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...
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...
Why Don't More People Think of Renting an RV from a Private RV Owner?
Posted on 03/02/2018, 9:00 PM
Probably the most misunderstood, most underused travel facility is the recreational vehicle capable of both housing and driving a family. All over America, persons own such RVs, but a good percentage of them make only a sporadic use of the vehicles they own. For much of the year, their RV remains parked in their garage or outside their home. This is such an underuse of valuable fa...
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 ...
Carnival Announces New Cruises to Cuba
Posted on 02/28/2018, 10:30 PM
Carnival Cruise Line is significantly increasing its sailings to Cuba. In 2019, the company will schedule 17 new cruises to the island aboard the recently renovated Carnival Sensation. The five-day voyages will be the line's first round-trip cruises to Cuba from Miami. They'll feature a day-long call in Havana as well as stops in Grand Turk, Grand Cayman, Nassau, and the private destinations o...
After 50 Years, Jesus' Baptism Site May Fully Reopen to Tourists
Posted on 02/16/2018, 11:00 PM
The section of the Jordan River traditionally designated as Jesus Christ's baptism site, where the Man from Galilee kicked off his mission to bring peace to the world, is currently surrounded by nearly 4,000 land mines. In other words, the peace-on-earth project still has a ways to go. But at least some moves are being made in the right direction. Following many delays and ongoing negotiations, ...
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.
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Arthur Frommer: My Choices for the 10 Most Memorable Destinations
Posted on 02/05/2018, 3:30 PM
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 mem...
"Three Billboards" Locations Way Outside Missouri
Posted on 01/26/2018, 12:15 AM
The titular small town in Martin McDonagh's Oscar-nominated dark comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri does not exist in real life. And we're not sure we'd want to visit if it did, considering the corrupt police force, vengeful townsfolk, and flying Molotov cocktails depicted in the movie. The scenery sure is nice, though. Much of it was filmed not in Missouri but 600 miles or so to th...
U.S. Civil Rights Trail Links Dozens of Historic Sites in 14 States
Posted on 01/16/2018, 11:00 PM
Fourteen states, covering a chunk of the U.S. from Delaware to Kansas, are joining together to promote tourism to more than 100 landmarks crucial to the struggle for civil rights. The U.S. Civil Rights Trail is a first-of-its-kind effort by tourism officials to expand smaller state programs, such as the Mississippi Freedom Trail, to cover a multi-state region predominantly in the South, the setti...
New York City's Airport Dentist Looks Back on 30 Years in the "Smile High Club"
Did you know there are dental offices at New York City's LaGuardia and JFK Airports? Dr. Robert Trager has been tending to the smiles of airport personnel and passengers for three decades.
Want a Cannabis Vacation? Now There's a Whole Town for That
Posted on 01/03/2018, 12:00 AM
One day after California, America's most populous state, made recreational cannabis consumption legal, the Los Angeles Times reported on an entire town where getting stoned is the whole point of the joint. It's called Nipton—as in Nipton in the bud. The village was purchased last September by American Green, a publicly traded, Arizona-based cannabis company. Nipton is a speck of a century-old mi...
