Tourism News

There are still numerous challenges and restrictions for Americans who want to visit Iran. But recent progress for Europeans has created hope for a wider opening of the country to U.S. travelers.

Happiest place on earth? Not for chief operating officer Thomas Staggs, who is leaving the company despite expectations that he would take over in two years.

Global security concerns have been a reality for travelers for years, so it's alarming to see 20 percent of respondents say that their company does not have a policy to deal with such risks.

Cracking down on Airbnb "Super Hosts," or those who use the platform on a "professional" full-time basis to operate illegal hotels, is becoming a serious hot button issue. If Airbnb wants to become more widely accepted, it has to assure local and state governments that its platform isn't becoming a front for illegal hotels.

These are the tourism trends we were talking about this week.

Southeast Asia owes much of its tourism growth to China but people from within the region are also generally more interested in travel than they were 10 years ago. It's a region that's social, mobile-dependent and interconnected that make it the ideal testing ground for the future of travel.

Brand USA expects to spend about $140 million marketing the U.S. abroad this fiscal year, but it's still hard to deduce the tangible impact its programs have on stimulating demand for American vacations.

For travel companies, the key to personalizing the offline travel experience is collecting as much personal information as possible from the customer online.

Carnival Corp. and competitors are looking at long-term potential rather than short-term pricing pressure in China.

International travelers have fewer incentives to spend their hearts out on vacations to the U.S. because of the stronger U.S. dollar. We'll see if fewer of them actually visited in 2015 later this year when visitor totals are released.