Posts in the category "Travel tips":

It’s hard to stay up to date on all the changes you might encounter at airports and on airplanes these days.

Cheat sheets come in handy.

In a blog post titled “Expedited airport security: We all want it but how do we get it?,” GateGuru put together a good run-down on how to get qualified to use the TSA’s expedited security lines at airports.

The take-away: you can pay to join some programs; you must qualify for others, but if you get ‘in’ you’ll save some time and hassle at many – but not all – airports.

And in a column “Handy Tips From Those in the Know,” in the New York Times, Joe Sharkey shares some great travel tips from expert travelers.

The take-away: In addition to reminding us to steer clear of the Cinnabons and to always wear clean underwear to the airport because “You never know when you’re going to get strip-searched,” Sharkey includes a travel tip from Christopher Schaberg, whose book “The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight” (Continuum, 2011), is sitting here on my desk. “Pay attention not only to public art in airports, but also to your own place within, no matter how grim or humble a concourse might seem,” said Schaberg. “Think of your time spent in the airport as an art walk of sorts. You are actually part of a giant, living art piece, the architectural matrix and social swirl that we recognize as airport life.”

Sharkey didn’t ask for a travel tip from me, but if he had I would have told him: When you’re stuck at the airport, don’t just sit there, poke around. That’s how I found some wonderful art and history exhibits, my favorite skirt and shops selling everything from used books to locally-crafted treasures. And: don’t forget to look out the window.

Categories: Travel tips
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While websites such as Flights from Hell are filled with stories of devilish and disgusting seatmates, there are plenty of people who have dated and gone on to marry someone they met on a plane.

But what if you’ve spent a cross-country flight successfully flirting with a seatmate whose contact information you neglect to secure as you exit the plane?

A new website hopes to give shy and forgetful fliers another chance.

WeMetOnAPlane.com was created by Will Scully-Power, the co-founder of a marketing analytics company in Sydney, Australia, who met his current girlfriend while flying from Thailand to Malaysia. The lovebirds exchanged email addresses before leaving the airport, but Scully-Power suspected many other travelers skip that step and go home with a “what if?” feeling.

He was right.

“After analyzing Google’s search data, we found over 4,000 people were searching daily for someone they’d met on a plane. Yet there was no website or service availability to help facilitate a reconnection,” said Scully-Power.

In the name of love, Scully-Power launched his website in early January and began gathering stories.

Travelers seeking to reconnect with a seatmate can either post their story and hope that the cute seatmate spots it, or search the site for a seatmate’s story using a flight number, year, month, date, origin or destination. If a reply is posted, the site sends out an alert. There’s also an option to spread the word using Facebook and Twitter.

So far, only about a dozen stories have been posted and no romantic reconnects have been made. But Scully-Power notes that the site is young and still in the beginning phase.

He said the next iteration will have more social media features and ways for people to connect with one another, as well as iPhone, iPad and Android apps.

And, while love is grand, Scully-Power is also eying ways to marry the pleasure of his site with business.

In addition to mining his database for information that can be used for targeted and behavioral-based marketing, Scully-Power said he’s also seeking an exclusive global airline partner for his site. “Think mystery flights. And flights designed specifically for meeting new people.”

(This first appeared on msnbc.com Travel)

Categories: Dating, Travel tips
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Christopher Schaberg, who’s lovely, brand new book “The Textual Life of Airports” showed up in the mail today, was curious about my post here yesterday about surprising advice I received on Christmas Day from an airline gate agent at Washington’s National Airport.

My husband had gone back out through security to buy a book and was very late getting back to the gate.

I waited and worried. And as the doors for the flight were about to close,  I asked the gate agent about my options. His response: “If ever thought about leaving your husband, this is your chance.”

Schaberg wrote to ask: “So what happened?!?”

I’m happy to report that I didn’t leave my husband behind at the airport.

In a ‘saved by the bell’ moment, he appeared at the gate – shoes in hand – having raced down the concourse after being re-scanned at the security checkpoint.

The gate agent looked a little disappointed, but he winked, ushered us onto the plane and wished us a Merry Christmas.

Have you gotten advice from someone who has seen it all at the airport? Please share your story.

Categories: Security, Travel tips
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The security checkpoint lines at Washington’s Reagan National Airport weren’t terribly long when we began our trip home to Seattle on Christmas Day, so my husband thought he had plenty of time to go back out through security to pick up something to read at the bookstore.

To save time on the way back, he left his carry-on, his coat, his cell phone and buckle-heavy belt with me by the gate.

But as the plane began – and finished – boarding and the gate agent made a ‘last call’ announcement, there was no sign of my husband.

I imagined him blissed-out there among the bestsellers, not paying attention to time. Then I thought perhaps he’d left his boarding pass behind along with his phone.

Irritated and a wee bit concerned (Was he passed out in the terminal? Sick in the bathroom?) I asked the gate agent for some options.

He didn’t skip a beat.

“Well,” he said, “If you were ever considering leaving your husband, this is your chance.”

Categories: Travel tips
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If, like most people, you turn to friends and family to recommend places to go and things to do, then consider this fresh batch of travel tools.

Several new sites and apps such as Trippy, Gogobot, Afar, Gtrot and Flymuch promise to help you plan the perfect trip by tapping into Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and friends or expert sources on other online networks you already trust.

Each product offers its own twist — for example, added editorial content or local coupons and deals — but all are based on information-gathering that goes beyond the crowdsourcing model of sites like TripAdvisor.com and relies instead on friendsourcing, or tapping into advice from your network of friends, as the model.

“When crowdsourcing sites first came out, they were pretty revolutionary,” said Travis Katz, CEO and co-founder of Gogobot.com. “They offered a way for people to get opinions and advice from regular, everyday people, as opposed to an editor. But then the problem was there was too much information. You had to read through a lot of information to figure out what matched your need.”

While much of that content can be helpful, much of it is anonymous. So it can also be untrustworthy. “People have a huge incentive to create fake content that promotes their own business or criticizes a competitor,” said J.R. Johnson, CEO and Founder of Trippy.com. “In a friend-sourced model, your only incentive is to help your friend have an amazing experience in a location you are familiar with and passionate about.”

“For aspirational products, this makes perfect sense. Anything you do for fun is fun to talk about and you like to share great experiences,” said Carroll Rheem, director of research at PhoCusWright Inc., a travel industry research provider. But when it comes to travel, Rheem finds the blend of social networks and crowdsourcing an especially good fit.

“Because travel is so expensive and experiential,” said Rheem. “And because there’s a lot of information gathering and weighing and making decisions, and a need for relevant content.”

But while travel-themed, friendsourcing sites are proliferating, Rheem doesn’t see them replacing the larger, established crowdsourcing sites anytime soon.

“The average person takes one or two trips a year. So unless you happen to have friends who are extremely well-traveled, the feasibility of friendsourcing can only go so far when you think of the entire world of travel. However, these sites can add an extra layer of leverage.”

“Crowdsourcing sites offer breadth,” said travel analyst Henry Harteveldt of the Atmosphere Group. “Friendsourcing offers trust. I could see someone checking a hotel on TripAdvisor and using Gogobot to verify the hotel with friends, while also getting additional ideas for what to do.”

The bottom line is that “friends and family remain the No. 1 source for travel information,” said Donna Quadri-Felitti, a professor at the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management at New York University. “This idea of online friendsourcing is really just harvesting user-generated content that already exists. Everyone is trying to find the way to monetize the new social media platforms and add value to what those sites already do. Some of the sites are there; some, not yet.”

(This story originally appeared on msnbc.com Travel)

Categories: Air Travel, Hotels, Travel tips
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