This New Budget-Priced Transatlantic Airline Is Probably News to You
Posted on 02/22/2018, 12:45 AM
Most everyone by now has heard of Norwegian Air Shuttle, which flies the Atlantic at rock-bottom prices. Although Norwegian suffered a loss in 2017, it has struck fear into the hearts of the so-called “legacy carriers,” like British Airways, Iberia Airlines, and others. Result: A consortium of established airlines—British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and others—have recently created a brand-new bud...
Japan's Ultra-Cheap “Bed-in-a-Box” Hotels Have Resurfaced—in London
Posted on 02/16/2018, 9:30 AM
Many years ago, when Japan was the world’s leading economy and Japanese businessmen were hard-striving cheapskates anxious to squeeze out any savings, several properties in Tokyo created so-called “capsule hotels” charging awesomely low rates. Instead of placing their clients in normal rooms, they lodged them in coffin-like boxes, three feet wide, four feet tall, and seven feet long, all inse...
Arthur Frommer: Make Sure To Check Your Passport Dates Before Travel
Posted on 02/14/2018, 2:00 PM
You are about to leave on an international trip, and you have carefully checked the contents of your suitcase, wallet or purse to make sure that everything—especially your passport—is there. And is the passport still valid? You glance at the page with that information, and seeing that all is well, you leave for the airport. You have done everything correctly, right? Wrong! Unbeknownst to virtua...
Arthur Frommer: My Choices for the 10 Most Memorable Destinations
Posted on 02/05/2018, 10:30 AM
As a professional travel writer, I was required to travel to far more destinations than the average American does. In my youthful years, I literally lived on an airplane, in constant motion, often traveling to several countries each week. And I loved every bit of that life—especially these 10 particular destinations. Here, based on that experience, are my choices of the world’s 10 most memorabl...
Arthur Frommer: For No Real Reason, Feds Attack the Legality of Cannabis Tourism
Posted on 01/11/2018, 8:00 PM
Because the current U.S. Attorney General is a fierce opponent of marijuana, we can expect a massive legal attack against travel to the states—mainly California and Colorado—that have recently legalized its use. What is startling about this prospect is that the alleged dangers of smoking marijuana have been denied by every respectable study. The key examination of marijuana was conducted m...
A Slump in the Number of Foreign Visitors to the United States Continues
Posted on 01/11/2018, 3:15 PM
Commencing with the inauguration of President Trump, tourism officials in several U.S. cities have drawn attention, with alarm, to a reduction in the number of foreign residents visiting their cities. One such official, representing New York, cited a drop of 700,000 foreign tourists no longer coming to the Big Apple. But until now, no such figures have been reported for the United States as a ...
A Cherished National Monument Was Just Reduced by 85%—Is a National Park Next?
Posted on 01/01/2018, 7:00 PM
On a recent trip to Utah, on which he was accompanied by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, President Donald Trump reduced the acreage of the Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and reduced the size of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument by half. For some idea of the scale of that reduction, the elimination of land from Bears Ears is equivalent to the size of the Grand Teton National Park. From...
Arthur Frommer's Travel Resolutions for the New Year
Posted on 12/27/2017, 7:00 PM
Because they often seek to regulate all of human activity, I find most New Year’s Resolutions to be rather unsatisfying. Here’s an attempt to limit these rules to the world of travel, which—to me—is badly in need of a little moralizing at this moment in our history. So here goes. In the year ahead: I shall fight, as a citizen and as a voter, to preserve the right of every American, in peac...
Two New Biographies Are Indispensable for Trips Through Europe or America
Posted on 12/26/2017, 7:00 PM
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are currently purchasing and avidly reading two monumental biographies in book form about two monumental figures in world and American history. In position number one on every bestseller list is Walter Isaacson’s 900-page volume on the life and achievements of Leonardo da Vinci (Simon & Schuster). The other, ranked closely behind and almost as large, is Ron ...
The Trump Slump Claims Another Victim: Students Coming to Study at U.S. Colleges
Posted on 11/17/2017, 4:00 PM
In earlier blogs, I discussed the recent sharp decline in foreign tourism coming to vacation in the United States—far more than a few million fewer visitors compared to previous periods. To those figures, in statistics released just days ago, we now need to figure in a drop of several hundreds of thousands of fewer foreign students coming to the United States to study in our places of learning. Exp...
