Welcome Rewards, the Hotels.com loyalty program, has just reached 10 million members and has redeemed more than one million free nights since its launch in 2008. In the program, customers can earn a free night at more than 100,000 hotels across the world for every 10 nights stayed, with no blackout dates. They issued a list today of where Canadians are using their points. And it’s mostly to stay close to home. Here’s the list of the top 10 redeemed destinations for Canadians in 2013: 1. Toronto, 2. Montreal, 3. Niagara Falls, 4. Edmonton, 5. Calgary, 6. New York City, Read more
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It’s that time again. The Sochi Olympics have already begun, and the Opening Ceremony is Friday at 11 a.m. Eastern time. This is the first winter Olympics I’ve missed being at since Nagano. I was the Star’s Olympics assignment editor and on-site web person for all the Games from Sydney in 2000 up to Vancouver in 2010. Vancouver was a magical way to finish my Olympics career. I spent pretty much 15 to 16 hours a day at the Main Press Centre, organizing assignments and covering the odd press conference and writing sometimes eight or 10 stories a day for Read more
I’ve had the good luck to visit 45 or 46 (I think) of the states in the U.S. I haven’t been to North Dakota or Oklahoma or Kansas or Arkansas, so I can’t say this is complete. And there are a lot of incredible properties I haven’t seen in the states I HAVE been to. But I’ve seen a few pretty cool ones, so here’s a list of some MY favourite spots for romance in the U.S. of A., just in time for Valentine’s Day. Travaasa Hana: One of my favourite hotels in the world (see sunrise photo above), with Read more
Pretty cool report the other day from hotels.com showed that Toronto is now the third most booked international city for U.S. travellers. The report, which analyzed bookings on hotels.com, found that U.S. travel types booked the most rooms in London, followed by Paris. Toronto was number three, moving ahead of Rome. Which is pretty cool. After Rome, in position five, was Vancouver, followed by Tokyo, Hong Kong, Montreal, Barcelona and Niagara Falls. It’s a not a definitive study in that it only takes into account bookings on one website. But it’s encouraging for Toronto and Canadian tourism types, I’d think… Read more
Earlier this week I was talking about the latest Canadian/American Automobile Association ratings and noted that Canada now has 11 combined hotels and restaurants with five-diamond ratings, the top award they give out. Now comes another series of ratings, this time from the travel folks at Forbes. They’ve got a pretty different list. Radically different, actually. Most notable, I think, is that both Forbes and the Automobile Association folks put the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto on their five-diamond (five-star for Forbes) list. That means the Four Seasons flagship property (in Yorkville) is the only property in Canada to have Read more
