I’m done with offering the same dry travel advice every year at about this time. Finished!
You’ve seen the tips: book your tickets early, travel on the holiday, spread your legs for the TSA and you’re guaranteed to have a good trip.
But the travel advice you’re likely to read around the holidays is growing mold, and not once in all of my years of offering it to my good readers has anyone written to say “thank you for recycling.”
You deserve better.
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The holidays are high season for scam artists. That’s because consumers like you are at your most vulnerable when you’re seeking gifts for your loved ones. (It’s the most wonderful time of the year, isn’t it?)
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There’s good news and bad news for motorists this holiday season.
America’s roads have never been safer, statistics show. But, depending where you live, they may never be slower.
“The big new trend this year is the construction,” said Carol White, co-author of “Live Your Road Trip Dream.” “With all the TARP funds rolling out on highway projects, last summer was a mess, and I think it is going to continue into the winter months in areas where weather permits.”
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the federal government has spent $27 billion for highway and bridge construction in the last two years.
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… Yosemite National Park in California. That’s according to a new survey by TomTom, which aggregated the average speeds of vehicles traveling through the parks, based on anonymous user-shared data using its navigation devices.
Of the top 10 most visited National Parks, Yosemite and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho have the longest individual traffic jams, with 3.5 and 2.8 miles respectively, it found.
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Everything you’ve heard about Dead Week may be dead wrong.
Dead Week, for those of you who aren’t dyed-in-the-wool bargain hunters, takes place the first week of every year. After the New Year’s holiday, travel falls off the map, figuratively speaking, as occupancy rates and prices plunge to their lowest levels in months.
So why ignore the conventional wisdom and stay home during the first week of the year?
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Ask Suzy Bennett how she’s approaching the 2009 holiday travel season, and she’ll tell you she isn’t.
“We’re staying home,” says Bennett, who works for a water treatment company in Linwood, Kan. “Or we’re driving.”
Why? Like many other travelers, Bennett is tired of the nonexistent customer service that seems to be the standard these days, and which only gets worse as the inevitable crush of passengers descends on every airport, bus station and train terminal between now and New Year’s Day.
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Take your car in for a tuneup. Give yourself extra time if you’re flying. Oh, and it’s going to be one for the record books.
You’ve read that before, haven’t you?
When it comes to the travel tips you see just before every major holiday, you can count on paint-by-numbers reporting: a AAA prediction followed by a sound bite from one of three travel “experts” (always the same three) followed by that familiar advice, dispensed in easy-to-read bullet points.
But which tips are cliches that should be ignored, and which are bona fide, you-must-do-this advice? If you’ve been reading these stories as long as I have, you must be wondering.
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