Sweden Reminds Tourists its Not Switzerland in New Campaign

Booking Holdings, whose $1.8 billion deal to acquire Sweden’s eTraveli Group was blocked by European Commission earlier this year, paid out $90 million in termination fee this October, according to a nugget in its latest quarterly statement.

Hidden in Tripadvisor’s latest earnings from earlier this week was some updates on its AI-based trip planning feature that it launched in July, along with some concrete numbers on performance of AI-assisted travel planning.

To witness the Northern Lights in all their glory, head to northern Sweden between early September and late March. The Aurora Borealis, a breathtaking natural phenomenon that looks like a wavy meteor shower, graces the skies. The show begins around Kiruna in early September, with vibrant streaks of pink, green, and purple dancing high above. As winter sets in, usually by January, you can catch these mesmerizing lights across a significant part of this region (especially Swedish Lapland – a vast region in the north that encompasses nearly a quarter of the country). The spectacle lasts until late March or early April.

As India’s outbound travel market gears up to reach $45 billion by 2032, there is a growing focus on high-spending travelers coming from the country.

Until recently, few Parisian hotels dared to distract from the classic aesthetics of the city itself. The décor of its gilded palace hotels, single-minded embassies of French heritage, was, largely, fussy and excessively impersonal, as if a misplaced streak of color could break the city’s spell. Today the capital is finally overcoming its self-seriousness, thanks in part to its vibrant post-Brexit ascendancy in the contemporary arts and culture scenes. Many of its new hotels seek to delight rather than simply impress, and often conjure other worlds, as in the Marais’s Maison Proust, a candlelit Belle Époque fantasy half-hidden behind tasseled indigo velvet curtains, or the nearby Le Grand Mazarin, fashioned by the London-based Swedish designer Martin Brudnizki from contrasting styles and eras, all in a swirl of candy colors. “It took longer than New York and London,” says the Italian architect and designer Fabrizio Casiraghi, “but Paris is at last discovering the kind of small hotel that has something to say.”

Certares Founder and Senior Managing Director Greg O’Hara will be the next chair of the World Travel & Tourism Council. He starts later this month, the organization announced on Friday.

It was supposed to be the pride of a nation. Built in the early 17th century, Vasa was commissioned by the King of Sweden during a time of intense naval competition among the European powers. But rather than a warship of unprecedented power and grandeur, Vasa became a symbol of poor design and tragedy.

JetBlue is phasing out more than a dozen routes across its network, significantly decreasing connectivity in the northeast.

Spain’s Balearic Islands are a hotspot for party tourism, with legendary clubs, extreme bar crawls and all-night raves.

The rules for most people entering Europe who don't have an EU passport are changing and after several delays, the EU has confirmed when and how they will roll out the two new border controls that will impact travelers arriving into the Schengen area from 2024 onwards.

"Where are you from?" has always been a tricky question for me. 

The history of Stockholm is one of ebbs and flows, freezes and thaws, sunken ships and shifting locks. History, though, isn’t exactly at the forefront of my mind 20 minutes into a morning kayak tour, when I’m frantically paddling against the frothy, destabilising wake dispatched by a passing city ferry.