7 Days; 6 Travel Stories

1. Museum Hopping

TripAdvisor’s list of the world's top 10 museums based on site reader comments: Musee du Louvre, Paris, France. Vatican Museums, Vatican City, Rome, Italy.Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles, California. Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Tate Modern, London, England. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Reuters India

2. Merger Frenzy

Mergers and acquisitions in the travel industry are the buzzwords today. Senior management of many airlines view this trend as a stop-gap to rising fuel costs and global economic slowdown. One concern as airlines merge: the dismantling of a hub airport the way American Airlines did in St. Louis after purchasing TWA. Say the experts: As the income of the airports diminishes, the airports themselves are forced to increase fees to those airlines that remain flying. The Bottom line--costs rise, flying becomes more cumbersome, lines become longer and the consumer is left to wonder where the great benefit was touted by the acquiring airline.

Travel industry mergers that work: At the end of the 19th Century, William Waldorf opened a 13-story hotel in the heart of New York and humbly named it the Waldorf Hotel. Four years later his cousin, Jacob Astor, erected a 17-story hotel on the adjacent site, naming it the Astoria Hotel. The two cousins agreed to a corridor connecting their properties and with the added benefits of having private bathrooms and electricity, the hotels flourished. It took only 38 years but finally in 1931, having vacated their original space for the Empire State Building, the merged hotels became the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. At the time, this gleaming skyscraper on Park Avenue was the tallest hotel in the world. Jerusalem Post

Analysts say airline mergers could hurt online travel agencies in a variety of ways, possibly lowering demand for their services. "If there are less options, there's less need to go there," said one analyst. Another speculated that "for the online travel agencies, any situation that could potentially lead to higher prices might lead to lower demand, and because they get paid per ticket and not based on the price of the fare, it would hurt them."

Where to turn: One analyst said that the international travel market is "particularly attractive" because only about 25 percent of it is currently booked online. The agencies are also trying to sell more packages, which combine things like airfare, hotel rooms and other travel services such as event tickets. CNN

3. In The Air

It’s one of the most overwhelming emotional situations possible…someone dies while in flight. The macabre phenomenon has received renewed attention with the recent death of a woman on a flight from Haiti to New York. Her family complained that the airline did not do enough to respond. When a passenger is stricken aboard a plane, flight crews and travelers with medical training often pull out emergency medical supplies and rush to save the patient’s life in full view of other passengers. Most airlines also subscribe to a company such as MedAire, which has doctors available on the ground to advise flight crews in a medical emergency. MedAire provides coverage for about one-third of the world’s commercial flights.

Should a passenger die in flight, the crew often throws a blanket over the corpse or puts it in a body bag--an item routinely kept on some planes. The dead passenger is sometimes placed on the floor in a galley area, or kept buckled in his or her seat, since the corpse cannot be allowed to block certain emergency exists. Pilots may consider making an emergency landing, but often they keep going. Airlines are not required to track or report the medical incidents they handle, but Med Aire counted 89 deaths aboard the flights it serviced in 06. MedAire says a passenger has a 1 in 7.6 million chance of dying on board a plane in a medical incident. AP

4. Down Under

A recent Tourism Australia report on the future of domestic tourism to 2020 found that the tourism within the country industry would stay weak unless it offset the ill effects of high petrol prices, accommodation shortages and competition from cheap overseas holidays. The report said consumers were opting instead to spend their money on a widening array of goods and services, spurred by a desire to buy the newest and the best and a need for immediate gratification.

And as for Generation Z - those born after 1991 – the report found that they were likely to forgo travel as educational costs and living expenses left them with little money for discretionary spending. The report concluded that Generation Z had not developed the "habit of travel", due to a decline in the traditional family holiday and predicted that Generation Z would travel less than previous generations and, when they did, would favor overseas travel, prompted by cheap overseas package deals, a desire to see the world and an apathy about Australian sights.
The report also found the environment would become a bigger factor, through nature-based tourism and people possibly preferring to travel locally as concerns about aircraft carbon emissions rose. TheAge.com.au

5. Online

A new travel site entered the fray this week: http://www.insidetrip.com/. For each air search, the site provides both fares and flight evaluations focused on 12 points of contention to help users know what they are getting into. Among the 12 points: the amount of legroom in a cabin, how often the flight is on time, the aircraft type, how crowded a specific flight typically is, if you can walk to your connection, and how long it usually takes to get through the security checkpoint nearest the gate. Overall trip scores can range from 0 to 100 with 100 being the best. NY Times

6. US Losing Competitiveness in World Tourism Survey

The U.S. is the seventh most competitive country in the world in the travel and tourism market, down two slots from last year, according to a report from Booz Allen Hamilton. The McLean, Va. company started the annual Global Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report last year to rank 130 countries based on a country's appeal in developing travel and tourism. Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Australia, Spain and Great Britain were the top 6. The US ranked first for business environment and infrastructure and second for natural resources because of its protected wildlife and number of World Heritage sites, and cultural and natural sites maintained by the international World Heritage Programme.

However, the U.S. ranked 100th for environmental sustainability because "perception exists that the country is not sufficiently protecting the environment." Two other areas where the U.S. performed poorly: safety and security, for its citizens being open toward foreign visitors. Meanwhile, China is projected to move into second place in the next few years. Washington Business Journal


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