Mary Waring had just quit her marketing job in San Diego in 2001, so saving money on her upcoming trip to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, was a high priority. She found lots of resources online and posted links to coupons on a Web site.
This week's news of the Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles because they were reportedly using laptop computers is only the latest aviation story to captivate audiences.
When Erin Hott checks into her hotel, she's shown to a room with an unmade bed. When she asks for clean sheets, an employee tells her they can't change her linen until the next day. And if she doesn't like it, she can find another hotel, but she'll still have to pay for her room. Whatever happened to customer service?
Six hundred years ago, Brussels was just a nice place to stop and buy a waffle on the way to France. Today, it's a city of 1.8 million, the capital of Belgium, the headquarters of NATO and the political center of the European Union. It may be easy to skip as you zip from Amsterdam to Paris by train, but its rich brew of food and culture pleasantly surprises those who stop. Its magnificent grand square, rightly named La Grand Place, alone makes a visit worthwhile.
Nicholas Czapor books four Hilton hotel stays through a double points promotion. But the points never show up in his account, and now Hilton is offering him only a fraction of the promised award. Can it do that? And what recourse, if any, does Czapor have?
The changing leaves are just one lure for outdoor adventurers during the fall season. The tourist crowds of July and August have dissipated, and in many spots, the blistering summer heat has passed. And happily, an abundance of premier tour operators offer ready-made autumn adventures that are relatively easy on the wallet. They bring expert guides and top-quality gear and arrange all meals and accommodations -- you just bring your thirst for adventure.
Travel to Litchfield County, Connecticut, and you'll find a community dotted with bed and breakfasts like the one Dean and Jean Marie Johnson purchased five years ago in the town of Norfolk.
Thursday is "Chinese night" at the Hotel Silk Road in Afghanistan's Bamiyan province.
There's a name for what ails you, and it's called "luxury guilt." Even if you can afford to travel, you reason, isn't it wrong to indulge when times are so tough? Well, if you haven't been swayed by the open-your-wallet, shorten-the-recession argument, how about this one: You may be missing a rare chance to visit some of the finest hotels on the planet at prices you aren't likely to see over the next decade. The deals now are better than in the aftermath of the Asian economic crisis, 9/11, or SARS, says Jan Freitag, vice president of Smith Travel Research, making travel to just about any place in the world from 30% to 50% more affordable than last year. One note: If you don't find these rates on the hotel website, call to book.
Six hundred years ago, Brussels was just a nice place to stop and buy a waffle on the way to France. Today, it's a city of 1.8 million, the capital of Belgium, the headquarters of NATO and the political center of the European Union. It may be easy to skip as you zip from Amsterdam to Paris by train, but its rich brew of food and culture pleasantly surprises those who stop. Its magnificent grand square, rightly named La Grand Place, alone makes a visit worthwhile.
Mary Waring had just quit her marketing job in San Diego in 2001, so saving money on her upcoming trip to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, was a high priority. She found lots of resources online and posted links to coupons on a Web site.
This week's news of the Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles because they were reportedly using laptop computers is only the latest aviation story to captivate audiences.
When Erin Hott checks into her hotel, she's shown to a room with an unmade bed. When she asks for clean sheets, an employee tells her they can't change her linen until the next day. And if she doesn't like it, she can find another hotel, but she'll still have to pay for her room. Whatever happened to customer service?
Six hundred years ago, Brussels was just a nice place to stop and buy a waffle on the way to France. Today, it's a city of 1.8 million, the capital of Belgium, the headquarters of NATO and the political center of the European Union. It may be easy to skip as you zip from Amsterdam to Paris by train, but its rich brew of food and culture pleasantly surprises those who stop. Its magnificent grand square, rightly named La Grand Place, alone makes a visit worthwhile.
Nicholas Czapor books four Hilton hotel stays through a double points promotion. But the points never show up in his account, and now Hilton is offering him only a fraction of the promised award. Can it do that? And what recourse, if any, does Czapor have?
The changing leaves are just one lure for outdoor adventurers during the fall season. The tourist crowds of July and August have dissipated, and in many spots, the blistering summer heat has passed. And happily, an abundance of premier tour operators offer ready-made autumn adventures that are relatively easy on the wallet. They bring expert guides and top-quality gear and arrange all meals and accommodations -- you just bring your thirst for adventure.
Travel to Litchfield County, Connecticut, and you'll find a community dotted with bed and breakfasts like the one Dean and Jean Marie Johnson purchased five years ago in the town of Norfolk.
Thursday is "Chinese night" at the Hotel Silk Road in Afghanistan's Bamiyan province.
There's a name for what ails you, and it's called "luxury guilt." Even if you can afford to travel, you reason, isn't it wrong to indulge when times are so tough? Well, if you haven't been swayed by the open-your-wallet, shorten-the-recession argument, how about this one: You may be missing a rare chance to visit some of the finest hotels on the planet at prices you aren't likely to see over the next decade. The deals now are better than in the aftermath of the Asian economic crisis, 9/11, or SARS, says Jan Freitag, vice president of Smith Travel Research, making travel to just about any place in the world from 30% to 50% more affordable than last year. One note: If you don't find these rates on the hotel website, call to book.
Six hundred years ago, Brussels was just a nice place to stop and buy a waffle on the way to France. Today, it's a city of 1.8 million, the capital of Belgium, the headquarters of NATO and the political center of the European Union. It may be easy to skip as you zip from Amsterdam to Paris by train, but its rich brew of food and culture pleasantly surprises those who stop. Its magnificent grand square, rightly named La Grand Place, alone makes a visit worthwhile.
Donna Savic thinks she has a reservation at the Barcelo Maya Palace in Cancun, Mexico. She's wrong. Orbitz booked her at a smaller, lower-rated hotel on the same complex. What now?
Touchscreen technology is having a golden moment.
Next time you order breakfast at a Marriott, you may notice something new about the bacon. Instead of being served in identical six-inch strips, it now comes in an assortment of sizes. That's because senior executives of Marriott, after sampling four or five varieties of bacon in a blind taste test, found that an irregular cut, which costs less, tastes just as good as the rectangular slices traditionally served in the company's hotels.
The following five sites have proven the most consistently useful for the editors of Budget Travel, who do thousands of searches a year.
Portland, Oregon, doesn't lack for fashionable boutique hotels, but to the west, along the Pacific Ocean, the options have tended to be as primal as the shoreline. Recently, however, a group of properties has sprung up on the northern coast, aiming to seduce 21st-century travelers with designs steeped in post-World War II Modernism.
These days, it's not unheard of for hotels to charge $15 for a mini-bar diet Coke, $40 for access to the gym, or $45 for rush laundry service. (Alas, these are actual fees on T+L editors' receipts.) But there's good news ahead: the extra charges are expected to decrease by six percent this year as hotels and resorts compete to attract guests.
Procrastination rarely looks this good.
The round-trip airfare from Brussels to New York on the European online travel site eDreams was 337 Euros -- until Alisa Schlossberg clicked on the "buy" button. Then it jumped to 592 Euros, creating an eNightmare.
Before his shocking death, the actor appeared happy and "full of life" while in Thailand
A group of students and teachers from a Maryland private school have been quarantined in China because of swine flu concerns, a school spokeswoman said Thursday.
Mexico's tourism industry has endured some brutal punches this year.
Short on cash, people are offering to paint houses and balance books in exchange for a free room or flight. Here's how three creative travelers pulled it off.
New York authorities indicted seven people accused of running a prostitution ring on the Web site Craigslist, the state's attorney general announced Wednesday.
Jack Taras and his friends thought they would be checking in at the Occidental Grand Hotel on the Dominican Republic's postcard-perfect Eastern shore for spring break. But when Taras, a 19-year-old sophomore from Providence College, arrived at the resort, he was greeted with the hotel industry's latest trick: he was walked down.
Waving and cheering like survivors of some kind of disaster, 200 guests of a Hong Kong business hotel who were confined for a week due to a swine flu scare left the building Friday.
Known in salon circles from the time she was 18, Sally Hershberger got the country's attention when she was asked to style First Lady Hillary Clinton's hair for a Vogue photo shoot. Ever since, Hershberger and her scissors have tamed the manes of Donna Karan, Nora Ephron, Jerry Bruckheimer, and even George and Laura Bush.
Class-action lawyers are offering cash-strapped municipalities a new way to fill their dwindling coffers: sue online travel companies like Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity.
In the world of business -- where book titles like "Only the Paranoid Survive" thrive -- successful executives hope for the best but plan for the worst.
Cruising isn't what it used to be. Just ask Steve Roberts, who recently sailed from Costa Maya, Mexico, to Nassau, Bahamas on the Carnival Glory.
From luxury hotels in colossal tower blocks to traditional "ryokan" and functional capsule hotels, there's plenty of variety in Tokyo's hotel scene.
London's newest hotelier Mark Fuller is showing commendable bravado for someone about to open a luxury hotel during a global recession.
A year ago, employees at Boiron, a medical manufacturing company, wined and dined at the Ritz-Carlton Golf & Spa Resort overlooking the picturesque bay in Rose Hall, Jamaica, for their annual retreat.
Boston-based wedding planner Bernadette Smith has helped arrange the same-sex nuptials of nearly 75 Massachusetts couples during her five-year career. But she's never seen quite the surge in business as she has during the past few months.
In the lodging world, green has gone mainstream. Once chided for being wasteful, the big hotel chains are now constantly trying to one-up each other with smart eco-design upgrades and stringent water and energy conservation policies.
Hours after G-20 leaders agreed to a trillion-dollar bailout of the world economy in chilly London, one of the world's most flamboyant hoteliers opened his latest luxury hotel in sunny South Africa.
The Seychelles, the idyllic archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa, is best known as an island paradise playground for celebrities, royalty and the ultra-wealthy. These days, it's better known for something else: bankruptcy.
Threatening to take "preventative measures," the Idol champ condemns people calling his hotel room
Watching Jean-Georges Vongerichten working out the kinks on the afternoon before he opens his latest restaurant, you might think Market by Jean-Georges was his first. As the chef walks through the kitchen, perched above Vancouver, British Columbia, in the new Shangri-La tower, his team is stirring sauces and filleting whole fish. The restaurant's manager swings by to report on the servers' uniforms. "I had to send them back," he says. "The shirts were too translucent."
In an attempt to be frugal amid the economic downturn, Karl Stetson and his family in Seattle, Washington, planned to skip their annual trip to Hawaii.
Carol Hodes thought the "special" $209 room rate offered as part of an upcoming convention at the Bellagio Las Vegas was a reasonably good deal -- about $10 a night off the regular price.
What would you expect to pay for accommodations in a palatial, elegantly decorated suite in one of London's most famously posh neighborhoods?
Enwei Lien's job title belies the unusual duties he has performed in the past few months.
A Chinese television station has apologized for Monday's massive fire at an unoccupied luxury hotel that killed a firefighter and wounded seven other people.
A massive fire engulfed a newly constructed, unoccupied luxury hotel in central Beijing on Monday night as crowds watched a nearby fireworks display marking the end of Lunar New Year celebrations.
A trip to Vegas might sound like a gamble, but deep discounts make it a better bet than it's been in years.
Leave behind the mainland and sneak away to these heavenly hideaways.
Thanks to a vibrant design culture and growing tourism industry, Spain now has some of the best boutique hotels on the continent -- including a recent wave of hotel chains that's making chic accommodations affordable.
Accommodation in London is extortionate, with a dearth of decent budget options. But once you've resigned yourself to paying top dollar, you'll find there is no shortage of quality hotels.
There's a good range of accommodation in Seattle, with an emphasis on hotels geared towards the business traveler. With Microsoft's HQ based just across Lake Washington, Seattle has long been at the forefront of new technology and unlike most cities, many of its hotels offer free wi-fi.
From modern comfort to budget hotels, there are several options for centrally-located accommodation in Malmo.
The iPod dock, yoga charts and branded scents may come and go, but one item has remained constant in hotel rooms worldwide: the Gideon Bible.
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