndlessVacationRentals.com, AirBnB.com, and others, as enjoying sharply-increased popularity in 2012. A single caution needs to be made about rentals in those several jurisdictions where the mere activity of renting a room in an apartment whose owner does not remain in residence, is illegal.
The Meteroric Rise of Dubai: Once given up for dead, in the financial crisis years of 2008-2010, Dubai has revived, and tens of thousands of Americans in 2012 endured marathon-like flights on Emirates Airlines from the U.S. to gawk at the excesses and conspicuous consumption of this culture-lacking place. I remain astonished as to why any normal traveler would want to make that trip -- but they're doing it.
Ireland and China Were the Top Travel Bargains: Airi-and-land packages to these two destinations, selling for as little as $699 (for Ireland) and $899 (for China), were the undoubted champions of cost-conscious tourists in 2012, and they will probably remain so in 2013.
The Increasing Operation of Quirky Day Tours in Major Tourist Cities: Bored by the sameness of most standard motorcoach tours, Americans have turned in growing numbers in 2012 to the off-the-beaten-track variety offered by such worldwide companies as Vayable.com and UrbanAdventures.com. These are mainly walking tours conducted by graduate students and other specialists passionately in love with their cities; they cost about $40; but they are infinitely superior in content and interest to the standard variety of sightseeing.
The Emergence of Bundled AirFares Sold Only by the Airline Themselves: In an effort to give you an advantage if you go directly to the airline's own website to make your booking, and not to the hated Orbitz, Expedia, or Travelocity, airlines in 2012 have rewarded their customers who make their bookings direct (and this policy will undoubtedly grow more popular in 2013). Frontier Airlines started the trend by making seat reservations available only to people who went to the Frontier website, and American Airlines has now weighed in with an $18 insurance policy giving the passenger the right to change the date or time of their flight without penalty -- but only if they make the booking direct with American Airlines (they charge a total of $68, of which $50 is the price for checking a suitcase round-trip, and $18 brings you that penalty-free right of cancellation).
The Explosive Growth in 2012 of River Cruising and Cheap Intercity Buses: Suddenly this past year, the traveler is surrounded by offers of cruises on rivers ranging from the Mississippi (where the famous paddlewheeler known as the American Queen has resumed sailing) to the Rhine and the Yangtze. Travelers should bear in mind that these are primarily booked by people mature in age (one survey showed a large number of passengers in their 70s), and certainly not for swingers. And if you'll go to the websites of Bolt Bus and MegaBus, you'll find that these large companies have, in 2012, vastly expanded the range of their itineraries, and now connect scores of U.S. cities with inexpensive bus services.
There they are -- the chief travel trends of 2012. Have I missed any?
In re-reading a blog I recently composed on major trends in travel, I find that I overlooked a definite movement towards unusual, off-the-beaten-track walking tours of key touristic cities. These are the unique stock-in-trade of two tour companies marketing their wares under Vayable.com and UrbanAdventures.com. And although Vayable seems the longer-in-business of the two, it should be noted that Urban Adventures is affiliated with the long-established Intrepid Tours of Australia, and therefore is supported by the reputation and probable financial reliability of its larger partner.
Go to UrbanAdventures.com and you'll find descriptions of unusual day tours available to you in more than 100 cities -- tours that get under the surface of things, tours conducted by persons passionately in love with their city or with various specialized aspects of it, tours led by graduate students out to earn extra income or by free spirits of various ages who do this out of their commitment to a particular lifestyle or topic. Go to Vayable.com and you'll find even more -- tours, say, of the creative, non-touristy areas of San Francisco where you'll be led into artists' studios or galleries of the sort you might never discover on your own.
Next time you plan a visit to any major city of the world, you'd be well advised to consult Vayable.com or UrbanAdventures.com and then sign on to one of their unique introductions to that city. It will be $37 or $40 well spent.
Although the Chinese yuan remains fairly stable and cheap, at 6.23 yuan to the dollar, there are other indications that the cost of a Chinese visit may increase substantially for tourists starting several months from now. Labor unrest in particular -- protests over low wages and harsh working conditions -- seems bound to require higher wages to Chinese workers and therefore an increase in the prices encountered by tourists.
I mention this forecast by way of suggesting that the immediate months ahead -- January through March -- may be your last opportunity to enjoy a bargain-priced look at China's two main cities: Beijing and Shanghai. Currently, the aggressive tour operator known as ChinaSpree.com is offering prices as low as $899 and $999 for one-week visits to those two capitals in late January and February, including round-trip air from San Francisco (and the price is only $100 more from New York). While those rates don't include many meals, the opportunity to wander the restaurant scene on your own is a decided plus, in my view, greatly adding to the adventure that a China trip can be. And although the above rates will begin to increase in very late February and March, they remain unusually cheap.
Currently -- and to make this point more explicitly -- a one-week trip to China is undoubtedly the single best bargain in travel today. When you consider that the rates I've quoted include airfare, you quickly see that nothing offered in Europe (including even those cheap fly/drive trips to Ireland) even remotely compares.
But now may be your last opportunity to enjoy a travel bargain of the sort that China presently offers in winter.
As we enter the New Year, the single major trend in travel is the substitution (by cash-pressed tourists) of apartments and homes for hotel rooms. Americans have learned it is far better to visit fewer places and to allot a full week to each location, staying in cheaper and more spacious apartments and homes in place of hotels. Try Homeaway.com, EndlessVacationRentals.com, Rentalo.com, AirBnB.com, VRBO.com, FlipKey.com, and countless local real estate brokers, for such rental opportunities.
As compared with AirBnB.com or Rentalo.com (which rent short-term apartments and rooms in apartments) and Homeaway.com (which rents homes and apartments), the rental company called Flipkey.com specializes in the short-term rentals of second homes owned by individuals in resort areas that encourage the rental of vacation homes. Therefore, it doesn't confront you with the risk of violating local laws forbidding the rental of short-term residences. It simply doesn't face that problem.
The second major trend in travel for the year ahead? It's the considerable expansion of the cities served by cheap intercity buses, most prominently those by Bolt Bus and Megabus. Go to the websites maintained by these firms, and consult the maps of their current itineraries; you'll be surprised to see how widespread their network now is, affording you a substitute for more expensive forms of transportation.
A third trend? It's the sudden and dramatic increase in tourism to Peru, all resulting from an amazingly-successful marketing program by that country's tourism officials. But underlying the hype are a number of undeniable lures: the recent discovery and unearthing of civilizations ante-dating the Incas by hundreds of years; the recognition of Peruvian cuisine by leading journals as the "hot culinary news of 2013." Peruvian restaurants featuring pisco sours and ceviche are springing up all over America and many more are catering to tourists in Lima and nearby.
Currently, two-thirds of the city of Venice, Italy, is under water, and tourists are wading waste deep to reach their hotels, carrying suitcases over their heads. It's a reminder that Venice really shouldn't be visited from about mid-November to mid-March, when the "aqua alta" (high waters) is an overly-frequent occurrence.
By announcing that it will now penalize customers who simply don't show up at the airport to use a seat they've reserved, Southwest Airlines is becoming more and more like the other airlines, no longer as forgiving of its passengers as it used to be. The recent purchase by Delta Airlines of a big chunk of Virgin Atlantic Airlines will have no immediate impact on passengers flying for vacation purposes, says Scott Mayerowitz of the Associated Press; but it will provide business passengers going to London with much more frequent service.
In an interview conducted on our recent Travel Show, Carolyn Spencer Brown of CruiseCritic.com was ecstatic about the new Celebrity Reflection cruiseship, bringing attention to the fact that you can now grill your own steak, outdoors, on the lawn covering part of the ship's upper deck. A prominent airline head recently declared that his company would begtin operating "airborne shopping malls" on board his planes, creating much-needed additional income from the display and sale of merchandise by flight attendants parading in the aisles. Thus, the airline industry is about to join the cruiselines in overly commercializing its product; already on many popularly-priced cruises, the passenger is bombarded endlessly by various loudspeaker announcements of special sales and auctions of clothing, bric-a-brac, artwork and the like. Even in the main dining rooms of ships, where everything was once free of extra charge, passengers are entreated to order extra-charge steaks and lobster, and waiters are given a mandatory extra gratuity on the sale of such items, an incentive to push passengers into ordering the special goodies. The day is fast coming when sensitive travelers will need to upgrade to higher-priced ships, in order to avoid these tawdry tactics.
At the end of last year, I hastily scribbled a list of 18 New Year's resolutions for travel in 2012, realizing as I did so that I was including too many marginal and minor ones. I have since pared down the list to 12 important rules for the year ahead, which I genuinely believe reflect important and realistic suggestions. Here they are:
I will be courteous and respectful to airport and airline personnel and members of the TSA; they work under stressful conditions, and deserve our smiles and understanding.
I will constantly remind myself of the moral obligation to leave a generous daily tip to the housekeepers who have made up my hotel room -- theirs is an underpaid profession, and we should supplement the measly wages of the hotel chains.
I will avoid traveling on airlines that delight in public-be-damned attitudes, the companies that exult in an openly-expressed disdain for the traveler.
On my very next flight, I will politely ask permission of the person sitting behind me to recline my seat.
I will stop burying my head in a newspaper or book, and converse with the airline passenger sitting beside me, if they have indicated a desire to talk.
I will continue to argue for high-speed rail -- either in journalism or meetings -- to make a case for a technology so urgently needed in a nation that will soon have 400,000,000 people, as dense as any other on earth.
I will agitate as well for an easing of our nation's overly-restrictive visa requirements for incoming tourism, that have prevented so many foreign residents from visiting our country.
I will bring sandwiches with me, prepared at home, to substitute for that atrocious airline food.
I will never leave on any trip before spending at least a few hours reading about the history and culture of the place I am about to visit.
I will supplement the recommended tipping policies of the cruiselines with additional sums meant to recognize the hard labors of the people who staff the ships.
I will never book any Caribbean cruise that stops at the many artificial "private islands" or "private beaches" that the cruiselines are substituting for encounters with actual local people.
And finally, in the writing I do and the talks I deliver, I will continue to regard travel not as a mere recreation, but as a serious learning activity, a way of understanding the world, an essential element of a civilized life.
The most significant recent news in travel was the announcement last week by American Airlines of a new, three-part method of quoting airfares. It is an innovation that will undoubtedly be copied by other airlines, and though difficult to grasp, it makes a lot of sense.
Under American Airlines' new plan, you will have three choices when you book an airfare on that carrier: Choice, Choice Essential, and Choice Plus.
First, you can simply opt to buy Choice: a basic air ticket with nothing other than simple air transportation included, to which you will add the various fees that you alone can choose to incur. You add the cost of checking your suitcase ($25 per bag, each way), and the cost of later changing your reservation if that’s what you want to do ($150 if you later change the date or time of your flight).
Or you choose Choice Essential by adding a total charge of $68 to the basic cost of your air ticket. For that additional $68, you receive the right to check one suitcase round-trip ($25 each way, or a value of $50 round-trip), and you also receive the right to change the date or time of your reservation without penalty. You also receive priority boarding privileges. In effect, you have paid $18 over the cost of checking your suitcase round-trip, a sort of insurance policy, that enables you -- if you later wish -- to change the date or time of your flight. For a lot of passengers, this additional cost of $18 makes a lot of sense, giving them the unlimited right to change the date or time of their flight without penalty. (And American Airlines is betting that so many people will take out that $18 "insurance policy" as to earn a lot of money for the airlines, far exceeding the occasional $150 that they nornally earn for permitting people to change their mind about that date or time.
And there's a third option, Choice Plus, costing $88 for one suitcase round-trip, flight changes without penalty, priority boarding, stand-by privileges, a 50% increase in the frequent flyer privileges you receive from the trip, and one alcoholic drink.
There's also a catch: You can purchase these $68 and $88 plans only directly from the airline, and not by booking through an online travel agency like Expedia, Orbitz or Travelocity. In effect, American wants you to enjoy these privileges only when you save them the hefty commission they normally have to pay to an online travel agency.
So how about it? Do these "advantages" seem worth the extra outlay? I'd be happy to hear comments.
