These 6 Passports Are the Most Powerful in 2024

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

On Valentine’s Day, even the most elegant New York City hotel dining rooms raise the bar in terms of their culinary offerings.

From air traffic control strikes to extreme weather, last year saw millions of passengers face flight delays across Europe.

Ever fantasized about having an entire hotel to yourself while on vacation? The Four Seasons Resort Bora Bora can make that dream come true: For $2.75 million, guests can buy out the entire island property for a week, dining at its open-air restaurants, snorkeling in the lagoon, and playing tennis with the hotel’s pro. Or, you could invite up to 245 of your closest friends to stay with you in the resort’s seven villas and 108 bungalow suites.

Bern has been rated the most liveable city in Europe again, according to one expert ranking.

There’s no better way to get to know a city than by ambling down winding roads and cobblestone streets, popping into restaurants and art galleries along the way. Unfortunately, in the many car-centric metropolitans of the US, a leisurely stroll from your hotel lobby might just lead you to a parking lot instead.

For frequent flyers the varying amount of legroom on airplanes can be difficult to navigate.  A recent study analyzed the amount of available legroom on varying airlines’ most popular routes, and ranked them in order of most legroom to least legroom. The clear winner was JetBlue while Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines tied in 7th place, according to the study from Upgraded Points.  The full ranking for the airline seat legroom is:

The passport you hold is a powerful tool when it comes to effortlessly visiting countries around the world.And some passports provide far more access than others, according to the Henley Passport Index.The just-released 2024 index shows that for the first time in 19 years of producing the ranking, six countries are tied for the top spot of having the most powerful passports.The countries leading the ranking are France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and Spain—meaning citizens from all of these countries are able to visit 194 destinations around the world either visa-free or by obtaining a visa-on-arrival.The Henley Passport Index is the only ranking of its kind and is developed based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Authority (IATA). The index compares 199 different passports and 227 different travel destinations.While Japan and Singapore have made it into the number one slot for the past five years running, according to CNN, the European countries that are now also ranked number one on the list is a new development.

When it comes to putting together the perfect pub tap line-up, parallels can be drawn from football management. As with an ideal first 11, there needs to be balance at the pumps — a required blend of promising youth and gnarled veterans, an equilibrium struck between the scampering pomp of the new world craft brewing scene and a solid spine of enduring, ageless classics, the odd eccentric from overseas and, at the fear of stretching the analogy a little too far, a couple of unashamed crowd-pleasers who go down far too easily.

It’s never a pleasant experience to fly through turbulence on an airplane. and a new list is revealing which routes are more likely to experience bumps than others. Passengers heading from Nashville to Raleigh/Durham are most likely to experience the bumpiest rides based on a report that analyzed the turbulence levels of 150,000 airline routes from travel tool Turbli. The report calculates the turbulence levels by assigning each route an «eddy dissipation rate,» which is scientific for the level of turbulence intensity. 

Growing up in the Midwest, I often saw photos on calendars or computer-screen wallpapers that seemed like they couldn't be real.

Six countries now have the world's most powerful passport, according to the 2024 Henley Passport Index — but the US isn't one of them.