Mobissimo

Travel can be stressful.  Holidays can be stressful.  Traveling during holidays is probably the worst.  Time constraints, big crowds, end of year blues can all add up to a huge headache, here's how to combat that.

The airports are crowded, the weather is dodgy, and stress levels are high. Here's where to go and how to get there with your sanity intact.

It seems like every worthwhile destination is overcrowded and overpriced around the holidays. Can you recommend some reasonable ways to avoid overpaying?
Christmas and Hanukkah are wholesome family holidays, when most people want wholesome family destinations. So one idea is to be contrarian and go where demand is weak. Consider heading to a party town like Las Vegas or New Orleans. The Big Easy has a long tradition of offering discounted hotel rates, free concerts, and free cooking demos during the first three weeks of December; check out fqfi.org/christmas for event schedules and special hotel deals.

It's always a tough time for airlines, low cost airlines even more so.  Fuel costs, passenger occupancy, labor costs, it all adds up.  However, some are wildly successful, others are having some issues.  easyjet, one of the pioneers has had some problems.

Budget airline Easyjet has reported a big fall in full-year profits to the end of September, after the rising price of oil pushed up fuel costs.

Pre-tax profits were £54.7m ($92.2m), half of the £110.2m the airline made a year earlier.

This came despite a 13% rise in sales from £2.36bn a year ago to £2.67bn.

Easyjet said the results were "extremely resilient", adding it was one of the "very few" European airlines to make a profit in the past 12 months.

United Airlines broke a passenger's guitar a while back and he took matters into his own hands, singing about it YouTube, causing a PR fiasco for United.  He was en route to talk about customer service when United lost his luggage.

After famously breaking his guitar, United Airlines has managed to cause further trouble for David Carroll by losing his luggage — just as the Canadian singer-songwriter was en route to deliver a speech about customer service.

RightNow Technologies, a company that creates customer service software, had hired Carroll to deliver a keynote speech this week at its conference in Colorado Springs, about 100 kilometres southeast of Denver.

Airplanes really haven't changed much in the past 50 years.  The Boeing 737 is one of the first of the modern passenger jets, now, on its last legs as a viable commercial jet.

United was an early customer of the 737, taking delivery of its first one in 1968. The plane that flew on Wednesday was delivered in 1988.

United began phasing out the decades-old planes last year as fuel prices spiked. Fuel prices have come back down somewhat since then, but United is still shrinking its fleet because demand is lower.

No doubt low cost airlines are great, but for intra-country travel especially in Europe, trains are still the best way.  Going from city center to city center saves time and these ultra fast and luxury trains do the job.

Minutes after leaving Barcelona Sants Station at 9:30 a.m., where platforms 1 to 6 have been converted from Spanish-gauge to European-gauge, you feel your Siemens Valero E AVE S-103 train begin a smooth transit from 92 mph to 186 mph, according to the speedometer inside the carriage.
An entrance to Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia is dwarfed by the four towers of the Nativity Façade. Photos: Brunhouse

The shiny new rails of the eagerly awaited high-speed line connecting Madrid and Barcelona opened on Feb. 20, 2008.

Upon deplaning in London Heathrow, you are subject to the endless line at customs.  Upon leaving Heathrow, you are subject to massive lines in security.  Are there any good things about Heathrow?  Apparently not, as it was voted the worst airport in the world.

BAA owned London Heathrow Airport has been voted the worst in the world by a poll of 14,500 frequent travellers.

The survey - which was carried out among members of Priority Pass airport lounge programme - included responses from travellers in 160 countries.

It’s a repeat of last year’s result in the same survey, when Heathrow was still reeling from the "debacle" of the T5 opening, and it appears that the airport has failed to shrug off its global reputation as the one to avoid.

Hotdogs are serious business, ask any New Yorker and he/she will show you to the best one in Manhattan.  Regardless of the fact that most of the hotdogs come from the same vendor.  Now here's a battle between cities.

It was fun to bring Montreal food insider Katerine Rollet into the world of hotdogs. Her refined palate is more accustomed to the culinary masterpieces she unearths in her home town, and she has the impeccable judgment that a food-illiterate like me can only admire. But, for a moment in New York and a moment farther north, she decided to come down to my level and explore the world of hotdogs

While the economic downturn has everyone watching budgets, apparently the need to get there outweighs the need to stay in a nice place.  Read more here.

American Express Business Travel expects the average cost of a North American domestic business trip, which includes air, ground transportation and hotel accommodations, to remain nearly the same as in 2009, with just a $5 decrease in cost per trip to $1,108, according to the company's 2010 Global Business Travel Forecast, released late last month. It projects North America-originating international trips to increase by an average of 3.5 percent to $3,413.

Don't know if this includes Obama, but Chicago suffers in a poll.  Perhaps this is why they lost the Olympics?

In Travel + Leisure magazine's annual poll, in which readers rate American cities in myriad categories, Chicago is No. 1 (skylines and views) and dead last (weather) for the third straight year.

This year's poll, which compared 30 cities (up from the usual 25), pitted Chicago against the likes of New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Denver, but also against Honolulu, Santa Fe, Kansas City and Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Can't have it both ways I guess, bad economy means higher fares, good economy means lower fares and more people.  Read more here.

The study from the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, said the downturn in travel has a "silver lining of freeing up airport capacity and improved on-time arrival rates. But these silver linings will disappear...in 2010."

A huge concern here, apparently there was a physical altercation onboard an Air India flight recently, read more here.

Passengers on an Air India flight apparently were treated to quite a scene over the weekend, according to a variety of media reports. Two pilots and two flight attendants apparently came to blows during an international flight on Saturday night. Reuters says the incident "began as a heated exchange on a charge of sexual harassment against the pilots by a crew member. Blows were also exchanged in the scuffle that spilled into the cabin late on Saturday night, according to media reports."

This is from Fodor's, traveling with kids can be stressful, make is less stressful for them and yourself with a surprise bag for your child.

Looking for advice on how to keep your little ones happy and occupied on your next flight? Fodor's member dfr4848 has one suggestion:
"Pack some surprises in your carry-on and give them one every 2 hours or so. My wife excelled in finding some inexpensive items - removable stickies that made games/pictures, small puzzles, child magazines, kids books on your destinations (let them pick some things they'd want to do), etc."

Easier written than explained.

It’s been a rough week for a couple of local U.S. tourism boards. First up, the Wisconsin Tourism Federation changed its name—to the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin—after catching on that the federation’s acronym, WTF, means something different when the kids say it. And then Reno’s mayor vetoed a proposed slogan that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t mean anything at all. The short-lived idea? “A Little West of Center”—which, said Mayor Bob Cashell, “doesn’t do a thing for me.”

Indeed. As the kids might say: WTF?

Much like liquor laws here in the United States which many foreigners run amuck in whilst traveling, there are many laws that can cause problems for travelers in other countries, read more here.

In Sweden, ladies of the evening are well within their rights to practice their profession. However, the gentlemen paying for their services are at risk for punishments ranging from a fine to as much as six months in jail.