“We will fight hard,” President Macron of France declared. “And we will ask them to remain in Paris!”
The leader of the 7th largest economy in the world wasn’t talking about some manufacturing giant or cutting edge tech company when he said that. No, he was referring to Netflix’s Emily in Paris. The much-derided show was contemplating a turn in Rome at the time. Aware that some studies had shown nearly 40% of tourists to France citing the show as the inspiration, Macron knew the value in keeping it there.
Series and movies like Emily in Paris, Game of Thrones, In Bruges, White Lotus, The Lord of the Rings, and more all became major drivers of tourism to the parts of the world used on screen. Being broadcast into people’s bedrooms—even if it’s where scandals, mass slaughter, or fictional fairy tales took place—dramatically changed the fate of Dubrovnik, Sicily, Bruges, and others. The locations almost become another character in their own right, but one you could actually meet.
Entourage made me want to live in LA and Sex and the City and Girls might have affected my vision of NYC as much as actually living there. Breaking Bad, despite all the meth and murder, captured the beauty of New Mexico. For God’s sake, Queer as Folk had teenage me thinking I should go to Pittsburgh to check it out if it was such a gay paradise!
These days, I’m fully committed to Widow’s Bay, a delightful horror-comedy that takes place on a fictional island off of Massachusetts. Sure, the creepy mishaps aren’t striking wanderlust. But it so thoroughly nails the unique qualities of a New England small town and its characters that it has me so excited for a summer bopping back and forth between Newport and Marblehead.
The one show that doesn’t convince me to go to its location? Hacks. The Vegas of Hacks, despite Deborah Vance’s enthusiasm, is not alluring. In fact, despite my love for the show, it has a persistent problem: it tells you something over and over, but your eyes and ears don’t agree. (Such-and-such joke is funny, but then they make a joke and it’s, well, not funny).
Outside of the first season, which captured the strangeness of life there, Vegas has somehow become either flat or a caricature. And neither of those compels me to visit anytime soon.
Which is too bad, because the city really could use a show that does that.
Reconsider flying to Lisbon. Back in February, I flew to Lisbon for the first time in years. My upgrade to business had gone through, and I managed to sleep nearly the whole flight. I was feeling great. Then I hit the immigration line. It took two hours to get through, with mass confusion and little communication. I at least had some expectation that things might be arduous, because I had seen chatter online about Lisbon in particular. Well, things have only gotten worse with the full rollout of the EES gates, and that has broken through to mainstream news outlets. (The EU denies the e-gates are to blame.) In fact, things have gotten so bad that if I was looking at booking summer travel to Europe and landing in Lisbon to connect elsewhere was an option, I would definitely not do it.
I flew in and out of Denver recently, and while I won’t drag this newsletter edition into my strong feelings about that airport, I will say I spent the handful of minutes waiting for the airport’s people-mover trains wondering whether they were ever going to come or if I would be stuck on them. That’s because the airport has been plagued by train breakdowns over the last year, which causes bottlenecks for thousands and thousands of passengers unable to get to their gates. The trains, you see, are the only way. Well, Edward Russell of Airport Architecture reported that Denver is finaaaaally retrofitting its baggage tunnels to become passenger tunnels so people can have the option of walking between terminals. What’s great about Russell’s piece is he also walks through (get it?!) the ways in which these kinds of tunnels have gone terribly wrong at other airports, and how to do it right.
So much to unpack in the recent interview by Southwest CEO Bob Jordan. The airline is now fully into its new era, with checked bag fees, basic economy, extra-legroom seats, and more. Jordan said in the next few years, we can expect to see clubs, first class, international long haul routes, a Starlink rollout (that he says they’ll do faster than United), and more. I’ll believe it when it all happens. He also named Baltimore’s BWI airport as the logical spot to build out international. Perhaps the most interesting part of the interview, though, was Jordan getting explicit about why airlines are adding destinations to far-flung places that might not make economic sense—credit cards. “The loyalty programs and co-brand are a huge part of the financials of an airline, and having long-haul, aspirational destination kind of routes really, really enhances the co-brand program as well,” he explained. “It’s as much a part of that. That’s as much the reason as it is even destinations that our customers want.”
I love a beautiful train station as much or more than the next guy (see last week’s column), but the choices involved in prettifying train stations aren’t hard ones. They’re often just a numbers question. But building out an actually useful rail network that is fast, reliable, and logical does require hard choices. Choices over land use, skipping intermediary cities, etc. And American politicians have been unwilling to make those, meaning we’ll have lots of beautiful stations and few reasons to use them except to take pictures.
Ouch! Three hotels in France—two in Paris—lost the coveted “palace” designation. The three in question? The Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme, the Mandarin Oriental Paris, and Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz.
The cult of Delta will die a death by a thousand cuts. This week, it’s a report that on one of the most important routes in the world—NYC to LA—Delta’s customers are pretty unhappy with delays and service, and a report that it’s losing its reputation as an airline that doesn’t cancel flights.
Well, it’s official. A whopping four million fewer people visited the U.S. last year than the year prior. It’s not really a surprise, but it still bites seeing the numbers. Now, Mexico’s tourism industry is growing faster than the U.S.
Cooome on, Chicago Sun-Times. It isn’t 1890! Have enough dignity not to ascribe everything the French do as being “high-fashion.” It’s akin to people thinking somebody with a British accent is more of an intellectual. They’re lawn chairs! (Which is what the headline on the article eventually read as).
Like elite colleges over the past couple of decades, airports are in the midst of an upgrades arms race that seems poorly thought out. When colleges did it, they often strapped themselves with enormous costs and accelerated administrative bloat—usually without asking if any of these things actually contributed to educating young people. Airports, particularly in the U.S., are spending or proposing to spend billions and billions on new terminals, often with designs that make one wonder if they’ve considered the passenger at all. More than anything, they seem designed to compete with splashy airports in the Middle East and East Asia that impress columnists like Tom Friedman. Even worse, as Edward Russell noted on Twitter this week, these pricey upgrades lead directly to high airport fees that price out low-cost carriers like Spirit, Frontier, and the like.
I mentioned it a few newsletters ago, but keep an eye on the trend of hotels within the Hyatt umbrella recategorizing themselves as “resorts.” Why are they doing this? Well, perks for the Hyatt rewards program aren’t as plush at properties categorized as resorts! The latest offender? The Park Hyatt Sydney, according to One Mile at a Time.
London has some of the most talented designers in the world living there. And this is the best the city could do for its new public drinking fountains?! (These also don’t work unless you already have a water bottle.) Come on. Why can’t we have services and beauty!?
The Tren Maya always seemed like it was going to be a disaster, and so far it is, losing millions of dollars a day according to documents obtained by El Universal.
I’ve been banging on to anybody who will listen about how we’re entering this golden age of safari tourism because it’s overlapping with massive wildlife restoration projects. Whether it’s the puma and the jaguar in South America, the wolf in Yellowstone, or tigers in India, the list of animals we can see and admire while keeping them protected seems to grow yearly. The latest? The Iberian lynx, a gorgeous cat that was down to a wild population of just 64 in 2002. Now, there are 2,700 and they’re at the center of a new type of tourism Spain hasn’t really experienced—safaris.
If you’re a fan of Gilded Age-era architecture, the most under the radar destination is actually Washington, D.C. For decades, money—old and new, and Old World and New World—raced to build stately homes here as America grew richer and Washington’s grip on the country grew stronger. Many of those homes are now embassies or ambassador residences, which open up to the public at various points of the year. So I loved this Washington Post feature taking readers inside some of the best ones. (The staircase at the Indonesian Embassy, which used to belong to Thomas Walsh and his daughter Evalyn Walsh McLean, is my favorite.)
This FT feature on how the original Hilton hotels represented modernity, which actually made them a key part of American soft power during the Cold War.
And for Dolly Parton fans, her latest act as tourism empress is honestly incredible and this Wall Street Journal story takes a look at how she pulled it off.
Olive Young, South Korea’s leading beauty retailer, is opening its first U.S. store in California
Italy restores lucky testicles on bull mosaic in Milan worn down by tourists
Brazilian court orders restoration of Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s Amazon ghost town
The Royal Palace in Brussels to reopen this summer after two-year renovation
Plus-size passengers on Southwest will no longer be required to purchase an extra seat
The Jewelers Building in Chicago might be getting a rooftop bar
Hotels can refuse to serve tap water, Italy’s top court rules
Saudi Arabia’s tourism chief to step down
Marriott launched a design portal for customers who want to buy designs from its hotels
American to add Starlink Wi-Fi to its planes beginning in 2027
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