EF Partners With Thai Tourism on Responsible Travel Effort

Nov 27, 2024 • 8 min read

Great news for Chase cardholders: The Chase Travel℠ platform for premium cardholders, The Edit, now allows you to earn hotel points and elite benefits in addition to earning Chase Ultimate Rewards points. This opportunity to double-dip can help you maximize your rewards, but it only applies to certain Chase cards and properties (for now).

Authoritarian governments are not known for taking kindly to criticism. And in Egypt, official skins can be especially thin: deepening repression has muffled most dissent and sent tens of thousands of perceived political opponents to jail, including one for posting a doctored photo of the president with Mickey Mouse ears.

The upcoming Indian wedding season will be driving a surge in travel, according to online travel company Ixigo. “Flight bookings to major metro hubs and top leisure destinations like Delhi, Mumbai, Srinagar, Jaipur and Goa are seeing a strong 70-80% year-on-year increase,” said Ixigo’s Group CEO Aloke Bajpai.

Savvy travelers have in recent years discovered one of the most helpful hacks while flying: using an Apple AirTag to keep track of checked luggage. The popularity of the quarter-size devices soared during the summer of 2022, when lost luggage was one of the lowlights among many other travel disruptions.

Tourism Australia is betting big on Indian tourists and is ramping up its efforts to attract them. The tourism board of Australia recently visited India along with a delegation of 15 CEOs from the Australian tourism industry.

Goa is not getting enough foreign tourists: Official Goa Tourism figures show that foreign arrivals in 2023 weren’t even half of 2019 levels: Just 450,000 visitors versus 937,000.

In the cruise industry, there's often a "bigger is better" mentality.

If you must be gay—and, dear reader, you really must—then it’s only natural that you’ve found yourself here, consulting our list of the best destinations for LGBTQ+ travelers to visit. While it’s true that queerness may be temporarily masked for survival reasons and that travelers should be prepared to compromise on aspects of their presentation out of respect for local customs and mores, sometimes that’s just not going to work. Many countries around the world are safe and fabulous destinations for openly LGBTQ+ travelers. (Admittedly, we're speaking generally here; it’s important to note it only takes one incident perpetuated by one bad actor or group to soil an individual’s trip—and that can happen anywhere.) So what are the places where you don’t have to put your most authentic self away?

On October 17, the German National Tourist Board announced an AI travel influencer named “Emma” with an AI-generated Instagram Reel. The voice attributed to Emma — a blonde, perennially smiling avatar that looks like a model in a department store fall catalog — can be broadly described as vaguely European. The caption on the post explains that Emma will “be taking you on an exciting journey through the most beautiful corners of Destination Germany on my own Channel!”

Indian travelers to Singapore have exceeded the 1 million mark, Singapore Tourism Board said on Wednesday. There was a 12% increase in Indian travelers to the country between January and October 2024 year-on-year. With this, India has become the third-largest source market for Singapore.

Ellie Furuya, 32, is a Hong Kong-based influencer, the founder of Rii Swim, a swimwear brand, and a mother. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.