Most NEXUS members in Canada will say the fast-track trusted traveller program is the best $50 they ever spent. (Many others lament they just haven’t gotten around to it yet). But after 20 years of border bliss without a price hike, the cost of the card is set to more than double effective Oct. 1.
Dubai welcomed more tourists than ever before in 2023, attracting 17.15 million international overnight visitors. And they weren’t all rich and famous – a perception that Visit Dubai is eager to dispel, urging the trade to consider that “If you think you know Dubai, think again!”
Accompanied by key suppliers from New Zealand, the South Pacific country’s national carrier called in Toronto and Calgary this week as part of a North American mission designed to “harness everything New Zealand… and bring a touch of New Zealand” to the trade.
It’s Australia month at Goway and any mention of DownUnder always gets me thinking about my favourite singer, the amazing Aussie Paul Kelly – a multi-talented singer-songwriter-poet I have previously introduced in this space, comparing his band and style to Blue Rodeo.
These are a few of my favourite things: Jimmy Buffet, New Orleans, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. And now the three of them have amazingly come together with the unexpected new video of a song recorded in 2023 just before the late singer’s untimely death.
It sounded like an Oscar speech, so many people thanked by Flemming Friisdahl. And in a way, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the company he founded, The Travel Agent Next Door, was an Oscar of sorts from the Canadian travel industry. But the point, Friishdahl was determined to make, was he couldn’t have done it alone.
As Jamaica prepares to host global delegates at the Caribbean’s pre-eminent travel trade event, Caribbean Travel Marketplace, in May, the country’s tourism minister has declared a new benchmark for tourism metrics: 2023. “Normally we talk about 2019 (before the pandemic), as being the benchmark,” Edmund Barlett said during a zoom event ahead of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association’s 42 annual event. “Now we have changed that. 2023 is the new benchmark for Jamaica’s tourism.”
Since the age of four, when my mother first played the irrepressible song “Off to Dublin in the Green” by an obscure group called The Abbey Tavern Singers, I’ve been hooked on traditional Irish folk music.
In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day on Sunday, it naturally behooves us to offer an Irish song this week, and I’m a sucker for the classics, like “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” “Whiskey in the Jar,” and “The Orange and the Green” – which is why we’ve done those in years past.
For those whose bucket list is beckoning, there may be no better time to travel to Egypt – a destination that our recent Goway FAM group found utterly unaffected by the ongoing situation in Gaza, but which is nevertheless experiencing a dip in tourism that has created an unintended silver lining of fewer fellow visitors for those who do go.
“We are a country of cruisers,” says Una O’Leary. As evidence, the Canadian GM for Virtuoso points to a “staggering” rise in future cruise bookings across the network – and figures showing that cruising comprised nearly half (48%) of all 2023 sales in the region.
Spring is in the air in Arizona – and that means spring training baseball, desert blooms, and plenty of Canadians. And while the former are annual rights of Spring, the latter is especially welcome news as the southern US state expects to at last surpass pre-pandemic numbers in 2024.
Gwen Stefani made news this week. Travel news. The glimmering pop star performed Godmother duties for Royal Caribbean International as the cruise line launched its new Jubilee flagship in Miami on the weekend.
Located on the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula, Los Cabos might be the “most isolated” region of Mexico – “you have to come by air,” notes the managing director of the region’s tourist board, Rodrigo Esponda – but Canadians clearly have no trouble finding the vacation hotspot.
Brent Carnegie admits he wouldn’t likely have ever listed Albania on his travel bucket list. But the Canadian travel industry veteran recently found himself in what has traditionally been considered a rather mysterious Balkan enclave for a family visit – and he loved it.
There was certainly no shortage of top-of-mind topics at Atout France’s annual Canadian roadshow this week – a four-city tour that winds up in Vancouver Thursday after gala event in Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary. After all, the Summer Olympic Games awaits the starters gun July 26 in Paris, D-Day will be thoughtfully remembered in Normandy on its milestone 80th anniversary on June 6, and the long-awaited re-opening of Paris’s landmark Notre Dame Cathedral is scheduled for Dec. 8 (it was famously devastated by fire 2019).
The cruise ships dot the Nile like planes coming into an airport, though the procession belies the fact that they are operating at half capacity or less as Egyptian tourism continues to be rocked by the country’s perceived proximity to the war in Palestine – despite the fact that the distance from Gaza to Giza is close to 500 km., and through the Sinai desert no less.
Beyond keeping up with Karly (our host and a speed-walker of the first order), Las Vegas is meant to be experienced at double speed. The current concept of “slow tourism” does not apply here.
Late last month Mary Weiss, lead singer of the pioneering 1960s girl group The Shangri-Las passed away. The band was best known for its classic “Leader of the Pack,” but also the hit “(Remember) Walking in the Sand.”
Travel South USA arrived in Canada this week to court the travel trade at gala events in Toronto and Montreal, enticing guests with “bacon, bourbon and blues” – the latter courtesy of special guest, American Idol winner (and Alabaman) Taylor Hicks, whose rootsy refrains provided the soundtrack of the evenings.
A buddy messaged me the other day and said, “Have to say it’s the first time I’ve ever landed in Vancouver to see everything covered in snow.” It was so cold in T.O. my wife wouldn’t let me walk the dog (her concern was for the dog!). And don’t get us started on the rain and fog. Needless to say, winter is wearisome in this country, and there’s so much more to come.
“Hidden in plain sight behind a secret door,” and situated in one of London’s most historic and cherished buildings, the Síbín whisky bar has launched a global “Whisky Passport” designed to take patrons on a flavour journey beyond the British capital with some of the world’s best vintages.
In the tradition of great charitable relief songs like “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” “We are the World,” and “Tears Are Not Enough,” The Doobie Brothers have recorded a song – “Lahaina” – to help raise funds for recovery in Maui from last year’s devastating wildfires. The band has deep connections to the Hawaiian island, as has Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood (who lost his restaurant on Maui to the fires).
On a day when most of Canada, coast to coast, was gripped in polar temperatures and snow, Grenada tourism officials brought their sunny ways to a Toronto airport hotel, leaving a couple of dozen travel advisors more actively dreaming of an escape to the Caribbean Spice Island than usual, both personally and for clients.
Three years into the unlikely ownership of Wrexham AFC soccer/football club by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, the appeal of their accompanying (and explanatory) documentary series “Welcome to Wrexham” continues to skyrocket. The series, and overall exposure, generated by the celebrity owners and the fairytale story that has ensued, has gifted the city with an unexpected moment in the global spotlight and, subsequently, a not-surprising surge of visitors to sleepy North Wales.
Last week I proffered my favourite song from 2023; now it’s time to tout last year’s best (in my humble estimation) album: The Rolling Stones’ “Hackney Diamonds.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not typically blinded by any and every offering from rock bands whose best days are years (decades!) in the past, but dropped-jaw kudos to Mick, Keith et al, whose latest album is, I daresay, right up there with some of their best.
There’s a frequently used word in Papiamentu – “dushi”– which, while hard to precisely translate from the local lingo on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, essentially means positive vibes, beautiful, and the good things in life, all mashed up into one.
‘Tis the season for best-of lists, and whereas my days of accounting such things are mostly past, 2023 produced for me a definite – and most unexpected – song. One I still can’t get out of my head. And don’t want to.
Goway and APT & Travelmarvel, both like-minded Down Under specialists, leveraged a long-standing partnership earlier this year that saw the former become the official North American partner for the latter – and it’s a plan that has proved positively bonzer (“first rate” in Aussie lingo), according to company officials.
Brazil’s Embratur has joined the Canadian association of tour operators (CATO), an unusual arrangement for a tourist board, but one that reflects the South American country’s keen interest in the Canadian tourism market.