World Tourism Blog

The 2010 edition of Travel + Leisure’s “100 Greatest Trips” shows the upscale magazine’s editors suggesting some surprisingly down-to-earth destinations, such as the Jersey Shore, Niagara Falls, and Milford, Pa., mixed in with more exotic locales like the Brazilian beach town of Trancoso, and Langkawi, a cluster of 99 islands off Malaysia’s northwest coast.

If the idea of voluntourism is appealing to you, check out Frommer’s “500 Places Where You Can Make A Difference.” Listings include an animal shelter in Vieques, Puerto Rico; orphanages in Bulgaria and Cambodia; and 10 places where you can learn a language while teaching English as a volunteer, including La Ceiba, Honduras, and Wuhu, China.

Also new from Frommer’s is “300 Unmissable Events & Festivals Around the World,” from the State Fair of Texas, in Dallas, starting late September, to the rose festival held in Morocco’s Dades Valley mid to late May, when millions of rose petals are crushed to make rosewater and rose oil. Other phenomena and events include the flamingo migration March-June, in Botswana; the summer solstice at Stonehenge; Hemingway Days in Key West, Fla., in late July, and the Buenos Aires Tango Festival, held in August.

From Lonely Planet comes “1000 Ultimate Experiences,” organized into categories like “Top 10 places to go skinny-dipping” (including Formentera, Spain); “Dreamiest fairy-tale destinations” (Germany’s Black Forest), “Ultimate party cities” (bet you hadn’t heard the buzz about Baku, Azerbaijan), and “Essential experiences to make time stand still” (Petra, Jordan).

And from National Geographic comes “Food Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 Extraordinary Places to Eat Around the Globe,” including the Phuket Vegetarian Festival in Thailand, held each fall; the oldest street market in Rome, Campo dei Fiori; the bourbon distilleries of Kentucky; and La Rioja, Spain, recommended for its fall wine harvest. The listings are divided into sections such as markets, seasonal items, street food and desserts, and the book also includes top 10 lists. The list of places that offer best dining with views of the water includes The Boathouse at Breach Inlet, Isle of Palms, S.C., and top old-fashioned candy stores includes Economy Candy on New York’s Lower East Side. Hard money training

For the second time in a little more than a year, a glitch at one of the two centers that handle flight plans for the nation’s air travel system set off delays and cancellations for passengers around the country.

The snarl Thursday — traced to something as simple as a single circuit board — prompted calls for more money and manpower at the Federal Aviation Administration, which has struggled without success for years to overhaul the air traffic system.

The circuit board, at an FAA center in Salt Lake City, is part of a multibillion-dollar nationwide communications network that the agency has spent years installing as part of plans to modernize air traffic control.

A government watchdog said last year that the network was over budget and plagued by outages. On a single day in 2007 alone, the failure of parts of the network was responsible for 566 flight delays.

Aviation experts are unsure whether any system that relies on the interconnectedness of computers can prevent glitches from causing havoc unless there are sufficient backup systems to handle the thousands of flight plans filed each day in the U.S.

“A good communications system should have enough redundancy that a failure shouldn’t hurt it that badly,” said Michael Ball, a University of Maryland professor who specializes in aviation operations research.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed from Atlanta to Houston to Phoenix after the problem began about 5 a.m. The glitch was fixed about four hours later, but scattered delays were reported throughout the day. Planes in the air were never in danger.

While the delays were not as bad as those caused by a major winter storm, passengers — already frustrated by add-on fees for checking bags and the other hassles of everyday air travel — were miffed. Hard money training

Two-year-old airline Virgin America touched down Wednesday in Florida, marking one of its most ambitious expansion moves yet with a lavish welcoming ceremony that included Virgin Group Ltd. founder and billionaire Richard Branson.

Virgin took a cautious first step into Florida — just two daily nonstop flights apiece between Fort Lauderdale and both Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The move could foreshadow even more head-to-head competition between Virgin and other airlines, including Delta, Southwest and JetBlue.

Virgin flies mostly between the coasts, from four spots in California to New York, Washington and Boston — routes popular with business travelers. Fort Lauderdale doesn’t fit the profile of a typical Virgin America city.

“We know we need warm-weather sites,” CEO David Cush said in an interview this week. “This will help balance out our network.”

Cush acknowledged that Californians, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, are more likely to consider Hawaii than Florida for a beach vacation, but he believes the airline can change that thinking. Fort Lauderdale is contributing $100,000 to a Virgin marketing campaign aimed at Californians, he said.

Virgin’s closest rival on the new routes may be JetBlue, which began nonstops between Fort Lauderdale and San Francisco on Tuesday.

“Virgin America has a good product, but we’re confident our customers will continue to fly JetBlue,” said JetBlue spokeswoman Alison Croyle.

The list of Virgin competitors is likely to grow.

Airline consultant Robert Mann said Virgin’s service from California to Florida is a good way to use its aircraft wisely on potentially lucrative flights. If the service succeeds, he said, Virgin will expand to include Florida flights from its bases in the Northeast, including New York’s Kennedy Airport.

That would pit Virgin against Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s biggest airline company, which already flies to Fort Lauderdale from Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York. Delta also flies there from Los Angeles.

Other big operators at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport include Southwest Airlines Co., the nation’s largest discount carrier, and AirTran.

Virgin advertises fares from California starting at $104, although it’s not saying how many seats it will sell at the cheapest price.

Kent Landers, a spokesman for Delta, said his airline offers a vastly larger network of connecting flights and “will vigorously compete” with Virgin on price, although he couldn’t say whether Delta had matched Virgin’s cheapest fares.

Because of stiff competition and the presence of low-cost carriers, airlines regularly discount fares to Florida destinations.

Airlines compete in other ways too. Continental pointed out it still serves free meals in coach, while Virgin charges for them. Hard money training

It’s not quite the warm and fuzzy crowd one imagines around most Christmas trees, but Barneys New York is celebrating the holidays with a motley crew that includes Roseanne Roseannadanna, the Church Lady, Father Guido Sarducci and Wayne and Garth.

Two dozen “Saturday Night Live” favorites have been transformed into life-size, papier-mache ornaments to hang in the windows on Madison Avenue as the flagship store puts on its biggest visual show of the year. There’s Will Ferrell as Janet Reno looking very prim and proper and Mike Myers as “Coffee Talk” Linda Richman with bright red nails and lips.

Atypical? Yes, but the quirky characters seem like they’d be right at home at a holiday party with Simon Doonan, Barneys’ renowned creative director.

“We like to set ourselves apart by picking something that’s a little out there,” Doonan says. “Our windows can’t be elitist, but we can’t do `traditional.’ We’d have to make Santa out of ketchup or something if we went that way.”

Doonan decided more than a year ago that this year’s holiday message would, above all else, be witty. “We had to have fun — it had been such a dismal year,” he says.

Holiday windows, he explains, are supposed to generate traffic, bring hoards of shoppers and tourists to the front of the store to “ooh” and “aah,” and garner some media buzz. At the same time, the windows need to convey taste, luxury and humor, all of which he considers the core of Barneys brand.

So, just how will John Belushi’s King Bee in the window help sell some of the most expensive apparel and accessories that hang on the racks inside?

He doesn’t have to, exactly.

“What we’ve got to have in our windows is something `current.’ We look for things that have a surge of interest,” says Doonan. The 35th anniversary of “SNL,” coupled with its spot-on coverage of last year’s election, convinced Doonan that now was the right time to honor these oddities of pop culture.

From the “SNL” side, costume designer Tom Broecker was eager to see what Doonan would do with already over-the-top characatures. It’s hard to pick just one favorite, Broecker says, but the version of Chris Kattan’s Mango prompted a serious, hearty belly laugh. Hard money training

This season’s Christmas tree displays include trees made from feathers at a historic home in Indianapolis, a thank-you tree in Boston sent from Nova Scotia, and the Obamas’ first National Christmas Tree ceremony in Washington.

The National Christmas Tree is scheduled to be lit on Dec. 3. Details of this year’s ceremony have not been released yet, but traditionally the president and his family preside. Tickets have already been distributed by lottery to nearly 10,000 people, but the tree stays lit through Jan. 1 with free performances nightly. The tree is located less than a block from the White House.

Also in Washington, the Capitol Christmas Tree goes on display on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol near Constitution and Independence avenues. The tree comes from a different state every year, and this year an 85-foot blue spruce from Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest becomes the first tree from that state to fill the role. The tree is scheduled to be lit Dec. 8 by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

In Indianapolis, the President Benjamin Harrison Home hosts a Victorian-themed Christmas, Nov. 20-Dec. 30. Decorations at the 1875 Italianate home will include a half-dozen feather trees, based on a German tradition popular in that era. The trees are made from white and dyed-green goose feathers wrapped around wires and shaped like small trees, according to curator Jennifer Capps.

The home will also have a replica of the tree the Harrisons had in the White House in 1889. “They were the first family to have a decorated Christmas tree in the White House,” she said. The original decorations included wooden soldiers, and the Harrison home in Indianapolis has been inviting children who visit to create soldier decorations for the tree there for 40 years.

In Boston, Nova Scotia sends a Christmas tree every year as thanks for disaster aid from Massachusetts following the Halifax Explosion in 1917. This year’s tree will be lit on the Boston Common Dec. 3.

The Rockefeller Center tree, a 76-foot Norway spruce, will be decorated with 30,000 lights and lit Dec. 2. You can see it any time until Jan. 7. The first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was put up in 1931 by workers building the complex during the Depression, and the first official tree lighting there was in 1933.

A fir tree from Northern California decorated with more than 10,000 lights and 15,000 ornaments will be lit at The Grove in Los Angeles on Nov. 22 at 7:30 p.m. The attraction stays up through the first of the year. An enormous Santa and sleigh, designed to look like Santa’s sailing through the night sky with the tree behind him, are part of the decorations.

In Houston, the 24th annual Uptown Holiday Lighting includes a half-million lights on 80 trees along Post Oak Boulevard, with fireworks at the opening ceremony Nov. 26. Also in Houston, the Downtown Holiday Spectacular kicks off Thanksgiving Day with a holiday parade and a weekend of activities that includes the Nov. 28 opening of the ice skating rink at Discovery Green and a nighttime illuminated art car parade along Avenida de Las Americas, also on the 28th. Hard money training

There’s visiting New York, and then there’s visiting the heart of Manhattan.

At New York’s St. Regis hotel, guests stay in a 1904 Beaux Arts landmark building that underwent a $100 million renovation in 2006 involving everything from the Louis XV furniture to hidden high-tech amenities. Just beyond the hotel’s doors is some of the world’s best shopping, including Emilio Pucci and Japanese department store Takashimaya. Star sightings are common on these streets.

After a day of lugging shopping bags, guests can settle in at one of the country’s most unique hotel bars, the King Cole Bar, which houses a famous 1906 Art Nouveau oil mural and claims to be the birthplace of the Bloody Mary (here called a Red Snapper, $18). Even walking through the lobby to the bar is an ethereal swagger by Italian marble, gilded moldings and a gleaming chandelier.

Just a 15-minute walk away — with countless other luxury accommodation options along the way–is the Trump International Hotel and Tower, sitting right on Columbus Circle and a stone’s throw from Central Park. Some of the rooms in this 52-story, modern high-rise designed by Philip Johnson and Costas Kondylis offer views of the park through floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Guests able to tear themselves from the windows might head to Jean Georges, a Michelin three-star French-fusion restaurant on the main floor.

Other four- and five-star spots include the Four Seasons Hualalai and the Four Seasons Hong Kong. The former, the chain’s resort on the Kona-Kohala Coast of West Hawaii, offers an inimitable beach on which guests enjoy bungalows carved into black lava and private tiki huts. The Hong Kong location features an infinity pool with views of Victoria Harbor and underwater classical music. Hard money training

Jenn Boneza remembers when the white sandy beach near the boat ramp in her hometown was wide enough for people to build sand castles.

“It really used to be a beautiful beach,” said the 35-year-old mother of two. “And now when you look at it, it’s gone.”

What’s happening to portions of the beach in Kailua — a sunny coastal suburb of Honolulu where President Barack Obama spent his last two family vacations in the islands — is being repeated around the Hawaiian Islands.

Geologists say more than 70 percent of Kauai’s beaches are eroding while Oahu has lost a quarter of its sandy shoreline. They warn the problem is only likely to get significantly worse in coming decades as global warming causes sea levels to rise more rapidly.

“It will probably have occurred to a scale that we will have only been able to save a few places and maintain beaches, and the rest are kind of a write-off,” said Dolan Eversole, a coastal geologist with the University of Hawaii’s Sea Grant program.

The loss of so many beaches is an alarming prospect for Hawaii on many levels. Many tourists come to Hawaii precisely because they want to lounge on and walk along its soft sandy shoreline. These visitors spend some $11.4 billion each year, making tourism the state’s largest employer.

Disappearing sands would also wreak havoc on the environment as many animals and plants would lose important habitats. The Hawaiian monk seal, an endangered species, gives birth and nurses pups on beaches. The green sea turtle, a threatened species, lays eggs in the sand.

Chip Fletcher, a University of Hawaii geology professor, says scientists in Hawaii haven’t yet observed an accelerated rate of sea level rise due to global warming.

Instead, the erosion the islands are experiencing now is caused by several factors including a steady historical climb in sea levels that likely dates back to the 19th century.

Other causes include storms and human actions like the construction of seawalls, jetties, and the dredging of stream mouths. Each of these human actions disrupts the natural flow of sand.

But a more rapid rise in sea levels, caused by global warming, is expected to contribute to erosion in Hawaii within decades. In 100 years, sea levels are likely to be at least 1 meter, or 3.3 feet, higher than they are now, pushing the ocean inland along coastal areas.

Fletcher says between 60 to 80 percent of the nation’s shoreline is chronically eroding. But the problem is felt particularly acutely in Hawaii because the economy and lifestyle are so dependent on healthy beaches.

The state is doing everything it can to keep the sand in Waikiki, for example, joining with hotels in the state’s tourist hub on a plan to spend between $2 million and $3 million pumping in sand from offshore.

Sam Lemmo, administrator of the state’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, says the state would need a variety of adaptation strategies for different beaches.

It would likely have to abandon hope for beaches in posh Lanikai and suburban Ewa Beach on Oahu because they’re already lined with seawalls and are badly eroded.

The same probably goes for shoreline next to highways or other critical public infrastructure, where seawalls already exist or may have to be built.

Seawalls protect individual properties from encroaching waters but they exacerbate erosion nearby by preventing waves from reaching the sand needed to replenish the beach.

For undeveloped shoreline, the state wants to make sure these areas stay pristine. This happened recently when a Florida-based developer announced plans to build luxury homes on sand dunes in Kahuku on Oahu’s North Shore. Hard money training

Italy is opening its first national museum for contemporary arts and architecture in a bid to shed its image as merely a keeper of a glorious artistic past.

The ⁈llion ($223 million) Maxxi cultural center opens Saturday, for a limited weekend run before its full-fledged opening in a few months. The museum, located in a residential area of Rome, was designed by Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-born architect who was the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004.

The Culture Ministry decided to build the museum in 1998, recognizing that the country that produced Giotto, Michelangelo and Bernini — the avant-garde artists of their times — must continue to promote contemporary creativity if it wants to have a cultural heritage in the future.

“It is inconceivable for this very long flow of Italian creativity to be interrupted and do without the promotion and support which, over past centuries, have generally kindled it,” said Pio Baldi, head of the foundation that runs the museum.

The center, officially called the National Museum of the XXI Century Arts, is the latest in a series of cutting-edge architectural projects to be built in the Eternal City, which is better known for its Roman ruins, Baroque basilicas and Renaissance palazzi.

Renzo Piano’s Auditorium opened in 2002, giving Rome its first major-league concert hall. More recently and controversially, Richard Meier’s Ara Pacis museum, which houses a 2,000 year-old altar, opened in 2005. Critics complained the box-like shell was a modern blot in Rome’s historic center — to some, a gas station blocks away from the Spanish Steps.

No such protests befell Hadid’s design, which is located on the grounds of a former military barracks in Rome’s Flaminio neighborhood, far from the cobblestoned streets of the center but close enough to be reached on public transport and near the new concert hall.

Hadid said she intended the space to be an “urban cultural center,” an arts campus with indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces. The building itself — a sleek, windowed box on top of a box — is made of cement walls, steel stairs and a glass roof, giving the galleries a neutral backdrop illuminated by filtered natural light.

“I see Maxxi as an immersive urban environment for the exchange of ideas, feeding the cultural vitality of the city,” she said.

Indeed, the museum is designed to be a research workshop of sorts, not just exhibiting contemporary art and architecture but incorporating contemporary design, fashion, film and advertising in a multidisciplinary cultural center. Hard money training

British Airways PLC began a charm offensive about its proposed merger with Spain’s Iberia SA Friday, dismissing suggestions the deal would increase fares or reduce standards at Britain’s flagship carrier.

BA Chief Executive Willie Walsh, who will take the same position at the combined company, stressed that each airline would keep their individual identities and brand images while allowing for massive cost savings.

BA shares were trading 1.9 percent higher at 219 pence, while Iberia’s stock slipped 2.3 percent to ⁈fter the two airlines revealed late Thursday that they had reached a preliminary agreement on a tie-up.

The combined company would consolidate BA’s rank as Europe’s third largest airline behind Germany’s Lufthansa and Air-France KLM with anticipated annual revenues of ⁈lion ($22.5 billion) — at a time the industry is struggling with falling demand.

“This is good news for BA, our customers and our shareholders,” BA Chief Executive Willie Walsh. “We recognize we have strong brands and these will be retained.”

BA will have a majority 55 percent stake in the ‘TopCo’ company with Iberia holding the remaining 45 percent. The group will be incorporated in Spain, while the main operational and financial functions and the stock market listing will remain in Britain. Iberia CEO Antonio Vazquez will become chairman.

Analysts said the deal — along with a proposed tie-up with American Airlines that is still facing regulatory hurdles — was a positive step for the two loss-making airlines.

“The revenue environment appears to have stabilized and both management teams have plans in place to cut costs,” said Collins Stewart analyst Andrew Fitchie. “To turbo-charge a return to economic returns we have long held that BA and Iberia both need this merger and need the antitrust immunity with American Airlines.”

Walsh dismissed suggestions that fares would increase on some routes as “total nonsense.”

BA is currently strong on North American routes and Iberia on Latin American destinations while both operate on shorter-haul European routes such as London to Madrid.

BA and Iberia are also waiting on regulatory approval for a proposed revenue-sharing deal with AMR Corp.’s American that — if approved by U.S. and European authorities — will see the trio set prices together and share seat capacity on trans-Atlantic flights.

The deal would form an alliance on a combined route network serving 443 destinations in 106 countries with 6,200 daily departures.

Trans-Atlantic rival Virgin Atlantic Airways has bitterly opposed that alliance, with boss Richard Branson arguing that the union between BA and American would lead to price-fixing and force travel agents to send business to the pair.

BA last week reported a net loss of 208 million pounds ($346 million) for the six months ending in September, its first-ever loss in the period, as revenue fell 13.7 percent because of the recession.

The airline has begun drastic cost-cutting, axing meals on short-haul flights and announcing sweeping job cuts and pay curbs that have raised the threat of strike action by its 14,000 cabin crew. It has already slashed 2,500 positions between June 2008 and March 2009 and plans to cut another 1,700, freeze pay for current staff and offer lower wages for new hires. Hard money training

The remnants of Tropical Storm Ida were expected to continue tracking through the Southeastern U.S. on Thursday.

The system was forecast to continue pulling abundant moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and allow for wet weather over the South. Rainfall in the Southeast could decrease to light and scattered showers with totals near a half of an inch. But strong winds were expected to increase over the region with wind gusts of up to 30 mph.

The slow-moving system was forecast to continue to flood the region from the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River, and up the East Coast in to the Mid-Atlantic states.

Scattered showers also were expected to increase up the coast as additional moisture comes in from the Atlantic.

Strong storms were forecast in the Carolinas and Virginias with rainfall totals of up to 2 inches with periods of strong thunderstorm development. Coastal flooding and erosion were expected over the Mid-Atlantic states.

Behind this system, a large high pressure system could move from the Plains and Mississippi River Valley and into the Great Lakes and Northeast. It was expected to continue bringing mild weather with mostly sunny skies and warm conditions.

Temperatures in the Northeast were expected to remain in the 50s while the Midwest could see a warm day in the 60s. A trough of low pressure was forecast to start pushing in from the Rocky Mountains and bring strong winds to the Southern Plains. Gusts could reach up to 20 mph in the Plains, with temperatures reaching into the 70s.

In the West, a trough of low pressure was expected to continue tracking eastward from the Pacific Northwest and over the Northern Plains. Most areas of Montana and Wyoming could see between 3 and 5 inches of snowfall with more at higher elevations.

Oregon and Washington were forecast to start to dry out and remain cool with highs in the 40s. A light mix of snow and rain was expected and could bring less than a half of an inch of accumulation. Light rain was forecast to spread into northern California as a cold front pushes southeastward through the region. Hard money training