Category Archives for Destinations.
Remember Thailand’s ridiculous tourism visa scheme? Turns out that no one even applied. It’s been called off, and leadership is back developing a new plan: Assign someone to follow around each tourist, and make sure they don’t have contact with any Thai people.
The U.S. is working with several governments to create ‘air bridges’ where people would be able to travel, at least between specific cities, with both pre-departure Covid testing along with testing on arrival. Talks with the U.K. are farthest along, and could allow travel next month or the month ago. The U.S. and Germany have also been in discussion about allowing reciprocal travel with double negative tests.
We’re only a week away from Hawaii’s announced October 15 re-opening. The state has said they’d allow arriving passengers to skip 14-day quarantine with a negative Covid-19 test from the past 72 hours. Airlines including United, Hawaiian, Alaska and American have set up testing regimes to help open up travel to the islands.
Already Hawaii’s plan is partially unraveling and the pandemic yo-yo continues.
Hawaii has required everyone arriving in the state to quarantine for 14 days. They’ve put off plans to re-open tourism until October 15. At that point they’ll allow visitors with a negative Covid test within 3 days of arrival to skip quarantine.
The island of Kauai, though, isn’t satisfied and doesn’t want to participate.
The principles of loyalty marketing can be applied across industries, and the basics are very much the same: recognition (elite benefits) and reward (redemption). While the most successful programs have been in travel – airlines have turned their marketing programs from a cost center into a profit engine – loyalty marketing is important to anywhere consumers make repeated choices.
The Maldives is trying something new with a destination rewards program with three elite levels. Here’s hoping they offer status matches!
An American hotel guest was jailed for writing a bad hotel review. He had to wait a couple of days to make bail after the hotel pressed defamation charges.
Several readers have sent the defense of pressing these charges offered by the hotel. Some are even persuaded by it. That’s nuts.
An American working in Thailand, Wesley Barnes, was arrested at his job and jailed over a defamation lawsuit filed by the owner of the Sea View Resort & Spa, Kah Change in response to a negative TripAdvisor review.
The man posted a one star review in July and two months later he was picked up by Thai police. It was a Friday and he “ended up spending a couple of nights in jail” before bring able to post 100,000 Baht (~ US$3165) bail. He faces up to two years in prison if convicted.
British Airways cabin crew who tested negative for Covid-19 on arrival were nonetheless rounded up from the SkyCity Marriott near the Hong Kong airport and taken to a forced 14 day quarantine in a government facility when one member of the crew tested positive. The airline’s pilots were allowed to return to London.
There are many things about Thailand that look strange to outsiders but to locals are simply ‘very Thai’. And while there’s increasing pushback against the monarchy (despite lese majeste laws) and against a military junta that last year had to clarify they wouldn’t actually execute tourists for taking selfies at the Phuket airport there’s still much acceptance of things as they are, without reason or justification.
It may even seem perfectly normal that as Thailand looks at how they can re-open to tourism amidst the global pandemic that putting potential visitors through a 31 step process that involves prepaying a 90 day hotel stay can seem perfectly normal.
Tanzania is open to U.S. tourists. Should you go?
It hasn’t been clear to me what the situation on the ground is like, but my award booking partner Steve Belkin just spent two weeks there and files this report.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
