Category: Tourism Industry

It snowed all day today. The temperature has sat at 0°C for most of the last 18 hours. When a wind arrived with the snow about noon, it was simply awful. It’s not even October yet. Also today, Keith Halliday posted an article in the Yukon News entitled “Your...

The best way to understand what it’s like to run the Yukon Quest is to spend a day mushing your own team of sled dogs. So on Saturday, February 1st, that’s what we did. I still only had one of the 9 people in my group, the rest being...

On Wednesday, January 30th, I began a 12-day tour with a group, focussed on the Yukon Quest sled dog race. I’m a few days behind (I’m writing this in Haines, on Day 6 of the tour), but I’ll try to catch up over the next couple of days. I...

A significant piece of legislation regarding the cruise ships which visit Alaska every summer was passed virtually unnoticed by the State of Alaska on February 4, 2013. Shopping is an activity that is very much encouraged by cruise lines. There are shopping malls on all large cruise ships, and...

Yet another article about questionable reviews at TripAdvisor, combined with some nonsense I saw posted at CruiseCritic last night, has prompted this post. The article, in Thursday’s Seattle Times, focuses on “…a string of flattering write-ups about the Sheraton Baltimore City Center Hotel” but talks as well about TripAdvisor’s...

I’m currently on a 4-day tour of what is marketed as the “Golden Circle Route”, from Whitehorse to Skagway, Haines, Haines Junction and back. With me is Julie Odell, Program Administrator for Road Scholar, a tour company which some of you may remember as Elderhostel. They are returning to...

All of my regular readers know that cruise ships play a significant role in my life, both in professional and recreational terms. I sell cruises, I work on cruise ships and I take cruises simply for pleasure. The tragedy still unfolding in Italy is obviously on my mind a...

This is kind of scary if only because of how simple it is. I’ll bet this works all too often. You arrive at your hotel/motel and check in at the front desk. When checking in, you give the front desk your credit card (for all the charges for your...

In case any of you like using reservation services for trip planning, I’m passing on a warning from the Yukon Tourism Department about a company working under several Web sites targeting Alaska, the Yukon, NWT and Nunavut. A screenshot of the CBC article is below. Note that the same...