OP-ED: Travelers Should Be Entitled to Airbnb Refunds During the COVID-19 Pandemic

My first solo trip — when I arrived in Nashville a few days ahead of a work trip in 2017 to revisit some old haunts from when I lived in Tennessee — was hardly the most inspiring. But it showed me that I could handle traveling by myself and that I actually kind of liked it.

To her more than one million TikTok followers, digital creator MJ Hedderman is known as "the Instagram girlfriend." It's a moniker she said she fell into in 2020 after realizing she didn't need a partner to take photos of her — she could learn to take them herself instead. 

If there’s one meteor shower to stay up for this year, it’s by far this weekend’s Perseids. The annual Perseid meteor shower will peak from around midnight on August 12 into the early morning of August 13. With a nearly new moon to keep the skies inky dark, timing for this year’s Perseids couldn’t be more perfect.

The devastating wildfires that have been ripping through Maui have been mostly contained as of Thursday morning, officials told the New York Times. However, periodic flare-ups are still occurring in some areas.

This summer's record-breaking heat has brought environmental consequences across the US, from coral bleaching in Florida to cacti toppling over in Arizona.

Adam Lubinsky is a poster boy for multimodal travel. When he commutes from Brooklyn to his Manhattan office, he switches effortlessly from a folding bike he has modified to make electric and then onto the subway.

It’s hard to know if Milan’s fashionistas are bemused more by my driving or by my vehicle as I stall, splutter and crunch the gears while double-parking the tuk-tuk on Via Monte Napoleone, the city’s swankiest street. Both it and I look comically out of place on a thoroughfare dripping with designer shops and high-end motors. I’ve just seen a Hermès shirt with a €10,500 price tag and spotted the Argentina World Cup winner and Inter Milan star Lautaro Martínez laden with Gucci shopping bags, and bouncing into a blacked-out Hummer with his girlfriend and minder.

Over the past two decades, I've spent a quarter of my time as a tourist.

A few months ago, New York Times Editor Damon Darlin wrote an op-ed suggesting that parents of rude or screaming children should give out small inflight gifts or “goodie bags” as a preemptive apology for their child’s behavior. Which begs the question, should parents have to apologize for traveling on an airplane with their child?

Travel over the Thanksgiving holiday period was robust, and predictions are for similarly strong demand for air travel during the period between Christmas and New Year’s. For most airlines, that’s good news. For American, however, it’s a potential nightmare.

I recently spent a week in Hawaii, splitting my time between Honolulu’s bustling Waikiki area and the lush shores of Kauai. My trip was completely unaffected by the Hawaii volcano eruption that’s been going on since early May, despite the scary pictures I’d seen of spewing ash and fiery lava. My flights were on time, the air was fresh and clean, and I was able to enjoy the pristine landscapes and local hospitality for which Hawaii is famous.

Do you like NFL football? Do you like to travel? Do you also enjoy receiving normally expensive things for free?