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Governor Diego Velázquez was so overawed by lush beauty of this fabulous part of Cuba that he decided to call it the Jardines del Rey (King’s Gardens) in honour of the Spanish monarch Ferdinand the Catholic. And this Spanish explorer could not have thought of a more suitable name for the chain of islands containing Cayo Coco, as they truly do reign supreme amongst the many stunning paradisiacal spots to be found on the spectacular island of Cuba, the largest of the Antilles.

The island of Cayo

Quebrada de San Lorenzo Nature Reserve

By Roy Heale

The charming Villa San Lorenzo is located in the Lerma Valley at the foot of the Eastern Cordillera Andes foothills just on the edge of the city of Salta, Argentina. This leisurely village is a popular vacation destination where visitors can combine outdoor nature activities with city attractions nearby. Villa San Lorenzo offers a natural environment ideal for adventure tourism activities and eco-tourism in the mountain forest. Its landscape, m

Reviews do matter, but what seems to matter more is who writes them, and the question, can they be predicted?
And it seems Airbnb is saying, "yes."

Booking an Airbnb place anywhere can be a 50-50 proposition, but it's the very unpredictability and rich individuality of each place that makes the stays (and the site) so undeniably attractive. 

In a delightful comment, GigaOm, a data science and social web site, says reviews do indeed matter more and more because we are in an age of "Data Darwini

Hau Hin is a beach town 3 hours south of Bangkok by bus which offer foreigners everything Bangkok has to offer but in a concentrated area - a narrow town only a couple of kilometers wide at its widest.  

The bus to Hau Hin from Bangkok's southern bus terminal  runs near every hour and the bus station offers a variety of food options while you wait for your bus  to load (10 minutes before departing).  Just recently It has become either illegal or socially unacceptable to drink alcohol on the bus

Legal issues have recently plagued Air BnB in a growing number of cities. It's great to share your home with others but your lease or homeowners' association may forbid you from doing it on a routine basis. Restrictive City ordinances are next. Easynest steers clear of these pitfalls by getting you in a hotel room at half price. Double occupancy rates automatically charged for a room by hotels and resorts are single biggest hurdle for solo travelers.

It doesn't matter if you're staying by yoursel

When staying in Manhattan, some hotels capture the essence of what it's like to actually live here. Visitors may wonder what drives people to pay a premium for the privilege of forsaking their cars and residing in apartments with square footages approximating walk-in closets. Upon checking into a hotel like the Omni Berkshire Place, you quickly realize that having so many views at every turn each day is one of Manhattan's most alluring characteristics.



At the Omni Berkshire Place, you are situ

Dining Journeys  (part 2 of 3)

Denmark

Pølsers in Copenhagen at Tivoli Gardens, where everyone seemed happy

This was our first trip to Europe together, we stayed across from Tivoli Gardens, the whimsical entertainment park enjoyed by young and old alike. It was Walt Disney's inspiration for Disneyland.  We had pølsers (the national sausage) and beer and noted that everyone seemed happy. On the Strøget cobblestone shopping promenade, we ate smørrebrod, open-faced sandwiches. We both like Danish

High up on a hillside overlooking the waters of a vast silvery blue lake...Montana. Serenity and sweeping views yet minutes away from a bustling historic village...Montana…Hotel Montana, that is, in Lucerne, Switzerland. Embodying art deco magnificence with no expense spared, this grand dame is one of the last of its kind, built in 1910 on a former dairy farm perched in resplendent isolation yet no more than a minute vertical ride via Switzerland’s shortest funicular to the lake shore promenade

Hotels live and die by the number and kinds of reviews they get. Especially on TripAdvisor, because the quantity, quality and frequency of reviews a hotel receives there, determine a hotels  all-important ranking.
Very little is said about the authenticity of a review, but regardless, even a small change in TripAdvisor's rankings can send shock waves, and deeply impact a hotel's website and revenue.

Hotelmarketing.com points out that TripAdvisor's rankings are based on a propriety algorithm cal

I’m a huge animal lover, and I’ve been writing about vacation resorts for a few years now. These two facts might at first seem like a non-sequitur, but on my recent visit to Iberostar’s five-resort Playa Paraíso complex on Mexico’s Mayan Riviera below Cancun, they came delightedly together. 

Here not a day goes by where you won’t spot a charming critter with feathers, fins, or fur. Strolling from my room to dinner one evening at the Paraíso Maya, I came across a peacock calmly striding around t

It has been some time since we reviewed a Hawaiian vacation property, and the Westin Princeville Ocean Resort Villas on the leafy garden island of Kaua‘i  is particularly interesting for several reasons.

Mixed Clientele

The Westin Princeville is a village style resort that caters to a number of different types of vacationers. We spoke with Westin Vacation (timeshare) owners, business people using their Starwood Preferred Guest points for a much deserved vacation, and ordinary folks seeking a safe

For the third and final leg of my Southern business trip, I pulled in to charming Charlottesville, Virginia and was eager to sample one of the town’s premier lodging offerings.

While the popular Boar’s Head Inn, Omni Charlottesville Hotel, and Keswick Hall all seemed interesting, each – IMHO - had its downside (too big, way too big, too stodgy, respectively). Digging a bit deeper, I found the elegant Oakhurst Inn, and judging from the ebullient reviews on TripAdvisor (4.5 stars), Yelp (5 stars)

Southport, Connecticut is a picturesque, historic (est. 1639) port town on the Long Island Sound, just an 80-minute Metro North train ride from midtown New York City, And just a quick stroll from the local train station, Delamar Southport's classic white clapboard colonial architecture situated on the Old Post Road looks like it's been a fixture here since the town's 19th-century maritime heyday.
 
Until walking inside, it's hard to conceive that construction on the property was actually comple

Whether for elegant shopping or hotels, Vienna Austria has become a hot spot in Europe. Hotels of all categories have been transforming and mushrooming for a while, with more and better places to sleep, at (still) reasonable prices. That makes the choice a little harder, and more people are looking for the most popular hotels in town. But does that reasonably narrow your search? The answer is no, as probably a third of all local hotels and B&Bs rank among the top 10 on different sites, and in di

Once a humble Howard Johnson's overlooking I-95, JHouse is now Greenwich, Connecticut’s newest hotel and live-music hotspot. Resulting from extreme adaptive reuse, the property’s exterior footprint is the only discernible clue revealing its HoJo origins. The rest is a tricked out ultramodern architectural gem. A grand glassed entrance with a valet at the ready leads into a bright reception area. At first it feels as though you’re entering a museum and in some ways it is once you look up at the i

Or, Are Facebook and Twitter a Waste of Time for the Travel Marketer?

How surprising is this: In the second half of last year, fewer that 1% of visitors arrived at a hotel or travel booking site, "via a social media link or a link shared by by a friend," reports Hotelmarketing.com.

Does this mean hotels are wasting their time chasing the Holy Grail of Twitter and Facebook? Could be.

We love our friends' photos and status updates, the report goes on to say, and it's very true that social media

I had some business meetings scheduled in downtown Atlanta, and I wanted to find a top rated hotel in the area that offered character, class, and quality.

The Glenn, part of the Marriott Autograph Collection chain, promotes a boutique-ish vibe and looked appealing.  Ditto the upscale Courtyard by Marriott and swank Ritz Carlton.  While all were within walking distance of my confabs and appeared to be perfectly fine choices, I hesitated on the chain thing:  given the uniqueness of Atlanta, my pre

The hipsters in L.A. know where to hang out and where to find a good pool party. Los Angeles is trendy, warm and fun. On weekends, Los Angeles’ vibrant hotel scene becomes “party central” at some of L.A.’s luxury hotels have the vibe is everything but relaxing. Complete with hot girls and guys, tequila and jelly shots, sliders by the pool.

Summer has come and goen to most of the U.S., but from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica, the fun in the sun is just beginning.

Here are five opportunities t

I was a longtime New Yorker and am now a Miamian, but on my most recent visit to Chicago this summer I rediscovered that despite its cold winters, there are some things that the Windy City does better than either of them. And now, since Halloween 2011, Chi-town’s  also the first city in North America to boast an outpost of the Radisson Blu brand (formerly Radisson SAS), which is run by a company called Rezidor and has taken Europe (and especially Scandinavia) by storm since it was introduced in