Good News for Deal-Seekers This Fall: Travel Demand Has Softened

Hard Rock Hotels is making a fall or winter getaway easier than ever by offering up to 50 percent off the brand’s resorts around the world. 

Melissa Dewalt caught the travel bug a decade ago when she drove from her home state of Pennsylvania across the country to California to visit her then-boyfriend. She then road-tripped north to Seattle.

Ski season is just around the corner, and the Ikon Pass is making it even easier to ski across the country by adding a new California mountain to the mix.

Clarksville, a historic district of Austin, Texas, has lately emerged as a stylish dining and shopping enclave. Among the area’s most compelling new businesses is La Embajada, a design shop housed in a 1923 Craftsman bungalow. Combining the hospitality and interiors expertise of its founder, Raul Cabra — who has designed tableware for some of Mexico City’s most celebrated restaurants, including Rosetta and Pujol — La Embajada presents a refined, regionally diverse selection of Mexico’s artisanal offerings. A series of small rooms display vintage and contemporary furniture, from stately midcentury armchairs and 1970s glass sconces to a minimalist agave fiber rug by the Oaxaca-based textile artist Trine Ellitsgaard. The house is also an actual residence. Cabra often stays in the bedroom up the creaky stairs, and he’s recently made it available for short-term stays (bookings include a daily basket of baked goods from Austin’s Swedish Hill). Guests can purchase the room’s handmade décor, such as a pair of sleek bedside lamps in milky white onyx, a 1960s La Malinche dresser and a bedspread from a Michoacan manufacturer that once supplied Herman Miller. Downstairs, glassware, candles and gifts fill a section modeled after a typical general store in a small Mexican town. But La Embajada’s heart is its inviting kitchen, where visiting chefs cook elaborate meals and staff prepare ice cream and coffee. In another twist, every bespoke detail — including a hammered copper sink, caramel-colored tiles and waxed pine cabinets — can be custom-ordered for one’s own home.

Always wanted to see Antarctica? Holland America Line this week unveiled an unusual new option for getting there.

Low-cost Icelandic airline Play is celebrating the unofficial end of summer with a Labor Day sale tempting travelers with 25 percent off flights to Europe.

As the summer travel season comes to a close, travelers have a new way to save on fall getaways. JetBlue recently announced the «Game On» fare sale, which offers flights as low as $49. The promotion is a nod to the fall football season, however the fares can provide an affordable options for early fall vacations, or last-minute trips.  As an example, JetBlue shows a fare of $49 one-way from New York's JFK airport to Nashville, Tenn. for travel in both September and October.

Two esteemed properties have recently joined the ranks of AAA’s Five Diamond award winners, the highest honor in the AAA Diamond Program. Montage Healdsburg, located in the heart of northern California’s wine country, and Cocina de Autor in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, have snagged the top-tier designation thanks to their high-end gourmet cuisine, exceptional service and luxurious milieus. 

Hotel contracts with hospitality union UNITE HERE are ending this month, and if hotel workers don’t receive the better benefits and higher wages they’re asking for, an estimated 10,000+ workers could go on strike across the country in what could be the biggest hotel strike in American history. 

Disney Cruise Line is sharing more details about its newest ship, Disney Destiny, including its inaugural sailing date and some itinerary details.

Frontier Airlines unveiled 11 new routes across 15 airports that are scheduled to launch in October and November.

Hundreds of charter and personal planes touched down on the same tarmac this weekend — and it wasn't in the Hamptons, Lake Tahoe, or any other particularly bougie hot spot. It was a pop-up airport called 88NV in the middle of the Nevada desert.