REPOST: Finding Your Travel Tribe

This article from the New York Times shares how and where you can find the perfect travel tribe for you.

Image Source: nytimes.com

When searching for a hotel or restaurant, you don’t want everybody’s opinion. You want opinions from people who share your taste and travel goals. But how to cherry-pick those travelers from the multitudes of citizen-critics on sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Hotels.com?

To find your travel tribe you’ve got to know something about the people who use the sites (which is different from filtering a search for, say, a spacious hotel room or a swim-up bar). Who’s writing the reviews on Yelp? Do they differ from users of a hotel booking site like Travelocity? Or maybe you would prefer a site that aggregates reviews from professional travel writers instead?

It’s not that one site is necessarily better than another; it’s that one is better for you. Below is a guide to help you find it. But first, a note about review sites:

As experienced users know, some reviews are fake and yes, the sites try to police that. What many travelers don’t realize, however, is that even if fake reviews are discovered and removed, they can still upend the ratings. That’s because online reviewers are susceptible to all sorts of biases including one that Sinan Aral, a professor of management and an associate professor of information technology and marketing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, has referred to as “social influence bias.” Seeing other people’s positive reviews in turn makes us more likely to write a positive review — or at least one that’s more positive than we might have otherwise intended. That bias “snowballs into disproportionately high scores,” Professor Aral wrote in December in the MIT Sloan Management Review. (Users can also be influenced by negative reviews, he noted, but the effect is mitigated because people are even more likely to “correct” any “undeserved negative score.”) So bear in mind that hotels and restaurants, like furniture and dinner dates, can look better online than in person — even when they are reviewed by fellow travelers.

YELP Users of this local recommendation site “tend to be younger, female, affluent and educated,” according to Nielsen. The reviews are written by people who, as Yelp itself has put it, are technologically savvy, “active travelers, foodies and trendsetters.” When compared with the general Internet population, Yelp attracts more people who earn $60,000 to $100,000 or more a year, according to Alexa, the analytics company owned by Amazon.com. The same also happens to be true of TripAdvisor (listed below). Yet relative to the general Internet population, Yelp attracts more people who went to college or had “some college” experience, according to Alexa. More often than not I agree with Yelp reviews. Take a recent afternoon in Philadelphia. Craving a Mexican snack yet deterred by unenthusiastic restaurant reviews, I ended up in the Italian market area in Bella Vista where inside the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Tortilleria San Roman, Yelpers advised picking up “dirt-cheap” hot tortillas, fried chips and, as one reviewer put it, “mean fresh green salsa.” Delicious — and I got to stroll through the market.

TRIPADVISOR The volume of reviews here is hard to beat. Actually, it’s overwhelming. Earlier this year the company said it collects more than 90 user contributions a minute. You can filter your search results for hotels that are romantic, trendy or luxurious. Or narrow your search by amenities, including properties that have a bar or lounge, permit pets or offer free Internet access. But such options are ubiquitous these days, and they don’t get at nuances in service or atmosphere. When it comes to finding your tribe, the most useful filters on TripAdvisor are the ones that appear after you click on a hotel. Once you do that you’re able to choose whether you want to see reviews for families, couples, solo travelers or business travelers. For instance, after selecting a hotel in Miami I clicked “solo” and was then able to sift through only those reviews by fellow solo travelers.

ONLINE TRAVEL AGENCIES Many booking sites, including Orbitz and Expedia, have similar demographics relative to the general Internet population. For instance, they attract more women and users ages 45 to 54 as well as 65 and older, according to Alexa. The sites are visually cluttered, which is why I don’t spend much time on them. But if you don’t mind that, there are upsides. You can narrow reviews by traveler type (such as “friends,” “singles” or “L.G.B.T.” on Orbitz). You can also filter them so that you see only the reviews by travelers who booked or stayed at one of the hotels on the site. That makes it more difficult for someone with an agenda to leave a bogus review. Proof-of-stay is not required to post a review to a site such as TripAdvisor.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW SITES If you would rather not have citizen travelers guide you, you may want to check out a review site that deploys its own critics. Oyster­.com, acquired last year by TripAdvisor, is one. If you appreciate what popular guidebook and magazine critics have to say, however, try the newcomer TripExpert­.com, which debuted this summer. TripExpert scores hotels from 60 to 100 based on expert reviews in places including travel guides, magazines and newspapers. (Well, almost. The site includes reviews from the boutique and luxury hotel site Tablet, which are written by guests, not travel professionals.) The score also takes into account travel industry awards that the hotel may have won. Hotels appear on the site only if they have been endorsed by multiple “experts.” The site is clean and self-explanatory: Click on a hotel and you see its reviews. For instance, the Hotel Majestic Roma in Italy has eight reviews from Michelin Guide, Fodor's, Frommer’s, Rough Guide, DK Eyewitness, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure and Tablet. The hotel’s score is 79, which means it’s considered “very good” (80 to 90 is “excellent”; 90 to 100 is “best in class”). It’s like Kayak for hotel reviews. And since hotels cannot get on the site without already having a few reviews in high-profile places, you don’t have to weed through a lot of duds.


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Getting started on your travel writing career

Image Source: lonelyplanet.com

When people find out what I do for a living, the first thing they ask me is how I became a travel writer. The truth of the matter is, it was just something that happened. I’ve always loved to travel and to write, and it seemed like the most natural thing to combine both passions into something that provided me a fairly stable income. Still, for aspiring travel writers out there, there are certain steps that you can follow to propel your career forward. I’ve listed some of them down.

Image Source: biancamarieta.com

Build a writing portfolio: Forgive me for stating the obvious, but being a writer means you have produced a good (if not readable) body of work. And nowadays, many new (and even seasoned) writers turn to the Internet to host all their stories and articles. Most travel writers start an online blog, too, to grow further their portfolio.


There are many different (and free) sites that you can use. And some sites come with templates specifically for travel. I suggest researching on which ones to use. Try several of them and find the one that best suits your writing style. Most of the websites have a "paid" option which will afford you wider access to templates and features.

Image Source: cros.land


Find a niche: One thing I’ve learned in my writing career is that to be successful, you have to be the best, the first, or the most unique. Given the growing number of travel writers out there, you can scratch out being the first; but you can still be the best one or the most unique. Separate yourself from the rest by the way you write or by visiting places not normally ventured out.


The most important advice, however, is to just travel! Most of the time, I hear people talking about how much they want to be a travel writer, but they are frozen by their fear of the rules of language. Writing and grammar can be learned (and re-learned) in time. You may have such a strong grasp on your sentence structure, but if you have nothing interesting to write about, it just doesn’t make any sense. So I say, go out, explore, and then write.



 My name is Louis Habash and I travel to live and write to make a living. Journey with me on Twitter and let’s explore all the wonderful places to journey to and read about.

REPOST: Want a raise? Try taking a vacation

 This article from Today.com talks about how taking vacations actually increases the chances for Americans to get ahead at work.

Image Source: today.com

As summer comes to a close, many Americans find themselves lamenting the vacations they didn't take.

Whether it's due to stress over the work that will pile up while they're gone, or concerns that their employer will realize that the company can get by without them, the U.S. Travel Association said last week that 40 percent of Americans don't use all of their vacation days.

But what if taking time off actually helped you get ahead at work?

According to internal research by audit firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young), employees who use more vacation days end up with better performance reviews.

"In the U.S. and Canada ... for each 10 vacation hours a person took, we found on average that performance reviews were 8 percent higher," said Maryella Gockel, flexibility strategy leader at EY.

Vacation also helped slow down employee turnover, with every 40 hours of free time extending employees' stay at the company by eight months, Gockel said.

Anne Weisberg, senior vice president at the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit that examines the "work-life fit," said that while people know there is a correlation between taking time off and better work performance, there is little research into the connection.

"We all know this intuitively, that we are not performing at our best when exhausted," she said. "Taking a break can bring you back and increase your performance. People on some level understand that. The question is what is the tone being set by the team leader?”

Although it can be difficult to measure the correlation between taking time off and performance, Ken Matos, senior director of research at the Families and Work Institute, cited some findings that parallel the results discovered by EY.

A study published in 2001 by Psychology & Health found that among blue-collar workers at an industrial plant in Israel, levels of absenteeism in workers fell for four weeks following a vacation.

"From a practical standpoint, absenteeism represents a significant cost and source of disruption to the organization," the report concluded. "To decrease absenteeism, the organization should try to regulate vacations according to stressful periods."

Gockel, a 34-year EY veteran who describes herself as "a recovering accountant," and who knows the pressures of high-performance environments where employee time is billed by the hour, said she thinks the spread of always-on technologies has made it more challenging to make good decisions about work and time off.

"[Technology] enables us to do crazy things we weren't able to do 20 years ago," she said. "We have to figure out ways to manage this new way of working."

EY attempts to combat this always-on culture by sending messages encouraging vacations, and operating a resource center that helps people think about what vacations they can take, and how to find good travel deals.

The firm also encourages a culture of delegation, which has another positive effect for workers and the firm.

"When you delegate to others, other people grow while you are gone," Gockel said. "Vacations can be a very important opportunity for others on the team."

Follow Louis Habash on Twitter to know more about the many benefits of going on vacation and traveling.

REPOST: Grenada vs Granada and other flight destination mix ups

 A report by Frances Cha of CNN.com shares (surprisingly) numerous airport mix-ups that will make you face-palm. 

Who wouldn't want to go to Grenada in the Caribbean? Those trying to get to Granada, Spain. | Image Source: CNN.com

You'd think with all the technology at our disposal, destination mix-ups would be a rarity.

Not so.

They're surprisingly common.

One that's attracted attention this week is the unfortunate story of a couple flown to the southern Caribbean island of Grenada, instead of the ancient city of Granada, Spain.

The incident is now the subject of a lawsuit.

U.S. dentist Edward Gamson thought he'd bought tickets from London's Gatwick Airport to Granada, Spain, for himself and his partner via a British Airways booking agent, but only realized he was actually headed to Grenada in the Caribbean once on board, reported The Independent.

The destination country and flight duration hadn't been listed on his e-tickets, which instead displayed only the city name.

"It's just so sad," Gamson told The Independent. "A trip we had been really looking forward to was ruined and ... BA won't do the decent thing."

Gamson claims the airline refuses to reimburse his first-class tickets and didn't reroute the travelers to Granada from Grenada.

Gamson is now suing British Airways for the cost of the trip, including planned tours in Spain that he and his partner didn't get to take.

A spokesperson for BA told CNN the company doesn't comment on matters of litigation.

Grenada, Granada

British Airways made the Grenada/Granada mix-up twice in two weeks. | Image Source: CNN.com

Remarkably, the same mix-up happened just the week before.

Lamenda Kingdon from Plymouth, UK, had also booked a British Airways flight to Granada, Spain, but found herself on a flight bound for Grenada in the Caribbean.

She'd planned the trip after being diagnosed with cancer.

When notified of the mistake, the BA crew moved Kingdon to first class and sent her back to Gatwick when the flight made a scheduled stop in St. Lucia, reported the Daily Mail.

"I genuinely don't blame anyone," she told the Daily Mail. "The person on the other end of the phone probably just misheard me. I honestly didn't notice the spelling difference."


Wrong continent

In May 2013, Sandy Valdivieso and her husband, Triet Vo, boarded a Turkish Airlines flight in Los Angeles, intending to travel to Dakar, Senegal, in western Africa, but ended up in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The mix-up was due to the similar sounding destinations and airport codes.

The couple didn't realize the error until they were already on their connecting flight from Istanbul.
"When the flight attendant said we were heading to Dhaka, we believed that this was how you pronounced 'Dakar' with a Turkish accent," Valdivieso told the LA Times.

Wrong state

Southwest Airlines flew the same woman to wrong destinations twice. | Image Source: CNN.com

In December 2013, 85-year-old Maria Nieves ended up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after she'd booked a Southwest Airlines flight to Fort Myers, Florida.

It was the second time such a mix-up had happened to her -- two years ago, the airline flew Nieves to Tampa, Florida, instead of New Orleans, Louisiana.

According to Louisiana's WAFB, Nieves had requested wheelchair assistance, which meant airline staff were responsible for assisting her from gate to gate.

"I can see it happening once, but twice to the same person, it's kind of like lightning striking twice in the same place," her son Robert Ortiz told WAFB.

Wrong airport

A VietJet Air flight landed at the wrong airport last week. | Image Source: CNN.com

Last Thursday, a VietJet Air plane that took off from Hanoi landed at the wrong airport.

Instead of arriving in Cam Ranh Airport near Nha Trang, the aircraft landed 140 kilometers away in Da Lat.

The airline flew the misdirected passengers to their original destination via another flight, reported local news outlet Thanh Nien News.

In January, another Southwest Airlines plane landed at a small airport in Taney County, Missouri, approximately seven miles from where it was meant to land at Branson Airport.

Due to the difference in airport runway lengths -- Taney County airport's runway is 3,738 feet compared with Branson Airport's 7,140 feet -- pilots were forced to brake hard when the plane touched down.

No one was hurt and the airline refunded all tickets and provided future travel credit for passengers.

Want to read more interesting travel stories? Follow this Louis Habash blog site  for more amusing tales.

REPOST: Why I am Travelling Light this Summer

Candace Davis of huffingtonpost.com tells us the benefits of packing light and how to successfully pull it off.

Image Source: blog.laterooms.com

Everyone thought I was either brave or crazy, maybe both, when I decided to travel through Europe this summer with a 25 L backpack weighing only 6 kg, but it was one of the best decisions I made and here's why:

Image Source: honolulumagazine.com

1. Stairs, stairs and more stairs. If you've ever travelled through Europe you'll know that there are often several flights of stairs to climb if you ever want to get, well anywhere.
2. Summer time. It's pretty easy to travel light when you're visiting a warm climate. I packed two dresses, three pairs of pants, four shirts, and a pair of pyjamas, plus my laptop, book, and toiletries.
3. Ease of movement. When you're travelling on your own, or with a tour group (I've done both on this trip) you often have to be really quick on your feet--running for the last train, rushing to get through a crowded square, beating the crowd through customs or getting out of a potentially sticky situation. Ease of movement is important when you're an independent traveller... you don't have anyone else you can count on.
4. Save money. When you don't have much space to put stuff, you can't really buy it. I have seen a few things that I would have otherwise bought but I couldn't due to limited space. Rather than seeing it as a missed opportunity, I just avoid the shopping areas altogether and check out everything else the city has to offer... especially by way of food.
5. Reduced waiting times. Goodbye waiting at the baggage carousel, wondering if your bag has made it half way across the world. I just take my bag as carry-on and hop straight off my flight and make my way through customs.

Tips for travelling light 

It's not always going to be easy to travel light, and you will have to repack your bag at least every couple of days to make room for everything, but here are some tips to make things easier:

Image Source: cbsnews.com

• Roll up your clothes, you'll be surprised how much space you will save.
• Remember to only take toiletries less than 100 ml for all international flights (this also significantly reduces the weight of your pack).
• Put the things you will use the least at the bottom of your bag. It took me about a week to remember to put my toiletries and pyjamas at the top of the bag for easy access.
• Pack things you're willing to leave behind. I am willing to leave behind all of the clothes I packed if I find something better to replace them with. This also helps refresh your wardrobe, as wearing the same few outfits for weeks on end can get a little tiresome.
• Check the carry-on weight limit of your airline. I had some flights with 10 kg limits, but some were only 7 kg so I had to stick to the lower limit or risk paying for it, literally.
• Check the banned substances list--no batteries, toiletries over 100 ml, tweezers, nail files, razors, etc. can be in your carry-on.
• Hand wash your clothes. Unfortunately a lot of European hotels don't really support washing in the hand basin but I highly recommend finding a way. If I am staying somewhere for more than one night I will get the hand soap or travel wash out and give my clothes a quick wash. It saves time and money at the laundromat and if you only have a few outfits, you will be washing every couple of days.
• Re-wear your clothes. Okay, this one is a little trickier when you've had a big day on the town sweating your little armpits out, but you can quite easily wear your pants at least twice. This also saves on hand washing.

Visit this Louis Habash Facebook page to get more traveling tips.

Traveling dirt-cheap

Image Source: frugaltravelguy.com

When I stepped outside at 5:45 am to jog yesterday, my nextdoor neighbors, Mike and Lyn, joined me. They started talking about their vacation home in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, which of course awoke my yet sleepy senses. At this time of year, as city life becomes hotter and smellier, a beach getaway in Brazil would be perfect. More so now that Brazil is becoming increasingly popular as a travel destination. However, the expensive airfare and the high prices in the country are a bummer for me. As a frequent traveler, I’d like my beach destination to be as cheap as it is memorable.

That is why I ended up choosing a beach haven closer to home, as picturesque as Brazil but more affordable: Dunedin, Florida. Dunedin beaches boast green-blue waters and pristine white powder-like sand. They also host virgin forests for the hikers and the adventurers. My obsession is Caladesi Island State Park, home to one of the most undisturbed barrier islands in Florida. With a little maneuvering of my cost-cutting skills and whatnots, I secured this beach travel for a steal … A prudent decision, I should say.

Image Source: isitdunedinfl.com

For those who are on the lookout for vacation cost cutting advice this summer, The New York Times has a helpful compilation for you. Mind you, I do and swear by most of them, with numbers five and nine as my favorite hacks.

Cutting costs on the process of searching, booking, and traveling involve craft and skill, mastered by seasoned travel writers. That’s the essence of what I do.

Image Source: expertbusinessadvice.com

For more travel tips and related topics, visit Louis Habash’s Facebook page.

REPOST: The world’s most ethical countries: 2014

This article from BBC.com shares some of the most ethical countries around the world. Interested to know? Read more:

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What makes the Bahamas a more ethical vacation choice than Costa Rica?

That’s the crux of a recent survey about ethical travel, a movement that encourages travellers to be mindful about the impact of bringing tourism dollars to one country over another. To encourage responsible globetrotting, a California nonprofit Ethical Traveler has been regularly compiling a list of its top 10 ethical destinations since 2006. The surprise: 2014’s list, which came out in late 2013, has three new contenders: the Bahamas, Chile and Dominica. So what are they doing right that Costa Rica, Ghana and Samoa (which fell off the list from 2013) didn’t do enough of?

The answer lies in the way Ethical Traveler evaluates countries for its top 10 list.

• Related article: Which countries deserve your money?

In addition to more standard criteria like unspoiled natural beauty and authentic cultural experiences, researchers judged destinations on 35 metrics in four categories: environment protection, social welfare, human rights, and for the first time, animal welfare. In other words, judges considered quality of drinking water in the category of environmental protection, women’s rights in the category of human rights, and so on.

The Bahamas won its way onto the list by making efforts to reduce human trafficking and expand national parks and protected areas, such as theAndros West Side National Park, which grew from 882,000 acres to nearly 1.3 million acres. Chile improved its gender equality scores and launched a few ambitious environmental initiatives – including a program to move logging workers into various tourism roles. And a plan to become carbon negative – that is, minimize and offset carbon emissions – by 2020 helped Dominica make the cut.

The complete list for 2014 (in alphabetical order) includes the Bahamas, Barbados, Cape Verde, Chile, Dominica, Latvia, Lithuania, Mauritius, Palau and Uruguay. Ethical Traveler does not rank the countries within the top 10.

Travellers can “vote with their wings”, said Jeff Greenwald, Ethical Traveler’s founder and executive director. “We feel that we can make a difference in those countries because they really want to try to do the right thing. If we can send more travellers there because of their good policies, we think they’ll really stand up and take notice.”

Three countries that fell off the list from 2013 – Costa Rica, Ghana and Samoa – slid backward on key metrics such as environmental protection and human rights violations, said Michael McColl, Ethical Traveler’s co-founder and director of communications.

Costa Rica, for example, is a major hub for human trafficking and its government allows persecution of activists working against illegal shark finning and sea turtle trades, McColl said. Ghana dropped from last year’s list due to discrimination against same-sex couples (same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Ghana, and there is no legal recognition of same-sex couples. Ghanaian law also does not protect people fromdiscrimination based on sexual orientation.) And Samoa fell from the top 10 due to unsustainable logging, failure to guarantee LGBT rights and poor women’s rights. Nonetheless, these countries still received high marks overall, and are still among the more ethical countries a traveller can visit.

“You want to put your money where your beliefs are,” Greenwald says. “Everyone loves the thought of travelling to Thailand or Cambodia or Burma, [but these places] don’t really have great human rights records. Why not use your travel dollars to show your support and solidarity for countries that are struggling to have good government and attract travellers? Why not reward them? It could create a groundswell of economic incentive for countries to do the right thing.”

For ethical properties and tours within a country, the site Green Travel Reviews evaluates environmentally and socially conscious properties likeRosalie Bay, the only Green Globe-certified resort in Dominica which has won accolades for its wind- and solar-powered energy, including more than 200 solar panels; locally- and organically-sourced food; and protected black sand beach where endangered sea turtles nest. In Costa Rica, Casa Corcovado Jungle Lodge is one of the few eco-resorts to earn a five-Leaf rating from Costa Rica’s Certification for Sustainable Tourism for its pristine 170-acre nature preserve as well as a number of eco-initiatives including a solar electric system, hydroelectric turbine and a hybrid solar convection system for heating water.

"I believe that we, as a tourism entity, have a responsibility to the travelling public and the beautiful destination we represent to use natural resources in a way that protects the local environment and improves the well-being of its residents,” said Rosalie Bay owner Beverly Deikel.

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Hi, Louis Habash here! I love traveling and going to place where I've never been to. Join me in my travels by following me on Facebook.