It's a couple of weeks old now, but easy to miss amidst the New Year's hoopla - and the information is still current: Namely, New York Times reporter Michelle Higgins's piece "19 Web Sites for Travel Savings in 2012.'' If you missed it, I highly recommend tracking back and finding the story on www.nytimes.com.
The hard-working Higgins highlights sites that can save travelers money on flights, hotels, cruises, car rentals and home exchanges, and provides thumbnail descriptions of each. Her piece was published on paper Jan. 4 and posted online Jan. 8. Just do a byline search for the writer.
Higgins singles out sites such as AirfareWatchdog.com, LuxuryLink.com, Hotels.com and HomeExchange.com, among others. If you're planning to be on the road this year, some due diligence on the Net can definitely save you money. This is a valuable, helpful piece that shouldn't slip by.
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Oakland and The List
Ah, list-making time again. How precious.
Every year at about this time - which is to say, the end of one year and the beginning of the next - travel media line up to draw up their lists of what's in and what's out, and share their wisdom about what destinations you absolutely have to visit. You know, be there or be square, Where to Go Now, etc.
Ths year, the upmarket, Ivy League New York Times (www.nytimes.com) puts at no. 5 of its 45 must-see places of 2012 a place I know pretty well: Oakland, California. Not suprisingly, visitoakland.com, whose melancholy task it is to promote tourism to this interesting but gritty (and occasionally scary) city across San Francisco Bay from San Francisco is sending out e-mails to tout the recommendation.
The Times touts Oakland chiefly for the revitalization of its Uptown district - actually centered near downtown at roughly Telegraph Avenue above 20th Street - and the most expensive restaurants by celebrity chefs it could visit on the parent company's expense accounts. Uptown is indeed an interesting area, worth your time if you're in the Bay Area. Other places, such as Temescal, the restored Victorian Row of houses and restaurants downtown and especially Rockridge, on the northern city line with Berkeley, are worth a visit, too.
I used to live in Oakland and I like some things about it very much, but as a long-time Bay Area guy, I have to level with you and say it is not most people's idea of a tourist paradise. Most of Oakland is not pretty, some of it - especially West Oakland, east Oakland, downtown's streets after dark and long blocks of murderers' row along International Boulevard are visited at your own risk. Some Oakland BART transit stations and especially the parking lots are high-risk.
I suspect the Times flagged Oakland because the writers and editors like to play with a frisson of fear and see themselves as hip and pioneering, very cool trendspotters, if they do say so themselves. It could be a reaction to the Gray Lady's longtime reputation as an authoritative but dowdy Establishment sheet. Not any more, the Times's hipsters want us to know.
OK, if you say so. Bottom line for travelers: Don't avoid Oakland, just keep your eyes open and explore it on your own, within the broad guidelines cited above.
Every year at about this time - which is to say, the end of one year and the beginning of the next - travel media line up to draw up their lists of what's in and what's out, and share their wisdom about what destinations you absolutely have to visit. You know, be there or be square, Where to Go Now, etc.
Ths year, the upmarket, Ivy League New York Times (www.nytimes.com) puts at no. 5 of its 45 must-see places of 2012 a place I know pretty well: Oakland, California. Not suprisingly, visitoakland.com, whose melancholy task it is to promote tourism to this interesting but gritty (and occasionally scary) city across San Francisco Bay from San Francisco is sending out e-mails to tout the recommendation.
The Times touts Oakland chiefly for the revitalization of its Uptown district - actually centered near downtown at roughly Telegraph Avenue above 20th Street - and the most expensive restaurants by celebrity chefs it could visit on the parent company's expense accounts. Uptown is indeed an interesting area, worth your time if you're in the Bay Area. Other places, such as Temescal, the restored Victorian Row of houses and restaurants downtown and especially Rockridge, on the northern city line with Berkeley, are worth a visit, too.
I used to live in Oakland and I like some things about it very much, but as a long-time Bay Area guy, I have to level with you and say it is not most people's idea of a tourist paradise. Most of Oakland is not pretty, some of it - especially West Oakland, east Oakland, downtown's streets after dark and long blocks of murderers' row along International Boulevard are visited at your own risk. Some Oakland BART transit stations and especially the parking lots are high-risk.
I suspect the Times flagged Oakland because the writers and editors like to play with a frisson of fear and see themselves as hip and pioneering, very cool trendspotters, if they do say so themselves. It could be a reaction to the Gray Lady's longtime reputation as an authoritative but dowdy Establishment sheet. Not any more, the Times's hipsters want us to know.
OK, if you say so. Bottom line for travelers: Don't avoid Oakland, just keep your eyes open and explore it on your own, within the broad guidelines cited above.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Quote of the Day
Re: the London riots, here are a few chosen words from Kit Malthouse, London's deputy mayor in charge of policing, quoted in today's New York Times (www.nytimes.com), ascribing ill intent to free-floating youth who are:
"... intent on violence, who are looking for the opportunity to steal and set fire to buildings and create a sense of mayhem, whether they're anarchists or part of organized gangs or just feral youth, frankly, who fancy a new pair of trainers.''
"... intent on violence, who are looking for the opportunity to steal and set fire to buildings and create a sense of mayhem, whether they're anarchists or part of organized gangs or just feral youth, frankly, who fancy a new pair of trainers.''
Friday, July 2, 2010
That Herbert Hoover Feeling
The news comes these days in twos, with good news on one hand and bad news on the other - and major implications for travelers and the travel industry.
Consider:
The American Automobile Association predicts that 34.9 million Americans will take a car trip at least 50 miles from home over this U.S. Fourth of July holiday weekend. That's a leap of 17.1 percent from the 29.8 million who took car trips over the same holiday last year.
The International Air Transport Association, the airline trade group based in Geneva and Montreal, reports that passenger traffic on the world's airlines jumped 11.7 percent this May from May 2009, while air cargo shipments soared 34.3 percent over May 2009. IATA also forecasts a profit of $2.5 billion USD for global airlines this year, a big upgrade from the $9.9 billion USD loss the airlines suffered in 2009.
Just as this welcome news arrives, however, the larger economy in the U.S. and Europe seems to be grinding to a halt, if not sliding backward. A tepid U.S. jobs report yesterday depressed markets, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average back below 10,000 - down 5 percent for the week in the steepest drop since the near-depression in October 2008. Moreover, U.S. consumer confidence, as determined by New York research firm the Conference Board, plummeted to 52.9 percent in June from 62.7 percent in May, driven by concern over a lack of jobs and Congress cutting off benefits to the long-term unemployed.
"Economists pay close attention to measures of consumer confidence as a proxy for consumer spending, which drives the bulk of the U.S. economy,'' explained a June 29 report on CNNMoney.com.
There's more: The New York Times's Web site, nytimes.com, today stacked no fewer than six stories on the home page tracking economic slowdown and decline.
Times columnist Paul Krugman, a Noble Prize-winning economist, took it a big step further:
"We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression,'' he wrote, referring to the Great Depression of the 1930s and a long depression in the U.S. after the Panic of 1873.
"And this third deprssion will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world ... governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending. ... Both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.''
Reading these signs and portents is enough to induce a sinking feeling - that Herbert Hoover feeling, to be exact.
Hoover, of course, was the U.S. President who presided over the Wall Street crash of 1929 and whose policies only made matters worse. Things improved under his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, but then Roosevelt slowed stimulus spending in 1938, leading to relapse in an economy not yet recovered from the collapse of 1929-31. We all know what happened next: World War II. If that tragedy hadn't occurred, we might still be in the Great Depression, for it was only wartime spending that ended the depression - at huge human cost.
What does all this macro-economic stuff and political history mean for travel? Plenty.
For one thing, even the good travel news contains signs that not all is actually well.
Giovanni Bisignani, the outspoken IATA director-general, said of the rise in the civil aviation business, "This is good news, but it is only a 0.5 percent margin. We are still a long way from sustainable profitability.''
Even the seemingly buoyant AAA forecast is not as encouraging as it looks at first glance. More U.S. motorists will hit the road this holiday weekend, but they are expected to spend less: a median spend of $644 USD this year, down from a median of $693 last year. Motorists seem drawn to the highway partly by the lure of relatively cheap gasoline (a U.S. average of $2.70-$2.80 per gallon) and because they don't want to spend money for airfares, which are up 13 percent in the U.S. from last year. They are not in an expansive, let's-spend-it mood.
If international economies stop recovering or even contract, travel will be among the first to feel it. Fewer people will travel. Those who do will spend less. Already stressed hotels, cruise ship lines and airlines will cut capacity, have to cut their rates and lay off staff. By some measures, tourism is the world's leading industry by production of revenue, and most travel-industry employees are working-class people - many of them living in developing countries - who will quickly fall on hard times if we really are in a third depression.
Sorry for the gloomy, foreboding tone of this post. But the first step toard dealing effectively with crisis is to see it for what it is.
Consider:
The American Automobile Association predicts that 34.9 million Americans will take a car trip at least 50 miles from home over this U.S. Fourth of July holiday weekend. That's a leap of 17.1 percent from the 29.8 million who took car trips over the same holiday last year.
The International Air Transport Association, the airline trade group based in Geneva and Montreal, reports that passenger traffic on the world's airlines jumped 11.7 percent this May from May 2009, while air cargo shipments soared 34.3 percent over May 2009. IATA also forecasts a profit of $2.5 billion USD for global airlines this year, a big upgrade from the $9.9 billion USD loss the airlines suffered in 2009.
Just as this welcome news arrives, however, the larger economy in the U.S. and Europe seems to be grinding to a halt, if not sliding backward. A tepid U.S. jobs report yesterday depressed markets, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average back below 10,000 - down 5 percent for the week in the steepest drop since the near-depression in October 2008. Moreover, U.S. consumer confidence, as determined by New York research firm the Conference Board, plummeted to 52.9 percent in June from 62.7 percent in May, driven by concern over a lack of jobs and Congress cutting off benefits to the long-term unemployed.
"Economists pay close attention to measures of consumer confidence as a proxy for consumer spending, which drives the bulk of the U.S. economy,'' explained a June 29 report on CNNMoney.com.
There's more: The New York Times's Web site, nytimes.com, today stacked no fewer than six stories on the home page tracking economic slowdown and decline.
Times columnist Paul Krugman, a Noble Prize-winning economist, took it a big step further:
"We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression,'' he wrote, referring to the Great Depression of the 1930s and a long depression in the U.S. after the Panic of 1873.
"And this third deprssion will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world ... governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending. ... Both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.''
Reading these signs and portents is enough to induce a sinking feeling - that Herbert Hoover feeling, to be exact.
Hoover, of course, was the U.S. President who presided over the Wall Street crash of 1929 and whose policies only made matters worse. Things improved under his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, but then Roosevelt slowed stimulus spending in 1938, leading to relapse in an economy not yet recovered from the collapse of 1929-31. We all know what happened next: World War II. If that tragedy hadn't occurred, we might still be in the Great Depression, for it was only wartime spending that ended the depression - at huge human cost.
What does all this macro-economic stuff and political history mean for travel? Plenty.
For one thing, even the good travel news contains signs that not all is actually well.
Giovanni Bisignani, the outspoken IATA director-general, said of the rise in the civil aviation business, "This is good news, but it is only a 0.5 percent margin. We are still a long way from sustainable profitability.''
Even the seemingly buoyant AAA forecast is not as encouraging as it looks at first glance. More U.S. motorists will hit the road this holiday weekend, but they are expected to spend less: a median spend of $644 USD this year, down from a median of $693 last year. Motorists seem drawn to the highway partly by the lure of relatively cheap gasoline (a U.S. average of $2.70-$2.80 per gallon) and because they don't want to spend money for airfares, which are up 13 percent in the U.S. from last year. They are not in an expansive, let's-spend-it mood.
If international economies stop recovering or even contract, travel will be among the first to feel it. Fewer people will travel. Those who do will spend less. Already stressed hotels, cruise ship lines and airlines will cut capacity, have to cut their rates and lay off staff. By some measures, tourism is the world's leading industry by production of revenue, and most travel-industry employees are working-class people - many of them living in developing countries - who will quickly fall on hard times if we really are in a third depression.
Sorry for the gloomy, foreboding tone of this post. But the first step toard dealing effectively with crisis is to see it for what it is.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Fashionable
Police barricades blocked off part of Brook Street and constables stood watch in front of London's Claridge's Hotel when I checked-in a few years back on a visit to the UK. You see, Madonna was in the house, renting an entire floor in Claridge's for her stay during London Fashion Week, and the Material Girl's visit had to be draped with 24/7 attention and security.
A small number of well-heeled elite travelers - fashionistas - hit the road to catch the big fashion shows in major capitals every year, eager to see the latest creations from famous designers, such as the British fashion leader Alexander McQueen, who has died at age 40. McQueen's passing Feb. 11 was treated as major news in the BBC World telecast I watched last night. Early media reports suggest his death may be a suicide. Whether or not that proves to be fact, it is a dramatic note on which to begin this year's Fashion Week in New York; McQueen had been expected to attend.
I am sorry to hear that the designer's life ended so soon; 40 is not old. There's no telling what he might have come up with had he lived longer.
I find it hard to love the outsized role the fashion industry plays in contemporary global pop culture, however, given fashion's terminal trendiness, its obsession with celebrity, its flashy, pouty runway displays, its love of the spectacle, its gleefully unwearable clothes. Fashion adepts, like McQueen, have real talent, to be sure; they must be masters of material, form, color and movement, and the good ones demonstrate admirable skill. Still, there is much vanity and triviality in the fashion world, and fashion's relevance to the overwhelming majority of the planet's people - especially in hard times - is dubious.
As shown by BBC News, McQueen's most out-there designs look as though they come from both Mars and Venus. 'Reptilian' and 'gothic' are words commentators used to describe them. In a Feb. 12 New York Times account of the British star's career, the writers observed matter-of-factly "Much of what Mr. McQueen crafted for the runway was difficult to sell.'' The Times also noted that McQueen, son of an East End cab driver, was "dubbed the 'hooligan' of British fashion.'' Indeed, he seemed a self-created bad-boy in the vein of the artist Damien Hirst, the actor James Dean, the chef Gordon Ramsay and any number of self-destructive pop music stars.
Fashionistas will continue to travel, of course, haunting Fashion Week in media capitals all over the world, making glad the hearts of restaurant owners, art directors, editors, photographers, Madonna and Lady Gaga, DJs, club owners, limo drivers, bodyguards, caterers, 5-star hotels and airlines with caviar and Champagne premium cabins. The road rolls on.
A small number of well-heeled elite travelers - fashionistas - hit the road to catch the big fashion shows in major capitals every year, eager to see the latest creations from famous designers, such as the British fashion leader Alexander McQueen, who has died at age 40. McQueen's passing Feb. 11 was treated as major news in the BBC World telecast I watched last night. Early media reports suggest his death may be a suicide. Whether or not that proves to be fact, it is a dramatic note on which to begin this year's Fashion Week in New York; McQueen had been expected to attend.
I am sorry to hear that the designer's life ended so soon; 40 is not old. There's no telling what he might have come up with had he lived longer.
I find it hard to love the outsized role the fashion industry plays in contemporary global pop culture, however, given fashion's terminal trendiness, its obsession with celebrity, its flashy, pouty runway displays, its love of the spectacle, its gleefully unwearable clothes. Fashion adepts, like McQueen, have real talent, to be sure; they must be masters of material, form, color and movement, and the good ones demonstrate admirable skill. Still, there is much vanity and triviality in the fashion world, and fashion's relevance to the overwhelming majority of the planet's people - especially in hard times - is dubious.
As shown by BBC News, McQueen's most out-there designs look as though they come from both Mars and Venus. 'Reptilian' and 'gothic' are words commentators used to describe them. In a Feb. 12 New York Times account of the British star's career, the writers observed matter-of-factly "Much of what Mr. McQueen crafted for the runway was difficult to sell.'' The Times also noted that McQueen, son of an East End cab driver, was "dubbed the 'hooligan' of British fashion.'' Indeed, he seemed a self-created bad-boy in the vein of the artist Damien Hirst, the actor James Dean, the chef Gordon Ramsay and any number of self-destructive pop music stars.
Fashionistas will continue to travel, of course, haunting Fashion Week in media capitals all over the world, making glad the hearts of restaurant owners, art directors, editors, photographers, Madonna and Lady Gaga, DJs, club owners, limo drivers, bodyguards, caterers, 5-star hotels and airlines with caviar and Champagne premium cabins. The road rolls on.
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