This month British Airways is introducing their innovative Electronic Bag Tag that will do away with the need for paper luggage tags for each flight. Created in partnership with Designworks UK , the smart tag will allow flyers to update their flight information with a smartphone saving time at check-in. Hopefully, the other airlines will follow suit at adopt the eBag tag too.
Rail travelers will never be short of reading material if they pass through the main train station in Haarlem, Netherlands. Two years ago de Bibliotheek op hef Station opened with 2,000 books and an interesting model. The collection is displayed more like a retail bookshop than a library and no title is older than two years old. The branch was designed in conjunction with Probiblio, the folks behind the brilliant library at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.
I’ve been a fan of the slightly wacky, very British, Smoke-A London Peculiar for years. It was originally an old-school print zine that was packed with all manner of London-focused short fiction, essays, photos, off-beat travel pieces, artwork and bit and pieces from around the Big Smoke. I loved quirky features like Bus of the Month, which profiled a select bus route and chronicled the sites, attractions and oddities along the journey.
Smoke-A London Peculiar ceased publication about three years ago, but I was pleased to discover that it’s now back as a website. The crowdsourced webmag is open for contributions as long as they are inspired in some way by London.
What can you expect from Smoke-A London Peculiar ? How about Please Don’t Touch The Walrus, ” a fabulous new series in which we attempt to catalogue some amazing things you can’t do in our fabulous capital city”.
As a life-long Beatles fan, I loved this short meditation on the celebrated Abbey Road zebra crossing. The film, directed by Chris Purcell, celebrates the tens of thousands of visitors who flock to the site each year to recreate the famous album cover photograph for themselves. Have you ever done it in the (Abbey) road?
Philadelphia is widely known for it’s treasure-trove of historical sites and it’s rich architectural heritage. And of course, it’s the mural arts capital of the world. But less attention has been focused on the area’s splendid literary legacy.
Opened just in time for the city’s massive 4th of July celebrations, the terrific Philadelphia’s Literary Legacy exhibit at Philadelphia International Airport remedies that oversight by shining a light on fifty local literary luminaries. Working in partnership with the famed Philadelphia Free Library, the airport created an exhibit that focuses on renowned authors, playwrights, poets and illustrators from different genres, eras and backgrounds.
Philadelphia’s Literary Legacy includes historical figures long connected with Philadelphia, such as Benjamin Franklin, W.E.B. DuBois and Louisa May Alcott, as well as writers who may not be as well known for their Philly connections, like R. Crumb, Ben Bova and I.F. Stone. I was especially pleased to see that the organizers included the great noir writer David Goodis in the show; he’s so often overlooked. They’ve also included some terrific contemporary local authors, such as Solomon Jones, Ken Kulfus and poet laureate Sonia Sanchez.
The exhibition runs for a full year. The only hitch is that the show is in the airport’s International Terminal A-East and you need a ticket to access the area or a press card.
After weeks of demonstrations and clashes between protesters and police across Turkey, a new type of civil disobedience has emerged—the Standing Protest. Turkish performance artist Erdem Gunduz started it off by standing with his hands in his pockets facing the Attaturk Cultural Center in Taksim Square for eight hours.
Soon other protesters formed what they are calling the Taksim Square Book Club by standing and silently reading in the square.
photos © George Henton
Gabriel Aguirre was born in Mexico, educated in the United States, and lives in Paris. He’s an IT profession by trade, but a highly skilled photographer, too. His wonderful series—Dépliage Du Soi, or Unfolding Self—is a thought-provoking riff on identity and the personal journey through the world. Using Paris as a backdrop doesn’t hurt either.
The online reputation management company TrustYou has just released this neat infographic (see below) that examines the impact of web reviews and social media on travel booking decisions.
Would you book a hotel that had no online reviews? Well 49% of hotel guest won’t even consider it. While 52% of travelers have changed their plans because of social media comments. Do you trust your friends’ online reviews? Do online reviews have a significant impact on your travel choices?
If you’ve ever tried to hail a taxi in an unfamiliar city, or just didn’t know where to find a cab and not get ripped-off, then the Hailo app is right up your alley. After a quick sign-up process, you’re ready to go. Just open the app (iOS & Android) and it shows the closest available taxi. Drivers respond to your request and you can even lock-in the fare, and you can then track the taxi’s progress to your location. You can quickly and safely pay using a registered credit card and add a tip as well.
Hailo is currently operating in Chicago, Boston, Toronto, London , NYC, Dublin and Madrid. Coming cities include Washington D.C., Cork and Barcelona.
One of the Europe’s most visited cities, but also famous for its purported rudeness, Paris has launched a campaign to improve its reputation and better meet the needs of tourists.
Restaurant servers, taxi drivers and retail sales staff in the French capital all too often perceived as impolite, unhelpful and unable to speak foreign languages say local tourism officials, who are distributing a manual with guidelines on better etiquette.
The six-page booklet, entitled “Do you speak Touriste?”, contains greetings in eight languages including German, Chinese and Portuguese and advice on the spending habits and cultural codes of different nationalities.
France is the world’s top destination for foreign travelers, with Paris visited by 29 million people last year. The income that tourists bring to hotels, restaurants, attractions and museums accounts for 10% of jobs in the region and is an important lift to the economy at a time of depressed domestic consumption.
The Paris tourist office has warned that growing competition from “friendlier cities” like London meant Paris needed to work harder to attract visitors, especially from emerging market countries.
More than 30,000 copies of the handbook on friendly service are being distributed to taxi drivers, restaurant servers, hotel managers and sales people in tourist areas, with a focus on the 1st through 9th Arrondissmement and the Monmartre area.
I’ve visited Paris three times in the last two years and each time I’ve found most people to be friendly and helpful despite my atrocious French language skills. From my subjective perspective, the stereotype of the rude Parisian is outdated and contributes to visitor hesitation to interact with locales. What do you think?
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