By Michael Baginski/ The Florida Keys isn’t your typical Florida (or U.S.) destination. Sometimes quirky, always laid back, the Keys stretches for 200 km south from Miami over the Atlantic Ocean, Florida Bay, and Gulf of Mexico, boasting great year-round weather and a feeling of being in the Caribbean without leaving the North American continent.
By Michael Baginski/ From comprehensive travel trade training to a myriad of individual incentives by partners in destination, Canadian travel advisors will find plenty of tools and opportunities to help increase their sales to the Florida Keys, and discover the destination for themselves.
By Michael Baginski/ Like Rush and AC/DC (amongst a few other others), you’ve got to love a band like Blackberry Smoke that has the hops to have its own beer (Blackberry Smoke American Lager, sold on its website); better still, you’ve got to love a band that recalls vintage Lynyrd Skynyrd and Black Crowes, yet with enough of its own style to be fresh and original within a swampy southern rock context.
By Michael Baginski/ As Canadians “pivot” towards alternative destinations to the U.S. amidst ongoing Trump tribulations across the border, Britain is poised to pick up some of the pieces, with all signs pointing to a banner year for the destination this year and into 2026, according to VisitBritain.
By Michael Baginski/ A team of close to two dozen tourism professionals from Louisiana, led by Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser, are visiting Canada this week with a simple message: “Come when you’re ready, we’re here with open arms!”
By Michael Baginski/ Rick Davies, the lead singer and co-founder of British band Supertramp, has died after a long battle with cancer. Davies, who co-wrote the band’s music with Roger Hodgson, was the voice and pianist behind some of Supertramp’s most iconic songs, including “Bloody Well Right,” “Crime of the Century,” and “Goodbye Stranger.”
By Michael Baginski/ Helping take punk mainstream, Billy Idol burst on the scene in the early ‘80s with a pair of hits from his 1882 debut album: “Dancing With Myself,” and the now iconic “White Wedding.”
By Michael Baginski/ I first met Canadian travel industry legend Pat Dineen on a press trip to Greece in the early 1990s. We got to know each other sipping ouzo in a harbour café in a postcard-perfect Greek fishing village, moon overhead, the strains of bouzouki in the air, and Pat was talking about… sumo.
By Michael Baginski/ Mick Jagger has certainly had his fair share of amazing duet partners, including the likes of Tina Turner, David Bowie and Lady Gaga. Not to be outdone, the second most famous Rolling Stone paired up with the incomparable jazz-pop singer Norah Jones to register his own claim on the well-known ballad “Love Hurts.”
By Michael Baginski/ It was only natural that Goway would convene the inaugural gathering of its recently constituted Travel Advisory Board on one of the travel company’s most important days of the year: its annual exhibition cricket match gala with Air New Zealand at the Toronto Cricket Club.
By Michael Baginski/ We recently introduced Imelda May (if an intro is in fact needed) in a guest starring role with the legendary late guitarist Jeff Beck. It’s only fair then to give the powerhouse Irish vocalist her own turn in the spotlight, in this case belting out a raucous version of the Soft Cell favourite “Tainted Love.”
Nothing says summer like wildfires, blistering heat waves, torrential rains… Er, I mean, nothing says summer in Canada like patio lanterns, a vibe Kim Mitchell captured in his 1986 classic, um, “Patio Lanterns.”
By Michael Baginski/ In advance of the 100th birthday of B.B. King on Sept. 16, Memphis Tourism in partnership with B.B. King’s Blues Club on Beale Street and the Blues Foundation Blue Hall of Fame, is celebrating “100 Days of Blues” in tribute to the life and legacy of the legendary bluesman with special events, entertainment, themed tours, and exhibits.
By Michael Baginski/ Last week was a tough one for music with the deaths of Ozzy Osbourne and Chuck Mangione (and pop culture in general if you count Hulk Hogan*). It’s not surprising then that another loss – that of George Kooymans – sadly slipped under the radar. The Dutch rock star may not have been a well-known outside the Netherlands, but his band, Golden Earring, and their classic song “Radar Love,” certainly are.
Ozzy Osbourne, the gloomy, demon-invoking lead singer of the pioneering band Black Sabbath who became the throaty, growling voice – and drug-and-alcohol ravaged id – of heavy metal, died Tuesday, just weeks after his farewell show. He was 76. In 2020, he revealed he had Parkinson’s disease after suffering a fall.
By Michael Baginski/ I sometimes feel like I was a little AWOL in the ‘90s – culturally that is. In my defence there was marriage, new home, kids (towards the end of the decade), dog, first job in travel (and lots of travelling) … You get the idea. And it’s how I undoubtedly utterly missed Primal Scream – my absolute favourite musical discovery of this year, 2025.
By Michael Baginski/ Grenada continues to be a popular destination for Canadians, but with many currently looking for new destinations beyond the U.S., the island’s new CEO of tourism thinks the time is ripe to make an even stronger case for the Spice Island.
By Michael Baginski/ ACTA’s 35th annual golf tournament last week marked a milestone on more than just the course as the association’s popular president Wendy Paradis officially celebrated her last day with the organization before retirement and passed the torch to Suzanne Acton-Gervais, who made her first official outing after being announced for the job.
By Michael Baginski/ The annual U.S Travel Association IPW trade show is typically a treasure trove of music, playing to America’s outsized influence on popular culture. This year in Chicago, the event was highlighted by a special Travel South USA partners conference featuring Darius Rucker, aka Hootie of Hootie & the Blowfish.
By Michael Baginski/ Bob Harris says there’s so much more to Myrtle beach than golf. After all, Canadians who told him so. The executive VP of group sales for Visit Myrtle Beach said his own misconception that Canadians mainly admire the South Carolina destination for its world class golf (mini and masters) was quickly corrected by in-the-know visitors from north of the border.
By Michael Baginski/ Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is now law, which is bad news for Brand USA. At nearly 900 pages, the budget reconciliation legislation – signed by the president with the backdrop of fireworks on July 4 – is a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations. But buried in the document is the slashing of funding for the marketing organization responsible for promoting U.S. tourism abroad by 80% to a mere $20 million.
Each year on since 2008, Ringo Starr has invited people everywhere to pause at 12 noon local time on July 8 – his birthday – to say, think, or post “Peace and Love” as a collective moment of global unity. The heartfelt tradition is now recognized worldwide as a simple yet powerful gesture of kindness and hope.
By Michael Baginski/ From Hendrix to Heart and Brandi Carlile to the Foo Fighters, Seattle has consistently rated as one of North America’s premiere music cities. Perhaps most notably, the Pacific northwest city spawned “grunge,” the gritty sound that captured the zeitgeist of the late 1980s and early ‘90s.
By Michael Baginski/- Not unlike its ubiquitous flying fish, Bahamas tourism is calmly skimming along above the surface of the world’s choppy waters and having a definitive moment in the sun, both generally and with its integral Canadian market.
By Michael Baginski/ I’m usually the one asking the questions. But this year at IPW, the U.S. Travel Association interviewed me – on camera – about my views on Canadian travel south of the border during these troubled times. And as a Canadian, I told them we were pissed.
By Michael Baginski/ IPW wasn’t a doozy – at least in the way I predicted in this space a week ago. To be clear, the annual U.S. Travel Association tradeshow was absolutely first rate thanks to the organizers, and particularly host city Chicago; however, any anticipated fireworks inside the show were quickly doused by a thorough glossing over by U.S. Travel and Brand USA of the affairs going on outside the convention space.
By Michael Baginski/ “Tumbling Dice” is often cited as one of the Rolling Stones top songs, so it’s of little surprise that it has been covered by many artists over the years and, surprisingly perhaps, none so capably as Linda Ronstadt. That’s no insult to clearly one of the greatest vocalists of all time, but one tends to recall her softer offerings like “Blue Bayou.”
by Michael Baginski/-Chicago is the place to be for the travel trade this week as U.S. Travel hosts its signature IPW trade show, where U.S. suppliers and destinations – and the host city, of course – pull out all the stops to put on a show for the world and position the U.S. as a pre-eminent place to visit. At the same time, the event never fails to capture the zeitgeist of the host country – both in travel and in general – and, as such, this year ought to be a doozy.
The endless summer has come to an end. Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ visionary and fragile leader whose genius for melody, arrangements and wide-eyed self-expression inspired “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls” and other summertime anthems and made him one of the world’s most influential recording artists, has died at 82.
By Michael Baginski/ With thousands of travel trade professionals from around the world – typically including well over a hundred Canadians – set to descend on Chicago this weekend for the U.S. travel industry’s signature IPW trade show (June 14-18), the U.S. Travel Association has issued a notable and sign-of-the-times guide to entering the country for delegates.