Some road-trip packing essentials are no-brainers: rocking music, tasty snacks, and a whole lot of patience. But there are plenty of additional items that you might not realize you need…until you need them. Luckily, we’ve got your essential road-trip packing list right here. These items will help you save money, stay healthy, and stay sane during those long hours on the road. (You can also click over to TripAdvisor to see Wendy’s full list.)
Save money with a cooler
Pack your own water and snacks to save money and calories. The cooler (either the old-school kind that you fill with ice from the hotel, or the electric kind that you plug into your cigarette lighter) will also come in handy for picnic lunches. Which reminds us: Toss a picnic blanket in the back seat.
Save your skin with sun protection
For you and for your car. For you and the kids, we’re talking about the SPF kind, and not only for the times when you get out to stretch your legs. If you’re riding with the windows open, slather some on arms and faces—especially the driver’s left arm. Wendy also recommends bringing a windshield sun blocker; the steering wheel and seats can get very hot after a few hours in the sun while you’re all off hiking or seeing the country’s largest peach pit. A blocker will keep the car cooler and cut down on how much you need to blast the A/C once you pile back in.
Save your sanity with emergency kits
You’ll need three kinds to be prepared for just about anything: a first-aid kit, a roadside emergency kit, and a roadside assistance plan, either through an automotive club or an insurance company.
Save your back
In addition to regular stops to stretch your legs, Wendy likes to take along a lumbar support pillow to help prevent back pain from long stretches of driving. (Pro tip: a rolled up towel works in a pinch too.) Then each night at the hotel she likes to use rubber massage balls called T Spheres to roll out cramps and kinks.
Stay on track
Getting lost can be maddening, especially if everyone is tired or hungry and ready to get out of the car. If you’re using the GPS on your phone, be sure to bring a USB car charger so that you always have power (better yet, get a charger with multiple ports so other passengers can charge their devices too). Don’t forget a smartphone mount for your dashboard either, as they make looking at the phone for directions and playlist changes much easier—remember both of these tasks are for your copilot, not the driver! Wendy also recommends a paper map for road trips. Not only are they handy if your devices do run out of juice, but they provide a big-picture overview of the trip and can be used as a roadside-stop journal and kept as a memento of your adventures.
Stay connected
Whether you have to work during your road trip or just want to post pictures of your trip on Facebook, you’ll need to bring a few pieces of tech gear if you want to get online on the road. A portable Wi-Fi hot spot can be invaluable; or you can talk to your cell phone carrier about turning your phone into a hot spot (sometimes this incurs fees, so be sure to check). Finally, pack a voltage inverter; these are special chargers that plug into the car’s cigarette lighter one end and have a three-prong A/C outlet and USB ports on the other.
See Wendy’s full list of road-trip essentials and her tips for how to plan the ultimate road trip itinerary on TripAdvisor, where she’s TripAdvisor’s Travel Advocate, and follow her on Instagram for postcards from the California road trip she’s on right now.
Road trips are the great American summer vacation: wind in your hair, rocking tunes on the radio, kids/friends smiling in the back seat. But the magic doesn’t happen, well, magically. All road trips roll a lot smoother if they’re planned well: No one wants to be driving endlessly at 3 a.m. still looking for somewhere to eat or sleep. And no one wants to be bored in the back seat.
With some easy pre-trip thinking, you can ensure that everyone in your car stays happy and even has a meaningful, memorable trip. This summer Wendy’s sharing her hard-earned road-trip wisdom, culled from countless drives across America, in a series of articles on TripAdvisor. First up: How to plan the ultimate itinerary. I’ve summarized a few of the tips, but click here to read the full article on TripAdvisor, and we’ll see you on the road!
Get everyone on the same page before you ever step foot in the car.
What are your fellow road-trippers expecting from this vacation? Ask everyone to share their trip goals—and likes and dislikes—early in the planning stages. If one person is expecting mountains and outdoor activities but another was planning on stuffing their pie hole with a different pie in every state, you could end up with some road-trip rage. If you can all agree on a few things ahead of time, you’re going to be a lot happier when you’re on Hour 15 of Day 6.
Throw a map-planning party.
Grab an old-school map and plot out where you want to go and how you want to get there. Be sure to think about how far you really want to drive each day, and how long you want to stay in various stops. College towns can be fun and affordable overnight stops, with plenty going on whether you arrive early or late.
Give everyone a day to own.
If every person in the car gets to choose one part of the trip to be in charge of, then everyone’s wish list is more likely to get met. You can set this up so that each road tripper picks something to do, see, or eat each day—or you can give over a whole day to each passenger.
Consider whether you want to go back the same way you came.
A round-trip route could be boring at the end: The home stretch could feel like your vacation has already ended. Or it could give you the opportunity to see things you couldn’t fit in on the first leg. If you’re flying to a destination and renting a car, you might want to opt for a loop route so that you can save money by flying into and out of the same airport..
If your route is one-way, decide which direction is best.
At first glance, driving from here to there might seem the same as driving from there to here—but direction can affect a lot on a road trip. One way might mean amazing sunsets every night, or better weather, or views that don’t require you gazing across a lane of oncoming traffic in order to see the ocean. Bonus tip from science: Studies show that it’s the end of the trip that leaves the most lasting impression, so pick a route that ends with a memorable grand finale.
Seek out the small stuff—and leave time for kismet.
Small towns are packed with fun events during the summer: state fairs are full of quirky competitions and food on sticks; parades and festivals pop up all season; and off-the-beaten-path spots sometimes have surprising or quirky attractions. When you do stop, be sure to ask the locals for recommendations—they may help you discover a gem that’s not on your map.
It’s too early to tell all the complex ways that Britain’s vote to exit the European Union, a.k.a. Brexit, will affect travelers. But those who were thinking of a trip to the U.K. this summer might be particularly motivated, now that the British pound has dropped significantly in value. The pound is at $1.32 today, which is a 31-year-low. “In the very short term, travel to the U.K. will be an incredible bargain,” says Joe Brancatelli, business travel expert and founder of JoeSentMe. “For travelers, the exchange rate translates to an immediate 10 percent discount on hotels, restaurant meals, train tickets, Uber and cab rides, or whatever you pay for in pounds.” He adds that we are likely to see bargains elsewhere in Europe in the short-term as well, since the euro has fallen too.
In case you want to seize the day and head to the U.K. this summer, here are FAQs covering what you should know.
Q: Should I buy my airline ticket now, or wait?
A: There are deals right now. “Just today I wrote about sub-$450 round-trips to Europe,” says Gary Leff of View From The Wing. “I’ve been seeing plenty of great deals recently, including frequent business-class sales of $1,500 –$2,000. Whenever you see a deal like that, jump on it—but only when your plans are firm because those sales are going to be non-refundable and carry hefty change penalties of $300 to $500 per ticket.”
Q: Should I use reward points to pay for airline tickets?
A: Probably not. “Frequent-flier awards are best used when airfares are high,” says Gary, a specialist in points and miles.
Q: Should I pay for accommodations now, or wait?
A: If that’s the way to guarantee you get the hotel, room type, or rental apartment you want, pay now. If you aren’t required to pay now, you might as well wait. “I’m not usually a fan of prepaying,” Joe points out, “because I don’t think travelers can be short-term forex experts. The pound was at $1.49 before the Brexit vote came in. It is selling at $1.31 today. You’d have to be betting on a global recession to think it’ll decline much further. You’d also have to be a cockeyed optimist to think it’ll run up a lot in the weeks ahead. So, if we are at or near the floor, I suppose it makes sense to lock in rates in advance. But I think the pound will be historically low for months and months. So I don’t see, for July-August, any need to lock in.”
Q: Should I pay in pounds or in my home currency?
A: “Always pay in pounds,” says Joe, “if for no other reason than if a hotel or an airline bills you in dollars, you get a bad currency exchange rate and, if you use the wrong credit card, you could get hit with forex fees anyway.” As always, use a credit card that does not charge foreign transaction fees; it will save you about 3% on every overseas purchase.
“If you use a credit card that doesn’t charge a foreign transaction fee,” says Gary. “then you’re going to be more or less indifferent to the currency you’re buying in, because you’re going to get a favorable rate and you won’t get a surcharge.” (Gary regularly reports on the best credit cards for travelers, along with current sign-up bonuses and offers).
Q: Should I be using hotel points to pay for my hotel?
A: Probably not. “Hotel points are best used when hotel rates are high,” says Gary. When the exchange rate is in your favor, it usually doesn’t make sense to use points. Instead, take advantage of hotel deals and save your points for destinations where rooms are expensive.
As Gary explains further, “Most hotel programs assign their properties to categories and charge a fixed number of points throughout the year (Hilton is an exception, varying the number of points a hotel costs even within its category, and making it difficult to get outsized value from their points). Hotel rates tend to be seasonal, or to vary by day of week. Use your points when prices are higher than average, and spend cash when they’re lower than average.”
Q: If I’m in the U.K., and a shop or restaurant gives me the choice of paying in pounds or dollars, which do I choose?
A: “Always pay in the local currency,” says Gary. “If you’re given the option of paying in dollars, the merchant is generally going to convert prices from the local currency to dollars at an exchange rate that’s unfavorable to you. And if your credit card charges a foreign transaction fee, they’re going to charge you the fee anyway—even if the bill is in U.S. dollars—because the transaction originated outside the U.S.”
Q: If I’m in the U.K., and I have a choice of paying by credit card or in cash, which do I use?
A: If the British pound is fluctuating every day, travelers should probably check the exchange rate every day (go to XE.com or use the XE app) because that might affect their daily decisions as to how to pay for things. On a day when the value of the pound is particularly low, it may make sense to pay in cash because credit cards may use an exchange rate that applies a day or two later, when the transaction is billed.
Even before last week’s Brexit vote, London represented a great value this August in particular. Here’s why.
We’ve all seen pictures of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing. The flashy skyline of Shanghai, the crowds and traffic of Beijing, the touristy waterfront light show in Hong Kong.
Those modern cities are what a lot of people think of when they think “China”—and unfortunately, that thought is usually followed by the specter of crowds, noise, and pollution. But there’s a very different world just beyond those buzzing cities, and it might change the way you think about traveling in China.
In Yunnan Province you can experience an alternate version of the most populous country in the world—a version where nature rules over crowds, the food is farm-to-table fresh, the air is clear blue and clean, and the people invite you into their homes instead of elbowing you out of their way.
With the help of Mei Zhang, one of our Trusted Travel Experts for China, I had the chance to dive into Yunnan Province, specifically the region of Dali where Mei grew up, to experience a very different side of China. Here are ten reasons why it should be included on any itinerary to the country.
1. You will learn that Yunnan’s “rural” is different from American “rural.”
Farmland is right up against people’s homes in Dali, Yunnan Province, China. Photo: Billie Cohen
In the U.S., farmland is a wide stretching expanse of planted ground. If people live on it at all, they live far apart. But in China, people live in rows of houses along what looks, for all intents and purposes, like a suburban street. And directly across from their house is a small plot of land, which they farm. They might have other family plots around the area too.
A short drive from the hotel took us to the base of Cangshan mountain range, where we hiked a rock-paved trail up past temples, tucked-away altars, waterfalls, a tea plantation, beautiful vista points, and even a few historic family grave sites, which led to fascinating conversations about cultural traditions and beliefs.
3. You will meet people who surprise you.
On our hike, Mr. Tian pointed out flowers, leaves, and plants commonly used in local cooking and medicines. Photo: Billie Cohen
The hike was led by botanist Mr. Tian, a former hotel-uniform designer who’d been successful in Beijing but had retired and moved to the countryside to teach environmental awareness to kids. As we walked, he pointed out flowers and leaves used in traditional cooking and medicines, and our guide Frank (a passionate flower-gardener himself) added his own personal stories eating those foods in his childhood home. Even though Mr. Tian didn’t speak any English, there was rarely a lull in the conversation—and we had plenty of laughs too. My favorite part: Despite some shyness on this particular topic of conversation, I discovered that both Frank and Mr. Tian had hidden talents. Frank has a beautiful voice and we convinced him to sing us a folk song as we walked through the woods. That loosened up Mr. Tian, who later revealed that he is a talented artist who draws Audubon-like illustrations of flora and fauna. He showed us some artwork he had on his phone and let drop that he was holding his first exhibition in a few weeks. Sadly, I was going to be gone by then.
4. You will eat well—and healthily.
The ingredients at a local lunch spot were so fresh because they were farmed nearby. Photo: Billie Cohen
It is a myth that all Chinese food is greasy and oily. In Yunnan, where the food is truly grown locally and served farm-to-table (you’ll pass farms wherever you go), everything I ate was fresh and healthy. Mixed vegetables and meats are often simply sautéed with a little bit of oil (rapeseed is what’s most commonly used) and a lot of delicious spices and flavors. As a vegetarian, I was able to eat well and deliciously—lots of tofu, lots of greens, and several new vegetables to try.
5. You’ll eat like a local.
Eating like a local in Dali, Yunnan Province, China. Photo: Billie Cohen
After our hike up Cangshan mountain, and the bonding it encouraged among our little group, we decided to change plans and eat at a local village spot recommended by Mr. Tian, where we found a crowd of regular folks digging into their daily lunches. At the counter, we picked out our main ingredients (a variety of vegetables and meats) and then headed upstairs to dine like locals, on low benches at a low table, sharing the dishes family-style. Pro tip: The typical way of eating is family-style, right down to the practice of allowing everyone to serve themselves from each platter with their personal chopsticks. If that’s going to bother you, it’s absolutely fine to ask for a serving spoon—no one will mind. (Though my new friends were impressed that I didn’t.)
6. You will meet artisan craftsmen who don’t live in Brooklyn or have beards.
Mr. Yung is a third-generation potter living and working in Dali, Yunnan Province. Photo: Billie Cohen
One of the many interesting artisans that Mei knows in Yunnan is a local potter who lives in the hills above a tiny village. After a ten-minute easy walk through winding streets, we reached Mr. Yung’s pottery compound, a few earthen shacks arranged next to a long dirt ridge that reached quite far down the hill and turned out to be, as he called it, the Dragon Kiln. That kiln could fire 1,000 vases at once. Mr. Yung’s work is that in-demand.
Mr. Yung is a third-generation potter and although his rustic studio didn’t look like much from the outside, it turned out to be a small museum when I walked inside—packed with beautifully shaped vases and bowls, some in progress and some finished. Make sure you ask for a lesson at the wheel. Mr. Yung (who doesn’t speak any English) lit up when I asked and we shared quite a laugh when my bowl turned out lopsided. If you have enough time in Dali, you can even take your creation home.
7. You can prepare and eat lunch with a Bai family.
Yang Mama prepared lunch with us in her own kitchen. Photo: Billie Cohen
Mei and our local guide, Frank (who also grew up in Dali and nearby Kunming), arranged for us to have lunch with a local Bai family. There are 56 ethnic groups in China; the Han people make up about 92% and the rest are small pockets of minority groups, including the Bai people, who number about 180,000. They live primarily in the Yunnan province, and you can see them going about their business in various markets that your guide will lead you through. In one special afternoon, after shopping for greens in the local Dali market, we took them to a Bai family’s home where Yang Mama (pictured) cooked them up in a giant wok heated by bricks, along with other regional dishes. Ask to help, and you’ll get the chance to try out the wok. After lunch, Yang Mama prepares three different kinds of teas, each with a symbolic meaning. And yes, the Bai women wear their colorful costumes all the time—not just for the tourists. However, we did learn from Frank that they’ve modernized a little bit. Look for the braided lanyard pinned near their right shoulder and hidden in a chest pocket; it’s usually connected to glasses or a mobile phone.
8. You’ll get to see handicrafts up close and learn how they’re made.
Visiting a small embroidery school in Dali, Yunnan Province, China. Photo: Billie Cohen
The Chinese government has funded some traditional handicraft schools to help keep those arts alive. With Frank, we got to visit two: an embroidery school and a batik school. Though we did run into another tour group at the silk embroidery school, my experience still felt separate: The big group did not get a private meeting with the woman who ran the small school (of only a dozen students), nor a guided tour through the gallery—and no matter where we went, there was never any pressure to buy anything. (Check out the baskets in the picture: They’re full of silk worm eggs!)
The baskets are filled with silk worm eggs! Each produced miles of silk that is dyed and used for embroidery by the students at this school. Photo: Billie Cohen
9. You’ll learn about local architecture from the inside out.
Inside a local’s home in Old Dali, Yunnan Province. Photo: Billie Cohen
Thanks to Frank’s and Mei’s deep roots in Dali and the time they’ve spent building relationships with interesting people, we were able to stop into a few local homes to see what they looked like, say hello, and even glimpse some behind-the-scenes real-life moments (like a pair of tween boys watching TV while their mom did laundry, or a wife cooking dinner as the husband led us around). This was so much better than having architectural details pointed out from the street as we walked by, as I saw other tourists doing.
10. You’ll have WOW experiences that weren’t even scheduled on your itinerary.
Undoubtedly the most “wow” moments of WildChina’s Yunnan itinerary were the ones that happened organically: The teachers at the handicraft schools who dropped surprising factoids in response to my many questions, the fascinating botanist Mr. Tian, the Bai woman who cracked up when I threw back a shot of spicy tea way too fast, the potter who laughed with me when I failed miserably at the potter’s wheel, and, most of all, our guide Frank.
Frank certainly didn’t have to tell us stories about his adorable young daughters (named after flowers) or show us pictures of all the plants he and his wife have stuffed into their home, or sing two folk songs for us (we had to beg for a few hours to make that happen). He was just a nice guy, with the unique local insight that comes from living in a place your whole life and wanting to find ways to help visitors see it the way he sees it, with all its wonders.
Those seemingly random human moments are the ones you end up talking about most when you get home. Ironically, though, they don’t really happen entirely by chance, do they? They happen because of the connections you make when doors are opened for you, and because someone with exceptional local knowledge put all the people and pieces in the right place and then stepped back to let the magic happen. That’s what Mei can do. Without all those people, Yunnan still would’ve been amazing and worth a stop on any China trip, especially as a fascinating juxtaposition to the country’s bustling cities, but the region and culture wouldn’t have opened up to me the way they did.
*Disclosure: WildChina provided me with a ten-day trip through China, mostly free of charge (we split the cost of domestic China airfare, and United provided the long-haul flights). In keeping with WendyPerrin.com standard practice, coverage was not guaranteed and remains at our editorial discretion. Our goal in taking sponsored trips from travel specialists is to evaluate the services we recommend for our readers and ensure that they remain up to Wendy’s standards. You can read the signed agreement between WendyPerrin.com and WildChina here.
The view the other. Note that there aren’t a lot of other people here with me.
Most tourists arrive at the Mutianyu welcome area and have to take an official shuttle bus up to the Wall entrance. Traveling with WildChina meant I didn’t have to.
As you can see from this map, you can hike among 23 watchtowers on the Mutianyu section of the Wall.
Bill Clinton rode this exact cable car up to the Great Wall in 1998. Billie Cohen rode it in 2016.
I visited Beijing in late March, which meant the trees had only just started to wake up from winter. In a few weeks, the view out the back of the cable car will be greener but it will also be more obscured. Also, notice the lack of haze. This is a great time of year to visit Beijing for clear skies.
See how the Wall curves to the right? Legend has it the foreman was a little tipsy when he gave the construction order.
Lotus-shaped arrow holes were added to the Wall in the 1580s.
The Brickyard resort and restaurant is a repurposed glazed-tile factory. In a few weeks, these bare trees will be full and the onsite culinary garden will be blooming.
The Chairman Suite at The Brickyard at Mutianyu maintains the feel of the original factory, and also has some retro 1960s touches.
Everyone’s seen pictures of the Great Wall of China. And it’s been around for nearly 3,000 years. But if you’ve only seen the photos or only remember the basics from your school lessons, you’ve hardly scratched the stone surface.
I walked the famous stretch of barricade in Mutianyu, with my history-buff guide Chris from WildChina (the company run by Mei Zhang, one of Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts for China), and he worked three bits of magic. First, without WildChina’s special access, I would not have been able to roll right up to the entrance. I would’ve had to ride the crowded shuttle bus with everyone else from the gift shop mall at the bottom of the hill. Instead, we drove nearly all the way up to the ticket booth and didn’t have to wait for anything or anyone.
Second, he timed our visit so that we were not surrounded by massive crowds. Granted, the Great Wall is China’s biggest tourist attraction, so it’s never going to be completely empty—but by scheduling my visit on a Monday around 11am, we missed the morning tour-bus crowds and were able to stroll the Wall freely, rather than crammed in among swarms of other people. Third, the history and context that Chris knew made the Wall come alive. I almost felt bad for others at the Wall—for them it was just a spot for a bucket-list selfie.
Here are nine secrets about the Great Wall of China and how best to experience it.
1. It doesn’t all look the way it does in the photos you see online.
Various tribes contributed to its growth, building different parts out of clay, earth, stone, and wood at different times as far back as 700 B.C. The Han tribe’s Wall (as in the predecessors of Atilla) was the longest, at about 11,000 miles, but it’s almost all gone.
2. But a lot of it does.
It was Emperor Qin Shi Huang of the Qin Dynasty (the first of unified China, around 220 B.C.) who effectively stitched together the tribal sections into the more familiar stone barrier we still see today. Subsequent dynasties added to it and reinforced it, and China’s Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) extended them. There are more than 9,000 miles of the Wall left, and about 4,000 of them look the way we imagine it: built out of stone bricks. These sections were constructed during the Ming dynasty.
3. It extended beyond modern-day China and Mongolia.
There was even a stretch of the old Wall in North Korea, but Kim Jong-Il tore it down out of national pride.
4. Construction didn’t always go as planned.
If you look downhill from where the cable car lets you off in Mutianyu, you’ll see a stretch of Wall that oddly loops out from the main path. Legend has it that, in the 1500s, the guy in charge of construction got a little drunk and gave the wrong order. To this day, the Wall still juts out unexpectedly.
5. War and peace really do go together.
In the 1580s a general added lotus-shaped arrow holes to the Wall, in a reference to the Buddhist blessing for peace. In Mutianyu, look for them near your feet, where the steps meet the Wall.
6. History is still living…nearby.
The residents of the village of Mutianyu are the descendants of those who built the Wall. And during the Cultural Revolution, farmers stole stones from the Great Wall to build their houses. Even today, some of the village homes still have Walls made of appropriated bricks.
7. The Mutianyu section of the Wall has its own Hollywood sign.
In the 1960s, a giant stone sign was laid on the side of the mountain in honor of Chairman Mao; it says “Loyal to Chairman Mao.” Over the years, the brush overtook it and it was lost to sight. Seeking a way to bring attention to his village, the Mutianyu mayor in 2008 had the sign cleaned and fixed up. Look for it to the left side of the Wall as you gaze uphill.
8. You can stay overnight near the Wall and not feel like a tourist trapped in a low-budget motel.
American Jim Spears and his Chinese wife Liang Tang have long roots in Mutianyu, and are partners in The Brickyard hotel and restaurant. Built in a repurposed factory that used to make glazed tiles for palaces and temples, the whole spread was redesigned by Jim about ten years ago as a way to showcase the beauty of the area and to give back to the community he and his wife had become a part of. All 25 rooms have views of the Wall, 80 percent of the staff is local (and most are women), and 80 percent of the food is local too (with about a quarter grown onsite). Chef Ranhir Singh let me know that the tofu in my vegetable dish was crafted by a nearby villager.
9. When it comes to visiting the Wall, distance makes all the difference.
If you’re staying in Beijing, you have a few options for which part of the Wall you visit:
• The sections closest to central city are Badaling and Juyongguan. They’re also the most crowded and commercialized.
• The next step up is Mutianyu: This section is about 1.5 hours from central Beijing by car. It winds across low mountains at roughly 2,000 feet and you can climb stairs, take a cable car (as Bill Clinton did), or ride a chairlift up to it. From there, you can hike a stretch that connects 23 watchtowers. For those brave enough, you can ride a toboggan back down. This makes Mutianyu sound like an amusement park, but I found it to be not that crowded and, therefore, decently serene.
• The “advanced” option is Jinshanling. This piece of the Wall, a combination of restored and wild stretches, is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Beijing. Because of the distance, it’s usually the least crowded, and because of its elevation, the views can be stunning. But if the air quality isn’t great (therefore limiting vistas), and you don’t have time for more than a day trip, it’s not necessarily worth the effort.
• Remember that it’s illegal to hike wild sections not regulated by the Chinese museum system—and they can be dangerous if you try. Visitors have fallen from rougher areas to their deaths.
Disclosure: Wild China and their partners provided most elements of the writer’s trip (hotels, guides, ground transportation, and sightseeing entry fees) free of charge. In keeping with WendyPerrin.com standard practice, there was no request for coverage on Wild China’s part, nor was anything promised on ours. We agreed to this arrangement so that we could test out the services of one our Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts and report back to you on it personally.
We recently heard an interesting hotel hack from a reader, about how to find cheaper rates: Sometimes if you make two separate back-to-back reservations, it’ll turn out cheaper than if you book one. Here’s what our reader Jerry Huller had to say:
I subscribe to Wendy’s newsletter and want to pass on a travel tip: If staying at a hotel over a long weekend, consider pricing individual nights to see if you can get a cheaper rate.
My wife and I are planning to stay at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek in Santa Rosa, CA, in April. On the hotel website, I priced a three-night stay arriving on a Friday and leaving on a Monday. The price was $252.10 per night (for a View King room with the AAA rate). Then I decided to price just the Sunday night and found a price of $234.10 per night for the same type of room. Then I went back and priced just the Friday night and Saturday nights, and got the cheaper rate of $234.10 per night. Then I went back and priced all three nights and again got the higher rate of $252.10 per night.
It’s cheaper to make two back-to-back reservations than one three-night reservation.
Have you ever tried this? Let us know if it worked, and share your own hotel tips below.
As I prepared for my trip to China—where I’ll be spending ten days with our Trusted Travel Expert Mei Zhang—Wendy had some good packing advice for me.
1. Pack cold medicine
“In China, it’s relatively easy to get clean bottled water and to get hot fresh cooked vegetables and food,” she told me. “The problem is all of the bad air and the germs and the people spitting and coughing. So bring medicines in case you get a cold. In China it’s the respiratory issues, not traveler’s diarrhea. You don’t need extra clothes, you can buy good quality things like silk pajamas for like ten bucks. You need cold medicine.”
On her list:
Vitamin C
Sudaphedrine or similar decongestant
Sore throat lozenges
Saline spray for your nose
Artificial tears for your eyes
2. Bring comfortable shoes
This sounds like an obvious one, but it’s more important than usual in China. Thanks to all the construction and uneven roads, you’ll want comfy walking shoes that you can spend the whole day in—whether you’re hiking the Great Wall or exploring hutongs.
3. Get a good data plan for your devices
This one is from my own research, as I knew I’d want to stay in close touch with WendyPerrin.com HQ, continue working, and post to our social media platforms.
Remember that the Internet doesn’t work in China like it does at home. No Google services—neither Google search, nor Gmail—are supported. Likewise, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter won’t load if you’re using the Internet (whether by Wi-Fi or a landline). However, if you use your phone or tablet’s cellular data (meaning 3G or 4G), the system recognizes your non-Chinese phone and lifts the gate. So I ended up being able to use my phone for anything (it simply switches to 4G) but can’t use my laptop. This is incredibly useful, but if you don’t have a good overseas data plan, this could also be incredibly expensive. T-Mobile offers free unlimited international data and texting included in its Simple plan, and Google Project Fi offers free texting along with international data at the same rates you’d pay at home (meaning your monthly bill is the same no matter where in the world you use your data) so those could be options if you’re a frequent traveler. (Full disclosure: I’m testing Google Project Fi while I’m in Asia, using a loaner phone from the company but paying for the service myself.)
Have you been to China? What were the most useful things you packed?
Passport photos are some of the ugliest photos we ever take. And ironically, they are some of the most expensive too—you have to buy them in pairs that can cost as much as $15. And if you need more, you have to fork over another $15.
I was very frustrated by this recently because I’m preparing for a three-month trip in Asia and I needed to renew my passport and get photos for several visas (I also like to carry a few extra in my luggage just in case I need one at the last minute). And then I read about ePassportPhoto.com. The site offers a few solutions to the problems mentioned above.
First, take your own photo.
ePassportPhoto.com lets you take your own photo, and then sends you multiples for cheap.
There’s no reason to pay so much money to have a bad photographer take a bad picture of you in front of a white screen. Seriously, so bad. I went to a local drugstore and the employee used a fish-eye lens, arguing that it was the best way to get the right proportions. I would argue differently.
Luckily, anyone who has a phone or a digital camera can take their own photo these days (and keep taking it until they get a good one). The State Department even provides very detailed directions on its site so that you can be sure you take one that will be acceptable for passport use. Just stand against a white wall, look directly at the camera, try not to smile, and snap away. If you use ePassportPhoto.com you have even less to worry about: They’ll let you know if the one you took is acceptable and then size it for you.
Or upload an existing one you already have.
If you prefer to have your photo taken professionally, or if you have a leftover professional passport photo (and since they usually come in pairs, that’s likely), you can still use ePassportPhoto.com to save some money on multiples. Just scan in the one you have and continue with the next step.
Next, print it for cheap…or free.
Go online to ePassportPhoto.com and choose the country for which you need a passport or visa photo. Next, decide whether you want the final result mailed to you at home; printed at a CVS, Walmart, or Walgreens; or if you want to print them at home yourself. Then just upload the photo that you took (or scan in the professional one you had taken), and decide how you want to receive them.
If you choose the print-at-home option—which is free—the website has an easy-to-use cropping tool to help you tailor your photo to the passport or visa you specified. Then you’ll just click download and voila! You have a single sheet of four images, which you can print out as many times as you need.
Four of my mug shots, tiled on one easily printable sheet by ePassportPhoto.com. I could print this at home, have it mailed to me, or have it printed at a local drugstore.
If you don’t have a quality photo printer (I don’t), you can opt to have a drugstore or ePassportPhoto.com do the printing for you. In those cases, the website will take care of sizing the image, and then it will create a tiled sheet of the photo—meaning it’ll fit four passport photos on a regular-sized 4×6 photo sheet (you’ll get two sheets total).
I chose to have my order routed to a local CVS for printing. When they’d been sent on to CVS, I got an email from one of the ePassportPhoto.com staffers, who reminded me not to mention the words “passport photo” when I picked them up. As far as CVS knows, you ordered regular 4×6 prints online, and they’ll treat your order the same way as if you’d ordered pictures of your dog.
The ePassportPhoto.com order of eight pictures—eight!—cost me just $8.99, plus about 20 cents that I paid when I picked them up at CVS, for the actual printing. That’s less than I would’ve paid for two passport photos at CVS if I’d used the traditional route. And if I’d printed them out myself at home, they would’ve been completely free.
The final step: Grab a pair of scissors and cut the sheet into separate little passport photos…and use the money you saved to buy yourself a little something for your trip.
Hi everyone, this is Billie, coming to you from Beijing. I’ll be traveling this week and next in China and sharing with you all the cool things I’m seeing, doing, and eating—and all the ways the right travel planner can make all the difference. Especially in a challenging destination like China.
That’s right, on this trip, I’m traveling with WildChina, run by Mei Zhang, one of our Trusted Travel Experts for China. Wendy keeps constant tabs on the travel planners she puts on her WOW List to ensure that they are delivering on “wow” experiences that live up to your (and her) standards, and Mei is doing some interesting work over here that we wanted to check out and share with you.
We were inspired to set up this trip, because we were hearing from readers and from travel planners that many people think China is a hard place to visit or not worth it. They couldn’t be more wrong.
The Beijing skyline on a late-March morning, from my room at the Rosewood Hotel—and there’s no smog! Photo: Billie Cohen
Everyone talks about Beijing’s smog like it’s the monster in a horror movie. But the trick to avoiding it is simply to know when to visit. Mei knows: early spring (right about now) when the weather is mild and beautiful (high 60s, low 70s) and the seasonal winds keep the air quality nearly as low as in other international cities.
The skies were blue and the smog nonexistent on the breezy spring morning I visited the Forbidden City. Photo: Billie Cohen
As for crowds, I haven’t been part of one yet. That’s because Mei’s guides have insider knowledge and special access. The first means they know things like what time of day to hit the Great Wall so that you’re not swallowed up by tourist hordes; the second means they can whisk you past queues and ticket takers so fast you’ll feel like a VIP. And of course you are.
My guide Chris found us a completely tourist-free nook in one of the Forbidden City’s gardens. The peace and quiet was wonderful. Photo: Billie Cohen
To remind travelers that there’s more to China than traffic-clogged Beijing or crowded Shanghai, Mei likes to take them way off the beaten path. So in addition to urban touring, she encourages travelers to explore rural areas, like Yunnan Province, where I’m headed in a few days. Mei grew up in that region, and therefore has deep local connections—connections that her travelers get the benefit of.
That’s what I know to start, and that’s what I’ll be checking out on this trip. Follow me for the next two weeks as I share my experiences (on instagram too a @billietravels). Leave any questions below and I’ll try to get them answered.
Do you search for travel information on your phone? According to Google, mobile travel inquiries increased by nearly 50% from January 2015 to January 2016. The rise makes sense, considering how much everyone seems to be looking at their phones these days. And with that increase, Google has been able to find out some interesting things about where we’re traveling lately.
Of course, all this interesting search information doesn’t remove the challenges of actually planning a great trip. In fact, Google says that 70% of travelers worry that they may not be finding the best price or making the best decision while booking a trip.
That’s why the search company held a press conference yesterday to introduce Destinations on Google, a new way of compiling certain kinds of travel information and displaying it to would-be globetrotters.
The tool works best as an overview of popular locations. For example, if you type in “Europe destinations,” you’ll get a list of popularly searched spots within Europe (London, Barcelona, Paris, etc). And if you tap into a city, you’ll see suggested itineraries.
The breadth of the information is decent for overview or inspiration purposes—and you can do some fun filtering by interest, like for scuba diving or hiking—but you’re not going to be able to plan a comprehensive trip from here, one with all the special experiences most people want to discover these days. The Google team says that’s fine—that’s not what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to complement the travel experts and travel planners, by offering a first stop for research.
And Destinations does work decently in that way…though to be fair, sophisticated travelers probably don’t need Google to tell them that the top sights in Paris are the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre Dame.
Instead, the most useful part of the tool is the same mechanism that powers Google Flights—so that when you type in “Greece destinations” or “Europe vacation,” your search results will include a recommended vacation week, based on the lowest estimated airfare Google Flights can find from your location. Similarly, Google shows the average estimated hotel price, in your chosen star category, in the destination you’re researching. Via its tool, you can find out the average starting price for, say, a seven-day trip from New York to Paris, in any particular month. Though the true price of a trip is never just the average air and hotel (there are meals, admission tickets, transportation, and activities to think about, not to mention the difference in cost between just any old hotel and the hot new spot everyone’s talking about), it’s still a helpful way to think about where you might want to go if you have a vacation coming up at a certain time of year.
A few key things to keep in mind as you explore: Google doesn’t do any of the booking (it’ll direct you to each hotel’s or airline’s site to do that) and it can’t refine for important personalized criteria (such as finding a hotel that is in your loyalty program or has the bed configuration or connecting rooms you need). Also keep in mind that Google is basing most of its information on popular searches that other people make. As an example, Google Destinations will tell you that May is when most people go to Athens; that is helpful information, but that doesn’t mean May is the smartest time for you to visit (unexpected or off-season weeks can sometimes be the best times for travel). Google also doesn’t tell you when a special local festival is happening a few miles outside of the city, or when the curator of the Acropolis Museum is available to take you on a private evening tour.
For that, you still need humans. And Google admits that freely. As a spokesperson explained, “This is not meant to replace travel agents, or TripAdvisor, or traditional travel media.It’s meant to compliment and be used in concert with other resources.”
That’s no surprise to us here—we’ve been talking about the value of exceptional human travel planners for years. So while a smart digital tool like Destinations on Google can be a useful part of your travel toolkit, you’ll still need to put down your phone to discover the most extraordinary parts of travel.
Train travel has a romance that few other modes of transportation do. And these days, there are so many trains to choose from, including sophisticated high-speed options in 20 countries around the world. Recognizing the continuing lure of the rails, Omnio—a website and mobile app for comparing and booking trains, buses, and flights across Europe—has just released a ranking of those 20 high-speed trains.
The rankings are based on a few criteria:
the percentage of the population that has access to high-speed trains from their home city
the ratio of high-speed to regular trains
the average ticket price by distance traveled
the maximum and daily operation speeds of the trains
Maybe you won’t be surprised to find out that the U.S. ranked 19th of the 20; only better than Finland. Or that the number 1 spot went to Japan—which was also first to this industry, constructing the original high-speed train network in 1964.
Here’s the full list of overall rankings:
Japan
South Korea
China
France
Spain
Taiwan
Germany
Italy
Austria
Turkey
Sweden
Belgium
Netherlands
Portugal
Russia
Poland
Uzbekistan
Norway
US
Finland
Even today, Japan still has the fastest trains, reaching speeds of 374 mph; France is a close second at 357 mph (though it only ranked fourth place overall). As part of its research, Omnio put together a map of the fastest rail routes in Europe.
Map of the Fastest Rail Routes in Europe
Map: Omnio
According to Omnio, 19 more countries are currently planning high-speed rail networks, so this ranking could include a lot more destinations in coming years, though it doesn’t look like the U.S. will stand a much better chance even then.
In a press release announcing Omnio’s findings, CEO and founder Naren Shaam said, “While the rail network once literally put cities on the map in the United States, trains have long since faded in Americans’ minds as a preferred way of travel, ceding to both the car and the plane. Europe has stayed with the beloved train however and also has rediscovered buses, with new luxury coaches now winning marketshare from discount airlines.”
Europe’s and Asia’s extensive ground-transportation networks are one of the reasons it’s easier to get to small towns and villages in those regions. Its search tool now covers train, air, and bus travel in 11 countries and more than 30,000 destinations all over Europe and easily allows you to compare your options.
Just go to the site and type in your starting destination and where you’d like to end up. In an easy-to-read list, it’ll spit back your options categorized by air, rail, and bus so that you can easily compare prices, schedule, travel times—and what Omnio calls the “smartest” itinerary, a combination of optimal price, duration, and time of departure. Once you click your selection, Omnio will either handle the booking itself or redirect you to the booking page on the relevant partner’s site (depending on its booking agreement with said partner).
Either way, the real joy of Omnio is that it gives travelers a one-stop shopping site for comparing different modes of transportation—and as a bonus, it might even help you discover a new and exciting way to travel.
If you’ve been thinking about experiencing the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro this summer, don’t wait any longer to plan your trip. The best hotels are nearly sold out. Luckily, one of our Trusted Travel Experts for Brazil, Martin Frankenberg—a Brazil native based in São Paulo, with an office in Rio—just dropped us a line to share some good news and useful tips.
As we explained in our how-to-plan article last summer, Olympic tickets and hotel bookings are available only through Authorized Ticket Resellers (ATRs)—and even back then nearly all of the hotel rooms were already spoken for by the International Olympic Committee and its long list of VIPs, sponsors, and staff.
The news is that Martin can now officially sell tickets and book hotels for you—and he has access to the hotels you’d actually want to stay in. At the time of this writing, he can still get travelers into the Sofitel, the Caesar Park, and the new Grand Hyatt. A few other new-for-the-Olympics luxury hotels—including the Trump and the Emiliano—are expected to open soon, too, possibly bringing a few more room options.
As for events, Martin notes that you can still buy tickets to just about everything, even the most popular events like the opening ceremony. (The only two not available at this time are the men’s tennis final and the men’s basketball final.) Of course, certain events come with big buzz and matching prices. For example, while the initial round of gymnastics will cost you only $300–$400, the finals round for sprinter Usain Bolt is more like $3,000. The most expensive tickets go up to about $7,000.
Fortunately, prices for official tickets are regulated, and if you buy through Martin you’ll pay the set price plus a transparent handling fee and be assured that your tickets are legitimate. You’ll also be buying what’s known as VIP hospitality tickets. That means they come with a few perks:
the best available Category A seats
access to the event’s hospitality lounge for food and beverages
a pass to use the VIP mini vans in Rio’s Olympic driving lane—which means you won’t be stuck in traffic as you travel between events
We recommend reaching out to Martin via this Trip Request Form because then you’ll be identified as a Wendy Perrin traveler, which brings a few additional benefits. You’ll be set to have the best possible experience in Brazil.
Lots of news outlets have been reporting that Italy will soon start limiting the number of people allowed to visit Cinque Terre this summer. The crowded seaside villages have become so clogged with tourists over the past few years that this announcement—of a plan to require tickets and cap visitors at 1.5 million—sounded realistic.
But as so often happens, the reports got most of it wrong (as they did with the scare that Venice was banning all wheeled luggage). You will not need tickets to visit the Cinque Terre this summer. We checked in with our Trusted Travel Experts for Italy to get the real details.
Turns out that the ticket idea broached by the president of Parco delle Cinque Terre was just that—an idea. As his staff clarified for Andrea Grisdale, it’s true that the national park is concerned about the high numbers of tourists to their UNESCO World Heritage Site—since 2011, the number of visitors has shot up from about 400,000 to about 2.5 million in 2015.
But officials are only brainstorming and researching options at this point—they are not limiting the number of visitors in 2016. One proposed idea is an online ticketing system called the Cinque Terre card (which would give visitors unlimited train access and admission to the park’s trails); another proposal could be a simple increase in prices. Beyond that, other ideas have been floating around—basing ticket availability on weather and trail conditions; an app that would show live information about traffic and tourist congestion in each village—but nothing is concrete.
At this stage, it’s too early to tell what will definitely happen. And you can be sure that we will keep you updated with the facts from our well-connected experts
As Brian Dore and Maria Gabriella Landers clarified, “There is nothing to this story other than it highlights something we’ve been saying to our clients for a long time: The Cinque Terre are overrun with tourists and may not be the authentic, fishing villages and peaceful hiking experience they have in mind.”
Of course, the Cinque Terre are not so popular by accident—they are beautiful, and remain on many people’s bucket lists despite the crowds. If these five towns along Italy’s Ligurian coast are on your travel list, here are some tips for making the most of your visit:
See the towns by boat.
“The five Terre towns are really tiny, so any land-based visit or hiking will be crowded, and the public ferries and local trains that go from town to town are also crowded,” notes Maria. “It is lovely to get out on the water to see the coast from that perspective—the view from the water is really what people see in dramatic photos of the area anyway.” Maria and Brian can set up a private boat excursion for you on a speedboat or sailboat; you can read more about it here.
Plan far ahead.
Andrea recommends you reserve accommodation as much in advance as possible, as the availability in the hotels is quickly booked up.
Visit during shoulder seasons.
“Consider the months of April and October ,as there are fewer tourists and a beautiful time of the year for weather and scenery,” says Andrea. “May, June, July August and September are always busy months for this area.”
Put in the leg work and you’ll be rewarded.
In a great blog post on the Cinque Terre, Maria and Brian point out that “Corniglia, the center village, is one of the least visited, as its clifftop position requires climbing 400 stairs, but because of this also has some of the most stunning views and hikes on the coast.”
Eat local
With all that walking, you’ll need sustenance. Don’t miss the local specialties: Liguria is the birthplace of pesto Genovese and is also known for focaccia bread, seafood, and Sciacchetrà, a wine produced in the hills of Cinque Terre.
Explore beyond Cinque Terre
Pro tip from Maria: Explore the area beyond the five towns. “I often suggest that visitors to the area stay in Santa Margherita Ligure or Portofino, which are also popular, but larger and a bit more expansive so you don’t feel the constant crush of your fellow travelers. The Cinque Terre is only a few minutes away, and you can visit the five towns in one day. You can also hike in the hills above Portofino. Other small coastal towns that are not strictly part of the 5 Terre but are nearby include Comogli, Moneglia and Porto Venere.”
Winter storms mean all kinds of problems: delays, cancellations, long lines, and changed plans. But they don’t have to mean stress. Here are steps you can take—and tools you need in your arsenal—to prepare for anything the snow can throw at you this season. Safe travels!
Change your flight. The simplest way to avoid the hassle of a storm is to avoid the storm altogether. So if you don’t have to travel when a blizzard is on the way—don’t. When big storms are expected, airlines will often take preemptive action and allow you to change your flight without fees. Check your airline’s website or Twitter feed to find out more. If do you have to travel, consider rerouting your flight to avoid the storm altogether. Look for hubs with good weather; this FlightStats chart tells you which airports are seeing the fewest cancellations.
Use the right technology. Speaking of Twitter, watch your airline’s feed closely for info on flight changes or cancellations. Another option is to download the airline’s app, which will also keep you updated about last-minute things like gate changes or flight delays.
Other apps that come in handy during bad weather include FlightStats.com, which can alert to you delays or weather cancellations (sometimes more efficiently than the airline will), and LoungeBuddy, which will help you find pay-by-day airport lounges so you can relax a little while you wait for your flight. We’ve got a full list of problem-solving apps here, and more info on airport lounge day passes here.
Use the right humans. Even with all the right apps, you might still need to talk to a real person to solve your travel snafu. A great way to avoid long hold times is to call an airline’s customer-service office in a different country (here’s more on how to never wait on hold with airline customer service again). Your credit card concierge can usually be of help as well, but you can also call in the experts and let them handle it for you: Brett Snyder of Cranky Concierge specializes in emergency air travel assistance, and his team is well prepped for messy weekends like this one.
Prep the kids. If you have kids, and there’s a possibility you’ll be stuck in an airport (or on the tarmac) for a while, you might want to try some of these tricks for flying with toddlers shared by contributing editor Brook Wilkinson. One of her secrets is to bring a bunch of new, very cheap toys to keep her son occupied. “Scour the library book sales and Target $1 bins for inexpensive options,” she writes. “Some of my favorites: play dough, pipe cleaners, magnetic playsets, and reusable sticker pads. On one flight, a pack of small monster trucks entertained Zeke for a good 30 minutes. Just make sure that you liberate toys from their plastic clamshell packaging at home, while you still have access to scissors!”
Do what you have to do to avoid as much stress as possible. Business travel expert Joe Brancatelli once told me his three most sanity-saving travel tips, and this was one of them: “Even if it costs you a few bucks, do whatever you have to do to fix a travel problem on the spot so you can go back to enjoying your trip. Argue with the travel company about compensation later. But, within reason, fix the problem first, worry about compensation later.”
Part of the fun of travel is trying a ton of new foods. But if you eat the wrong thing…well, then the trip becomes no fun at all.
Luckily, it’s reasonably easy to avoid food poisoning in developing countries, as Wendy outlined in her recent TripAdvisor blog post.
Here are a few of the basics:
1. Keep your hands clean Wash with soap and water right before eating, and carry antiseptic wipes.
2. Stick to bottled or sterilized water Drink bottled water—and make sure the bottle is properly sealed. Avoid ice unless you can confirm it came from a bottle or was purified. And don’t brush your teeth with tap water (or shower water). Bring your own water purification tablets too.
3. Eat smart Avoid seafood, buffets of food that has been out for a long time, and fruits or vegetables that might have been washed in contaminated water or touched by unwashed hands. (Instead, stick to bananas and other fruits you peel yourself). Don’t be afraid to try street food, as long as you look for dishes that are boiled or steamed in front of you and served piping hot.
What are your best tips for staying healthy while traveling?
The best human travel planners are a bit like old friends: They just “get” you. A big part of their jobs—aside from building the local connections that lead to the best travel experiences—is to be able to quickly understand what travelers want and find creative ways to provide it. That’s why we think this list of trends is interesting. What follows are the observations of some of our Trusted Travel Experts—longtime vets of the travel-planning world who book hundreds, if not thousands, of trips each year. This is what they’re seeing travelers ask for most…as well as their predictions for the experiences travelers will be asking for in the coming year.
What other services or types of trips would you like to see travel planners provide in 2016? Tell us in the comments below.
A Blend of the High and the Low “When it comes to culinary experiences, travelers want to mix haute cuisine with street food. The same goes for culture—they’re mixing high-brow culture with real interaction with locals. The trend is echoed with glamping: Travelers want real remote nature and adventure combined with luxury.” —Zach Rabinor, Trusted Travel Expert for Mexico
Once-in-a-Lifetime Experiences “People don’t want to die with a lot of cash. They would rather spend it on helicopters over the Cliffs of Moher, or a once-in-a-lifetime experience with a master Scotch whiskey distiller at their favorite distillery, or paying what it takes to beat the crowds.” —Jonathan Epstein, Trusted Travel Expert for England, Ireland, and Scotland
Solo Travel “I’m seeing many more solo travelers! Thankfully, Ireland is perfect for this. You never have to feel alone.” —Jonathan Epstein, Trusted Travel Expert for England, Ireland, and Scotland
Travel Influenced by Pop Culture “We see people chasing scenes from movies and books. In the U.K. and Ireland alone, you can see sites related to Outlander, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, MacBeth, Sherlock Holmes, Doc Martin, Dr. Who, and James Bond.” —Jonathan Epstein, Trusted Travel Expert for England, Ireland, and Scotland
Travel Influenced by Food Photography “Also, we’re getting a lot of requests for photo tours, so we’re doing a new tour where travelers learn how to take photos of food. We all love taking photos of food when eating new things! Travelers also want to go home with new recipes so they can cook what they have eaten in the destination.” —Virginia Irurita, Trusted Travel Expert for Spain
Millennials and Mobile “Our demographics have shifted wildly towards millennials, who are booking our tours for the intellectually curious at a higher rate than any other demographic. They are also repeating more and staying longer. So, in other words, they’re a more engaged demographic than Gen X or Boomers. We’re also seeing a decided shift toward mobile bookings and last-minute bookings.”—Paul Bennett, Trusted Travel Expert for Cultural City Experiences
Increased Interest in Turkish Art “There is an increased interest in exploring the contemporary art scene in Istanbul. [My company] has arranged exclusive tours of art galleries with local art experts and the opportunity to meet gallery owners and interact with learning experiences and the history of the artists.” —Karen Fedorko Sefer, Trusted Travel Expert for Turkey
The Rise of Colombia as a Family Getaway “More and more families are coming to Colombia: Many Americans, particularly from the Eastern corridor, are opting for quick escapes to Cartagena, due to direct flights from NYC , Miami, and Fort Lauderdale. We see a trend of families visiting the coffee country, which is not really on many Colombia itineraries but offers a plethora of outdoor and cultural activities that have wowed our family travelers. The town and region of Barichara in the province of Santander has one of the most charming, well preserved colonial villages in all Colombia. Coupled with this region being an active adventure capital of Colombia, it will surely be more and more visited in 2016. [My company] rents ranches and country homes in this region for families.” —Eric Sheets, Trusted Travel Expert for Colombia
