Arthur Frommer's Blog, page 29

A U.K. Regulatory Board Is Forcing TripAdvisor to Change its Advertising

It's fascinating to compare the different ways in which TripAdvisor is regarded by (a) the press and the regulators of Britain, and (b) the press and the regulators of the United States. Here in America, no one seriously challenges the claims of TripAdvisor to provide accurate reflections of hotels and resorts. Over there in Great Britain, the opposite is the case. Last week, the Advertising Standard Authority of Great Britain issued an extraordinary ruling that TripAdvisor can no longer claim that all of its reviews are "honest, real or trusted" or that all its reviews are by "real travellers." The ASA has demanded that TripAdvisor make big changes to its advertising.
 
Side by side with the regulators, the British press keeps up a steady drum-beat of vehement exposés of reviews appearing in TripAdvisor. This week, the Telegraph has printed a long critique, pointing out that TripAdvisor's reviews can frequently combine, in the same review, both a five-star rave about a particular hotel with a statement that the same hotel "is the worst in the world".
 
"The time has come," the British newspaper continues, "for a re-think on how they [TripAdvisor] verify their reviews. At the very least, anyone that wants to leave a review must prove that they have stayed or eaten at the given hotel or restaurant. All the ASA ruling has done is highlight the need for such a change."
 
Meantime, the Irish Times of Dublin has printed an even more damning indictment. It tells how an employee at the Carlton Hotel Group of Ireland  e-mailed dozens of its employees, asking them to take photos of various rooms to be inserted into fake reviews submitted to TripAdvisor. That way, a mass of favorable reviews would appear in each of the write-ups of the chain's hotels. Employees were cautioned to use crude cellphone cameras for taking the shots, and to send in the reviews on computers that had no association with the hotels or the group. (When Carlton's lawyers heard of these instructions, they apparently forced a withdrawal of the pronouncement.)
 
To all these reports, TripAdvisor has responded with sanctimonious claims of the extreme measures they allegedly take to weed out phony comments from their website, comments either pro or con. No convincing proof is offered of their ability to spot these invented claims. But they apparently continue to oppose any demand that they require their reviewers to show proof that they have actually stayed as guests at the hotels in question, and such a procedure is the only one that could cut down drastically on false raves or critiques.
 
I have earlier written of my own inability to make heads or tails out of various TripAdvisor reviews that I have read. How do you reach a judgment about a hotel if ten people call it a sheer wonder and ten other people call it a fleabag? Even when such contrasts are absent from a particular review, how wise is it to rely on the judgment of a sheer amateur who has been, once in their lives, in a particular hotel--and has been to no other nearby hotels?
 
I will continue to seek out the appraisals of experienced critics who have a reputation for the worth of their opinions.

A U.K. Regulatory Board Is Forcing Trip Advisor to Change its Advertising

It's fascinating to compare the different ways in which TripAdvisor is regarded by (a) the press and the regulators of Britain, and (b) the press and the regulators of the United States. Here in America, no one seriously challenges the claims of TripAdvisor to provide accurate reflections of hotels and resorts. Over there in Great Britain, the opposite is the case. Last week, the Advertising Standard Authority of Great Britain issued an extraordinary ruling that TripAdvisor can no longer claim that all of its reviews are "honest, real or trusted" or that all its reviews are by "real travellers." The ASA has demanded that TripAdvisor make big changes to its advertising.
 
Side by side with the regulators, the British press keeps up a steady drum-beat of vehement exposés of reviews appearing in TripAdvisor. This week, the Telegraph has printed a long critique, pointing out that TripAdvisor's reviews can frequently combine, in the same review, both a five-star rave about a particular hotel with a statement that the same hotel "is the worst in the world".
 
"The time has come," the British newspaper continues, "for a re-think on how they [TripAdvisor] verify their reviews. At the very least, anyone that wants to leave a review must prove that they have stayed or eaten at the given hotel or restaurant. All the ASA ruling has done is highlight the need for such a change."
 
Meantime, the Irish Times of Dublin has printed an even more damning indictment. It tells how an employee at the Carlton Hotel Group of Ireland  e-mailed dozens of its employees, asking them to take photos of various rooms to be inserted into fake reviews submitted to TripAdvisor. That way, a mass of favorable reviews would appear in each of the write-ups of the chain's hotels. Employees were cautioned to use crude cellphone cameras for taking the shots, and to send in the reviews on computers that had no association with the hotels or the group. (When Carlton's lawyers heard of these instructions, they apparently forced a withdrawal of the pronouncement.)
 
To all these reports, TripAdvisor has responded with sanctimonious claims of the extreme measures they allegedly take to weed out phony comments from their website, comments either pro or con. No convincing proof is offered of their ability to spot these invented claims. But they apparently continue to oppose any demand that they require their reviewers to show proof that they have actually stayed as guests at the hotels in question, and such a procedure is the only one that could cut down drastically on false raves or critiques.
 
I have earlier written of my own inability to make heads or tails out of various TripAdvisor reviews that I have read. How do you reach a judgment about a hotel if ten people call it a sheer wonder and ten other people call it a fleabag? Even when such contrasts are absent from a particular review, how wise is it to rely on the judgment of a sheer amateur who has been, once in their lives, in a particular hotel--and has been to no other nearby hotels?
 
I will continue to seek out the appraisals of experienced critics who have a reputation for the worth of their opinions.

For the First Time in Recent History There's an Affordable African Safari out of Los Angeles

You may recall a recent blog post in which I described March departures from New York and Washington, D.C., of a one-week African safari to Kenya costing $2,499 per person, including round-trip airfare, fuel surcharge, and all government fees and taxes. The trip in question ("Kenya on Sale"), operated by Lion World Tours (tel. 800/387-2706; www.lionworldtours.com ), is virtually all-inclusive, goes to four different games lodges in Kenya, and includes all three meals daily on each day of the tour.
 
To my surprise, Lion World has just announced that it will be offering the very same tour in May and June from Los Angeles, for $2,699 per person (a pretty unique bargain for readers residing on or near the West Coast). This, to my knowledge, is the first such air-and-land packages in eons to be operated at that price, which also includes fuel surcharge and all government fees and taxes. May and June are high season to Africa. And kids are out of school at that time and get to go on safari before camp starts.
 
Air transportation from Los Angeles is on Emirates Airlines to Nairobi, via Dubai; transportation on daily games drives is in a seven-seater safari minibus with pop-up roof; the supplement for singles traveling alone is $250; and the exact departure dates are May 17 and 24 and June 14 and 21 of 2012.
 
This is a big one, a unique value, and you might want to contact them for further information or to book.

Carnival's SEC Filing Tells the Truth: The Costa Concordia Tragedy Has Slowed Things Considerably

When I was a tour operator several years ago, I was constantly amused by the way in which my competitors would fudge the facts in responding to questions from journalists about how business was. The theory was that if you answered truthfully that business was lousy, you ran the risk of leaving the impression that your company was in trouble and about to go under. So instead, you responded: business is great, we're inundated with bookings.
 
I thought about this all-too-human reaction when I read the recent statements by several cruise brokers that cruise bookings had actually firmed up in the wake of the Costa Concordia tragedy, and that prices were now 1% higher. Something closer to the truth was revealed last week by Carnival Cruises (owner of Costa Cruises, operator of the ill-fated Costa Concordia) in a required 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a document that had to be submitted under oath. In it, Carnival admitted that future cruise bookings on all its ships had declined in the "mid-teens" in the immediate aftermath of the Costa Concordia sinking. It went on to admit that bookings of cruises on Costa Line's ships in particular were "down significantly."
 
All this was further emphasized in a recent comment in USA Today by a perceptive cruise journalist, Gene Sloan (a Frommers travel guide author, among other things), in which he pointed out that advance bookings for summer cruises in the Mediterranean were soft.
 
So what does this all have to do with us? I have earlier pointed out that the safety record of the cruise industry is actually pretty good; out of the multitudes of passengers who have taken cruises in recent years (over a hundred million of them?), only an infinitesimally small number have been injured or killed. All forms of transportation are of course potentially dangerous, but the single most dangerous activity of transportation for U.S. travelers is driving a car on the highways and streets of America. So I would doubt that anyone would put off their cruise plans because of the Costa Concordia tragedy.
 
And it should be pointed out, in particular, that if Mediterranean cruises are significantly down in popularity, that this would be an excellent time to book a Mediterranean cruise in summer: prices will be low and discounts rampant. Beyond that, Mediterranean cruises are different from the kind of cruise you encounter in the Caribbean. Passengers are interested in observing the foreign life in the Mediterranean port cities and less interested in the fun-and-games features on those amusement parks masquerading as Caribbean cruise ships.

It's Travel Show Season, And I Hope to Meet With Readers at Events in Boston and New York City

Having just returned from an appearance this past Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show, where I met a great many readers of this blog, I need to announce that the next such appearance will be about two weeks from now, on Saturday, February 11, at the Boston Globe Travel Show at the Seaport World Trade Center. This time, I'll be sharing the stage with my daughter, Pauline, and we will be speaking twice, at 11am (talking about new developments in Travel) and 2pm (speaking about ideas for your next vacation). Each talk will be followed by book-signing at a nearby bookstore booth, and we hope to meet and converse with a great many of our readers at this time. We hope you'll stop by.
 
On Saturday March 3, Pauline and I will be speaking at the giant New York Times Travel Show in the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. Times and topics will again be the same, followed again by book signing. We very much look forward to meeting with you.

Here's a Last-Minute Invitation to Meet at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show on Saturday

Rushing to complete a number of matters, I find that I have failed to point out that tomorrow at 11am, I will be speaking at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show ( http://events.latimes.com/travelshow/ ) at the L.A. Convention Center, and would hope that a great many readers of this Blog might be in attendance. Afterwards, I'll be signing books at the Distant Planets bookstore booth from around noon to 12:30pm, before rushing back to the airport to catch a return flight back to New York (for tomorrow's radio Travel Show).

Again, I hope to meet with many of you at that Show, one of the largest in the nation. If you do attend, you'll be able to examine the travel offerings of some 500 major travel firms -- airlines, cruiselines, state tourist offices, tour operators, makers of travel products, and the entirety of the
colorful travel industry.

One-Week Safaris in Kenya Have Again Dropped to Affordable Levels

The days of an air-and-land package to Kenya for under $2,000 are long gone, wiped out by the high cost of aviation fuel. But a price of only $2,499 for such a trip, for two departure dates in March of this year, is still a value in these times of high airfares. And that's the price currently offered by our friends at Lion World Tours ( www.lionworldtours.com ). On its program known as Kenya on Sale, and for $2,499 per person, Lion World will supply you with:
Round trip international Economy Class airfare from New York (JFK) or Washington, DC (Dulles) to Nairobi, Kenya, aboard Ethiopian Airlines.All Fuel Surcharges and Taxes1 night at Serena Mountain Lodge, in the wildlife area2 nights at Sarova Shaba Lodge, in the Shaba Game Reserve1 night at Sarova Lion Hill Lodge in the Lake Nakuru National Park Rift Valley Province2 nights at Sarova Mara Game Camp in the African bush, staying in luxurious tent accommodations.Game drives as specified in the itinerary6 Breakfasts / 6 Lunches / 6 DinnersA Lion World Tours representative meeting you on arrivalAll TransfersThe price of $2,499 per person is valid for the departures of March 29 and March 31, ascending only slightly to $2,699 per person for all other departures in March, April and the first half of May. Inexpensive air add-ons are available from most other U.S. cities.
 
An African safari -- and especially one situated in such interesting and varied locations as this one -- at the prices offered, is a major value. If you have never been on safari, you will never again have the opportunity to do so at rates as moderate as these.

Final Observations on a Just-Completed 8-Day Stay in Miami Beach

As I end my mid-January vacation in Miami Beach, certain observations should be made.
 
From every indication, Miami is back to its normal popularity. Yesterday's Miami Herald exulted over the fact that condominium sales in that sunshine city were up by an amazing 46% in 2011, reflecting a greatly improved real estate picture in general and a probable economic recovery. Though many of those condo purchases were by foreigners seeking a safe haven for their funds, there's no doubt that rentals and visits by U.S. residents are up as well. As you walk along the brightly-lit, pedestrian-only Lincoln Road in south Miami Beach, thronged with tourists shopping madly and filling every one of almost continuous sidewalk restaurant tables, the feeling is inescapable that Miami is back as a top vacation destination.

[image error] Photo Caption: Lifeguard station at Miami Beach, FL. theniwaslike/Frommers.com Community

But despite the heightened tourism, the city is so packed with large hotels and condominiums available for rental and needing to fill tens of thousands of rooms and apartments -- including brand new residential skyscrapers spotted up and down all the main touristic boulevards and beach roads (the product of a real estate boom of several years ago) -- that the chance to negotiate a bargain for your own stay remains almost as strong as during the recession of 2008-09. When you call a condominium owner or a hotel reservations office, you should bargain -- tell them the price you're looking for, and stick to it (as I recently did for my own stay). In my experience, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
 
Not only has beach-and-seaside tourism returned to the Miami area, but it appears that its cruise industry has not suffered in any meaningful way from the recent tragedy of the Costa Concordia off the shores of Tuscany. On a Saturday in the course of my stay, I drove to the port of Miami and there saw no fewer than eight giant cruiseships filling up with thousands of excited passengers who flocked to the rails of the upper decks to look out onto the Miami scene as their stately, 4,000-passenger behemoths sailed slowly out of Miami waters on their way to the Caribbean. Those laughing, smiling, confident passengers seemed to have not a care in the world, and appeared just as exuberant as in the days prior to news of the recent tragedy in the Mediterranean.
 
Back on shore, the dining quality of the city's restaurants has soared, mainly because of the emergence of dozens of new Brazilian, Argentinian and Peruvian restaurants. When I recently had dinner at a new Peruvian stand-out called Mixtura (in North Beach at 7118 Collins Avenue), and asked the waiter to suggest that establishment's best entree, he responded with aji de gallina, a classic dish of chicken sliced razor thin and topped with a sauce of yellow peppers mixed with heavy cream and combined with garlic and other tangy sauces. It was the highlight of one of the best meals I've had in years. The night before, we went to a nearby seafood restaurant called Fi Fi's (6934 Collins Avenue, two blocks down from Mixtura), started with stone crab (as good as in Miami Beach's legendary Joe's Original Stone Crab), and followed up with a freshly-caught fish superbly prepared.
 
From the sublime to the ridiculous: at the many exercise classes and sessions in hotels and condos here, a new aerobic work-out is a wildly-popular series of steps known as Zumba. Instead of simply undergoing aerobic exercise for 40 minutes to the standard beat-beat-beat of various rock songs, Zumba achieves aerobics to the insistent and just-as-rapid beat of Latin dance rhythms. In short spurts of 10 minutes apiece, separated from the next session by a one-minute pause for rest, you attempt to imitate your skilled instructor while he or she does lightning-fast renditions of samba, rumba, tango. You end up drenched in sweat, completely exhausted, but wonderfully entertained by stepping, running and prancing to the sound of Latin American bands, played on records and discs supplied by the instructor. Your next visit to Miami Beach, ask your hotel front desk clerk where you can engage in Zumba.

Want to Meet Locals While Traveling? Go to a Reading at an Independent Bookstore

In the course of my eight-night vacation in Miami Beach (still in progress), I had occasion to visit the famous independent bookstore located in the attractive Coral Gables neighborhood of Miami. A long, low-slung, hacienda-like building of two wings on either side of a large garden café where visitors drink coffee and converse, Books & Books, as it's called, is a remarkable success that has withstood the competition of e-books and created four other outlets in other sections of Miami.

In addition to selling books, the Coral Gables branch serves as a community center that attracts standing-room-only audiences to its nightly free lectures presented by prominent authors of important books. And it well may be that the success of Books & Books is in part because of these evening gatherings attracting book-lovers who then proceed to purchase books before they leave.

The success of Books & Books, and the immense attendance at its nightly lectures, has reminded me that tourists visiting almost any large city in the United States may find companionship or acquaintances at the book lectures that almost all of the large and famous independent bookstores in those cities present almost every evening. From the Tattered Cover in Denver, to Book Passage in the San Francisco Bay Area, to Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., to Powell's in Portland, Oregon, to Moes Books in Berkeley, to Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, at least 30 giant independent bookstores continue to thrive because they have become centers of discussion in addition to simply stores (each one of the several I've listed schedules near-nightly events). And each one of them has a café to which you repair following the lecture you have heard, there to meet and converse with intellectually-curious residents of the city in question.

When you visit any of the largest independent bookstores in America, you will usually find an evening schedule of free lectures and a large number of residents who show up for these talks. I can't think of a better way to meet residents of the city in question and learn something about their attitudes and opinion. It's the best way to turn an ordinary vacation into a vital one.

On a Short Winter Vacation, I'm Reveling in the Latin Quality of An Increasingly Unusual Resort Town

I am surrounded by Brazilian restaurants, Argentinian steakhouses, Peruvian grills. As I walk along a beachside boulevard, I pass Cuban groceries, and sidewalk cafes frequented by people reading books with Spanish-titles that I can easily see.

And where am I? I'm in Miami Beach, Florida, which has definitely become one of the most cosmopolitan cities in America. As I enjoy favorable January weather (daytime temperatures of 79 and 80 degrees), I am also responding happily to the novelty of a pervasive foreign culture.

Defying all the difficulties of obtaining American visas, a large number of newly prosperous Brazilians and Argentinians are flocking to this vacation center, occupying condominium apartments in the real estate developments that erupted onto Collins Avenue and in elegant Bar Harbour in the late 1990s and very early 2000s. Without them, the promoters of these residential complexes would be in bad trouble. What's even better is that our neighbors to the south are primarily choosing the U.S. summer months (which is winter in their climes) for their most popular time to visit, supplying off-season business to Miami Beach and at the same time creating this year-around infrastructure of new restaurants and shops. Plenty of Brazilians are here during our winter, but even more of them arrive in summer.

And so it was fairly to easy to consult the want ads on the Internet for an available condo in January. My wife and I are in a modern and extremely comfortable one-bedroom apartment facing the sea, at a reasonable price. We conducted the entire transaction of renting through the exchange of a few e-mails and a deposit easily made to the U.S. bank account of the foreign gentleman who rented us his condo. I simply strolled to the branch of the U.S. bank where he maintains his account, and deposited a check to it in a ten-minute effort.

Ensconced in our kitchen-equipped Miami Beach condo, we make breakfast for ourselves from the ingredients purchased from a nearby grocery, and we usually make lunch out of the salmon- or tunafish-filled bagels we've obtained from a nearby deli and stored in our refrigerator. For dinner, we go to one of those surprisingly-good South American restaurants, and make believe we're in Rio or Buenos Aires -- the experience is remarkably similar. We bathe in the heated swimming pool of our condo, or dip into the sea; we go power walking along the beach; we went to see Meryl Streep in Iron Lady last night; and on several occasions we've signed into yoga sessions made available by the operator of our condo or to engage in a form of aerobics called "Zamba" (all the rage in Florida -- a form of aerobics but to the beat of Latin dance rythms).

This may not strike you as much of an exotic vacation (we'll be traveling internationally next month), but it was reached in a flight of only two and a half hours, and the arrangements for it took only a few minutes. If you have a patronizing attitude towards a Florida beach vacation, or look upon it as a cop-out, you haven't been keeping up with the Latin invasion of one of our southernmost U.S. resort cities. Those Brazilians, Argentinians and Peruvians have made it into a colorful and interesting, Latin-style place.