Hotel Bait and Switch: Throttled Internet is Unethical, So Why Aren't People Angrier?
Posted on 10/07/2015, 10:30 PM
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The One-Percenting of Disney: Who Loses, Who Wins
Posted on 10/06/2015, 11:45 AM
Every few months, American news outlets erupt with a new round of rueful Disney coverage. Every spring, admission ticket prices shoot skyward, and this week, it hiked its annual pass rates as much as 31%—an insane inflation by any standard. Disney parks are as crowded as ever, but the company seems to be entirely tone deaf to the real takeaway behind the constant drumbeat of bad press: Disne...
Gifts You Should Give Yourself This Holiday Travel Season
Posted on 10/05/2015, 7:30 PM
In the next couple of months, most of us will be spending a lot of time in stores, and online, shopping for gifts for our loved ones. If you’re going to be traveling to give those presents in person, why not make what can be a stressful travel season a little easier by gifting yourself with the following? An early morning flight: Holiday travel season is also storm season. And when storms hi...
Have Airlines Deliberately Made Flying Uncomfortable in Order to Collect Extra Fees?
Posted on 09/29/2015, 6:15 PM
Fees for "priority boarding" of the planes. Fees for extra legroom. Fees for wider seats. Fees for choosing seats. Fees for snacks served aboard. Fees for checking luggage. Fees for contacting an airline reservationist. Those and countless other extra fees confront today's airline passenger. Are they all part of a deliberate conspiracy of the airlines to collect fees from passengers seeking to ...
Though Not the Equivalent of Maho Bay Camps, Concordia Eco Resort is an Adequate Substitute for Ecologically Minded Vacationers
Posted on 09/26/2015, 3:00 PM
For some 30 years, the world's most ecologically sensitive vacation resort has been Maho Bay Camps on the exquisite but lightly developed island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. A complex of canvas-sided huts ranged along a hill sloping down to a remarkable beach and view, Maho Bay was booked by Americans of all income levels who wanted to live clos...
A Sharp Reduction in the Number of Important, Independently Owned Travel Websites is Threatening to Harm the Quality of Their Advice
Posted on 09/26/2015, 2:45 PM
Based on the ground-breaking research and analysis of travel expert Reid Bramblett, I recently wrote in these blogs about the shocking consolidation of what used to be three large online travel agencies—Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz—into what is now only one immensely giant online travel agency, namely Expedia. In just as shocking a development, Expedia has now caused the airfares and hotel r...
Death By Selfie: The Dangers of Taking Too Many Selfies While Traveling
Posted on 09/24/2015, 11:45 AM
With every technological advance, there’s also a step backward…and sometimes that step can be a fatal one, in the case of selfies. The modern smartphone, with its ability to not only act as a communication device but also as a camera (and one with a lens on both sides) is changing the way we experience travel, and it's leaving some travelers hurt, and even dead. That isn’t hyperbole. In j...
Two Little-Known Upstarts—WOW Airlines of Iceland and Norwegian Air of Scandinavia—Are Currently Offering Bargain Rates for Off-Season Crossings of the Atlantic
Posted on 09/18/2015, 4:30 PM
We are about to reach the slowest days of the European off-season, which starts as we approach the month of November and continues until mid-March. It is then that European hotels search for guests, the cost of vacationing in Europe declines, and the smartest of all American travelers choose to cross the Atlantic. But though the land costs of Europe are less at that time, e...
Meteorologists Predict Changing Weather Will Make This Year's Fall Foliage Different
Posted on 09/16/2015, 1:00 PM
First the bad news: leaf-peeping along North America’s eastern seaboard, and in the inland areas of New England, may not be quite as vivid an event as it usually is in 2015. Yankee magazine, which keeps a meteorologist on staff to make such predictions, is just one of the many voices predicting less color. “It’s going to be a little bit of a mix this year because we had one of the fierces...
Driver Licences From Four U.S. States May No Longer Be Accepted As I.D. at Airports in 2016
Posted on 09/14/2015, 7:45 PM
And those states are: New York, New Hampshire, Louisiana, and Minnesota. In December of 2014, the first phase of the Real ID Act from Congress and the Department of Homeland Security went into effect. It's mandate was to standardize government-issued IDs across the United States, specifically for the purpose of allowing people entry to Federal facilities. The states would have until 2016 t...
