D/R DOWNLOAD 1.5
What’s Trending
01/ On Google
“Best travel credit cards 2024” trended +300% this week as travelers gear up and begin to plan for this year's trips while aiming to get the most for their money.
02/ With Media
This week, media were interested in Valentine’s Day hotel packages, the most exciting destinations to visit in 2024, unique non-alcoholic cocktails, hotels with newly launched and upgraded cocktail bars/menus, small towns offering wellness-centric retreats and more.
03/ In the Zeitgeist
To reduce waste, Starbucks will now allow customers to bring their reusable cups for mobile and drive-through orders. The initiative, which was previously only offered for in-store purchases, saves guests 10¢ on their drink.
216,000 U.S. jobs were added in December, capping the overall 2.7 million jobs that were added in 2023.
Industry Insights
In their latest effort to combat over-tourism, Venice, Italy, has announced they will be capping group tours to 25 people maximum.
Actor Stanley Tucci is set to premiere a 10-episode docuseries on National Geographic “Tucci – The Heart of Italy,” where he will explore the cuisines and cultures in ten different regions of Italy.
Lexington, Kentucky is inviting aliens to visit in the first interstellar tourism campaign. Using a transmitted signal to the Trappist-1 star system, about 40 light-years away from Earth, pitching the destination to extraterrestrials.
A new state park is set to debut on January 20 in Nevada, just north of Las Vegas. The Ice Age Fossils State Park features an abundance of fossils travelers will be able to scour for and collect.
A new bridge in Vietnam is for kissing, not for crossing as the two sides are separated by 12 inches, encouraging couples to travel separately from each side and meet in the middle to kiss.
Brazil has postponed its requirement for Americans to travel with visas until April 2024 to ensure the system is prepared to process travelers without interfering with the flow of tourists during peak season.
After three years of long delays, passport renewal processing times have resumed to pre-pandemic levels of just a month.
A 9-month Royal Caribbean cruise has gone viral on TikTok as passengers document their 274-night and 60-country journey on the app, including what they eat and offered activities.
In Tokyo, a commercial plane crashed into a coastguard plane during landing, fatally injuring five of the six coastguard passengers. All 379 passengers on the commercial plane survived.
Multiple airlines have alerted their passengers about potential flight delays and cancellations due to a snowstorm set to fall this weekend over the East Coast of the United States.
The Good
During the annual Pop-Tarts Bowl, the Pop-Tarts mascot gained viral popularity after lowering itself into a “giant toaster” to be snacked on by the winning team. The initiative is part of Pop-Tarts larger “Agents of Crazy Good” campaign, which launched last year and plays on an older set of advertisements.
The Bad
Lululemon’s founder Chip Wilson, who left the company in 2015, recently made comments criticizing the company’s inclusion efforts. Wilson stated: They’re trying to become like the Gap, everything to everybody," Wilson told Forbes in an interview published Tuesday. "And I think the definition of a brand is that you’re not everything to everybody… You’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in."
