Tehran has a population estimated at between 8 and 12 million, and sprawls out from the north, butted up against Damovan mountain with lots of snow and a cablecar to the top, spreading and growing every year far, far out. I was told that North Tehran, where the shah once […]
The mosque in Aran, Iran, the complex dominates the dusty town, south of Qom the most holy city of Iran. We stopped at a caravansary, a fortress built 400 years ago to defend the camel caravans along this important trading route. Iranians took the Friday holiday to picnic on the […]
We left the hotel at five am yesterday, to meet a bus full of Tehranians and take an excursion out into the desert. The bus rolled through the light traffic of central Tehran and out into an exquisitely flat open road, unbroken by anything except distant hills, we were bound […]
After our final dinner, complete with rollicking Iranian musicians, my tablemates and I decided to walk back to the hotel in Tehran. Cars raced around us.
Here are some of the faces of people I met in Iran, friendly girls with low headscarves in Isfahan, a couple in Shiraz, nice people all of them.
Trip Television is one of the brightest stars of the Travel Innovator’s summit, since I truly believe that the next big step in travel content has to be video. I think that once people have seen video they will no longer be content to simply read words or view photos. […]
The opening speaker this morning, Philip C. Wolf, put our industry in perspective with this daunting statistic: Eight percent of the entire world’s workforce has something to do with travel and tourism. Wow! With this heady stat about our relevance, we launched into this morning’s parade of innovators, a group […]
Isn’t it the little things that often make the difference? For me it’s been a combination of goodness since I checked in last night to the Magic Castle hotel here in Hollywood. First the honest-to-goodnessly friendly guy at the counter upgraded me to a suite for my $155 a night […]
This afternoon I fly to Hollywood California, and at about 7:30 tonight I should be checking in to the Magic Castle Hotel, a block away from the event venue the Renaissance convention center. I’m going to attend my second PhoCusWright travel conference, where the leaders of today’s biggest on-line travel […]
Malcolm Gladwell looks like somebody wearing a big funny wig, with hair that shoots up all around and the serious demeanor of a scholar. The New Yorker writer is out with a new book that if anything like the first two, (The Tipping Point and Blink) should sell well and […]
Last night while we were waiting for Cindy to arrive to go up to the Voo in resurgent Turners Falls, a television program on the Travel Channel caught our attention. Francisco and I looked aghast as the show, called “Extreme Terror Rides,” described North America’s most fearsome ‘fun’ rides and […]
At the VEMEX meeting of European tourism boards, it was a pleasure to meet the tourism officials and also to get their gifts of USB drives.