Canadian searches for international flights are outweighing those for domestic trips, but flights within Canada remain very popular, a new study says. Kayak.com looked at flight searches for the week of April 10 and compared them three years ago, prior to the pandemic, and then to a month ago. For three year comparisons, they found Dubai led the way, with searches up 105% since April of 2019. Next was Halifax at 97%, followed by Istanbul at 90%. For month-over-month comparisons, searches for flights to Frankfurt were on top, with a gain of 17% from March to April of this year. Read more
Dubai
Brussels in Belgium has been revealed as the city offering the greatest amount of culinary choice, by a new Remitly study that looked at close to one million restaurants worldwide. Vancouver was the highest ranking Canadian city, finishing 19th overall, with an impressive 2,372 international restaurants versus its population of 697,266 (= 3.40 foreign restaurants per 1,000 people). “With eating out being something the whole world enjoys doing, Remitly wanted to discover which city offers the most diverse food options per person, when it comes to options outside of the city’s home cuisine,” officials said. “This was achieved using Tripadvisor Read more
A new study finds that Canada is one of the most googled vacation spots on earth. And a story from the New York Times focuses on how hotels are changing the way they do business as as result of COVID-19. My Future of Travel blog for Sunday, July 26. There’s nothing wrong with sharing a silver medal. A company called Kuoni recently analyzed Google searches for vacations and found that Canada finished in a tie for second as a potential holiday spot. The study found that the United Arab Emirates, a group of states that includes Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Read more
The latest study of world cities by Resonance Consultancy names London, New York City and Paris as the top three cities on the planet. Toronto was the only Canadian city in the top 25, placing 17th for the second year in a row. Resonance, which has been conducting this study for years, looked at everything from culture and education to shopping and neighborhoods and came up with their top 25 for the world. London was cited for its energy, projects and people. As the “capital of capitals” negotiates the uncharted terrain of a post-Brexit world, for now it still reigns Read more
**This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of BMO Insurance. All opinions are my own. It was the last full day of my visit to Dubai a few years ago. I was writing a travel story on Dubai for the Toronto Star, where I was the travel editor. I’d had breakfast at a fine, luxury hotel and was heading out to tour some of the old city, check out the markets and have a drink with a friend who was living in the UAE. I had no reason to expect anything would go wrong. But sometime in Read more
