Come for the desert. Stay for the museums, fabulous food, great hiking, luxurious hotels, sensational sports, wellness retreats, local wines and more. Arizona Tourism officials made a strategic stop in Toronto last night (March 20) to tout the benefits of Canadian visits to the Grand Canyon State. Arizona had nearly one million Canadian visitors in 2019. The figures for last year aren’t in but they’re not expecting to reach that level for anther year or so. In a one-on-one chat, Joanna Tejeda, Senior Travel Industry Marketing Manager, Arizona Office of Tourism, told me there are a number of great new Read more
Tucson
Time Magazine (remember them?) is out with a list of its top 50 destinations for 2023. Some of my fave places made the list, including Vancouver, Vienna, surprising Tampa and the Caribbean island of Dominica, where I spent five days in January. Also making the list on the Canadian side of the ledger was Churchill, Manitoba, which I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting. For Australia, placements went to Kangaroo Island in South Australia and Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. There are six U.S. places on the list but none from the United Kingdom or Ireland, which is a little Read more
Flair Airlines has announced flights to Tucson, Arizona from five Canadian cities, with introductory fares starting at $99. Service to Tucson begins in November and December from five Canadian airports; Edmonton, Fort McMurray and Lethbridge in Alberta, plus Prince George B.C. and Windsor, Ontario. “Flair Airlines, Canada’s everyday low fare airline, is excited to announce a long-term partnership with Tucson, Arizona to connect underserved Canadian communities with affordable, non-stop, winter flights to sunshine and warmth,” officials said. All flights to Tucson are non-stop and offer a quick and easy way to explore Arizona. There is no shortage of national parks, Read more
I discovered Tucson and a cool new area of Florida. I had the dreamiest boat ride of my life in Kauai. I even met the son of one of the fabled Marx Brothers at a golf course surrounded by a trailer park in suburban Palm Springs. It was quite the year for travel to the U.S. for this cowboy, with trips to Florida, Hawaii, California, Vegas, Arizona, New York and more. Here are some highlights for my 2016 U.S.A. Jimmy Awards. BEST CITY DISCOVERY: I had never spent any time in downtown Tucson until November. I fell in love with Read more
I got news of a remarkable study the other day from Resonance Consultancy, which did a report on 121 U.S. cities and ranked them according to their “experiential quality.” It strikes me as a bit of an inexact science, but the idea behind the study is a very good one that involved analyzing consumer comments on various websites to determine not just actual numbers of who goes where but the level of engagement and happiness people feel when they go to a destination. In a press release they sent, Resonance officials said industry folks know about visitor county,, spending and Read more
