Travel Blog: News and Briefs
New Travel Book: ‘A Moveable Feast’
by Jim Benning | 11.10.10 | 2:07 PM ET
Lonely Planet has just published a new anthology to whet travelers’ appetites, A Moveable Feast: Life Changing Food Adventures from Around the World. Edited by Don George, it includes never-before-published tales from Simon Winchester, Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern and several World Hum contributors, myself included.
George, Andrew McCarthy, Johanna Gohmann and Anita Breland will be reading from the book tonight at Lolita Bar in New York City as part of David Farley’s Restless Legs Reading Series.
I’ll join George, Larry Habegger and Amanda Jones in a reading Sunday evening at Book Passage in Corte Madera.
If you’re around, stop by and say hi.
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Yahoo! BuzzTour Guide Battle in Southern California Leaves Chinese ‘Very Afraid’
by Michael Yessis | 11.10.10 | 1:02 PM ET
Chinese tourists are increasingly bringing their own guides when they travel to Southern California. Local guides are pissed about losing business and, allegedly, becoming confrontational. The Los Angeles Times breaks it down:
Wang Suqi, president of Beijing-based Total Travel International Travel Service, claims that one of his tour leaders was punched by an American tour guide at Universal Studios Hollywood, and now his tour leaders have asked to be transferred to different tours in Europe and Southeast Asia.
“They’re very afraid,” Wang said. “Even our customers are asking what’s going on.”
The competition for the Chinese tourism business was set off in 2007 when China, for the first time, allowed commercial travel agents to book group pleasure trips to the U.S. But China did not mandate that Chinese tourists hire accredited American tour guides—a requirement that China imposed on other countries, including Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
Of course, it’s mostly about money. Chinese travelers have been unleashed in recent years, and they spend.
In 2009, Chinese travelers spent an average of $6,800 per person per visit, including airfare, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. By 2020, China will become the world’s fourth-largest source of tourists, the United Nation’s World Tourism Organization predicts.
Slate Goes to 30 Airports in 30 Days
by Eva Holland | 11.10.10 | 11:43 AM ET
Slate’s latest Well-Traveled series follows Chadwick Matlin, newly unemployed and newly single, on a quest to visit 30 airports in 30 days. Here’s Matlin’s explanation of his “unnecessarily idiotic” mission:
Airports are universally reviled. They’re full of bad food, arbitrary security rules, and stale air. The planes are little better—uncomfortable seats, no personal space, and yet more stale air. No person has felt better getting off a plane than they did getting on.
But if unemployment is supposed to be good for anything, it’s for chasing dreams we otherwise couldn’t. And for reasons far too masochistic for even me to understand, going to 30 airports in 30 days had become my dream.
The series continues all week. So far it’s a solid mix of insight and humor, with some fun graphic treatments of the trip’s numbers thrown in.
Pilots: Leading the Charge Against Full-Body Scans
by Eva Holland | 11.09.10 | 1:53 PM ET
A couple weeks back, we wrote about a lone ExpressJet pilot who faced down the TSA over the new full-body scans. Now a union representing 11,000 American Airlines pilots has joined the fight. Here’s the Allied Pilots Association president, Captain Dave Bates, in a letter to his members:
While I’m sure that each of us recognizes that the threats to our lives are real, the practice of airport security screening of airline pilots has spun out of control and does nothing to improve national security. It’s long past time that policymakers take the steps necessary to exempt commercial pilots from airport security screening and grant designated pilot access to SIDA utilizing either Crew Pass or biometric identification.
Is This a ‘Golden Age’ for Air Travel?
by Eva Holland | 11.09.10 | 1:27 PM ET
USA Today’s Ben Mutzabaugh makes the case, arguing that—despite the many complaints about air travel today—low fares, new technology and an array of service choices could mean flying has never been better.
Meanwhile, a quick browse through our archives reveals that we may also be enjoying the golden age of American family vacations, the golden age of green travel, a new golden age of train travel, the golden age of British indie bookstores and the new golden age of the cross-country road trip. Travelers of the 21st century, count your blessings.
The Critics: ‘Due Date’
by Eva Holland | 11.08.10 | 2:38 PM ET
When I first wrote about “Due Date” a few months back, I compared it to the 1980s road trip classic, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” Now that the movie has arrived in theaters, many critics are drawing the same parallel—but the new flick, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis, just doesn’t hold up when compared with “Planes, Trains.”
New York Magazine’s David Edelstein describes “a premise so wrung-out I’m bored recounting it—two viscerally mismatched people thrown together on a desperate road trip,” and the Christian Science Monitor’s Peter Rainer suggests that “if the comic premise of this film appeals to you, you’d be better off renting ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’.” Over at Slate, Dana Stevens adds: “It’s not that a reworking of this familiar material couldn’t be made funny again, but it would take a lot more imagination than this movie, directed by dude-comedy auteur Todd Phillips (‘Road Trip,’ ‘Old School,’ ‘The Hangover’), seems willing to put in.”
I caught the movie this weekend, too, and I was not impressed. The drive from Atlanta to L.A.—a road trip with plenty of potential—provided only a few miserly scenic shots, and while there was a handful of good laughs, too many of the jokes fell flat. I’ll give David Edelstein the last word:
At journey’s end, though, “Due Date” is less than exhilarating. It’s still a formula mismatched buddy movie that goes nowhere you haven’t been, happy to hug the Interstate, willfully oblivious to other roads and a more surprising—and even more riotous—world elsewhere.
Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia Consecrated After 128 Years
by Eva Holland | 11.08.10 | 1:03 PM ET
REUTERS/Gustau Nacarino The Pope consecrated the Gaudi-designed church as a Basilica yesterday. The building is still unfinished—it’s been under construction since 1882—but the consecration means that daily masses can now be held in the main nave. If tourist entry fees remain steady, it’s hoped that the Sagrada Familia will be complete by 2026.
What We Loved This Week: Antarctica, San Diego Sunsets and the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
by World Hum | 11.05.10 | 5:44 PM ET
Chris Epting
I’ve loved reviewing some of the 3,000-plus penguin/iceberg/landscape photos I shot in Antarctica last week while on a glorious Quark Expeditions trip with my teenage daughter. Here’s one:
‘Expedition Impossible’: Indiana Jones Meets ‘The Amazing Race’?
by Eva Holland | 11.05.10 | 12:48 PM ET
There’s a new travel-themed reality TV show in the works from “Survivor” producer Mark Burnett. “Expedition Impossible” will follow several three-person teams as they tackle challenges and solve problems while traveling through the wilderness areas of the world—Burnett calls it “an epic Indiana Jones-style experience.” So, fedoras and leather jackets all around? The show will air on ABC.
Qantas and Singapore Airlines Ground All A380s
by Eva Holland | 11.04.10 | 2:48 PM ET
REUTERS/STRINGER Singapore The two airlines made the decision after a Qantas A380 engine exploded above Indonesia earlier today. The plane landed safely, and investigations are ongoing. The much-hyped, long-awaited super jumbo jet debuted three years ago, and according to the New York Times story about the explosion, there are 37 of them currently in use.
Retracing Paul Theroux’s ‘The Old Patagonian Express’
by Jim Benning | 11.04.10 | 2:10 PM ET
Rachel Pook My favorite Paul Theroux book is The Old Patagonian Express, in which he chronicled his journey by train through the Americas. Theroux had a grand time, enduring irritating travelers, witnessing a soccer riot in El Salvador and reading to the late blind Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
So I was happy to hear the other day from Rachel Pook, who is retracing the route Theroux followed in the book—at least from Costa Rica southward—and blogging about it.
As she explains on her site:
An urge for adventure teamed with huge admiration for Paul Theroux’s travel writing has led me to this project.
After seven years working at News International for The Times I decided to escape the confines of Fortress Wapping and do some exploring.
She embarked on the trip in August. Her last post, on Sunday, titled Altitude Sickness and a Tortoise, was from Peru.
‘They Like Shopping, Theme Parks and, of Course, Eating’
by Eva Holland | 11.04.10 | 1:01 PM ET
That’s according to a tourism real estate investor keen to anticipate the needs of a growing wave of Chinese tourists. The Independent reports on the ways some tourism operators are preparing for that wave—here are the numbers motivating the effort:
Travelling Chinese spent US$43.7 billion (31 billion euro) on tourism in 2009 - a rise of 21 per cent year on year. And the United Nation’s World Tourism Organisation says it is only a matter of time before they spend more than visitors from the traditional international travel leaders Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Outbound trips by Chinese are meanwhile expected to jump from an estimated 52 million this year to 100 million in 2020.
Test Driving the New Travel + Leisure iPad App
by Jim Benning | 11.03.10 | 3:15 PM ET
Travel + Leisure magazine just launched an app designed especially for the iPad, and the first issue, for November, is available for free.
Here’s how the magazine touts the app on its iPad FAQ page.
You’ll find exclusive videos from top creative minds and travel experts and bonus photo galleries and slideshows of the magazine’s award-winning photography from destinations around the globe. You’ll get the best of the print magazine, plus bonus trip tips, interactive maps, booking and buying links, audio reviews, and much more-all the tools you need to take you where you want to go.
I downloaded it last night and took it for a test spin.
The Big Picture: Haiti, After the Earthquake
by Eva Holland | 11.03.10 | 3:09 PM ET
The Big Picture has another stunning photo essay from the island, now 10 months into its recovery from a massive earthquake. The pictures are sad, beautiful and—occasionally—uplifting.
BP to Spend Millions on Louisiana Tourism Promotion
by Jim Benning | 11.02.10 | 5:12 PM ET
The funds, totaling $78 million, will also help promote the Louisiana seafood industry.
According to Business Week:
BP has paid out $87 million to Gulf Coast states for tourism promotion, and has so far committed to an additional $30 million to Louisiana. The company has also promised $68 million to Louisiana and Florida for seafood testing and product marketing.
I wonder whether any of that money will help fund travel-writer junkets to the region. As we noted in September, some BP money already has, prompting a debate about the ethics of a such a trip.
