Behind the scenes with Singapore Airlines' wine experts as they choose the Champagnes that will be on board soon

Dec 20, 2024 • 11 min read

Spend a few days in Siargao, the fig-shaped Filipino island in the country’s southeast, and locals will tell you, with a mix of anxiety and excitement, that the coconut tree-covered enclave is what Bali was in the 1970s. Or they might say, as the documentarian and trans-rights activist Queenmelo Esguerra told me last month, that laid-back hotels and cafes that’ve opened this decade (like Siago), “feel inspired by Tulum, no?”

Avios is quickly becoming one of the most widely used loyalty currencies. Long used by British Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus, Qatar Airways and Finnair have recently joined the party and adopted Avios.

The holiday season is a time for traditions, some of which are specific to individual cultures.

About 15 years ago, I moved to Nashville and was excited to learn that it was located just a short drive away from Tennessee's Smoky Mountains.

Don’t litter; don’t vandalize public property; don’t chew gum. Singapore, which Condé Nast Traveler readers named one of the best cities in the world in 2024, has laws so famously stringent that T-shirts gently poking fun at them make popular tourist souvenirs. (The gum thing is actually often misconstrued: it’s actually illegal to import and sell gum, but not to chew it.) That said, in this intricately multicultural East-meets-West metropolis of nearly six million people and 95 ethnic groups, it’s the rules that tether society. Which is why we Singaporeans are such sticklers for them; in fact, we’ve added many of our own unofficial decrees to the rule book—from the correct way to save a table at a hawker center, to how to behave on the local subway system. If you overhear one person grumbling, it’s more often than not because another has breached this community code of conduct.

Every December, hotels across the US undergo a festive transformation.

In 2022, you could use words like “total chaos,” and “an incomparable nightmare” to describe the state of American air travel, and it would barely be hyperbolic. Mass cancellations and delays were the norm — and then when travelers ended up stranded and there was no incentive for airlines to provide any sort of compensation. By that time, Secretary Pete Buttigieg had been heading up the Department of Transportation (DOT) for nearly two years, and was just starting to put some bigger plans in motion for passenger rights.  Then, in December 2022, everything changed. Southwest Airlines had historic levels of  cancellations over the winter holiday travel period; it was so catastrophic it was universally dubbed “the meltdown.” By that point, most American passengers had reached a point of hopeless exhaustion.

Every year, the TPG Awards honor excellence in credit cards, loyalty programs and travel. Please click here to read more about our winner selection process and methodology for the 2024 TPG Awards.

Emirates received a new jet type for the first time since 2008 with the arrival of its highly anticipated Airbus A350-900, but ill feelings about the plane's American rival were not absent from the milestone day.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brandon Chia, 31, a nurse in the South Island of New Zealand. Chia moved from Singapore to New Zealand in 2022. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

You don't have to take a transatlantic flight to feel like you're in Europe this holiday season.