Travel Blog
The Oddities of Travel on Television
by Jim Benning | 10.06.05 | 11:18 AM ET
San Antonio Current looks at travel programming on TV—from Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” to a show about 20-something travelers called “5 Takes”—and finds “new highs and lows.” Writes Elaine Wolff: “The wilderness may be largely settled in the 21st century, but cable and satellite television is a vast territory populated by hungry media executives clamoring for programming to which ad revenue can be tethered, and specialty channels such as Travel face a bigger challenge than their polygamous brethren: How do you put a fresh face on 24 hours worth of globetrotting? The answer seems to be leave no demographic or formula unturned.”
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Yahoo! BuzzTalking Travel Writing in Key West
by Jim Benning | 10.06.05 | 10:50 AM ET
Organizers of the Key West Literary Seminar have put together an all-star line-up for its three-day January event, which focuses on travel and adventure writing. Among the scheduled panelists: Pico Iyer, Tony Horwitz, Patrick Symmes, Kate Wheeler, Peter Matthiessen and Barry Lopez. According to the seminar Web site, the event is sold out, and those who register will be added to a wait list.
Pork for Salmon on Alaska Airlines Plane
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.05 | 9:41 AM ET
The money that paid for the fish on an Alaska Airlines plane—a “Salmon-Thirty-Salmon”—comes from a $500,000 United States government grant to support the salmon industry, reports ABC News. Critics of congressional pork are having a field day across the web. Rightly so.
Tanya Shaffer’s “Baby Taj”: A “Delectable New Play”
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.05 | 4:46 AM ET
Travel writer and playwright Tanya Shaffer’s latest effort, Baby Taj, earned a rave review from the Robert Hurwitt in Thursday’s San Francisco Chronicle. The play, which is partly based on her travels through India, is “a witty and probing culture clash between free-thinking modernity and long-established traditions that discovers degrees of freedom within cultural restrictions and incapacitating constraints in freedom,” Hurwitt writes.
New .travel Domain Debuts, Controversy Ensues
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.05 | 4:33 AM ET
Tralliance Corp. began accepting registration for .travel domain names yesterday, but only to the “global travel and tourism community,” the AP’s Anick Jesdanun reports. Translation: No individual travelers allowed, unless they’re selling travel services.
American Visits to Cuba Are Down. Fines Are Up. Way Up.
by Jim Benning | 10.04.05 | 6:26 PM ET
It’s 7 A.M. in Botswana. Do You Know Where Your Wildebeest Is?
by Jim Benning | 10.04.05 | 12:07 PM ET
Call it “armchair safari.” National Geographic has set up a webcam at Pete’s Pond, a wildlife reserve in Botswana that is apparently teeming with animals, from elephants to wildebeests. Best viewing times fall between 7 a.m. and noon Botswana time, then again in the evening before sundown. Spiegel magazine offers a brief backgrounder on the webcam and the pond. It was getting late in Botswana when I checked the cam this morning from California. I didn’t see much.
Bali, Terrorism and the Economics of Fear
by Jim Benning | 10.03.05 | 11:23 AM ET
We recently pointed to a USA Today story noting that terrorist attacks don’t have the crippling economic effects they once did. So what will come of Saturday’s bombings in Bali, which killed 26 people? An article in Forbes online suggests tourism will rebound relatively quickly. “Although Saturday’s blasts will mean a sharp fall in Bali’s tourist arrivals, analysts said the experiences of other target cities suggest its beaches will be packed again within a year or two,” the article states. That’s good news for Bali and bad news for terrorists.
He Did Follow U2 in Europe
by Jim Benning | 10.03.05 | 9:00 AM ET
The Boston Globe’s Tom Haines, recently named travel journalist of the year by the Society of American Travel Writers, followed U2 on tour in Europe this summer from Vienna to Chorzow, Poland to Berlin. His unconventional story about the trip, Wide awake in Europe with U2, appeared in Sunday’s paper.
The History of “Tourism” in Two Sentences
by Jim Benning | 10.03.05 | 9:00 AM ET
From the October issue of AeroMexico’s in-flight magazine, Escala: The word “tourism” didn’t originate from some English travelers’ journey through Tours, France, as some claim. “The truth of the matter is,” the magazine reports, “its origin goes back to the ancient French word torneier, meaning ‘to go around’ which, in turn, came from the Latin tornare, to make something go around on a lathe. As for the city [Tours], its name is derived from another, older one, Toronum or Toronus.”
Supreme Court Justice Travel Watch: Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy
by Michael Yessis | 09.29.05 | 4:06 AM ET
It seems that at least two of the current Supremes love to travel. Soon-to-be-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told Associated Press reporter Gina Holland Wednesday that, once Congress confirms her replacement, she’s looking forward to working on book projects and traveling. “Just to see friends and take a trip or two would be nice,” said the 24-year-veteran of the court. Earlier this month, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin profiled one of O’Connor’s colleagues, Anthony Kennedy. Toobin met up with Kennedy in Salzburg, Austria where the Justice has rented an apartment for the last 15 summers with his wife, Mary.
This Gives Entirely New Meaning to Speed Dating
by Michael Yessis | 09.29.05 | 4:01 AM ET
AirTroductions deserves the groan-worthy headline. It’s a new service that acts as a matchmaker for air travelers, connecting two people traveling on the same flight. It’s billed as “JDate meets the Mile-High Club.” Founder Peter Shankman says in a press release: “Having taken over 500 flights in the past four years, I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve been seated next to someone I actually wanted to talk to. Creating AirTroductions was a labor of love. Hopefully, people can match themselves up and sit next to someone they want to talk to! Imagine what kind of success can come from this, on a business, personal, and friendship level!”
Flight Attendants Take Aim at Jodie Foster’s “Flightplan”
by Michael Yessis | 09.29.05 | 12:11 AM ET
From Reuters: “Labor unions representing most of the nation’s 90,000 flight attendants have urged their members to boycott a new Jodie Foster film that portrays a flight attendant and a U.S. air marshal as terrorists. They said that casting cabin crew members as villains in the movie ‘Flightplan’ was irresponsible in light of heightened security concerns since the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which suicide hijackers used airliners as guided missiles.”
World Tourism Organization: 100 Million Chinese Travelers by 2020
by Michael Yessis | 09.27.05 | 4:54 AM ET
How significant is the number? Consider this: Chinese citizens were only freed by their government to travel for leisure in 1997, and last year only 29 million mainland Chinese citizens traveled abroad. Tom Miller of the China Economic Quarterly writes that the upcoming Chinese tourism boom is a mixed blessing for Europe’s tourism economy.
Innuendo and the City
by Michael Yessis | 09.27.05 | 4:42 AM ET
Sunday’s New York Times arrived with another travel edition of T Style Magazine inside, and it’s mostly what you’d expect from a style/travel magazine: it’s full of stories by and about celebrities and celebrated writers. I haven’t had a chance to read much of it yet, but I did notice a secondary theme: sex. Or maybe it’s just travel writing that would really entertain a teenage boy.
