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In November and December, all the major tour operators to Turkey offer 12-night tours of that country's main sights for as little as $1,063, not including airfare. That sum comes to $88.58 per person per night, including excellent accommodations, three meals and all escorted sightseeing.
In October and throughout November, dozens of cruise ships in European waters are moved from their now-chilly locations and sent on long, trans-Atlantic sailings to the Caribbean or South American waters. Because, when they cross the Atlantic, they are solely at sea for at least five, six or seven days and make no port stops during that time, they are unpopular with the public; passengers with short attention spans can't stand the thought of being aboard a ship that isn't making daily visits to land. And many members of the public can't devote the two-or-so weeks that most repositioning cruises require (several port stops in the Mediterranean before reaching the open sea of the Atlantic, then the crossing, then several port stops on the way to the ultimate destination in Florida or elsewhere).
Why does it matter? Why should a fee affecting flights within the U.K. and Europe be of significance to readers on my side of the Atlantic? It's because decisions by the U.K.' s leading low-cost airline have a disturbing tendency to influence later decisions by U.S. airlines flying domestically. Ryanair was the first to institute a la carte pricing in air travel, and the system it inaugurated has since been copied — triumphantly, enthusiastically, wholeheartedly — by American carriers.
Twitter scored a major success by persuading users to confine their "tweets" to 140 characters or fewer (including spaces and periods). Let me see if I can do the same thing in print for 10 major new travel developments:
A famous radio announcer used to start his broadcasts by shouting, "There's good news tonight!" In these days of economic slowdown, there are a great many instances of good travel news, born out of the urgent needs of travel suppliers to increase their business:
In the world of travel, no news event has had a greater impact on public attitudes than a recent drama on board a Continental Express plane stuck on the tarmac in Rochester, Minn., for nine hours.
Judging from the almost complete lack of U.S. advertising for it, you'd never know there was an important World's Fair (called the World Expo) scheduled to take place in Shanghai, China, from May through October of 2010. Yet all throughout the world, it appears, excitement is rising over an event in which nearly 200 countries and 48 world organizations will maintain breathtaking pavilions containing important, instructive exhibits about the future. These have been heavily featured in European and Asian publications, and some of the more unusual designs make architectural history.
Though everyone's crying gloom and doom about U.S. aviation, there are several positive recent developments to report.
People in travel are talking about Mexico. The combination of the outbreak of swine flu several months ago and reports of drug-related violence served to decimate tourist traffic to Mexico this past winter and spring, and the downturn continues in summer. In those non-holiday weeks when there isn't a large amount of local, Mexican traffic, many hotels have been reporting occupancy rates so low as to defy credulity. The response of those properties — especially the deluxe hotels — are pricing lures never before seen.
No tourist destination in America has been hit harder than Las Vegas. The current prices there for rooms and meals are so low that they can't be grasped in the abstract; they have to be set forth dollar-by-dollar to be believed.
It has become chic to be cheap. It is dumb to spend recklessly. It has never been more important to economize: using public transportation, hostels, apartments and guesthouses, inside cabins, sightseeing passes, cut-rate carriers and all the other devices of cost-conscious, sensible vacations.
No matter how many times I answer the question (and I always do so with a resounding no), the listeners to my weekly radio program persist in posing the challenge again and again: "Should we sign up for shore excursions in advance of our cruise?"
Jet-lagged and unable to sleep, I awake a few minutes before 5 a.m. and step onto the balcony of my room overlooking Istanbul. Suddenly the colored lights atop minarets all over the city go on, and the voices of a dozen muezzins are heard from loudspeakers resounding all about me. It is the morning call to prayer, a strangely beautiful sound, repeated at four other times throughout the day.
