A new proposed rule from the US Department of Labor is taking another look at the status of independent contractors—and making some in the travel agency channel nervous.

It’s the second time in two years the Department of Labor has revisited the way companies define “independent contractor.” Their goal, they say, is to put an end to the misclassification of workers—”a serious issue that denies workers’ rights and protections under federal labor standards, promotes wage theft, allows certain employers to gain an unfair advantage over law-abiding businesses, and hurts the economy at-large. Misclassification denies basic worker protections such as minimum wage and overtime pay and affects a wide range of workers in the home care, janitorial services, trucking, delivery, construction, personal services, and hospitality and restaurant industries, among others.”

On first approach, the most noticeable part of London’s skyline is glass and steel—a modern society reaching for greater heights. As one gets closer, the London Bridge shows off its 700-year transformation from a stone-built medieval structure to concrete and steel. Big Ben (aka. Great Bell) stands tall, counting the 163 years on a clock face since it’s been built. Yet, an even closer look shows a city that keeps its roots close.

As owner of Mangata Travel, Beth Hill was often asked by customers if they could come along on her personal vacations. And she always changed the subject. When covid hit, she started to look at things differently—and a new niche was born.

“Women in particular often would say, ‘please take me with you when you go on vacation, I want to travel with you’—but traveling with customers turns a vacation into work,” Hill says. “But when covid came and I had more time to think, I changed my mindset from ‘traveling with others will be a pain’ to ‘I’m going to bring the world to people who don’t want to travel alone.’ It’s really my personal goal to bring far-flung destinations to women who might never go on their own.”

When Tourism Cares was formed in 2005, it was called Tourism Cares for Tomorrow. Now 17 years later, we find ourselves in that tomorrow. The environmental protection issues the organization was founded to address are no longer concerns for some distant future. They are extremely pressing issues that are right on top of us.

The vision Tourism Cares was founded on looks even better in hindsight than it looked at its inception. It was a mobilization based on the realization of people in the travel industry that environmental degradation, if allowed to go too far, would destroy their businesses.

It was the travel industry stepping up and taking responsibility to protect the environmental and cultural resources it depended on to operate its businesses. In the face of decades of inertia and failure in the public sector to take meaningful action to confront the problems of environmental destruction, it was an industry saying, “If not us, who? And if not now, when?”

When it comes to river and coastal sailing in the United States, American Cruise Lines has been at the top of the game since 1991. Not only have they provided sophisticated cruising for travelers since then, but they have also continued to update their fleet with new ships ready to provide unique scenery on the Mississippi and the Columbia and Snake Rivers. And they’ve done it again, with anticipation for the first voyage of the American Symphony approaching in August.

As part of the modernization of their fleet, American Symphony has taken elements of the ships that cruise the European rivers and brought them to the shores of the United States… particularly the shores of the mighty Mississippi River. The ship carries 175 passengers. Similar to her sibling ship, American Melody, the interior has been updated in design and comfort.

With almost perfect temperatures the whole year, the Canary Islands are a popular getaway for travelers. Particularly Tenerife, the most populous island in the chain. Picturesque sand beaches stretch along the coasts surrounding cloud-covered mountains, and small villages once lost to volcanic explosions have been born anew. A flourishing culture with art, delectable food, and tasty wine… the Tenerife life is rest and relaxation immersed in naturally stunning views with a healthy helping of adventurous views and perfect beaches.

I had to admit to myself that I was a bit nervous about interviewing Laurie McAndish King. As the accomplished writer of An Elephant Ate My Arm: More True Stories from a Curious Traveler, published last year, she’s seen a rise in popularity. This book has won first place in the Paris Book Festival, with individual stories in the collection winning multiple other awards. Her writing voice is clearly her own, a daunting task most writers struggle with on a daily basis. So, yeah, I was clearly nervous that my questions wouldn’t grab her attention. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

From the starting conversation about our video backgrounds, there was a curiosity radiating from the image on the computer. Three minutes in, she’d asked more questions than me. When it naturally came around to a starting point, I launched in with the biggest question first: did you start this collection of stories during the primary part of the pandemic?

Joel Cohen has invested the past 44 years of his life in tourism and is very pleased that the investment has paid dividends.

Joel graduated from Temple University School of Business Administration and attended its Law School, has spoken at many travel industry events including the ASTA World Congress, and has been named to Who’s Who of American Business Leaders.

He is an avid photographer, has self-published a book called Random Photographs from Random Journeys, and has had several exhibitions of his works.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following phrase is used in a number of different areas of our lives, and sales is no exception: STICK TO THE BASICS.

With much of the thanks going to our fast-paced, over-communicated, internet-influenced world, we all have a tendency to try the latest trend or introduce the newest technological advancement to our day-to-day activities.

In sales, this can prove fatal.

I want you to stick to the basics; dance with who “brung-ya”; focus on the little things; do what has always worked; walk before you run. You get the idea.

Why?

If a potential client asks you to recommend a cruise, the worst thing you can do is start rattling off cruise lines and destinations. Unless you know them very well, before you jump in with suggestions, engage them in a conversation in which you weave in the following questions. These will help qualify them as potential cruisers and help you to guide them to the best choices.

Travel advisors know that the key to a successful trip is putting the right customer in the right place, and then matching their expectations to reality. And there’s no place that’s truer than in Alaska.

Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to cruise Alaska three times. But I never saw the vast and wild interior of the forty-ninth state until last week, when my husband and I and a couple of friends set off on our first-ever Globus bus tour to explore the 49th state from the ground. With 37 other curious explorers and one terrific tour director named Kip Wheeler, we drove almost 100 hours on the highways and byways, rode the train to Denali National Park, took a paddle boat to a native village, played with a litter of seven-week-old Iditarod dogs, and watched the sea lions line up for lunch on opening day of pink salmon season.

For hours, as the bus rolled on through the sun and the rain and the detours around washed-out roads, we were immersed in the vast emptiness of Alaska’s forests, mountains, and glaciers. On Day Three alone, we drove 370 miles. We often ate what the locals ate: fried cod and chips, buffalo meatloaf, the inevitable choice of turkey or ham sandwiches.

Do you believe you have the right to travel?

You may have taken it for granted that you are free to travel wherever and whenever you want for whatever reason you wish, but it may not be that simple. Legal reasoning can get very weird and can lead to some surprising places. And then there’s politics.

Dobbs v. Jackson, the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and the right to have an abortion, was based on the idea that the right to an abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” proclaimed Justice Samuel Alito, in the majority opinion. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision…”

This could raise a red flag for some, because the word “travel” is also not mentioned in the Constitution Read the rest of this entry »

Sales is hard enough without voluntarily making it more difficult than it has to be. In today’s message, I am going to share with you four myths usually connected with the selling profession… and what you can do about them.

Myth #1: The belief that selling is simply a number’s game.

This implies that if you do enough “stuff,” call enough people, write enough letters, make enough appointments, send enough postcards, or return enough phone calls you will be rewarded handsomely for your efforts.

I am not disagreeing that if you throw enough marbles into the air, one or two will land in the cup situated ten feet away. There is some interesting data supporting The Law of Numbers.

However, this does not take into consideration Read the rest of this entry »

As the world returns to its new normal, so are things at River Cruise Advisor. The past month has been one of extreme productivity for us. Before the pandemic hit, we were working hard at redesigning our sites. We ran surveys about the industry and about our readers’ unique interests to better keep you in the loop on all things river cruise. Our goal for this site has always been a simple one, to help you make an informed decision before you book your river cruise, be it your first or fifteenth. Read the rest of this entry »

For Collette, the century-old Pawtucket, R.I.-based tour operator, the removal of COVID testing requirements for entering the US was the opening of the floodgates for people to travel again. I spoke to some of the Collette people last week.

“As soon as testing requirements were dropped, we immediately noticed that our phones were ringing off the hook for international travel,” said Amelia Sugerman, senior manager of strategic communications. “Prior to that, 70 percent had been domestic. But when they dropped testing on June 12, in the five days following, the next Monday through Friday, 75 percent of the calls were Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the optimism of the travel trade publications, you only need to look at the stock prices of the major cruise lines to see what’s happening in cruising. Compared to a year ago:

• Carnival stock is down by 61%
• Norwegian is down by 56%
• Royal Caribbean is down by 55%

A drop in stock prices doesn’t reflect past woes. It predicts what analysts think companies will be earning in 3-6 months. Morgan Stanley’s Jamie Rollo outlined a worst-case scenario in which Carnival stock could fall to $0 during a global economic downturn. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s message introduces two reminders that I feel are extremely important. The first one reminds us of the Law of Attraction, while the second reminds us of how to use just three questions to position strangers for future interaction. Let’s look at one at a time.

I remember the day like it was yesterday, when I first found myself attracted to a member of the opposite sex. And it wasn’t my idea.

If my memory serves me correctly, I was around ten years old when I experienced my first “crush.” A very interesting series of events unfolded as soon as I heard that somebody thought I was a cool dude Read the rest of this entry »

Tauck is experiencing a post-lockdown boom that is making Steve Spivak, vice president of global sales, very happy. “We’re seeing such a great resurgence in the type of travel we offer,” he told me, “not just luxury, but truly immersive, bucket list-type travel.”

Tauck has already carried more passengers this year than it did in all of last year. Its booking pace has exceeded that of 2019, the last year before the COVID pandemic. As unprecedented as the lockdown was, the bounce back for Tauck is also creating a novel constellation of market forces. The pent-up demand is across the board for cruise and land products, destinations around the world, and various styles of travel packages. Tauck’s customers are ready to travel, to make up for lost time. And there’s a greater sense than ever that time is limited, and so may be their opportunities to fulfill their lifetime travel dreams Read the rest of this entry »

Britton and her grandmother are cruising the Rhone on Emerald Liberte. They are guests of Emerald Cruisers for the purposes of this review. Britton has been sending updates of her trip as they cruise along. She’ll have a more detailed report when she returns home.

Saturday, June 4, 2022

WELCOME ABOARD

Day one of the journey. How exciting! I have to admit, the airport was not easy. This is a busy time of year, and it is normal to expect delays and cancelations. In fact, some of our fellow passengers didn’t make it to the boat until late in the evening, and some even arrived the following day. Read the rest of this entry »