Scouting the best airfares, hotels, cruises and vacation packages

Oahu, Hawaii: Sneak a peek undersea with this kayak tour

July 12, 2009 12:14pm

Explore the underwater world while staying dry with a tour aboard a plexiglass-bottom kayak. This unique sit-on-top vessel, with a viewing window at its bottom, has been used for certain tours off  Oahu since early June.

With participants aboard Peekaboo kayaks (made by Ocean Kayak), the Shaka Kayaks tours provide customers a look at coral reefs, tropical fish and more — even World War II wreckage — below the ocean’s surface. If you’re new to kayaking, don’t worry: The guided two-hour tours begin with a demo on proper techniques, and participants have time to familiarize themselves with kayaking before embarking.

Transport to the boat-launch point at Kawela Bay leaves daily from the lobby of Turtle Bay Resort, on Oahu’s North Shore. Read the rest of this entry »

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Rack up free stays at InterContinental’s hotels

July 12, 2009 7:31am

Pay to stay now, and stay free later, under an especially flexible InterContinental Hotels Group program that rewards the loyal.

Deal: To take advantage of the “Biggest Free Nights” offer, you must first register at GetaFreeNight.com. Then, clock in two nights at a hotel (they don’t have to be consecutive nights, nor do they have to be at the same hotel) under any of the following ICH brands to earn a free one-night stay: Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn Club Vacations, InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Staybridge Suites or Candlewood Suites.

The more you pay to stay, the more you earn. You are allowed to accrue up to four free nights. There are no blackout dates, and you can pick and choose among property types. So, you are given license to pay for your stay at a Holiday Inn Express, and then cash your freebie in at fancier digs. Read the rest of this entry »

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Lights on at Chartres, France

July 11, 2009 12:29pm

Colored lights! They work at the Eiffel Tower, so this summer the French are turning them on at Chartres too. Every evening 20 monuments—including the famous Gothic cathedral—in the town of Chartres, about 50 miles southwest of Paris, will be illuminated. The office of tourism calls it “Chartres en Lumieres.”

The displays culminate with a Festival of Lights on Sept. 18 and 19, featuring concerts, hot-air balloon rides, street shows and exhibitions.

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Theme park news: Michael Jackson’s bumper cars, Princess Diana exhibit, Disneyland Halloween fireworks

July 11, 2009 7:29am

A roundup of my theme park Twitter updates for the last week:

Hong Kong Disneyland testing a pay version of FastPass dubbed Magic Pass. (Screamscape)

Theme Park Insider’s Top 3 New Rides of 2009: (1) Manta at SeaWorld Orlando, (2) Prowler at Worlds of Fun in Missouri, (3) Diamondback at Kings Island in Ohio.

Mice Age: Disneyland to add Halloween-themed fireworks show this fall.

World of Color fountains at Disney’s California Adventure to respond to cheers, return for encore if crowd loud enough. (Mice Age)

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The results of Travel + Leisure’s best domestic airline survey are in — do you agree?

July 10, 2009 5:21pm

Lists. You either love them or you hate them. I happen to have a soft spot for lists, and I’m swimming in reading the best of everything in travel over at the newly redesigned Travel + Leisure site right now. Though it’s easy and more fun to swoon at luxury hotels on the other side of the globe, the question of which airline rates the highest for service is something everyday travelers have an opinion on — because they’ve most likely flown on a few of them whether they made the top five or not. Below are Travel + Leisure’s, Zagat’s and JD Powers’ takes on how airlines stacked up against each other.

Travel + Leisure readers measured the airlines on cabin comfort, in-flight service, customer service and value (food was optional) as stated in their methodology.

Here is the list of domestic airlines that ranked the highest among T+L readers.

1. Virgin America
2. JetBlue Airways
3. Midwest Airlines
4. WestJet Airlines
5. Southwest Airlines

Compared with last year’s top five, Virgin America remained in the No. 1 spot, JetBlue moved up and swapped places with Midwest, WestJet was new to the list and Southwest jumped up two spots from No. 7.

“Curiously, not a single of those so-called legacy carriers made Travel + Leisure’s top 10 list,” USA Today noticed.

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Ilikai Hotel in Waikiki closes, forcing guests to find other accommodations

July 10, 2009 12:21pm

Illikai Hotel in Waikiki closed its doors just after midnight Thursday, ousting guests from the iconic ’60s structure on Ala Moana Boulevard. ”We only had 24 hours’ notice to get everyone out,” said employee Shelly Okubo, who spent a trying day Thursday attempting to place guests in other accommodations.

It’s a sad turn of events for the Waikiki Beach hotel, which gained fame in the late ’60s when the cop show “Hawaii Five-O”  featured it in an opening sequence. Square-jawed detective Steve McGarrett (the late Jack Lord) was pictured standing on an Illikai balcony with Diamond Head in the background while the throbbing beat of the show’s theme music played.

The Y-shaped Illikai fell victim to mounting operating losses and was closed by its new owner, iStar Financial Inc., which acquired the hotel for $51 million after a foreclosure auction in May. The 1,000-unit building has 203 guest rooms, plus condos and timeshares. Non-hotel parts of the property will not be affected. New York-based iStar has not disclosed its plans for the hotel part of the building and could not be reached for additional comment.

The 30-story Illikai opened in 1964 and was touted as Oahu’s first luxury high-rise hotel, featuring views of Honolulu and the beaches. During its heyday, it hosted U.S. presidents and celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Stevie Wonder, Lucille Ball and Mickey Mantle.

— Rosemary McClure/special to The Times

[Photo: Ilikai Hotel, located at the Waikiki beach gateway and overlooking the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor. Credit: Courtesy of Ilikai Hotel)

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Death in Running of the Bulls dampens spirits at Pamplona San Fermin Festival

July 10, 2009 11:12am

A man was gored to death in the fourth encierro at Pamplona’s running of the bulls. Daniel Jimeno Romero, 27, from Alcala de Henares,  was gored in the neck and lung as he was trying to get to a protective barrier during the run. Romero was on vacation with his parents and his girlfriend, according to the Associated Press.

“He had run at the festival of San Fermin in previous years, as had his father, who is from Pamplona,” said John Rhodes, of BullRunning.com.

There is video on BullRunning.com from local Spanish television RTVE that shows the bull getting separated from the pack and how the pastores who wear green and carry sticks attempted to get the rogue bull to run in the right direction. Capuchino, the bull that gored Romero, got separated from the pack, a dangerous thing to happen during the run. Isolated bulls can become disoriented and are more likely to start charging people.

“The spirits are noticeably dampened at the festival today. However the party goes on. I heard that they are going to have a moment of silence before all the official events today,” Rhodes said.

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For total solar eclipse, travel to Asia, or Griffith Observatory

July 10, 2009 9:45am

Around the world folks are gearing up for a major switch-off. The next total eclipse of the sun, on July 22 (July 21, California time), will “darken major cities, densely populated countryside, and a vast expanse of tropical ocean,” according to Sky & Telescope magazine. Lasting over 6.6 minutes at its point of longest duration, the solar eclipse will be the longest Earthlings have a chance to see until 2132.

To view this phenomenon, during which the moon completely obscures the sun, in person, you’ll have to get yourself to select portions of Asia or the Pacific islands. Destinations along the path include parts of India, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, China and Japan.

The “instant of greatest eclipse,” or the longest totality (6 minutes, 39 seconds), will occur above the Pacific Ocean well away from land at 2:35:19 UT on July 22, according to Sky & Telescope. But just before and just after this maximum is reached, the eclipse will be viewable in Iwo Jima and Kitaio Jima, and then the Marshall Islands and Kiribati.

Want to seek a pot of gold at eclipse’s end? Read the rest of this entry »

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FareCompare’s 170+ Twitter accounts, new Dealfinder and Q&A with CEO Rick Seaney

July 9, 2009 4:56pm

I first heard about FareCompare’s new 170+ airport-specific, travel deal Twitter accounts Wednesday morning on Twitter. I quickly signed up to follow @flyfromLAX and within 24 hours already heard about a $356 RT LAX-Buenos Aires deal and an $81 RT LAX-PHX fare that was down 31%. As if Twitter has become the first choice in communication tools, I got in touch with FareCompare’s CEO at @rickseaney and scheduled a time this morning to talk about FareCompare’s new DealFinder and Twitter accounts. In our talks, the only thing that threw me off guard was the fact that they’ve found a way to automate their 170+  accounts. It might not be surprising to you, but I was envisioning an uber social media online travel geek behind six computer monitors, fingers flying fast as they tweeted travel deals to the world. Read on to find out about two new ways you can expedite your next airfare search.

Jen Leo: Is the Dealfinder new?

Rick Seaney: We came up with the idea a few years ago. We had a tool on the site with air deals posted on a Google Map (prices on cities in the map) but it didn’t do a 180-date combination seat check and wasn’t easy to sort. The new DealFinder finishes up our original dream of providing consumers the best air deals by departure date and then scouring hundreds of date combinations for seats in real-time. We officially launched the DealFinder Wednesday but it’s been in soft launch for about a month and a half.

What do you mean by the 180-date combination seat check?

It all came together when we partnered with ITA Software in December (they power the low fare search of many airlines, meta searchers and online travel agencies). Because we know when prices are dropping with our technology, we’re able to do some cool things with them. Our goal is that every time we show a price, they’ll be able to find that price sometime in the month. And then if an airline publishes prices with no seat availability too often we’ll pull them from the alerts.

The DealFinder with one click does the equivalent of 180 separate searches with different depart/return dates. Within a 30-day period, it searches six different lengths of stay (nights) based on the trip distance. For example, pick LAX to PHX and you see the prices for the whole month come up. Click a departure date and you can compare the price difference for different return dates. Select the one that best meets your needs and you’re off to get flight itineraries in a standard meta search that returns hundreds of flight choices that you can filter. We don’t sell tickets as a meta-searcher so you click on your flight and it takes you to either an airline or online travel agency for final booking (all of whom now have waived booking fees).

Now tell us what this Twitter account frenzy is all about. Did I hear that you have more than 170 accounts?

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Marking ‘Summer of ‘69,’ Sheraton Tuscon offers $69 rooms

July 9, 2009 12:00pm

The summer of ‘69 saw civil rights marchers; Neil Armstrong step onto the moon; hundreds of thousands descend upon Woodstock; the Mets achieve a historic World Series win; and, perhaps in a league of its own, the TV debut of “Sesame Street.”

Tipping their floppy hats to that unprecedented time — now 40 years ago — Sheraton Tucson Hotel & Suites, in Tucson, Ariz., has just launched a fun summer promotion.

[Above is one glimpse of Woodstock. To view other photos of the August 1969 music and arts festival, see this gallery.]

Deal: The hotel’s “Summer of ‘69” package is a great reason to break out your best tie-dye and head to the desert. Rooms under this offer are just $69 per night ($78 after taxes). And if that isn’t enough to entice you, here are the optional extras thrown in: an upgrade to a suite for $6.90; 69 cents for domestic draft beers; snacks for $6.90 (at hotel restaurant Fire + Spice); and a $69 massage. Read the rest of this entry »

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