Big Thing in Travel
RFID will help as well in gathering useful information about guests: As hotels and casinos grow ever larger, this kind of tracking would make it easier to find lost guests and guide them to their destinations. Reports from Las Vegas suggest that some such aid already is badly needed. In such large operations, RFID also can make sure that guests and their luggage arrive at the same room. This will be a boon for airlines as well!
Remotely reading RFID keys would make it possible to track which guests used free services like pools and weight rooms, which roamed the grounds at conference centers, and which had left the facility to visit local attractions. This can be critical in future marketing efforts and in customizing guest services to fit the customer’s preferences. It also will make it easier for hospitality operators to target their development funds to the most popular services.
The Swamp thing
There are guided tours . . . and guided tours. Over breakfast, Gus "One Bear" Batista gave an impromptu tour of his alligator scars. When you take a job dealing with sharp-toothed reptiles you look into the jaws of death on a daily basis. Batista's scars derive from working on an alligator farm and wrestling the beasts for tourist shows.
Deep in the interior of the eerie, steamy, swampy Florida Everglades, alligator wrestling and trading has been a feature of Native American survival and a contribution to their economy for hundreds of years.
On a night-time safari in the huge nature reserve in the middle of the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation, north-west of Miami, the 'gators are everywhere.
Driving out into the swamp in a high-chassis buggy, the searchlight picks up glints of orange as the light reflects back from reptilian eyes. Blink, blink. The bigger beasts sit tight and eyeball the buggy, resting in the shallow pools with their knobbly backs shining in the torchlight. The smaller ones scoot off into the reeds and disappear behind narrow palms rising out of still water.
Night herons stare down at the glassy surface, poised rigidly as they prepare to strike for fish. And all around are minuscule, sparkling green lights in the grass between the swampy pools. "Spiders' eyes reflect back green," says Batista.
Very lucky visitors may even spot the rare Florida panther which still thrives in the Everglades.
At night, the palms, cypress trees, ferns and fronds that make up the tangled forests of the Everglades display their reflections in the water with a ghostly beauty. The buggy snakes its way through the narrow trails, which are dry in the winter and waterlogged in summer.
The Seminoles originally built their huts out of hewn cypress planks, roofed with palm fronds and perched a few feet above the water to avoid floods and midnight encounters with alligators in the bedroom. Even today, although families live in modern houses on dry land in the Everglades, they may also build a traditional wooden hut in the garden and use it for weekend get- togethers.
The Seminole are the only Native American tribe that allow tourists to stay in such traditional-style dwellings, known as chickees, on their reservation. At the Billie Swamp Safari centre within the Big Cypress nature reserve, visitors can drive in for day safaris or stay for longer in a chickee.
A fee of $35 will buy you a night in just about the roughest shed you can imagine outside I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! A simple bunk bed with a basic wool blanket comes with one kerosene lantern and mosquito screens over the open window frames.
Travel Thing 1
I was exhausted. I flew to Copenhagen from London, where I gave the personas and getting from data to design seminars at the Nielsen/Norman Group conferences. The seminars went great, but it was two full days of being ‘on’ for big audiences, plus jetlag, plus sleeplessness…I was pooped. So I get on the plane to Copenhagen and spend my time worrying about giving the talk the next day (it’s remarkably hard to give a short talk on something you’ve just spent two full days talking about. That might qualify as a ‘Thing 4.’ We’ll see when we get there.) When I got off of the plane, I was dizzy with exhaustion. And when I’m tired, I’m incredibly susceptible to thinking the world is completely falling apart and nothing will ever be ok again.
Which is probably why I completely emotionally overreacted to my discovery that no, Denmark has not adopted the Euro. See, I HAD some Euros. I was all prepared. And then I get into the airport and see prices that were in the hundreds of thousands…and I realized I was actually totally unprepared. I had no idea what the exchange rate was. Which meant I had no idea how much a cab might cost. Which was enough to send me over the edge.
So I went to the cash machine—which offers only Danish as a language by the way. (And a note on that…why can’t my bank card remember that I choose English, oh, 100% of the time? Why on earth do I have to choose a language every time? And when I DO need a choice, like, say, in another country…I don’t get one?). After two attempts (I think I tried to get out the equivalent of $5 the first time and maybe $5000 the second) I had a handful of Kroner. And still no idea what the exchange rate was.
And now you’re going to say ‘weren’t there those exchange rate boards that show what the exchange rates are?’ Yes of course there were. Am I the only person on the planet whose brain starts to spin uncontrollably when I look at one of those? Am I overthinking, or is it REALLY difficult to figure out how to read something that looks like this:
Next Big Thing
Cramped airplanes and flimsy seats are frustrations that even the most seasoned travelers find hard to endure, but to the plus-sized vacationer, they're nightmares.
Enter Freedom Paradise, the world's first "size-friendly" resort. The 112-room hotel, which opened with much fanfare last summer on Mexico's Riviera Maya, was created expressly for the estimated 64 percent of Americans who are obese (with a body mass index of 30 or more) or overweight. The resort's sturdy, armless furniture, ladderless pools, and ample bathrooms were all designed with larger bodies in mind. Perhaps most significant, its staff has been trained by psychologists to look guests in the eye rather than staring at their physiques.
Despite such a strong market, Freedom Paradise is off to a slow start. This is a difficult economic climate in which to open a new hotel, especially one that caters to a group that has traditionally been reluctant to travel. According to Allen Steadham, director of the Austin, Texas-based International Size Acceptance Association, many plus-sized people are accustomed to traveling for work, but not for leisure. In the past, options designed for the overweight traveler have been slim: weight-loss vacations and fitness camps. Though Freedom Paradise offers fitness classes, the focus is on strength training and self-acceptance, not weight loss. "Freedom Paradise is about relaxing and feeling comfortable," explains co-founder Jurriaan Klink.
Freedom Paradise may herald a new era of plus-sized travel. Already, Klink and his partner Julio César Rincón plan to open other size-friendly resorts. At BBW (Big Beautiful Women) Travel in Maine, founded in June, travel agent Jo-Ellen Hodgkins advises overweight vacationers on how to avoid being charged for two airplane seats and how to find the most accommodating cruise lines. Kelly Bliss, Freedom Paradise's healthy-living coordinator, is hoping to introduce her specialized fitness routines at other resorts. Miriam Berg, president of the Council on Size & Weight Discrimination, is optimistic. She says, "Entrepreneurs are finally catching on to the fact that people come in all shapes and sizes."
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