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Pay-what-you-wish city tours are on the rise
DestinationsWhen is a free tour not a free tour? When it is, more accurately speaking, a pay-what-you-want tour. The concept of a city tour where there is no set charge and tourists show their appreciation by leaving a tip is becoming increasingly popular across Europe and beyond. An increase in budget-conscious travel, a growth of [...]
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New Mexico tour peels back layers of artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s private life
DestinationsThe Georgia O’Keeffe Museum will begin offering a “Behind the Scenes Tour” of the artist’s home and studio in Abiquiu, N.M., giving vistors a rare glimpse into her private world. The weekly tour begins June 12. O’Keeffe bought the 5,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial-era compound in 1945 from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. She then spent the [...]
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TMZ and New York Post push celebrity scandal tours of NYC
DestinationsIn February The New York Post, in partnership with Metro Sightseeing, an offshoot of Circle Line Sightseeing, began taking riders on a tabloid excursion around the city, revisiting many of the sites immortalized in the newspaper’s renowned headlines, although not the tavern in its most famous one, “Headless Body in Topless Bar.” That would require a long [...]
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The travelers who see State Department warnings as advertisements
DestinationsThere is a certain segment of the traveling public for whom a destination’s desirability is directly proportionate to how taboo it is. The more controversial its politics, the longer it has been closed to the outside world, the deeper their curiosity and appetite. So, for all the industry’s fretting over the negative impact of State [...]
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Historic U.S. steel furnaces could be given new life as tourist attraction
DestinationsThe Carrie Furnaces are intriguing, gritty historical attractions, if you can find the now-abandoned blast furnaces. The two 13-story furnaces, rusting and dilapidated, sit on the north side of the Monongahela River near the Rankin Bridge, seven miles from downtown Pittsburgh, surrounded by almost nothing. The complex with the giant furnaces and associated buildings in [...]
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Tourism is ruining everything special about Mount Everest
DestinationsReaching the summit of Everest – or, rather, returning alive from it – has to be one of the most exhilarating experiences life can offer. But what really matters is how you reach the summit. It used to be a prize earned through a long apprenticeship. Chris Bonington’s 1975 expedition brought the elite of British [...]
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Bronx succeeds in stopping ‘ghetto’ tours, kick-starts branding initiative
DestinationsA company that promised sightseer tours to the Bronx that included a New York City “ghetto” has stopped the bus rides under protest from an outraged neighborhood. Real Bronx Tours, which took mostly European tourists from Manhattan to see life in the South Bronx “from a safe distance,” issued a statement this week saying it [...]
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Game of Thrones tours launched in Dubrovnik and Belfast
DestinationsFans of the epic fantasy series Game of Thrones can visit sites made famous by the television drama on new walking tours around Dubrovnik and Northern Ireland. The tours visit some of the most popular filming locations and have been launched this summer by tour company Viator. Guides will be up-to-date on the latest gossip [...]
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Argentina’s new papal bus tours are met with high demand
DestinationsA new themed bus tour of Buenos Aires has run for the first time, giving visitors the chance to explore sites associated with Pope Francis. The Papa Tour of Buenos Aires includes stops at the pontiff’s childhood home, the plaza where he played football, and the school he attended. The three-hour bus tours are being [...]
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Alaska’s interior cruise tourism turns from rail to bus to speed visits
TransportTwo tour companies are changing how they will move tourists in and out of Fairbanks. Princess Alaska Tours and Holland America told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that visitors to Denali National Park will cover the trip north to Fairbanks by bus rather than rail car starting in 2014. Princess will begin the change this year. Spokesman [...]
