These Are the Best Travel Apps, According to J.D. Power

I've been on 110 cruises in the past few decades, and I've learned some of the best ways to get a great deal before and during a trip.

While summer vacations may still be underway, travelers planning for a Labor Day Weekend end of the season may want to take new data into account. The holiday weekend, which traditionally marks the end of the summer travel season, will see travelers explore popular travel hotspots both in the United States and around the world. Friday, Sept. 1 and Monday, Sept. 4 will be the busiest days for airport traffic as flyers jet to and from their destinations around the world, according to new data from Chase Travel shared with Travel + Leisure this week.

My husband and I are from Barbados but we visit family in the US a few times a year. Living in Barbados, it's often difficult and expensive to find specialty food and ingredients, so we rely on our Trader Joe's trips to Miami to grab the items we can't find in our hometown.

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.

After taking annual vacations to Europe for over a decade, I followed my dream and moved abroad right after my 32nd birthday. I initially did a six-month stay in Bordeaux, France, before heading to Barcelona, Spain, in early 2020.

Late last year, I was itching to leave my hometown of Los Angeles and booked a short trip to the East Coast. But, as soon as I boarded my return flight, I realized I couldn't wait to get back home.

Carefree days lounging on the sand are a hallmark of an idyllic vacation for many travelers. But beaches themselves are a commodity, vulnerable to retreat that’s exacerbated by climate change. In fact, nearly half of the Earth’s sandy beaches could be extinct by 2100, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.

The chance to spot a bear, bison, or bald eagle in the wild is one of the major reasons travelers visit the United States’ 63 national parks. You might assume that a megafauna mecca like Yellowstone National Park would offer the best odds of seeing multiple animals. 

In news that might signal a win for fast-moving New Yorkers, the city that’s home to Times Square has paved colored lanes within the headache-inducing Midtown tourist drag, separating street performers and their audiences from pedestrians who are in a hurry.

Depending on your point of view, busier airports are either a blessing or a curse. For the Airports Council International, which just released its ACI World Airport Traffic Report, busy airports are a sign of economic vitality and consumer vigor.

This month saw the launch of what many in the travel blogosphere are calling the best travel-rewards credit card ever: the Sapphire Reserve Visa card from Chase.

Conde Nast Traveler gets a lot of mileage out of its annual Readers’ Choice Awards, slicing and dicing feedback from 300,000 travelers into a dizzying array of categories, sub-categories, and sub-sub-categories. Not only is there a ranking of the best cities in the world, there’s also the best small cities in the U.S. The world’s best hotels, sure. But also the top 10 hotels in Europe, and in Northern Asia, and in Eastern Mexico, and in Florence.