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:

***

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.

***

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.

REPOST: 7 Travel Rules You Should Definitely Ignore

This HuffingtonPost.com article tells us that it's ok to break the rules sometimes, well at least in traveling.

You don't have to listen to everything your mother tells you.

As millennials, we've decided that some travel rules are more than okay to ditch.

"Know before you go." 
Detailing an itinerary before your trip is so last decade. The "must-sees" on travel sites or in guidebooks often turn out to be jam-packed with tourists, and they rob you of an opportunities to see through a local's eyes. Sketch a general outline of activities if you must, but stay open to scouting little-known gems once you're there and taking recommendations from people you meet.

"Take lots of pictures." 
Instagram has shifted our mindset from "I'm going to take a picture, because I'm having so much fun" to "I'm going to take a picture, because my friends will think I had so much fun." A trip, of all places, is where you should practice living in the moment. Go without the camera.

"Don't talk to strangers." 
While avoiding the obvious risks, try striking up a chat with any locals you come across. They've seen everything there is to see--so when they say they know of the best noodle house or cheapest ferry, you can bet they're right.

"Pack light." 
Those who can fit four weeks of clothes into their carry-on deserve a trophy, it's true. But aside from being painfully heavy to drag through an airport, squashing all your stuff together in a duffel leaves no room for extra items (like the forgotten parka you'll have to buy at your destination) nor souvenirs (like the vase that'd be perfect for your kitchen, if only you had room to bring it back). Quite a few airlines will check your first bag for free... put your pride aside and take them up on it.

"Cross it off your bucket list."
The danger with bucket lists is they can make traveling seem like a chore. Go where you want when you want, and do what you want while you're there. Traveling is supposed to make you happy-- not proud that you checked off a list written decades ago.

"Bring a good beach read."
Society has officially moved past chick lit and into deeper intellectual realms. Use your lounge hours to dig into a meaty newspaper -- the Kindle edition won't blow around in the wind -- or listen to Podcasts on a topic you've always wondered about. If you manage to learn something during your downtime, you'll return home feeling pleasantly accomplished.

"Use the buddy system."
 Ok yes, there are circumstances in which traveling with another person is crucial to safety. But the buddy system fails as an all-encompassing rule... sometimes, places are better experienced alone. The best travelers are those who know these places when they see one, then summon the courage to fly solo.


Louis Habash writes articles on the places that he has visited. Read more articles related to traveling  by visiting this blog site.

REPOST: Planning a Trip: Guidebook Versus the Web

Are guidebooks still reliable just like the old times? This article by Seth Kugel that compares guidebooks and information from the World Wide Web is something that travelers must read.

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I recently asked my friend Doug if he still uses guidebooks to plan his trips abroad. He’s a smart guy and a veteran traveler, so I figured he would have a thoughtful reason one way or the other. He did not.

“I probably don’t use guidebooks because I’ve essentially forgotten they exist,” he said.

I’m guessing Doug is not alone. Sales of international travel guides in the United States are down 42 percent since 2006, according to the Nielsen BookScan Travel Publishing Yearbook. As online resources have expanded, I’ll bet lots of people have shifted their travel planning to the web without giving it any thought at all. And I suspect some who still use guidebooks think they’re wasting money for what they could find online free.

But are they? I decided to try an experiment: I would buy a brand-new guidebook, comb through it, then to try to replicate or improve upon what I found in the free but chaotic bounty of the World Wide Web. I bought and read most of the Lonely Planet’s Hungary guide (which I chose because Lonely Planet is popular among Frugal Traveler readers and I know nothing about Hungary) and then got to work.

My first stop was LonelyPlanet.com, where I was somewhat shocked to find most of the content I had just paid $24.99 for was free online: a section on the country’s history, practical information, specifics like airport transport in Budapest, and many more listings for hotels, restaurants and attractions than were in the book. (The site had reviews for 200 restaurants in Budapest while my book had only 48.)

Still, a few things were missing — important things. The dozens of indexed city and town and neighborhood maps were absent. Suggested itineraries were gone. There was no glossary of useful Hungarian phrases. (A spokeswoman for Lonely Planet said some guidebooks had significantly less online.) And, though the site was fine for finding something specific, it was clumsier to browse through and get a feel for the country, especially on a mobile device. The formatting also makes it difficult and time-consuming to copy, paste and print your way to a homemade guidebook.

Still, Lonely Planet’s robust web showing does not apply to all guidebook companies — Rough Guides, for example, offers limited content online. So I also tried an à la carte approach.

For lodging, the obvious first stop was TripAdvisor.com, which replaces a guidebook’s curated list of tightly written reviews with free-for-all user evaluations, only partly controllable by tools that filter and rank results by price, availability, location, type of reviewer (family, solo, people in your Facebook network) and more. Booking.com andHotels.com also depend on customer reviews. Is that a valid substitute? To many, it is. Even if you prefer curated picks, there are free sites like TheHotelGuru.com, with reviews writers contribute themselves or cull from guidebooks and articles. (Of course, as with flights, the most up-to-date information on hotel prices is online.)

For sightseeing information, there were endless options, and I only scratched the surface. I checked Hungary’s official tourist website, Gotohungary.com, which had good if limited ideas, but was lacking practical information like prices. My next stop was Wikivoyage.org, which is run by the Wikimedia Foundation and is the closest thing I found in format to an online guidebook. It had plenty of ideas for Hungary, although the length and quality of descriptions were erratic, the writing was dull and practical information was again scarce.

I also tried the user-generated reviews on Gogobot.com, which allows you to see rankings by people in “tribes” like yours: budget travelers, “trendsters,” “spiritual seekers” and the like. Not bad.

But to me, the site that came closest to replicating a guidebook experience, while still harnessing the power of the Internet, is Stay.com. Sights and activities (and hotels and restaurants) are separated by category, and there are curated guides by the site’s editors, users and local experts (“Family Fun in Budapest,” for example). Best of all, you can click to add any item to your own “city guide”; the result is a personalized itinerary, complete with customized map, that can be downloaded to your cellphone and used without piling up cellular data.

There are so many ways to find restaurants online, I don’t even know where to begin. I already had culled ideas from the sites I’ve mentioned. Next, local resources: with a simple Google search, I found a few compelling sites in English (chew.hu, Best of Budapest,Everythingbudapest.eu), as well as articles published in newspapers like this one.Chowhound’s discussion boards had what sounded like knowledgeable Budapest tips. And I haven’t mentioned the power of Facebook, Twitter, Couchsurfing and online travel forums for getting personalized advice.

It may sound like the web was blowing away my guidebook — but not so fast. Literally: It’s not so fast. Marking up the guidebook took a few hours and came to an obvious end (the last page). But I could have sifted through these sites forever. For some people, that’s fine: it’s been shown that planning a trip actually makes us happier than the trip itself. But choice can be paralyzing. For those who want the deciding done for them, a trusted guidebook brand wins, at least in planning an agenda.

The score was more or less tied in some other areas, like overviews on culture and history, collections of some useful phrases and important cultural mores like tipping. Wikivoyage alone covered most of those.

Still, I found three ways that a guidebook stomps the web almost every time:

First, those curated maps. No site I tried — Google, Michelin, Bing — could match the book’s maps, even after being customized to pinpoint hotels and restaurants and sights. If you do want to print out city or town maps and mark them up yourself, I found Bing Maps to be by far the cleanest-looking and easiest to print. (Use the full-screen feature, take a screen shot and print.)

Second, guidebooks offer information you may never think to look for online. In the Hungary book, I happened on a section about common tourist scams in Budapest, and an article on Budapest’s Jewish population — neither of which I would have thought to look up on my own.

Finally, there’s simple convenience. A guidebook means an extra pound or so in your bag. But it’s all in one place, doesn’t run out of batteries or go out of range or use international data and is unlikely to be ripped out of your hand by a thief. And for infrequent travelers, it doesn’t have a steep learning curve.

If the web is a fully stocked kitchen where an experienced chef given enough time can produce a brilliant meal, guidebooks are an energy bar, packing all the nutrients you need into a handy package that can be tossed into your bag. Of course, there’s one catch: at $25, that’s one expensive energy bar.

***
This is Louis Habash. I love traveling and reading about helpful tips that I can bring when I travel. If you love these too, Follow my Facebook page for updates.

Life lessons from traveling

Image Source: updates.lifehacker.com

Travel has always been part of life. Growing up, I never thought I would be drifting from one place to another because of my love of culture, geography, and tradition.

Yet, looking back at all my adventures (and misadventures), I realized the immense power of travel not only as a way of relaxation but also for learning life’s greatest lessons.

Image Source: vacationcancun.net

After years of being on the road, these ideas hit me:

Change is for everyone. When you feel unhappy, sometimes the answer is change. Traveling around the world is about change—places, cultures, shelters, languages, food and many more. Personally, travel has revealed to me my high standards of happiness. Today, I have learned how to be happy even from the simplest things in life.

People are innately good. In different countries around the world, I have seen and met various people who did not only help me with directions, but also shaped my character down the line. Through my experiences, I have learned not to be overly guarded and judgmental. Sometimes, it just takes time and a little effort to crack the shell of strangers.

Languages are important. Once you start traveling the world, either for a job or for vacation, you will realize that speaking English is not the only passport to success in communication or survival. Having immersed in diverse cultures, I realized that not all streets are responsive to an outsider who never took the time to pick up a word or two in the local tongue.

Image Source: schwartzmsl.com

A journalism graduate of San Francisco State University, Louis Habash now works as a freelance travel writer who dabbles in travel photography and nature tripping. Know more about him by visiting his Youtube channel.