...Aren't those the sweetest words ever?
Well, it's been awesome. With the end of another year comes another clean calendar to fill with travel itinerary details and oh it feels so good. Thank You again for another excellent 365 days, and we'll be back bright and early on Monday with more kickass stories.
Enjoy the full collection of our 2011 travel awards below, and be sure to check out the awards from our sister sites HotelChatter and VegasChatter as well. Happy New Year!]]>
It's that time of the year again, the time when the year just plain ends. Alas, we can't just let 2011 go that easily, especially since travelers spent it both up in the air and up in arms over a crazy range of topics, encompassing everything from nudie scans to tarmac delays. Needless to say, we're ready for 2012, but first we're taking a brief look back at the best of 2011 with the Jaunted Travel Awards,—or as we fondly refer to them—The Jauntys.
After an iffy last few years, our choice for Destination of the Year 2011 finally had huge tourist boom in 2011, that is until all of it was washed away by flooding at the end of this year. Well, they've dried off and are ready yet again to be inundated with both the ritzy and budget travelers. We're talking about Thailand.
We went to some many amazing places in 2011—Norway, Wales, Italy, Switzerland, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Amsterdam, Paris... just to name a very few. Thus, picking a place to highlight was stressful. Really you should visit everywhere you can, but Thailand stood out for us because we not only spend 3+ weeks there getting a feel for several areas of the country, but we were overwhelmed with how fully the country offers something for every type of traveler. Culture? check. Shopping? check. Adventure? check. Luxury? check. Cute animals? check. Fun airlines? check. LGBT? check. Food? Um, a million times check.]]>
It's that time of the year again, the time when the year just plain ends. Alas, we can't just let 2011 go that easily, especially since travelers spent it both up in the air and up in arms over a crazy range of topics, encompassing everything from nudie scans to tarmac delays. Needless to say, we're ready for 2012, but first we're taking a brief look back at the best of 2011 with the Jaunted Travel Awards,—or as we fondly refer to them—The Jauntys.
Of all our Jaunted Awards we've handed out, this one—Domestic Airline of the Year 2011—is the most surprising. If the US airline industry was a game of Super Mario Bros, this carrier would have been the one to continuously score gold coins with every jump. We're talking about Delta, believe it or not.
Aside from rolling out new route after new route like a BOSS, Delta spent 2011 beefing up their mobile tech, customer service and onboard product. Specifically we loved them for their introduction of Economy Comfort to more than just long-haul flights, their bravery to expand DeltaAssist and online flight check-in to Facebook, their completion of fleet-wide WiFi and introduction of it to regional jets, and the fact that they brought Ben & Jerry's ice cream onboard in 2011. ]]>
It's that time of the year again, the time when the year just plain ends. Alas, we can't just let 2011 go that easily, especially since travelers spent it both up in the air and up in arms over a crazy range of topics, encompassing everything from nudie scans to tarmac delays. Needless to say, we're ready for 2012, but first we're taking a brief look back at the best of 2011 with the Jaunted Travel Awards,—or as we fondly refer to them—The Jauntys.
We let the TSA off the hook as 2011's Biggest Travel Villain—the agency finished as a runner-up after dominating the category in 2009 and 2010—but obviously they were going to make at least a couple more appearances this year.
TSA's airport security officers are, after all, responsible for the vast majority of airport hell stories (especially when you take out first-world complaints like "the plane was stuck on the tarmac for 25 extra minutes and it was the worst. thing. ever").
But as much as there are genuine concerns about TSA and civil liberties; and TSA and individual privacy; and TSA and private property; and TSA and outright criminal behavior; and TSA and surreal douchebaggery—as much as there are genuine problems in all of those areas, the vast majority of TSA officials and officers and even politicians aren't bad. It's just that so many of them are kind of bumbling and incompetent, and unfortunately they've been put in charge of a task that requires precision and competence.
So when we were choosing 2011's Worst TSA Tale, we looked for something that accurately represented the essence of TSA. Which is to say, borderline-comic incompetence.]]>
It's that time of the year again, the time when the year just plain ends. Alas, we can't just let 2011 go that easily, especially since travelers spent it both up in the air and up in arms over a crazy range of topics, encompassing everything from nudie scans to tarmac delays. Needless to say, we're ready for 2012, but first we're taking a brief look back at the best of 2011 with the Jaunted Travel Awards,—or as we fondly refer to them—The Jauntys.
With no JetBlue AYCJ Pass this year, the "sweetest travel deal" category was blown wide open. Many excellent offers intrigued in 2011, but there was one that repeatedly popped up and instantly inspired long-distance travel. That is ridiculously cheap airfare to Tokyo, Japan.
The thing is, Tokyo shouldn't have been so cheap in 2011! If it weren't for the Tohoku Earthquake and resulting tsunami early in the year (our 2011 Travel Villain of the Year), these deals would never have happened. The country was (and still is) seriously hurting for tourism. So let's take a look at some of the actual low prices... ]]>
It's that time of the year again, the time when the year just plain ends. Alas, we can't just let 2011 go that easily, especially since travelers spent it both up in the air and up in arms over a crazy range of topics, encompassing everything from nudie scans to tarmac delays. Needless to say, we're ready for 2012, but first we're taking a brief look back at the best of 2011 with the Jaunted Travel Awards,—or as we fondly refer to them—The Jauntys.
Each year there are plenty of wacky travel stories that just make us shake our head, so it was hard to pick just one weird event as deserving of this year’s Jaunty for craziest travel story.
Stealing like five-digits worth of first class swag was pretty funny, and who wasn’t slightly alarmed when the entire East Coast started shaking? We looked long and hard through the 2011 Jaunted archives, but one event stood high above the rest... ]]>
It's that time of the year again, the time when the year just plain ends. Alas, we can't just let 2011 go that easily, especially since travelers spent it both up in the air and up in arms over a crazy range of topics, encompassing everything from nudie scans to tarmac delays. Needless to say, we're ready for 2012, but first we're taking a brief look back at the best of 2011 with the Jaunted Travel Awards,—or as we fondly refer to them—The Jauntys.
Each and every year there are plenty of naughty flight attendants getting into trouble, and it usually involves wearing something a little bit different from the company-issued uniform, or not wearing something at all. This year, Canadian flight attendants stripped for their Turbulence Calendar of 2012—nice, eh—and of course getting frisky in the cockpit is sure to get you on Santa’s naughty list. However, when the final votes were tallied we just had to give out this year’s naughtiest flight attendants award to the high-flying ladies of Ryanair. ]]>