#travelzoo news flash

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/travel/books-territory-a-southern-bookstore-serving-up-a-little-bit-of-everything/

BOOKS TERRITORY: A Southern Bookstore Serving Up a Little Bit of Everything

RICHMOND, Va. — “The joke was that when we opened up, we had three Civil War books,” said Ward Tefft, owner of Chop Suey Books, “But we’re in Richmond so we see a lot more now, and it’s grown since then.” Since it first opened 17 years ago, the store has grown more than just its local history holdings, and has become a well-stocked stop for book lovers strolling the vibrant Carytown district of Virginia’s capital (and former capital of the Confederacy). As described on its website, Chop Suey Books offers “gently used literature, art, photography, architecture, design, philosophy, poetry, theater, film and the like” volumes.

Tefft, 47, knew the Carytown area from his days as an undergraduate studying English at nearby Virginia Commonwealth University. After earning a master’s degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo, he ended up making a living largely by working in independent bookstores, including the late, lamented Skyline Books that once brightened Manhattan’s West 18th Street.

Although the move was already in the works before the September 11 attacks on the city, Tefft left New York and moved back to Richmond in October 2001 with a truck of “about 3,000 or 4,000 books” he’d collected and an idea for a used-books shop of his own. A few months later, he found a retail space and a name for his store — in a building at 1317 W. Cary Street that still sported a rusted hanging sign for “George’s Chop Suey,” a long-gone restaurant.

[Heading south? Read “36 Hours in Richmond, Virginia.”]

While the store’s culinary-themed name is a nod to neighborhood history, it’s also sincerely inspired by the concept of the dish itself, considered to be a Chinese-American creation. As Tefft explains, the name “chop suey” is thought to have derived from the Mandarin “za sui,” which translates to “a little bit of this, a little bit of that” — much like the contents of a used-books shop.

The store opened in 2002 and has expanded in many ways since. Chop Suey Books moved from its original building in 2008 and is currently located in a larger space at 2913 W. Cary Street across from Richmond’s landmark Byrd Theatre, a 1928 movie palace still in operation showing second-run films. Tefft handles the daily business of buying, selling and trading books for store credit with the help of six employees and WonTon, the store’s affable tuxedo cat, who freely patrols the place.

WonTon has a lot of room to roam. In addition to the ground-floor sales area — where newly released titles can also be purchased — Tefft was able to expand the store bit-by-bit over the years and now rents the entire second floor of the building. A trip up the stairs reveals five more rooms packed with shelves and free-standing racks of books.

The Children’s Room is organized chronologically from expectant-parent guides to board books to picture books and all the way around to the young-adult titles. The walls of the room are decorated with brightly painted murals of the store’s cat having fantasy adventures, but other whimsical bits turn up elsewhere around the store — including a large stuffed pink unicorn perched atop a shelf of adult memoirs and biographies.

The second floor also houses the store’s Fiction Room. “This is our most popular room,” said Tefft, who said he’s tried to make the literary-fiction titles for sale there inclusive and representative of different points of view. “We try to get a strong international selection, African-American and indigenous authors.”

[ntrending]

How to book a good hotel room at the best possible price

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/how-to-book-a-good-hotel-room-at-the-best-possible-price/

How to book a good hotel room at the best possible price

Travel gets very expensive very fast—and one of the biggest costs is the hotel room. But with all the discounts and deal-hunting sites out there, you shouldn’t pay top price unless you absolutely have to. Instead, save more of your budget for actually enjoying your trip. Here are our top tips and essential resources for spending as little as possible on your next hotel stay.

Get the timing right

Most hotels will reward you for booking as early as possible: That’s when they offer the cheapest prices, and sometimes, they throw in sweeteners like free drinks or an extra night. So, once you know where and when you plan to travel, start looking at prices as soon as you can, while they’re at their lowest.

On the flip side, you can also find good deals by booking very late, as hotels try to fill up their rooms at the last minute. However, with this option, you’ll have a smaller pool of hotels and rooms to choose from. Thanks to the limited selection, you may miss out on your preferred location, especially if you’re visiting a popular destination. If you do want to take this risk, a couple sites can help you find the best deals.

Hotel Tonight: With this service, you input your destination and your travel dates to see a list of hotel offers. It compares current prices with historical highs so you can see where the big savings are.

Lastminute.com: This is another site built on the concept of the last-minute deal. In addition to a comprehensive hotel search tool similar to those we’ve already mentioned, Lastminute.com has a dedicated page for highlighting flash sales. As a bonus, it often gives out bigger discounts when you buy a hotel and flight together.

Another point to consider is free cancellation. If you’re interested in a hotel that offers this, take advantage by booking the room immediately, but continuing to check on the latest prices as your departure date nears. If you find that prices keep sliding, you can cancel your original booking and set up a new one for a better price.

In other words, the timing of when you book is not an exact science. Whether you should claim your room early or late will depend on the popularity of your destination and the policies of the hotel chain you choose. In fact, if you’re devoted to a particular hotel or chain, the issue of timing becomes less important. Instead, focus on that particular brand’s perks. Sign up for their newsletter or social media updates, which often advertise special deals. While you’re at it, sign up for a reward program, such as Hilton Honors or IHG Rewards., which offers members lower prices, free nights, and bonuses like discounts on restaurant meals.

Sites and apps that compare hotel prices can save you the time and hassle of checking each location individually. These services often promote special savings and seasonal deals as well. Depending on your personal privacy policy, you might consider setting up a free account with some of these sites. In return for your email address and a little personal data, certain search tools will show you offers not available to more casual visitors.

The internet abounds in this type of service. So we picked out three of the most popular options for you to consider.

Booking.com: Input your destination and travel dates into this site to see a list of hotel choices. Then sort the results by price or by other travelers’ review scores. You can filter hotels using all types of criteria—free breakfast, free Wi-Fi, free cancelation, and much more. With Booking.com, you should keep an eye out for the “Great Value Today” labels, which highlight hotel prices that are unlikely to drop any lower before your trip date. Also check out the deals page, which shows special offers running right now. This site works best if you plan to book right away and want the cheapest immediate price.

Trivago: Like Booking.com, this site lets you sort by price and traveler rating, and tap into filters that cover amenities, hotel facilities, and extras like complimentary Wi-Fi or breakfast. Trivago is particularly good at surfacing deals, whether those come directly from the hotel or through third-party travel services like Expedia. You can see at a glance how prices vary depending on the agent through which you decide to book your room. Then click through to access the best one.

Kayak: This option includes an extensive selection of filters, so you can find a place tailored to your preferences. It also flags the locations where you’ll find the biggest savings, like if a hotel is running a half-price sale. But the area where Kayak really excels is in letting you watch particular hotels. If you register an account with the site, you can maintain a list of places you’re considering, monitor how the room prices change over time, and receive email alerts if prices drop. This comes in handy if you’d prefer to see updates in your inbox rather than visiting Kayak every day.

While you’re looking for low prices, consider a site that provides “secret hotel” deal. If you don’t really mind which company owns the hotel, as long as it’s in the right area, you can make substantial savings by booking your room first and learning the hotel’s name after.

Lastminute.com: We already discussed this site, but we didn’t talk about its Top Secret Hotels page. Like with the standard service, you can sort by certain criteria, such as available amenities and star rating, but you don’t find out the hotel’s name until you’ve actually booked.

Hotwire: This popular travel site also takes the secret hotel approach. You can see the star rating, user reviews, and how much you’ll save, but the hotel name remains hidden until you’ve completed your booking. As with Kayak, you can sign up for email alerts to notify you of dropping prices.

Once you’ve compared prices through a dedicated site, try going directly to the hotel to see if it has anything cheaper: Some locations save their best prices for customers who book through their official website or contact the hotel in person. If you’re determined to get the price down, it can’t hurt to get on the phone and speak to the hotel directly.

When making this type of comparison, remember to look at the final prices, which should include all the extra little charges like room tax. Also weigh up the bundled bonuses, such as free meals, that you might receive when buying directly from the hotel—even if you end up paying slightly more for your stay, you could save money because you won’t have to purchase those items separately.

Try other sources

Finally, it’s a good idea to look for discount offers outside of the hotels and their related search engines.

Groupon is a great resource for discounts on just about any experience, including hotel stays. You can search by location or decide to take a trip to wherever seems to have the biggest savings.

A similar resource, but focused more on trip-related discounts, is TravelZoo. You have to register an account before checking out deals. But once you do, you’ll see special offers on hotel stays and on experiences to enjoy while you’re away. We especially like the list of top 20 deals, hand-picked by TravelZoo staff.

Written By David Nield

[touristguidebuzz]

Travelzoo Closes Search Business and Sells Fly.com Domain

The airfare metasearch brand is the most under-leveraged Internet domain out there. Fly.com

Skift Take: Travelzoo has sold Fly.com, the most under-leveraged internet domain name in travel. We hope the mystery buyer has better luck with it than the deals publisher did.

— Sean O'Neill

Metasearch isn’t the sure path to riches that companies like Kayak, Skyscanner, and Momondo have made it seem — as deals publisher Travelzoo has learned the hard way.

In 2009, the New York City-based company spent $1.76 million to buy the domain Fly.com, which seemed worth the price. It was short, self-evident, and hard to misspell.

Travelzoo launched a metasearch site on Fly.com for flights (and later hotels). The business model was to upsell buyers of flights on some of the hotel and holiday bargains listed on its platform and in its weekly email newsletter offers to millions of subscribers. The goal was to challenge Kayak in the U.S. and Skyscanner in Europe.

But the plans didn’t fly. The company never established the brand successfully with its users or via customer acquisition.

In recent weeks, Travelzoo laid off or reassigned Fly.com’s small staff and contractors for its search business, which consisted of Fly.com and SuperSearch, a pay-per-click search tool that recommends travel sites.

Mystery buyer

On March 31, it sold the Fly.com domain name to an undisclosed buyer who has registered it privately.

The company’s chief financial officer declined to elaborate on the decision.

Not so fly

Outsiders suspect that the problem was that executives were distracted. From late 2010, Travelzoo executives paid attention instead to their Local Deals and Getaways products. They were aiming to compete with Groupon’s then flaring success with vouchers.

Fly.com’s job got harder with time. After the Priceline Group acquired Kayak in 2012, the cost of competing in user acquisition and supply acquisition rose steeply.

Travelzoo was then hurt by consumer adoption of mobile, which, thanks in part to ad blocking software and other factors, commands lower advertising rates.

Since 2013, the company has tried to shift its revenue model to commissions on hotel bookings, as we noted at the time. But the expense of investing in a hotel booking platform was high.

To free up cash, Travelzoo had to wind down its digital marketing support for Fly.com. Between 2013 and 2016, monthly searches dropped in half. That drop brought down the search unit’s (Fly.com’s and SuperSearch’s) consolidated annual revenue from $23 million in 2013 to $14 million in 2016.

Sadly, the Local Deals product also was a flash in the flash sales pan. As global economies recovered, interest in vouchers declined. The Local Deals unit’s annual revenues went from $35 million in 2013 to $20 million a year in 2016.

In 2016, Travelzoo booked $128 million in revenue, a drop of 9 percent year-over-year.

The declines have spooked investors. Since summer 2013, investors have knocked two-thirds off of Travelzoo’s valuation, to today’s $130 million — about the same as its annualized revenue.

That said, Travelzoo recently relaunched its website and, overall, it continues to hire for dozens of positions worldwide for its core deals-publishing business. Its email newsletter claims 28 million addresses.

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/travel/merkel-saddened-as-germany-awaits-answers-on-deadly-bus-crash-in-madeira/

Merkel ‘Saddened’ as Germany Awaits Answers on Deadly Bus Crash in Madeira

BERLIN — A day after a bus plunged off a road on the Portuguese island of Madeira, killing 29 tourists, possibly all Germans, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said she was “saddened and distressed” by the accident, as her nation awaited word of the victims’ identities.

The Portuguese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that all those killed had been German citizens, but Berlin said it could not yet confirm that information. The German government took the unusual step of readying a medical evacuation plane, however, and will send the foreign minister, Heiko Maas, to help determine how many of the victims were German.

The German ambassador to Portugal, Christof Weil, also traveled to Madeira on Thursday morning, ahead of Mr. Maas, to assist with the identifications. Portuguese officials said the identification process would not be completed until Saturday.

As Germany awaited answers about the cause of the accident — the bus drove off the road and landed on an empty house, leaving 27 others injured — the authorities in Portugal declared three days of national mourning, and German politicians expressed their condolences.

“It is shocking that the Easter holiday had become a tragedy for so many people,” Mr. Maas said in a statement. “They were suddenly killed or struggled with serious injuries,” he added.

Ms. Merkel sent her condolences while she was away for the funeral service of her mother, who died on April 6.

The tourist bus was carrying at least 56 people on Wednesday night when it went off the road and tumbled down a steep incline on the island, Portuguese officials said. Twenty-eight people died almost instantly, and one person died at a hospital hours later, physicians at Dr. Nélio Mendonça Hospital said at a news conference.

The doctors said the injured had been 40 to 60 years old. They were taken to a medical center in Funchal, the island’s capital. Nine of the injured were released on Thursday morning. Several were still in intensive care a day after the accident, the doctors said.

Two Portuguese citizens onboard — presumably the driver and the guide — survived the accident and were in stable condition, according to hospital officials.

An unidentified woman who was on the bus said on Thursday in a televised interview in Portugal that during the accident, passengers went into a “fetal position” and “that’s why we survived.”

Portuguese officials hauled away the wreckage of the tour bus from the crash site on Thursday.

At a news conference, Helge Braun, a minister in Ms. Merkel’s government, asked the public and the news media to respect the relatives of the victims, who needed to be informed before the victims could be named publicly.

Most of the passengers were German citizens who had booked their Easter vacation with the same tour company, according to reports in the German news media. The bus was said to have been taking the group to a restaurant when it drove off the road several hundred yards into its route.

Security video footage shows the white bus tumbling down the hill. It came to rest after falling on the house, according to officials. The accident took place on a treacherous road that is difficult for larger vehicles to navigate, officials said.

Maria de Lurdes Correia, an official in Madeira, said a judicial investigation had been opened into the cause of the crash. The Portuguese authorities said the bus was about six years old and had been handled by an experienced, 55-year-old driver.

Madeira, about 400 miles off the African coast, is a popular holiday destination for European tourists. In 2016, the island hosted about 1.2 million international visitors — more than four times the island’s population.

In 2015, more than four million German vacationers had bus trips abroad lasting longer than five days, according to the International Coach Tourism Federation. Among tourists who fly to a destination, 23 percent use tour buses to visit the local sights, the federation said.

“We Germans are rather social; they like traveling together in the bus,” said Dieter Gauf, the former managing director of the federation.