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Tags: Travel Bans / Sex Travel / Brothels / Germany Travel / Recessionomics / → All Tags
Germany Cracking Down On Recession-Friendly Brothel 'Flat Rates'
Everyone is suffering during this recession, even and perhaps especially the honest, hard working ladies of the Vegas stripper community. Our hearts go out.
The tragedy extends far beyond Nevada however. In many German brothels the only things that have been going down lately are the profits. Brothel owners are trying to cope by introducing creative new marketing and pricing arrangements, such as the Pussy Club's "flat rate" special.
For a single payment of 60 pounds gentlemen can avail themselves of the establishment's wares, which involve women and beer and women, for the entire day.
Tags: Open Skies / Recessionomics / Airline News / → All Tags
Open Skies Nixes Amsterdam Route
The all-business-class model of running an airline seems to be about one recession-induced nail away from a full coffin. Premium transatlantic carrier Open Skies announced this weekend that it will no longer offer its New York to Amsterdam route.
The announcement is a shame—especially after a Jaunted reader recently pointed out that the $900 roundtrip fare was one of the best biz class bargains to be had. But it’s not much of a surprise—rumors have cycled for months that the British Airways-owned Open Skies was nearing the end of its run.
The airline will offer flights to Amsterdam only through August 16, after which it’s only remaining route will be JFK to Paris. We’re taking bets on how long that one will last.
Related Stories:
· OpenSkies to halt Amsterdam-New York flights [LA Times]
· Open Skies 'One of the Best Travel Bargains' But For How Much Longer? [Jaunted]
· Even The Airports Were Tuned Into Michael Jackson's Memorial [Jaunted]
[Photo: shazari]
Tags: Recessionomics / Pub Travel / Beer Travel / Drinking Travel / → All Tags
British Pub Crisis! UK Losing 52 Bars Per Week
Here in the states, we’ve been keeping a close eye on what restaurants and bars are having trouble making it through the recession, but we figure not too many consumers are shedding tears, since it’s high-end eateries that seem to be having the most trouble.
But we’re hearing some frightening news from across the pond, where the hardest-hit businesses in Britain are also one of the country’s prime tourist draws: good old-fashioned pubs. Local pubs in the UK have been having such a rough go of it that a new report indicates they’re closing at the rate of 52 per week. Yep, that’s an astonishing 2,377 pubs lost in the past year!
Tags: Continental Airlines / Flight Attendants / Airline News / Recessionomics / → All Tags
Continental Asking Flight Attendants To Stay Grounded
Most people would gladly leave their jobs for the opportunity to do something else for a few months. However, taking a sabbatical is a tough choice when your company is the one initiating the leave.
Continental Airlines is asking their 9,500 flight attendants to think about taking voluntary leaves starting in September. Obviously the airline is looking to cut costs and save some cash during this period of slow travel and reduced spending.
Workers who opt to take a leave of absence can choose from five or nine month time periods—which is a long time to be away from the skies, considering all of the safety details and more that an attendant must have memorized. During their absence, the flight attendants will still maintain travel privileges, health insurance, and will accrue vacation time, but just won't be paid.
Clearly it’s hard to voluntarily give up your paycheck, but with an abundance of empty seats on planes across the globe, now might be a great time to take some time off to travel. The airline is looking for about 650 volunteers, and although the economic situation is bleak, we’re thinking they’ll have no trouble finding some folks willing to hang up their wings for a few months.
Related Stories: [Photo: 787 Dreamliner]
· Continental Asks Flight Attendants to Consider Leaves [Houston Chronicle]
· Continental Celebrates 75th Anniversary By Buying Their Own Present [Jaunted]
· Continental coverage [Jaunted]
Tags: Music Festivals / Music Travel / Virgin Mobile FreeFest / Recessionomics / Richard Branson / → All Tags
Baltimore's Virgin Mobile Festival Drops Ticket Prices To Free
There’s been a lot of talk about 2009 being the year the music festival died, (see Summercase, Langerado and the San Francisco Blues Festival), and the long-rumored next casualty has been the Virgin Mobile Festival in Baltimore. Despite being a hit in its first three years out, concert organizers have waited forever to announce any details on dates or lineup, leading many around the music blogosphere to assume the fest wouldn’t be able to pull it together this year.
Well our old billionaire buddy Richard Branson must have taken those nasty rumors personally, because Virgin has announced that not only will the show go on, but they don’t need to make any stinkin' money on it anyway. That’s right, this year’s concert is 100-percent free.
Tags: Airports / OAK / Airport Construction / Recessionomics / → All Tags
Airport Renovations Get Scaled Back as Airlines Cut Routes and Passenger Traffic Wanes
Oakland Airport's Southwest terminal during its renovation of 2006.
No surprise here but with the travel industry taking a hard hit this year, airports across the U.S. are having to put their massive renovations plans on hold or in some caese, just settle for just quickie face-lifts.
At Oakland International Airport in California, for example, a $1 billion plan to build a third terminal was shelved last summer after ExpressJet withdrew from the market, Aloha Airlines went out of business and other carriers, especially Southwest Airlines, cut back on flights. Passenger traffic fell by 30 percent, creating a ripple effect at the airport’s restaurants and car rental operations, which also generate cash. Food and beverage revenue dropped by 25 percent; car rental revenue by 20 percent.
Instead of building a new terminal, Oakland is doing a $200 million facelift of an existing terminal.
On the bright side(?), having less passengers allows the construction crews to get their work done faster. A very minor consolation to the airport indeed.
About a dozen other U.S. airports have cancelled or delayed their improvements but Kansas City International Airport is doing something different. The airport is taking advantage of the drop in construction costs to pursue its airport improvement projects which will cost about $161 million. Guess that's what happens when someone calls you a Hot Destination for 2009.
Thank God, JetBlue did their T5 overhaul before the economy crapped out!
Related Stories:
· Oakland Airport Under Construction [Jaunted]
· Airport Projects Delayed or Canceled [NY Times]
Tags: Recessionomics / Film Festivals / Screen on the Green / Washington DC / → All Tags
National Mall Film Festival Gets a Bailout
When we said DC's favorite film festival deserved a federal bailout, we were half-joking, but it looks like someone heard us, because the Trust for the National Mall has responded to Washingtonians' angry cries all over the interwebs and banded together with sponsors HBO and Comcast to save Screen on the Green.
Visitors to the National Mall won't be out of luck when the museums close this summer after all. The classic film festival will be back, with movies shown on the 40' by 20' outdoor screen every Monday at sunset, from July 20 through August 20.
Screen on the Green kicks off next month with a showing of Steven Spielberg's 1977 sci-fi classic, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Related Stories:
· Screen on the Green shows will go on [Washington Biz Journal]
· The Recession Puts a Kibosh on DC's Outdoor Film Festival [Jaunted]
· Film festival travel coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: voteprime]
Tags: Recessionomics / Yaycations / Travel Muse / Travel Deals / → All Tags
Three More Categories We'd Like To Add To The Yaycations Calculator
TravelMuse just launched a fun toy called the Yaycations Calculator, which combs your budget for money you could use to travel and then gives you suggestions on where to spend it.
Like many money-management tools, the principle of the thing is that you have more room in your monthly nut than you think, as long as you're picking and choosing what's really important to you.
Tags: Concerts / Live Music Travel / Celeb Travel / Britney Spears / Recessionomics / → All Tags
Britney Spears' Circus May Leave Town Sooner Than Planned
Only elephants work for peanuts: Britney Spears' long-awaited comeback tour likely won't get the worldwide extension promoters were looking for due to, you guessed it, the bad economy.
Spears set off March 3 from New Orleans on a 49-stop tour that included Canada and London, and producers were hoping the continual cloud of drama which separates Brit from the rest of us would part long enough to later add on dates in Europe and Asia and perhaps another round of shows in the U.S.
And despite rumors of a reunion with Kevin Federline and a summons to testify against one of her former hangers-on in a lawsuit brought by her dad, Spears was holding up her end of the deal. The girl just can't catch a break!
While promoters are mum on whether any of the existing shows will be canceled, it's always a possibility, so keep reading superlative sites like this one to keep abreast of the news. Ticketmaster is handling all the sales, but their cancellation policy is actually quite decent -- though you'll have to mail your would-be treasures back in in the event of a canceled show. The last time this happened to us, though, we got our refund in about three weeks.
Related Stories:
· Bad Economy May Fold Britney Spears' Circus Tent [People]
· The Circus Starring Britney Spears 2009 Tour Information [BritneySpears.com]
· Cancelled/Postponed Events [Ticketmaster.com]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo from the Atlanta show: loveyousave]
Tags: Recessionomics / Bernie Madoff / Ponzi Schemes / → All Tags
Bernie Madoff Taking Palm Beach Down With Him
Right now disgraced faux-financier Bernie Madoff is cooling his heels in an undisclosed jail (probably to keep the pitchforked masses from descending). But if he were allowed to walk free, he'd pretty much have nowhere to go anyway: Not only is his Manhattan penthouse on sale and several of his toys seized, he's now being blamed for bringing down his second home of Palm Beach as well. It's true, you can't go home again.
The penthouse was quietly put up for sale in January, around the time Madoff was first confined to house arrest there. (Well, that's gotta be awkward!) But his Palm Beach pad has been seized by the feds to help repay the people he swindled, as was a yacht and an Aston Martin he gave to his brother Peter last year. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Florida mansion has dropped some 20 percent in value since being assessed last year, adding untold hours to the time Madoff will spend making license plates in the clink.
Tags: Dominican Republic Field Trip / Recessionomics / → All Tags
The Up Side of a Down Market
Jaunted editor Ellen Wernecke hopes you had a great time visiting the Dominican Republic with her.
They came in the afternoon, great waves of dark-green sucking up all unoccupied space on the sand. We drew up our toes in horror. How dare they invade our beach? On a day this nice? The waiters and the towel guy looked on, impassive; by now, they're used to the daily invasion of hundreds of cruise travelers onto the Casa de Campo beach. The resort's relative emptiness prompted management to start offering nearby boats the chance to dump its passengers on its shores in the name of an "excursion" -- and so they came, clutching the ships' dark-green towels in their hands.
Unlike in the U.S., it is possible to go days, even weeks in the D.R. without being reminded of the recession, so long as you don't flip to an American channel or surf the Web. But the fingerprints of the downturn are everywhere, and not just for people on the beach during cruise hour. I had a lot of time to think about this on my last day on the island, in which not only was I confronted with the above deserted airport, I ended up getting a ride to the airport on -- kid you not -- a 55-passenger bus. Just me and the driver rattling around in there. So here are two things to expect in the new Caribbean economy:
More, but not always better, service. Tourist-facing business probably have a surfeit of workers even if they've gone through layoffs in the past year, but if you're looking for speedy service, maybe you should be vacationing in a McDonalds drive-through instead. Whether we were stopping in a local farmacia or a tony restaurant with a bilingual staff, we were helped in the same relaxed manner which, had we been in a hurry, might have annoyed us. But a downturn in visits is no reason to get snippy if you're one of the people who are still going. Willingness to check one's assumptions about the cultural value of time is a great thing to put in your carry-on.
Independent vendors getting more aggressive. The resort used to ban people who came to the beach to sell coconuts from hawking their wares; now they're allowed to play through. Truth is, many Dominicans' economic situations are in trouble unrelated to the recession, since tourist development mostly create jobs for either the very educated (which pay a living wage) or those willing to do manual labor (which don't); for most, that means supplementing licensed work income with unlicensed business. (Steven Gregory's The Devil in the Mirror is a great, albeit depressing, read on tourism and the Dominican Republic specifically.) You don't have to use local vendors, but most of them aren't out to trick you; they're just making a living.
My intent is not to dissuade you from visiting the D.R. or any other Caribbean destination; I had an incredible time and there are deals to be had if you are in a position to take them. From stargazing under a stand of palm trees to dancing a beachside merengue, the sights and sounds are the best souvenir. Still, tread lightly.
Related Stories:
· Bruce Willis Won't Let Caribbean Economy "Die Hard" [Jaunted]
· Everyone Still Going On Cruises, Royal Caribbean Says [Jaunted]
· Dominican Republic Field Trip [Jaunted]
[Photo of La Romana International Airport by the author.]
Tags: Recessionomics / Television Travel / Real Housewives of New York City / → All Tags
'Real Housewife' Dumped Over Email Thanks to Airline Cutbacks
We know there's nothing real about the "Real Housewives of New York," but this is too juicy not to be real: Show character Countess Luann de Lesseps reportedly was dumped by her husband over e-mail this week while he was in Geneva with his new girlfriend.
The union of Count Alexandre and Luann (his fourth, and she used to be a model) was never that stable: Despite their two kids, he lives in Europe most of the time, according to Page Six. But really? E-mail? Hopefully he got socked with some really nasty roaming charges.
Well, maybe the count just couldn't get a flight home to tell her: The International Air Transport Association boasted it was cutting emissions by 8 percent, but it's not because of better technology or improved efficiency: Most of the improvement has to do with routes and flights being canceled in the economic downturn. If he can't get a ticket home to dump you, he may just be not that into you.
Related Stories:
· Real Housewives' Countess Separating from Husband [US Magazine]
· Airlines to fly less, and pollute less, in downturn [Reuters]
· Real Househusband Simon van Kempen Clears Up "Ownership Status" On His Blog [HC]
[Photo: famegame.com]
