Author Archive: John

Confessions of an Electronic Traveler

Sometimes I think that the days of leaving your life behind are a thing of the past, and maybe that’s a bad thing. But, like it or not, today we are more connected than ever. We’ve got e-mail from cruise ships, satellite calls from the Serengeti, cell phones in flight. BlackBerrys, Palms, PDAs, and PIMs — they’re becoming as common as calculators. But what are the really essential electronics for the traveler? And how best to use them? Cell phones. Perhaps the greatest invention of the last 20 years is…

Living It Up In The Riviera Maya

Suggest a Mexican getaway, and most people think of Cancun, a balmy beach resort area manufactured as a tourist destination in the early 1970s. The first hotel broke ground in 1972. Now, 33 years later, Cancun has more than 50,000 hotel beds, hundreds of restaurants, and a couple of mega-malls for the throngs of American sun worshippers who come here to play, sometimes every year. I say, skip Cancun and head 40 minutes south — to the Riviera Maya, a long stretch of beautiful Caribbean coast on the Yucatán peninsula.…

So, You Wanna Be A Travel Agent?

Back in the mid 90s, I almost bought a restaurant. It was a great restaurant — great location, great food, great patrons and great potential. Then a friend of mine who owns several restaurants took me aside and warned me, “You don’t want to get into the restaurant business unless you are born into it!” Probably very good advice. So what did I do? I got into the travel business, instead. Out of the frying pan and into the fire? Well, yes and no. Certainly the travel industry has faced…

A New Look At New Orleans

Whatever your vice, it can probably be found in New Orleans, home of Mardi Gras, zydeco, bimbos and booze. But this bad-ass river town has another side: romantic, soulful, epicurean, and yes, even familial. Take a new look at the Big Easy with the loving eye of a local. Some say Paris is the most romantic city in the world, but in the absence of a transatlantic ticket, New Orleans might give it a run for the money. From the quaint carriage rides around the French Quarter to the splendor…

Different And Cheap: 3 Cool Places

Believe it or not, vacation season is winding down and late summer is a great time for some fantastic bargains. Conventional wisdom says to head to some calm and collected place: perhaps a beach on the northeast coast, or a ranch out west, or a cool mountain retreat. I say to hell with conventional wisdom. Don’t worry about things that are beyond your control. Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead to Cancun, London and Aruba. Cancun. Hey, if it is good enough for Emily, it is good enough for…

Why Agents Love & Hate The Net

It seems you can’t get through life without at least one of those love/hate relationships: Alexis Carrington, Martha Stewart, OJ, or the latest challenge — the Internet. Sometimes I wonder how Earth managed to revolve without e-mail, instant news, spectacular travel deals and online porn. And sometimes I wish I’d never heard of cyberspace. You’d think the Internet has put the whammy on traditional travel agents — just look at the declining numbers. According to the Airlines Reporting Corporation, in May of 2001, there were 29,412 approved retail locations in…

What’s Your Tour Type?

Remember the days when Granny would pull out the old Super-8 projector to “treat” the kids to her latest jaunt across Europe with her friends on that “lovely” escorted tour? You probably also felt like you’d rather be undergoing a root canal. Without drugs. And a pit-bull chewing your leg. Good news: Tours are changing. And they’re not just for Granny anymore. Three years ago, I spoke with Paolo Mantegazza, the late chief executive of Globus & Cosmos, one of the world’s oldest and most respected escorted tour operators.…

Feeling Homesick? Five Remedies

Dorothy was right. There’s no place like home. If you travel for fun, you might only have a vague appreciation of that. But if you’ve ever been away on business for an extended period of time, you probably see things differently. There are few things worse than being sent across some ocean to tend to business for a long period of time. Unfortunately, I can’t write a note to excuse you from the project at hand. But I can offer some suggestions for making it a bit more palatable when…

Annapolis: More Than The Academy

The Blue Angels have just completed their last flyover. The presidential motorcade is heading back to a waiting Marine One, and all of the Midshipman have picked up their hats. Now that all the hustle and bustle of Commissioning Week — better known to us civilians as graduation — is over, Annapolis, Md., will calm down. The locals will have their town and harbor back for a little while until the summer tourists begin their annual migration. Whether you come for the history, the education, the water, or the hospitality,…

A Single Dad’s Trip Survival Guide

If the archetypal 20th century vacation was mom, dad and the kids driving to a national park in the station wagon (complete with a Rockwellesque dog, its tongue wagging in the wind), then the 21st century vacation is … well, a little less nuclear. After all, half of the marriages end in divorce nowadays. So scratch one parent. The dog? Left at home, preferably with the estranged spouse. And the rules? Let’s just say a glimpse at a modern-day getaway wouldn’t inspire Norman Rockwell to paint. Unless he wanted to…