If you’ve ever seen the tremendous video of the poor “Zone One” boarding pass guy waiting to get on a plane, you might understand where I’m coming from with this piece. For those who don’t know it or don’t have time right now to watch it via this link, the skit involves a fellow who eagerly bounds to the front of a gate lineup as he’s holding a precious “Zone One” boarding pass. Of course, he waits for First Class, and then Business, and then elite rewards members and kids and folks in wheelchairs and is still standing in line. Read more
Oahu
The annual Trip Advisor Best Beaches List is out again, and there’s plenty to like. For the world, Trip Advisor users named Baia de Sancho on the idyllic island of Fernando de Noronha in Brazil as the top beach, followed by Eagle Beach in Aruba and Cable Beach in Broome, Western Australia. I haven’t made it to Cable Beach, but I can tell you that beaches in Western Australia are some of the best – and least crowded – in the world. In world voting, Grace Bay in the Turks and Caicos was fifth, Varadero Beach in Cuba ninth and Read more
Kudos to Canada. And a nod to Hawai’i, as well. A study by Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection has anointed Canada as the safest country on the planet for 2024. Montreal came second in the world for safe cities, beaten only by Honolulu. Berkshire Hathaway nalyzed the responses of 1,702 travelers who were polled between August 24 and September 13, 2023, along with third-party data sources to evaluate concerns such as terrorism, weather emergencies, health measures, and the safety of underrepresented groups. The Berkshire Hathaway rankings also take into account data and information sourced from the U.S. State Department, The Economist, Read more
New research has revealed the most picturesque beaches in America, with California’s La Jolla Cove coming out on top. Florida and Hawaii also cleaned up.M The study by hotel company Westgate Resorts analyzed the number of Instagram hashtags for the most visited beaches across the country. These hashtag numbers were then compared with each beach’s length to see which beaches had the highest number of hashtags per meter. California’s La Jolla Cove takes the crown as the most Instagrammable beach in America, with a whopping 4,257 hashtags per meter. The beach has had 366,068 hashtagged Instagram posts made about it, and Read more
The planned re-opening of West Maui for October 8 appears to be partly in doubt. Hawai’i Governor Josh Green last month declared that the West Maui communities of Kā‘anapali, Nāpili, Honokōwai, and Kapalua will fully reopen on Sunday, October 8, two months after the August 8 wildfires that destroyed Lahaina. But that seems unlikely to happen after Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said this week that the reopening will happen in phases. Bissen said the most northerly part of the West Maui tourism area would open October 8 and would include everything from Kahana Villa to the The Ritz-Carlton Maui, Read more
