How One Family Learned to Give Up Electronics and  Love Aruba w/Video



Kim Orlando loves to travel. She should, she's the CEO of travelingmom.com and she especially loves to travel with her family.



When the idea of a family trip to …

“God Himself could not sink this ship,” a  crewman of the Titanic said to one Mrs. Albert Campbell, as she boarded the ship in Southampton, England



In May 1911, the RMS Titanic gracefully slid  into  the bustling harbor of …

Hardie Karges has one self-professed goal in life: to see every country in the world.



And he’s off to a grand start!



His recently self-published book, Hypertravel -100 Countries in…

Used to be they were called “mommy bloggers,” but that was before their Klout scores soared and corporations avidly courted them.



And while I may be exaggerating, I’m not by much. This group of bright, engaged mothers who travel with their kids and run homes and blog, now run the family travel market and drive some of the most exciting conversations on…

One of the vexing ironies of travel is that Visitor Information Centers (VIC) do little to nothing to enhance or promote the destination they represent. If anything, they can be a “turn off” for the destination.



Visitor centers are usually some functional building filled with tired staffers surrounded by lots of brochures, a few maps and mundane kinds of…

Andrew Curry, Director and Co-author of The Futures Company is a smart guy.

When he discuses the future of travel in …

TripAdvisor Barred from Claiming Reviews are Honest, Real



Hotelmarketing’sweb site broke news saying  that a UK advertising “watchdog” ruled that since  TripAdvisor’s reviews can be posted with no form…

It's a bit startling to learn that our passion for travel is second only to our passion for our families.

I learned this from travel trade sites which often have more interesting things to say than consumer travel publications or sites.

The content on Travel Weekly and, say, …

There’s no doubt marketers and brand managers are spending lots of human and real capital to leverage the power of Social Sites, especially Facebook and Twitter. But does it do them any good? Meaning, do consumers promote brands via Social Media regardless of how hard those brands try to get in front of consumers?…

Patrick Smith’s column, Ask the Pilot  is almost always an acerbic look at the airline industry with its many foibles and Alice in Wonderland rules and regulations.



But the regular contributor to Salon, the award-winning online news…

Technology Fails Locking Guests Out of Hotel Rooms

Guests at the Denver Marriott Tech Center would have loved a set of hard keys to their rooms on New Year’s Eve because, as if by magic, a computer malfunction locked every guest out of…

Listen to this sound-rich Ottawa, Audio PostCard. Be transported by the sounds of this friendly, accessible city.

It's a bit of a throwback to the theater of the mind when audio created the place

 …

How We Make Travel Decisions



At some point or other someone is always gazing into a crystal ball predicting the future of the travel industry



It's understandable given the tremendous impact, say, mobile has had in the travel space, or the  daily emergence of new sites that offer interesting new search processes.



There are…

Should Travel Writers Ask for Free Trips or Get Paid by a Destination?



This started out with a question: Should travel writers ask for free trips.



It’s  a vexing and contentious issue for travel professionals.



The ethical issues are pretty clear: If a travel writer is given an all-expense trip to a country, hotel,…

Battle of the Review Giants: HolidayCheck vs. TripAdvisor

In the unfolding drama of  TripAdvisor vs Fake Reviews that has played out  in various travel publications, HolidayCheck has upped the stakes by trumpeting its differences with TripAdvisor relative to the integrity of hotel reviews.

In fact, the Swiss-based online travel portal,…

Getting High in Jamaica



I was pretty terrified.



Weak knees,  breath-holding terrified.



I was standing on the edge of small tree platform high above the Jamaican rain forest, looking down at all the treetops. About eye level with the birds!



With the forest canopy beneath me, the guides from …

How Tourism Ireland Won Top Social Media Prize



Luck of the Irish?



Hardly.



It was no surprise to us when Tourism Ireland  was tapped as the winner in the “Best Use of Social Media” contest at the…

When Travelers Become Transumers



Get comfortable with the term "Transumer,” because you’ll be hearing it often.



Correspondent Charlene Rook uses it in her informative articles in Sparksheet  to refer to the flow of goods and services by…

The Lure of Dark Tourism: Murder and Mayhem



Places like Cambodia’s Killing Fields,  Auschwitz, New York’s Ground Zero, or the Wolf’s Lair where Hitler barely survived an assassination attempt in 1944, exert a powerful pull on travelers.



But what’s the fascination?



Professor John Lennon of Glasgow University…

Billions Spent, But Are We Any Safer?





In its usual witty, acerbic but always readable content, FastCompany  looks at the Transportation Security Administration’s  huge expenditures on air travel since 9/11 in their efforts to keep…