North Korea set to welcome Russian ski trip in February - its first tourists since 2020

Travelers headed to South Korea can now make use of a lounge that's not only new but a first-of-its-kind option.

Cuba is counting on winter-weary Russians to help boost the Caribbean island nation’s ailing tourism sector in 2024, according to the Cuban ambassador in Moscow, after a disappointing 2023 saw visitors numbers fall short of the government’s goals.

Spirit Airlines is expanding its presence in South Carolina, adding flights from Charleston to Boston and New York City this spring.

Boeing is slated to deliver a 737 Max to a Chinese airline for the first time since March 2019, according to Bloomberg.

Los Angeles Tourism is launching its most expensive and far-reaching advertising campaign on February 1 in Paris. 

This series of articles about credit cards, points and miles, and budgeting for travel is brought to you in partnership with The Points Guy.

Dinner begins at Gori, the tasting menu chef’s counter that opened this month above Anto, a high end Korean steakhouse in New York’s Midtown East, with the presentation of ingredients in a lavish Cartier chest. How to take this: a bit showy, too quintessential East Side? But once the ten courses start to appear, the luxe introduction makes sense. Chef Jeong Muk Kim, formerly of Myomi in Seoul, the youngest chef to earn a Michelin star in Korea, joined this nearly year old restaurant in November and uses strictly elite ingredients such as the caviar, uni and Wagyu in the chest. Even more important: the creations he produces from them for the ten seat counter have flavors so fully developed and enticing that they immediately set up anticipation for the next course.

Leading global travel service provider Trip.com Group is embracing new trends and opportunities in the post-pandemic travel landscape, with its CEO Jane Sun sharing insights at the prominent World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting held in Davos, Switzerland, this week. Ms Sun also expressed optimism about Asia’s continued growth and shared her perspective on its investment potential at the panel discussion titled “Asia – the world’s next growth anchor?”

The number of seniors on the slopes has reached epic proportions. In 2020-21 seniors accounted for 16.1% of skier visits, totaling 59 million, while a record 10.5 million seniors participated in the sport according to the National Ski Areas Association. Contrary to popular belief, not all seniors are snowbirds who fly south at the first sign of winter.

Will 2024 be a Goldilocks year for the global travel industry? We’ve gone from “too cold” during the pandemic to “too hot,” as demand for revenge travel outstripped capacity. Could 2024 be “just right?”​

Travelers appear to be slowly returning to some Middle East nations despite the continuation of the Israel-Hamas conflict that all but decimated the region’s tourism since it began on Oct. 7. Travel operators said that bookings to countries including Egypt, Jordan and Oman are growing, welcome news for an area that’s dependent on tourist dollars and one that had received a record number of visitors since the height of the pandemic.

An upcoming Russian tourist trip to North Korea is the first such inbound visit by vacationers there in four years. When people think of that country under the strict dictatorship of Kim Jong Un, they don’t think of tourism. So many will have questions about what kind of travel is possible.