The travel news from Europe and Hong Kong is bad. But things may be looking up for Canadian tourism in the Atlantic provinces. My Future of Travel report for July 27. It was only a few weeks ago that the UK put Spain on its good list, saying it was safe for its residents to take a holiday there. Now, with a surge in cases in Barcelona and other places, the UK has put Spain back on its naughty list, meaning UK residents would have to quarantine after coming home. The World Travel and Tourism Council called the move a Read more
Hong Kong
Hong Kong makes sense. Certainly Tokyo. But Athens? And how does my home city of Toronto end up fifth best for food in Canada? Booking.com today released a list of the top destinations its travellers enjoy for great food. There are some obvious inclusions and some surprising exclusions, if you ask me. (Which you technically didn’t). Here’s what booking.com customers came up with for a ranking of the food scene in Canada: 1. Vancouver 2. Montreal 3. Halifax 4. Winnipeg 5. Toronto I don’t want to get all parochial here, but there’s not a chance Toronto is only the fifth Read more
London’s prices are falling down. But you’re still much further ahead if try Prague or Bangkok. A new study of hotel prices by hotels.com shows that the Brexit vote has had an effect on hotel costs. The study found that Canadians last year paid an average of $254 a night for a hotel in London, England. That’s down 9% from the 2015 average price of $278. It’s a sizable drop, but $254 Cdn. per night is still a hefty price to pay for a night’s sleep. The hotels.com Hotel Price Index study found you’re much better off in Paris, where Read more
Have Canadians thrown off our love affair with the U.S. in favour of exotic Asia? A new report from hotels.com suggests that could be the case. The study of bookings made by Canadians on their site in 2016 found that Los Angeles dropped from the 8th most popular international destination in 2015 all the way down to 20th, while Washington D.C. dropped from number 19 in 2015 to 35th last year. Some U.S. cities still did extremely well. New York was number one and Las Vegas was number two overall for bookings by Canadians, while Orlando was fifth. (The other Read more
There’s nothing quite like arriving refreshed after a 14-hour flight to Asia. And I can’t think of a better way to manage that than with a business class ticket on Cathay Pacific. All of us who fly economy, and that’s by far the majority of what I fly, have trudged to our seats at the back of the plane and looked enviously at the folks ensconced in those dreamy pods in the front section. I was lucky enough to fly from Toronto to Hong Kong a couple weeks ago in the biz cabin on Cathay Pacific. And I’m happy to Read more
