Results tagged “recession” from Travel

By Robert Farmer

I was speaking to a Bay Area hotelier recently who was decrying his abundance of inventory. That is to say, he's got a bunch of empty rooms that, when they sit empty, cost him money--sometimes lots of money. What, I asked, is he doing about it? More to the point, what can he do about it? You'd think the obvious answer would be to reduce the room rates into an "offer you can't refuse" category. But, for several reasons that we won't get into here, that's not the obvious answer. So the question became, What is he willing to concede in exchange for putting people in his rooms.

Can the Wine Tourism Trend Save Travel?
By Robert P. Farmer

While it's no new concept in the valleys of Napa or Sonoma, the idea of wine tourism is starting to take root across the globe. From France to Germany and Australia to Chile, people are increasingly booking passage based less on the destination itself than on the wine produced in that destination.

Wine lovers everywhere are discovering that it's more fun to drink their way through vacation than to sit idle on, say, a beach reading the latest trashy best-seller. Wine Tourism is providing a renewed sense of purpose for leisure time and it is not limited to wine aficionados. Thanks in part to concerted efforts by wine-producing regions to espouse their industry and leverage it for fun and profit, the wine tourism trend appears to be something travelers can savor.

By Robert Farmer

I know I know. It's all bad news all the time when it comes to the economy. And if you're like me at all, which I think you probably are, the wall-to-wall doom-and-gloom in the press and everywhere else makes you want to head for the hills--or, at least to the rolling hills of California's Wine Country. That in and of itself is a good thing, but it also happens to harbor some even better news for those intrepid travelers who are fortunate enough to get away.