Open house cooking offers tourists local homemade food and friendly chat
Eating is traditionally a social experience, something recognized by the UK’s Casserole scheme, which connects elderly people with leftover meals cooked by their neighbors. Now EatWith aims to link up travelers in need of food with residents willing to meet new people. READ MORE…
Tourist suggestions crowdsourced from social media trends in real time
Netherlands-based WaarSchijntdeZonWel.nl has already provided a way for tourists to book last minute holidays based on the current weather. Now another Dutch platform – Suggestme – is doing the same for travelers looking for destinations that are popular on social media at the time and enables users to compile their own custom guide. READ MORE…
Airline introduces world’s first ‘pay-by-weight’ customer charge
Air travel is ripe for world firsts – take Virgin Atlantic‘s in-flight art gallery for example. In a slightly more controversial move, Samoa Air is now claiming to be the first airline in the world to charge passengers based on their own weight, as well as their luggage. READ MORE…
Rented smartphones for tourists offer free international calls and unlimited internet access
Tourists who don’t travel abroad often can sometimes face steep price increases for making phone calls and texts if their tariff doesn’t include international minutes and roaming charges come into effect. Bearing this in mind, Hong Kong-based handy is leasing smartphones out to visitors, pre-loaded with free calls, 3G internet access and apps to help them navigate their destination. READ MORE…
During presidential inauguration, hotel offers social media butler
Capturing a trip is an important part of the experience for most travelers, something that the Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel picked up on with its instant Facebook update booths. In conjunction with the presidential inauguration earlier this week, The Madison Washington DC offered its Inaugural Town and Country package, which included a social media expert to document guests’ stays and keep their online profiles updated. READ MORE…
Modular caravan expands for more spacious living quarters
Domestic vacations can be a frugal way to take a break, but the image many people have of spending a week in a cramped caravan can be unappealing. Aiming to change that, the Romotow is a flexible and stylish mobile living quarters that can expand to create more space. READ MORE…
Limited edition tour guides feature helpful locals’ phone numbers
As we saw with Nectar & Pulse and Plus One Berlin, innovations in the tourism sector are increasingly looking to connect travelers with locals in order to provide a more personalized experience. In a similar vein, For You The Traveller is a limited edition printed brochure written by one local per country, which also provides that person’s phone number. READ MORE…
Package holiday-style all inclusive booking for festivals
Many people like the idea of seeing their favorite bands at a festival but aren’t too keen on the hassle of organizing the trip. We’ve already seen startups such as Very help take the stress out of slumming it in a field with one-hour deliveries of fresh clothes, and now Festicket aims to do for festivals what package tours have done for holidays abroad. READ MORE…
Fingerprint recognition allows automatic Facebook updates for hotel guests
We’ve already featured the Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel on these pages before thanks to its biometric payment system. Using the same technology, the hotel is now set to feature similar technology that recognizes guests’ fingerprints and automatically updates their Facebook profiles. READ MORE…
Luxury travel curated by cultural tastemakers
Holiday recommendations from online review sites or travel agents may be enough for some, but we’ve recently seen that there are many travelers out there who demand more bespoke and unique suggestions. We’ve already seen Australia-based Nectar & Pulse offer tourist ‘soulmates’ to suggest destinations and activities abroad, and now Valet aims to appeal to the discerning traveler by getting city insiders to handpick its programs. READ MORE…
