Why Do Kind Strangers Return Our Wallets?

Explora Journeys is celebrating the one-year anniversary of its ship Explora I this month with a special offer for travelers.

Singapore has been recrowned as the country with the world’s most powerful passport in 2024.

UN Tourism and TUI Care Foundation have solidified their ongoing partnership by signing an agreement at the UN Tourism headquarters in Madrid. The agreement focuses on empowering artists and artisans, particularly women and youth, in rural tourism destinations in Africa. With this new agreement, TUI Care Foundation becomes the first partner to support the pilot phase of the Tourism for Rural Development Small Grants Programme by UN Tourism.

My husband, Andrew, retired early after we sold our business. We live in Melbourne, Australia, but now we spend a lot of time traveling.

When taking a transatlantic redeye, aka a flight that leaves late in the night in the U.S. and lands in the morning Europe time, you’re presented with some minor and major issues. With flights lasting about 5 to 8 hours, it’s hard to get great sleep on board, meaning you’re bound to be fatigued upon landing. Jet lag is going to hit at some point, even if you did get great sleep. And landing at 6 a.m. or even a bit later generally means that your room might not be ready for you to catch a much needed morning nap — leading to you making like a zombie walking through the streets of your European city of choice, looking for coffee or the will to keep your eyes open. 

Amid the cafes and boutiques of Athens’s Kolonaki neighborhood is a housewares shop that’s also a showcase for Greek craftsmanship. It’s the first brick-and-mortar location for Crini & Sophia, the brand that the former interior and set designer Maya Zafeiropoulou-Martinou founded in 2022. Its wood-and-rattan shelves, two-tone marble floors and furniture are all made by Greek artists, while one window is decorated with a vinelike steel and spray-paint piece by the Cypriot sculptor Socrates Socratous. The shop’s goods are designed by Zafeiropoulou-Martinou, whose inspirations include the colors in Francis Bacon paintings and the Amazon rainforest. Linens are produced in Portugal before being embroidered in Greece with patterns that often take cues from antiques on view at Athens’s Benaki Museum. Hand-painted ceramics and glassware are made in partnership with artisans in New York, Greece, Italy and France. When it comes to designing your own table, Zafeiropoulou-Martinou encourages layering. “The pattern isn’t just the plate or the tablecloth,” she says of her pieces, “but a puzzle of the two on top of each other.”

South Korea’s tourism industry is experiencing a significant revival. The country welcomed 7.7 million foreign arrivals in the first half of the year, a 74% increase from the same period in 2023.

Jul 29, 2024 • 4 min read

Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, July 26, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today. 

In a shift in global mobility rankings, Singapore has claimed the top spot in the 2024 Henley Passport Index released on Wednesday, granting its citizens visa-free access to 195 countries.

My family — me, my husband, our 8- and 3-year-old daughters, and our wire-haired dog, who's 14 years young — recently took a trip to the Hamptons.

Japan is bracing for a tourism boom like never before. With a record 35 million foreign visitors expected this year and tourism spending projected to hit an unprecedented JPY 8 trillion ($51 billion), the country is seeing a surge driven by a weak yen.