Holidays
China extends visa-free policy to 9 more countries — including South Korea
From Friday, citizens of nine more countries can enter China without needing a visa to visit. Holders of ordinary passports from eight countries in Europe — Slovakia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Andorra, Monaco and Liechtenstein — as well as South Korea can visit for business or leisure purposes for up to 15 days without needing […]
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Is this the world’s ‘coolest hotel room’ for baseball fans? Go inside to see the view
The 2024 World Series may be over, but that won’t stop baseball fans from searching for their next ballpark fix. But forget touring a stadium — this one lets you sleep inside it. Es Con Field Hokkaido is a stadium on the Japanese island of Hokkaido with a grass field, retractable roof and space for 35,000 spectators. But […]
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Interest in ‘Travel Tuesday’ soars, with more consumers saying they prefer travel to shopping
First there was Black Friday — then Cyber Monday. Now deal-thirsty consumers have a reason to shop online one day longer. “Travel Tuesday” — the first Tuesday after the American Thanksgiving holiday — targets those looking for discounts on trips, rather than flat-screen TVs. Search interest for “Travel Tuesday” rose more than 500% from […]
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Halloween to holidays: How Disney turns over its parks between its two most important seasons
A staple of Disney’s theme park’s celebrations, the giant Mickey pumpkin statue towers over guests on Main Street. Disney It’s time for Disney parks to swap pumpkins for poinsettias. In the thick of its busiest season, Disney’s domestic theme parks have already begun to transition from Halloween decorations to Christmas colors. The transformation starts to […]
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Major airlines are cutting services to China or quitting entirely amid low travel demand, high costs
British Airlines, Qantas and Finnair are some of the airlines that are reducing services to China. Nicola Economou | Nurphoto | Getty Images Major global airlines are reducing services and, in some instances, withdrawing from China altogether as longer routes to Asia following the closure of Russian airspace have raised operational costs, while demand has […]
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He’s British, she’s Australian. Here’s their trick to traveling 10,000 miles — with kids in tow
I’m proud to call the tiny sugarcane farming community of Ingham, Australia, my hometown. It boasts blue skies, sandy beaches and Australia’s longest single-drop waterfall. But its location — at the northern end of the state of Queensland — is a problem for me. Lured by the desire to explore Europe, I left for London […]
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‘They want something different’: Two new reports predict a big shift in travel behavior in 2025
The biggest travel trend of 2022 was to go big, spend big — with people eagerly booking bucket list-style trips to places like Bali, Rome, London and Paris. But two new reports show travelers are now in a very different headspace. Trend reports from Expedia and Booking.com show vacationers are forgoing splashy trips to global […]
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Overtourism: It’s not the tourists — it’s local ‘lack of management,’ says sustainability expert
Crowded beaches. Expensive rent. Tourist sites with wall-to-wall people. When it comes to overtourism, don’t blame the travelers, said Randy Durband, CEO of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council. Rather, it’s “lack of management,” he told “Squawk Box Asia” Monday. “I’ve been in travel and tourism for 40 years, working on committees and trade associations […]
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Protesters in Spain told tourists to ‘go home.’ Instead more arrived.
On July 6, thousands of anti-tourism protesters marched through the streets of Barcelona, shouting: “Tourists go home!” A little more than a month later, Spain’s tourism board sent a mass email with a different message: “Spain: the summer you’ll want to repeat every year … We can’t wait to see you!” Tourists caught in the […]
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‘She doesn’t stop talking’: How extroverts unknowingly irritate fellow travelers
My husband — a brooding New Yorker, polite and tolerant of much — broke on the seventh day of our family vacation. “She doesn’t stop talking,” he said. The “she“ is my mother — a bubbly Midwesterner — who can hold court in a room of strangers with the deftness of a small-town politician at […]
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