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Arthur FrommerOn a Budget |
Recent Columns:
CHINA tourism is soaring, and there are great deals to be found.
TO the surprise of almost everyone in the travel industry, Turkey welcomed a near record number of 500,000 American tourists in 2006, even more than in the heady travel days before 9/11.
IT'S time to predict the course of travel in 2007: It might suggest some ways to save vacation dollars over the coming year.
BECAUSE many Americans make their charitable contributions during the holiday season, each year at this time I mention several worthwhile nonprofit organizations that perform valuable service in the travel industry. Each accepts tax-deductible contributions.
HOLLYWOOD has discovered the home exchange, which means millions of moviegoers are discovering the home exchange, an inexpensive way to vacation.
ONLY one cruise ship — Cunard Lines' giant QM2 — makes regular crossings of the Atlantic, and those voyages are a luxury product. There's no steerage class for the poorest of the poor, so there's no chance of dancing with Leonardo DiCaprio on a level near the engine room. Everything is elegant, and tuxedos are suggested for dinner on several evenings.
NO other hotel is marketed, to my mind, with such advertising fanfare and bombast as Atlantis on Paradise Island in Nassau, Bahamas.
WALT DISNEY WORLD is an important part of life in Orlando, Fla. It's also a fierce business competitor determined to keep visitors within its own theme parks every day of their Orlando stay, even if they come to town for a week.
RIDE sharing is enormously popular in Europe, where gasoline often tops $4 a gallon. On bulletin boards all over the Continent, people list auto trips they plan to take for vacation or other purposes and then ask whether someone else would like to share travel costs.
DURING the next four weeks, vacation prices will sink to their lowest levels of the year. From Thanksgiving through mid-December, airplanes, resorts and cruise ships will empty out, and smart travelers will take advantage of the bargains (and the calm) that descend, not only upon resorts and resort islands, but also in the major tourist cities of Europe and Asia.