Historic Luxury Resort Reborn in Arizona
Posted on 06/13/2018, 9:30 PM
For several decades starting in 1896, a remote Arizona resort located about 50 miles north of Phoenix played host to a steady stream of well-to-do vacationers, including Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Roosevelts, and other Gilded Age muckety-mucks. They were drawn to Castle Hot Springs for the seclusion, sunny weather, Southwestern pursuits like horseback riding, and the supposed restorative propert...
New Booking Site for Clothing-Optional Stays
Posted on 05/09/2018, 12:00 AM
We're strong believers in packing light—all that luggage will only slow you down—but the champions in that department have got to be those who are fond of vacationing in the nude. After all, once they reach their destinations, they don't need much more than towels and sunscreen (take that, airline baggage fees!). Those carefree and, we assume, frequently chilly travelers now have a new online res...
Hugely Popular European Destination Bans Apartment Rentals
Posted on 04/27/2018, 8:00 PM
Between 2015 and 2017, illegal vacation rentals, fueled by services such as Airbnb, shot up 50%. As a consequence, rent for locals skyrocketed 40%. For a small Mediterranean island without suburbs to expand to, what is there to do? If you're governing Majorca, an internationally beloved getaway in the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain, you impose a life-ruining fine of €400,000 (US $485,000...
Renowned Ocean Liner Reborn as Floating Hotel in Dubai
Posted on 04/19/2018, 12:00 AM
The retired Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner, which the Cunard Line operated from 1969 to 2008, has been transformed into a floating hotel in Dubai. Docked at the city's Port Rashid for a decade (the 2008 recession slowed down the remodeling project), the 13-deck ship has more than 200 contemporary rooms and suites, ranging from tiny cabins to opulent aeries with private verandas. The design, accor...
In New York City, Rapidly Shifting Hotel Prices, Shorter Dining Hours, and More
Posted on 04/12/2018, 5:30 PM
Every year at this time, I update the book Frommer’s EasyGuide to New York City. This involves spreadsheets of pricing, hours, and more, meaning that I’m easily able to graph the trends that shape visits to Gotham. Here’s what I’m seeing for 2018 and into 2019: Good news/bad news on hotel rates: To track hotel pricing, I use several hotel booking engines, and I test dates for the slowest travel da...
Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas Getting a Virgin Hotels Makeover
Posted on 04/02/2018, 3:00 PM
The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is entering Virgin territory. The hotel—located just off the Strip on Paradise Road—has been acquired by the growing Virgin Hotels chain, which is giving the property a top-to-bottom overhaul. Virgin founder Richard Branson revealed the changeover at a press conference announcing that his company and other investors had made the purchase. The ren...
Hotel on Skis Debuts in Finland for Northern Lights Viewing
Posted on 03/21/2018, 9:15 PM
A novel way of experiencing the Northern Lights has come to Finland. The new Aurora Wilderness Camp, located near the village of Kilpisjärvi, is comprised of three mobile cabins that have been mounted on skis so that they can be dragged into the remote reaches of the country's Lapland region. And because each unit has a glass roof, guests have a good chance of spotting the Northern Lights from t...
Makeup Mogul Bobbi Brown Opening Her Own Hotel in New Jersey
Posted on 03/16/2018, 12:30 PM
Makeup designer and skincare expert Bobbi Brown is going from fashionable boutiques to her own fashionable boutique hotel. Known for creating a popular line of understated cosmetics (she later sold the company to Estée Lauder), Brown has teamed up with her husband, developer Steven Plofker, to open The George, a 32-room inn "with modern style and historic bones." In other words, it sort of looks...
Disney World Now Charges for Parking at Hotels, Decreasing Their Value
Posted on 03/14/2018, 4:00 PM
It used to be one of the great courtesies of staying in a Walt Disney World resort hotel: You got free parking, and then you could take Disney transportation for free. It was touted as one of the perks and a big incentive to choose a Disney hotel over a room located outside the resort property's gates. Since Disney hotels are two or three times as much as a room of comparable quality a mile away, ...
New Club Med Openings: Sicily, the Great Wall, and More
Posted on 03/13/2018, 2:30 PM
Club Med has embarked on an ambitious expansion project. The pioneer in all-inclusive resorts plans to add 15 new properties to its worldwide roster by the end of 2020, opening five resorts per year between now and then. Though you might associate Club Med with sunny spots in the Caribbean, major focuses of the company's latest efforts are Asia and the mountains of Europe. Openings scheduled fo...
Booking.com Introduces New Program for Unusual Stays
Posted on 03/08/2018, 12:30 AM
Unconventional accommodations like treehouses, yurts, and barns have proven popular on vacation rental sites such as Airbnb and HomeAway. For the increasing number of travelers seeking unique, Instagrammable experiences, a night in a castle or on a houseboat has obvious advantages over a run-of-the-mill chain hotel. Now Booking.com, which has an enormous online database of accommodations around t...
Privacy vs. Security: How Hotel Guests Can Get Around the Rise in "Room Checks"
Posted on 03/06/2018, 5:00 PM
I do a strange thing in hotel rooms sometimes: I host a live radio show. When I'm on the road, thanks to the magic of Skype, my room becomes my studio. And it used to be a quiet, easy place to broadcast from. No more. During not one, but two recent broadcasts, I’ve been interrupted by the maid knocking insistently. This despite hanging a "do not disturb" sign on the door. I’d thought it was bad...
The Ever-Expanding Footprint of Airbnb and What It Means
Posted on 03/05/2018, 6:00 AM
With speed more head-spinning than Linda Blair's in The Exorcist, Airbnb has been growing and changing and growing once again. In just the past 18 months or so, it has added online guidebook-style material, a section for luxury rentals, another that filters for “unusual” digs, and, most surprisingly, actual hotels. In the latter category, Airbnb will be growing exponentially in the coming months: I...
The World’s Most Rewarding Source of Free Homestays Is, and Remains, Servas
Posted on 03/02/2018, 8:45 PM
Organizations come and go that arrange for you to stay free-of-charge in someone else’s home or apartment in the course of your travels. The latest leaders in this effort are Couchsurfing.com and Globalfreeloaders.com, which are sometimes criticized as having grown too large to be effective. But another such organization—USServas.org—is older by far and careful to hand-pick both hosts and ...
Huge New Atlantis Resort Opens in China
Posted on 02/26/2018, 10:30 PM
The world now has three Atlantis resorts to overwhelm visitors with an ocean's worth of watery amenities and maximalist architecture. Joining sister properties in the Bahamas and Dubai (another is in the works in Hawaii), the just-opened Atlantis Sanya occupies more than 130 coastal acres on China's Hainan island, a tropical spot southwest of Hong Kong in the South China Sea that's becoming incre...
Resort Fees Are a Tax Dodge: Why They're Destructive for Us All
Posted on 02/21/2018, 12:00 AM
Americans despise resort fees. But in a shockingly short span of time, about a decade, we became blasé about them. Appallingly, the people once reknowned for feisty individualism and a testy spirit of fairness have rolled over like docile lap dogs—we sigh and pay hidden charges as if staying in hotels had always been this way. It wasn't. This is not normal. Can you remember how terrible you felt ...
Japan's Ultra-Cheap “Bed-in-a-Box” Hotels Have Resurfaced—in London
Posted on 02/16/2018, 2:30 PM
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...
What to Expect When You Stay Overnight at the Quebec Ice Hotel
Every winter, North America's only ice hotel is rebuilt in Quebec. Here's what you need to know before checking in.
