POPULAR TRAVEL ARTICLES

Your Home Away From Home Your home away from home used to be an advertising slogan for a major hotel chain in the eighties. A hotel should and can just be that, in particular if you travel on a regular basis or spend an extensive period of time in a hotel....more Your Housekeeper Room Attendants, or Maids as they were called in a previous life, are probably the most under appreciated employees in a hotel. They work for eight hours, pretty much by themselves, completing repetitive tasks, and rely very much on being self-motivated. Why tell you, the guest this?...more Pricing Integrity You may recall from a previous article, hotels sell a perishable product. The rooms that aren’t sold tonight can’t be put on sale tomorrow at a discount. This obviously creates a scenario whereby the hotelier will try to get the best, which in his case means the highest, rate possible for any room sold....more

POPULAR TRAVEL DESTINATIONS

Las Vegas Shimmering from the desert haze of Nevada like a latter-day El Dorado, Las Vegas is the most dynamic, spectacular city on earth. At the start of the twentieth century, it didn't even exist; at the start of the twenty-first, it's home to well over one million people, with enough newcomers arriving to need a new school every month. Las Vegas is not like other cities. No city in history has so explicitly valued the needs of visitors above those of its own population. All its growth has been fueled by tourism, but the tourists haven't spoiled the "real" city; there is no real city. Las Vegas doesn't have fascinating little-known neighborhoods, and it's not a place where visitors can go off the beaten track to have more authentic experiences. Instead, the whole thing is completely self-referential; the reason Las Vegas boasts the vast majority of the world's largest hotels is that around thirty-seven million tourists each year come to see the hotels themselves. ...more London London is the place to start. Nowhere in the country can match the scope and innovation of the metropolis, a colossal, frenetic city, perhaps not as immediately attractive as its European counterparts, but with so much variety that the only obstacle to a great time is the shockingly high cost of everything. It's here that you'll find Britain's best spread of nightlife, cultural events, museums, galleries, pubs and restaurants. The other large cities, such as Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds or Liverpool each have their strengths: Birmingham has a resurgent arts scene, for example, while people travel for miles to sample Newcastle's nightlife. These days Manchester can match the capital for glamour in cafés and clubs, and also boasts the inimitable draw of the world's best-known football team. ...more New York The most beguiling city in the world, New York is an adrenaline-charged, history-laden place that holds immense romantic appeal for visitors. Wandering the streets here, you'll cut between buildings that are icons to the modern age - and whether gazing at the flickering lights of the midtown skyscrapers as you speed across the Queensboro bridge, experiencing the 4am half-life downtown, or just wasting the morning on the Staten Island ferry, you really would have to be made of stone not to be moved by it all. There's no place quite like it. ...more