Travel Insights 100, a panel of travel experts selected by UpTake.com (the travel search engine that helps travelers decide where to go, where to stay, or what to do) were recently asked to name the dumbest moments in travel during 2009.

The experts ranked the airlines as the dumbest industry, citing events such as ramping-up of all kinds of airline fees, the NWA Flight 188 pilots who overshot the Minneapolis airport during a landing approach because they weren’t paying attention, the ‘United breaks Guitars‘ fiasco, and TSA threatening travel bloggers. However airlines weren’t the only ones on the dumbness radar, as the following presentation shows:

A few months ago I was honored to be invited to become a member of Travel Insights 100, a panel of 100 travel experts that included activists, traditional media, independent travelers, and airline and hotel experts who have banded together to monitor travel insights and trends and share that information across the travel industry. Participants, who were hand selected by the folks at UpTake.com (the travel search engine that helps travelers decide where to go, where to stay, or what to do) were recently surveyed about their predictions for travel during the upcoming year.

Responses covered a wide range of issues, but several trends were evident. The following were the most oft repeated predictions; it will be interesting to track the insights to see if they come to pass in 2010:

Travel Insights

1. Travel will begin to recover  in 2010, driven in part by a pent-up demand from those who have put off traveling due to economic concerns, but travelers will continue to focus on discounts and promotional pricing. Most believe that discount airlines, hostels, and budget hotel chains will be the big beneficiary of this trend.
2. Several panel members believe that travelers will drive rather than fly whenever possible, as the airlines increase security measures and add-on fees. Many predict that airlines will continue to introduce new add-on fees in an attempt to squeeze the last penny out of the traveler, and one respondent predicts this will result in the government stepping in to regulate the practice.
3. Social media (Twitter in particular) will continue to reshape how destinations are promoted and companies will increase their participation in and creative use of social media.
4. With the world becoming an ever smaller place, there are no longer any “undiscovered” destinations, yet travelers increasingly desire authentic travel experiences. Most panel members believe this will result in an increase in cultural based tourism, home stays, eco-tourism, and volunteer travel.

An in a more humorous vein, participants gave us their dumbest moments in travel during the past year: Read the rest of this entry »

Southwest Airlines has always been one of my favorite carriers, a position which was recently reinforced when they refused to charge the onerous $100 checked luggage fee being levied by other airlines. My confidence in Southwest escalated another notch today when I learned a “green plane” is being added to their fleet. Environmentally friendly materials used in the interior of the Boeing 737-700 will equate to a weight savings of almost five pounds per seat, saving fuel and reducing emissions while adding recyclable elements to the cabin interior and reducing waste. Elements of the plane include: Read the rest of this entry »

Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines recently announced that it will begin daily jet service from Northwest Florida’s new international airport near Panama City Beach, Florida in May 2010. Southwest has not released specific details, saying only that it will add at least two daily nonstop flights from Northwest Florida to four destinations across its 67 airport network for a total of eight daily nonstop flights when it begins service next year.

The new international airport, which is the first to open in the nation in more than a decade, is currently under construction and is scheduled to open in May 2010. Specific details on Southwest’s fares and schedule will be available in December 2009. Both the new facility and Southwest’s plans to provide service to the area are expected to help position Northwest Florida, which is blessed with stunning white-sand beaches, as one of America’s leading beach destinations.

In the early years of blogging, political sites like Huffington Post, tech blogs such as Gizmodo and Mashable!, and celebrity gossip sites such as Perez Hilton were first to grab the spotlight. But of late, travel has had the hot hand on the Internet. Travel search engines, booking sites, travelogues, and independent travel blogs are multiplying like oversexed bunnies. There are now sites where travel bloggers can converse and others where travel writers can connect with PR firms and editors. Social networking sites are getting into the action in a big way; StumbleUpon only recently added a specific category for travel thumbs ups, and Twitter is inundated with travel tweets every day, all day. There’s even a special day on twitter for travel bloggers (TwitterTuesday) and an aggregator site where all travel tweets are collected and displayed in one place (Wanderlisting).

For those of us trying to make our living as travel writers, it’s frankly hard to stay on top of things, and that is where Travel Insights 100 comes in. Designed to be a forum where a diverse set of travel leaders* can share their points of view, Travel Insights 100 is a platform for discussion, based on research, with thought leaders in travel and tourism around the world. For their first project, the forum surveyed 100 travel leaders around the world to gauge their interest in and use of Twitter. The short presentation below is a summary of results from that survey, All About Twitter, released on September 21, 2009.

Travel Insights 100 All About Twitter Survey Presentation

This is a first in a series of surveys the group will create during the next year, as it examines the impact that economic, political and social issues have on travel. Travel Insights 100 is a Read the rest of this entry »

You want to take a vacation and you’re looking for inspiration. Or maybe you know generally where you want to go, but you need guidance on the best things to see and do when you get there.

The newest travel site in town, Ruba.com, is a visual guide and tour review site that helps travelers discover their next perfect trip. Need to know the most spectacular ruins in Rome? The best beaches in Thailand? Looking for a boutique hotel in Egypt? Or the best way travel to Dublin with kids? You can find it all at Ruba. Unlike many other travel sites where you consume reviews of individual hotels, restaurants, and sights, and THEN have to put it all together into a travel itinerary, on Ruba you can explore comprehensive photo-filled guides written by Ruba experts, fellow travelers, and tour companies anxious to share their experience and knowledge about specific destinations across the globe.

On the other hand, if you’re an expert on a particular city, country, or activity, you may want to create a an expert guide to share with others. Ruba makes that process a breeze, right down to providing pictures (of course, you can use your own photos, if you prefer). To see how simple it is, watch the brief video below, then cruise over to Ruba and start planning your next vacation.

Gogo Inflight Internet, the new service that lets you surf the internet, get email, and use your mobile device while cruising at 30,000 feet at 500 mph, is offering a 50% discount on your first use through August 31, 2009.

Gogo promises that “if you can wi-fi, you can gogo.” The service is available on select AirTran, American Airlines, Delta, and Virgin America flights, and more are being added every day! It works with smartphones and other hand-held devices equipped with wi-fi, offered by all major U.S. carriers. Platforms supported include: BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Apple, and Nokia (Symbian S60).

How does it work? Once the aircraft reaches 10,000 feet and the captain gives the okay to turn on portable electronic devices, just turn on your wi-fi, connect to the gogo inflight signal, then simply launch your web browser and sign up. Read the rest of this entry »

BlogHer 2009, the quintessential gathering of women who blog, is over for another year. It was my first time at BlogHer and I was extremely impressed, although the whirlwind of keynote sessions, breakout panels, geek labs, leadership track training, exhibitions, and private parties left me exhausted.

Welcome session

The undisputed highlight of the conference was the Community Keynote, where 21 chosen BlogHer bloggers read their work. I laughed out loud as Danielle from KnottyYarn.com told us about forgetting to remove her tampon before having sex with her husband and then, when she couldn’t “find” the tampon, living in fear that she would die of toxic shock syndrome for five days before going to the doctor. It was especially amusing to me because the same thing happened to me, oh so many years ago, and it took me three days to “fish it out,” as Danielle’s doctor referred to the process.

Issa from Issa’s Crazy World stepped to the mike and, with wavering voice, related the story of her beloved uncle Marky, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and lived most of his life as a mentally unstable homeless person. Read the rest of this entry »

“What’s your travel personality?” It seemed a simple question, but for the founders of Trazzler.com, it was one not being addressed by any existing online travel site. Despite the proliferation of travel reference sites filled with logistical information, voluminous tourist bureau propaganda, and requisite guidebooks written by a handful of writers who may or may not have personally visited the places they reviewed, the folks at Trazzler believed something was missing. That something was fun!

Trazzler knew there were thousands of travelers just itching to write about their experiences, but they had no interest in lengthy travelogue articles. Instead, they challenged travelers to describe their favorite trip in 150 words or less, focusing on very specific moments that made the destination so special. Travelers wholeheartedly embraced the concept and within a very short time, thousands of “trips” had been produced, including 28 trips that I eventually wrote for Trazzler.

Meanwhile, readers began browsing through the easy to read trips – an activity dubbed “trazzling” – and adding their favorites to a wish list. Trazzler soon partnered with Facebook, which allowed readers to share their favorite trips with friends. And this is where it gets really interesting. As readers trazzle – clicking Read the rest of this entry »