Disney Will Never Be the Same: A Litany of Layoff Devastation
Posted on 10/28/2020, 5:00 PM
This week, there was an employment cataclysm at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. In one day, the company axed nearly every worker with a speaking role in its U.S. parks. As part of the 28,000 layoffs announced a few weeks ago, Disney's live entertainment all but came to an end. Although Walt Disney World reopened in July, visitors simply aren't coming and spending. The company can no longer aff...
Pauline Frommer: A Worthy Vacation Rental Search Aggregator Has Arrived
Posted on 10/27/2020, 12:00 PM
Fewer travelers may be hitting the road right now, but among those still traveling, the top accommodation choices have shifted dramatically from a year ago. As I wrote last week, more people are choosing vacation rentals over hotels. The change has made Airbnbs more expensive than hotels in most North American markets. We’ve also seen a huge uptick in the percentage of travelers choosing RVs, ten...
Get Ready: Travel Is Becoming More Expensive and More Exclusive
Posted on 10/27/2020, 7:00 AM
The warning signs are everywhere. You will soon be paying more to travel. The headlines are full of news about the airlines cutting capacity. In Europe, Ryanair will fly only 40% of what it flew a year ago. Next summer, Icelandair's capacity will be down about 30% from 2019. We could list many more examples from around the world, but the bottom line is the same: There are fewer seats in the skies...
In a Trial to Rescue Travel, Canada to Test International Arrivals at One Airport
Posted on 10/23/2020, 1:00 PM
The multibillion-dollar problem for the travel industry right now is how travel will get back to normal. For many, the solution could be summed up in three words: easily accessible testing. Since most scientists are expecting it to take a good eight months to a year before a vaccine can be approved and widely distributed, testing is a stopgap measure that allows governments to curb the spread of ...
Southwest Airlines to Start Filling Every Seat Again, Despite Covid
Posted on 10/22/2020, 9:00 AM
Just in time for the holidays, Southwest Airlines announced it will no longer restrict ticket sales for flights, which will result in middle seats being occupied on full flights. Southwest will join United Airlines and American Airlines in filling seats to capacity. Southwest said it will notify booked passengers if a scheduled flight is expected to be full and give the option of rescheduling with...
Pauline Frommer: Thanks to 2020, Airbnb Isn't Always the Cheapest Option Anymore
Posted on 10/21/2020, 3:00 PM
The conventional wisdom used to be you’d save money by renting an Airbnb rather than booking a hotel room. That now needs to be revised in yet another reversal brought by the pandemic. A new study from Wanderu, a website usually devoted to comparing bus and train ticket prices, found that in most of North America, average Airbnb nightly rates are now higher than average hotel prices. Sometimes t...
Is This The Strongest Proof Yet Flying Is Safe? See These New Military-Grade Tests
Posted on 10/15/2020, 10:00 AM
If you ran an airline in 2020, how would you prove to the public that flying in your planes is safe? It's a tricky proposition in an age of document dumps, disinformation, and fake news. To reassure consumers, the airlines need to show that they're safe to use, but any study they produce on their own could be dismissed as self-serving, questionable, or overly anecdotal. So here's what United Airl...
Stay at the Luxury Hotel Where 'The Great British Baking Show' Was Shot
Posted on 10/14/2020, 6:00 PM
What 2020 championship season successfully navigated the Covid Era by requiring participants to live and compete in a rigorously maintained social bubble? If you said the National Basketball Association, your answer is only half-baked. Yes, the NBA hunkered down in an isolated community at Walt Disney World in Florida. ABC's But the contestants on the U.K.'s The Great British Bake Off, known in N...
Oh, Great. Now That Icelandic Volcano Looks Like It Could Erupt Again
Posted on 10/12/2020, 6:00 PM
If you're old enough, you might remember that time in 2010 when a volcano shut down Europe. In March of that year, Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano (pictured above) erupted and spewed so much ash that planes couldn't safely fly. As the plume drifted southeast and spread, the continent's aircraft were effectively shut down for a week until the microscopic flecks of ash gradually dispersed. More t...
Panama Is Reopening for Quarantine-Free Visits, So Is This the Winter to Finally Go?
Posted on 10/10/2020, 7:00 AM
As Frommer's Panama author Nicholas Gill writes, "Panama is home to a staggering array of natural landscapes, each beautiful in its own way." That includes lovely beaches, perfect spots for snorkeling and scuba diving, mile after mile of pristine rainforest, rugged mountains laced with top whitewater rivers, state-of-the-art golf courses, mangrove swamps, coffee plantations, dozing volcanoes, coas...
