Pandemic tips

Hilton's plan to boost its appeal to smaller companies took a big step forward this week with a new global booking platform that can net companies bonus Hilton Honors points.

Among the many aspects of travel that the pandemic disrupted, one issue was more bureaucratic — but no less frustrating — for some Americans: an enormous backlog of U.S. passport applications.

Chase's airport lounge network is expanding with the addition of an outpost in one of the nation's busiest airports.

Add a new must-see to Florence’s staggeringly rich cultural offerings—the refurbished Fashion and Costume Museum in the Pitti Palace, part of the Uffizi Galleries complex. Closed for three years for restoration and from the effects of the pandemic, the Museo della Moda e del Costumemakes news by highlighting the recent past, debuting 12 rooms focused on 20th-century fashion, while remaining an important repository for historic pieces dating from the time when the Medicis ruled the town.

North Korea will welcome its first foreign tourists since closing its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to news reports, a hint the isolated nation may be considering a revival of its small tourism industry amid growing tensions on the international stage.

The promise of a new year always comes with the arrival of new hotels and resorts, and the editors of Forbes Travel Guide have compiled a list of the 30 most anticipated hotel openings of 2024. From the Dominican Republic to Dubai, here are the properties worth checking out—and into—this year.

Travelers, rejoice! Getting your U.S. passport renewed now takes less time that at any point since the Covid-19 pandemic darkened the globe.

EasyJet passengers who experienced canceled flights during the coronavirus pandemic were issued vouchers as an alternative to refunds, and the expiration date to redeem the vouchers is looming.

Want to know what’s on the minds of Americans and others around the world? Just study what they’re watching. Netflix recently released its first ever biannual viewing report which gives insights into what people across the globe are craving on their screens.

China’s travel and tourism industry – among the world’s biggest – last year began its recovery from heavy pandemic damage. One beneficiary: Trip.com Group, a global travel service provider that is China’s largest. Revenue in the third quarter of 2023 almost doubled from a year earlier; net profit in the three months to September totaled 4.6 billion yuan (about $637 million), more than 18 times the year-earlier 245 million yuan.

The principals of the innovative London and New York-based travel company Black Tomato made their name by assembling detail-oriented and sometimes very out of the way travel plans for exceedingly curious, adventurous clients. Having surveyed the market to ascertain what their clients are interested in now and the changes they see in the travel landscape, they’ve come up with the ways they see that travel happening in the next year and in what parts of the world those ambitious travelers could be.

In the last few years, the health-meets-travel trend has reached new heights, in no small part thanks to gyms themselves. In 2019 the luxury fitness-club empire Equinox opened its first hotel in New York City. Now, everyone's taking their exercise routines with them wherever they go. “Before the pandemic, my clientele was local,” says Luke Goulden, a London-based personal trainer who now also coaches clients virtually. “They don't want to break routines when they're traveling for work or pleasure.” The good news: Hotels are paying attention.

While COVID-19 shuttered many global destinations, Australia's borders remained closed longer than most, for nearly two years. During this time, the country's Blue Mountains, less than two hours northwest of Sydney, also experienced devastating bushfires that destroyed 2.5 million acres of the region's UNESCO-listed National Park. The fires were followed by two years of cataclysmal flooding that wiped out farms, roads, and riverbeds, and killed two successive wine harvests. Until recently, the region felt impenetrable.

“Creating a new home for Café Boulud has been my focus and priority for the last year,” Chef Daniel Boulud explains. “Given the special place it holds in my heart, I feel very fortunate to be able to bring it back to the Upper East Side and look forward to sharing it with our guests, The restaurant will be a vibrant celebration of my French roots and love for New York.”

It’s the holiday season! Time to dust off those “busy summer travel” stories, re-brand them for the holidays, and relay once again the current state of our country’s airline industry.

Alone in London with a day to kill, Jon Martin was hungry for an off-the-cuff adventure when he decided to show up for a meal at a stranger’s home.

Well, we got close, folks. However, it looks like a trouble-free year with only minor cancellations and delays for Christmas travel in Europe won't be happening after all.

Decades ago, Walt Disney said that Disneyland — the only park open at the time — would never be completed and would continue to grow as long as there was imagination left in the world. And boy, was he right — likely in ways he couldn't have dreamed of so many years ago.

There is so much more to Marrakech than the European rock stars who have famously partied here and the iconic expats, like Yves Saint Laurent, who adopted it as their home. The past two decades have seen this North African city become accessible to more travelers as an armada of courtyard homes, or riads, within the ochre walls of the medina have been transformed into chic but affordable boutique hotels, providing options beyond the lavish hotels owned by Morocco's king.

In a surprise move, the Norwegian Competition Authority has approved the acquisition of Norway’s regional carrier Widerøe by Norwegian for 1.1 billion kroner ($107 million).

A historic year of strikes has been roiling across hotels in one of the biggest travel markets in the US. Starting in July, thousands of Los Angeles-based hotel employees, including cooks, housekeepers, dishwashers, servers, bellhops, and front desk agents, walked off the job to protest their current working conditions, according to Unite Here Local 11, the union that represents most hospitality workers in Los Angeles.