Jaunted

Tags: Tourism Boards / Tourism Board Travel / Travel Media / Hawaii Travel / Tourism Advertising / → All Tags

As If We Didn't Already Know: Vacations Make People Happier, More Productive

Every few months another one of these "vacation deprivation" studies comes out and promptly gets picked up as Science! by the same tourism boards that commissioned it. The term seems to go back to a contest for free hotel rooms that Hyatt ran in the mid-1990s, and it's been circulating as this kind of pseudo-scientific fake medical term ever since.

The latest version puts everything in terms of economic productivity, because that's what people care about right now. If people cared about something else, that's what vacations would be good for. And so, we are stuck with this drivel:

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Tags: In-Flight Magazines / Magazines / Travel Media / Airlines / American Airlines / → All Tags

Air France Magazine: Like U.S. In-Flights, Only Fatter and More Artsy

We recently flew Air France between Dulles and Charles de Gaulle, giving me the chance to pore through one more in-flight magazine, the aptly-named Air France Magazine. As it turns out, Air France Magazine is a lot like an American in-flight, only fatter. It's fatter, of course, because every article is published in both French and English, a polite gesture to passengers such as me. But other than that, it seems to cater to the same demographic, rich (or aspirational) travelers obsessed with health, beauty, and duty-free items.

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Tags: Magazines / Travel Media / Travel News / AFAR Magazine / → All Tags

New 'AFAR' Travel Magazine Promises More Than The Expected

One can never have too many travel magazines; after all, we need something to read while we’re flying to our destination—you know, after the iPhone battery dies. Launching later this month is AFAR, a magazine focused on places and people off the beaten path. The founders are hoping to bring cultural connections and new experiences to the masses, but we’ll have to wait for their inaugural issue to see if they deliver.

They’ll be all about experiential travel at AFAR, and their team will look to hit the Internet in 2010, assuming the magazine hits the newsstand running. Some of their upcoming regular features include: The A(FAR) List, which will reveal destinations around the world that are a little less common than the local state fair, and Spin the Globe, featuring a writer's musings after she's been randomly sent to a location—sounds like something we'd read for sure.

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Tags: Beach Travel / Travel Media / Massachusetts Travel / → All Tags

Whatever, Germany: The USA Has A Singing Beach Too

Time to withdraw that application for the modern wonders of the world: The New York Times fawned over the German island of Usedom and its harmonious beaches without ever making the (comparatively short) trip to the singing beach in its backyard—er, in Massachusetts.

The classily-named town of Manchester-by-the-Sea, about an hour out of Boston's North Station, boasts a singing beach of its own not half a mile from the commuter rail stop. The low price of $5 gets you a full day of soft white sand which, if you strain your ears, appears to make a slight squeaking noise when you step on it. It's BYO spa gear, but you have very little chance of running into a dude with gray chest hair boasting of how the mineral waters aid his digestive tract, so it's a split decision.

Manchester's an easy day trip from Boston, especially when compared to the further enticements of the Cape, Newport or Block Island. There are a few things the American singing beach lacks, notably Roman Polanski and nudity, but why not leave those to the Europeans anyway, since both are potentially hazardous?

Related Stories:
· The NYT Visits Germany's "Singing" Sand Nude Beaches [Jaunted]
· Welcome to the Singing Beach [Manchester.MA.US]

[Photo: conbon]

Tags: Staycations / Staycation Travel / Travel Media / Trends / → All Tags

Travel Writers Desperate for New Buzzwords as Staycation Meme Rages

Back in March, we marveled at the sudden ubiquity of the term staycation in the travel media, charting the trajectory from its 2003 birth in the pages of the Myrtle Beach Sun-News to a staggering 242 mentions in newspapers and websites that month. At the time, I assumed that the market was saturated with staycation stories and they'd soon begin to peter out, but I was dead wrong. Google News has 1,078 mentions of the grating portmanteau for the month of May, more than four times the number for March.

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Tags: What We're Reading / In-Flight Magazines / Magazines / Travel Media / Airlines / United / Delta / → All Tags

Hemispheres Sticks to the Classics, Sky Gets Busy

Airlines have cut out just about every perk imaginable, but for now, you'll still find an in-flight magazine in the seat pocket in front of you, tucked between the barf bag and SkyMall catalog. As a service to those readers who choose airlines based on the quality of their in-flight magazines, Jaunted is publishing a series that takes a look at the flagship magazines from airlines big and small. In the fourth installment, Victor Ozols notices a sharp difference in style between United's Hemispheres and Delta's Sky.

I've recently had the good fortune to get my hands on the April, 2009 issues of both United's Hemispheres magazine and Delta's Sky magazine, and a casual comparison reveals some sharp differences in editorial philosophy. One represents a traditional approach to in-flight reading, while the other seems determined to provide a digital experience in a paper format.

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Tags: Surf Schools / Surfing / Travel Media / → All Tags

Can 'Anyone' Really Learn to Surf?

Dream a little dream for us: In this weekend's New York Times travel section, rock'n'roll saves an industrial casualty, the Rat Pack lives and anyone can surf. Hey, it's nice to escape every once in a while, but why not stick to places that exist beyond the pages of the Gray Lady?

We're not saying the writers involved didn't do their due diligence in finding a silver lining to every cloud. Detroit's music scene as chronicled by Micheline Maynard presents as one very much alive, albeit through the IV of bored teenagers and repeated shocks administered by the Pussycat Dolls.

Atlantic City may yet rise above the ashes to become a rival to Vegas, although the existence of Amtrak's service alone doesn't have much to do with it, nor is Steven Kurutz's review of same particularly inspired. ("I sat behind two mustached men"; good for you!)

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Tags: Staycations / Staycation Travel / Travel Media / Trends / → All Tags

Staycation Story Trend Saves Travel Journalism

There's nothing like a funny-sounding buzzword to launch a library's worth of stories in the travel media. Such is the case with staycation, a portmanteau that describes a vacation spent at or close to one's home, exploring local attractions and festivals. Just about every major media outlet has made the staycation a central theme of their recession 2008-2009 travel coverage, providing a treasure trove of previously-covered story ideas that need only to be repackaged and repurposed for a local audience ("Staycation in Cleveland," "Staycation in Schenectady," etc.). I don't doubt the staycation trend is real, but I find it funny just how much the term seems to have stimulated coverage of a phenomena that probably goes back to the Great Depression and beyond, namely, when people have less money, they cut back on leisure travel.

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Hey Look, There's a New Travel Site Called Jaunt ... Wait, WTF?

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so maybe we here at Jaunted, a website about travel, should be thrilled that former Google employee Dorothy McGivney has given the name Jauntsetter to her own website about travel. Hey, it's not the same exact word, it just takes the root of our name and adds a different ending. In fact, when she thought of her site's name, she probably didn't even know we existed, because if you're launching a travel site, the last thing you would want to do is look at the travel sites that are already out there. Totally cool, right?

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Tags: Pub Travel / Drinking / Utah Tourism / Travel Media / → All Tags

Drinking in Utah: It Can Be Done

Did you know you can drink in Utah? The Beehive State has a puritanical reputation due to its majority of Mormons, who don't smoke, drink or Starbucks it up, but that doesn't stop you from drinking. And as this weekend's New York Times travel section points out, a little resistance can mean better beer from the state microbreweries.

Writer Vanessa Chang visited several brew pubs, defined by Utah law as a place where beers produced on site are served, and discovered that yes, Utahns do drink beer. Other options for drinking include taverns, which can sell any beer under 4 percent alcohol by volume, restaurants, where beer drinkers must also buy food, or "private clubs" which charge a membership fee to enter their full bars.

The Times recommends Uinta Brewery (1722 S. Fremont Dr. in Salt Lake City) and Wasatch Brew Pub (250 Main Street in tony Park City) for their delicious eats and local brews. So where's your favorite place to drink in Utah?

Related Stories:
· Brew Pubs Gain A Foothold In Utah [NYTimes]
· UT Liquor Laws Explained [Utah Beer]
· Drinking coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: toprankblog]

Tags: What We're Reading / In-Flight Magazines / Magazines / Travel Media / Airlines / Continental / → All Tags

In-Flight Magazine Extravaganza, Part III: A Double Dose of Continental

Airlines have cut out just about every perk imaginable, but for now, you'll still find an in-flight magazine in the seat pocket in front of you, tucked between the barf bag, emergency procedures card, and SkyMall catalog. As a service to those readers who choose airlines based on the quality of their in-flight magazines, Jaunted is publishing a multi-part series that takes a look at the flagship magazines from airlines big and small. In the third installment, Victor Ozols pores over the December, 2008 and January, 2009 issues of Continental, the in-flight magazine of Continental Airlines.

We flew Continental round-trip to Phoenix from Newark over the holidays, and were rewarded with not one but two issues of their surprisingly high-quality in-flight magazine, which is cleverly titled Continental. I didn't expect too much when I pulled out the December issue (left), with its "Hurricane Fighters" cover. Hey, I'm not saying Houston Mayor Bill White and Judge Ed Emmett aren't sexy as hell, but the cover didn't really "pop," to use the lingo of the graphic designers I know. But once I started thumbing through it, I quickly came to the conclusion that Continental could almost be a "real" travel magazine, escaping the confines of the seat pocket and crawling to the racks at Barnes & Noble under its own power.

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Tags: The Jauntys / 2008 Travel Awards / Travel News / Travel Media / → All Tags

2008's Worst Travel Media Moment Is...

As many travel publications revamped their web offerings--and a certain couple of sites were acquired by a media conglomerate--one travel media titan fell off the RSS readers of many of its fans, if the enormous commenter backlash is to be believed.

The Gridskipper gutting took pretty much everyone by surprise. When we first reported on it, we didn't editorialize, seeing as how we didn't know the inner workings of the competition for whom we have nothing but respect. But what we are sure of is that in the wake of the site's relaunch, we managed to pick up some great travel blog talent in Victor Ozols while alums Neal Ungerleider and Hunter Walker also wrote us some great stories.

At least G'skip was spared a smackdown from Arthur Frommer.

Related Stories:
· Refereeing the Travel Media: Gridskipper Not Keeping Too Many Fans [Jaunted]
· Jaunted Makes Arthur Frommer Burn His Guidebook [Jaunted]
· Three Is a Trend: Travel Media Pro-am [Jaunted]
· Peter Greenberg Loved Thomas Kohnstamm's Book [Jaunted]
· Travel Media coverage [Jaunted]