What a great study. I mentioned on Twitter the other day how I found a study that compared the cost of club sandwiches and a mini-bottle of vodka at various hotels around the world. That was fun. But now comes a far more exhaustive study that looks around the world at everything from the cost of a Big Mac to the price of a man’s haircut, a standard beer, a cheap date and the cost of a five-star hotel room. It’s useful information if you can believe all of it. But I’ll get to that in a minute. In the Read more
London
Expedia’s climb in Canada has been remarkable. Fifteen years ago, Expedia.ca was just coming into existence. Most Canadians looking for hotels at the time used something called a land-line telephone at home to book hotels or even went without reservations and cruised the highways of Canada and the U.S., or the streets of Europe, looking for flashing vacancy signs in hotel windows. Now, Expedia.ca is the largest on-line travel service provider in the country and does $12 billion gross in business in Canada per year; a target they reached back in 2012. From zero hotel properties and zero airlines in 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
It’s Jimmy time. Yes, while many of you are gearing up for the deep freeze at the Winter Classic with the Maple Leafs or Red Wings or toasting the new year at a posh hotel in New York or Jamaica, I’m home in Toronto counting my blessings and staying close to my overtaxed radiators so I can stay warm while I type up my list of Jimmy Award winners for the year that’s about to come to a close. I was immensely lucky in this past year and was able to visit some astonishing places and do some amazing things. Read more
LONDON – I don’t know this city as well as I’d like, but I found a great new spot in the eastern-central part of town. The Montcalm at Brewery City is a fun, polished and unique property near the Barbican and Moorgate tube stops. It’s in what functioned as the Whitbread Brewery for more than 200 years, and it’s got a lot of charm. You walk into the facility through a giant archway that once formed the entrance to the brewery, past iron gates with a polished gold sign. The lobby isn’t large but there are beautiful, fresh flowers (they’ve Read more
