Using my face as my boarding pass to get on a flight to Oaxaca, Mexico and then as my passport to get back in the US got me thinking about how facial recognition has permeated the travel experience. To help us understand where this is going, we talk with two travel industry experts, Dr. Sheldon…
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It’s the sustainability episode of the TravelCommons podcast, talking about my experience renting a Tesla from Hertz and my road-tested list of Christmas gift suggestions for the frequent traveler(s) in your life. I also talk about some new TSA biometrics equipment I faced (literally) in Nashville and yet another update on the EU’s ETIAS system…
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Stubbornness fixed some ORD connection drama when coming home from a tulip-peeping trip in Holland, even after all my travel planning. We wander into the world of flâneuring, aimlessly walking around a city as a way to swerve overtourism. Listeners weigh in on Priority Pass lounge access and online passport renewal experiences, and I count all the apps I needed to go cashless.
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Back at the microphone after two weeks in Southern Italy. Lots of travel segments that could’ve gone wrong, but none of them did. We talk about what international travel is like in COVID times, about the challenge of keeping track and complying with the different COVID travel requirements that seem to be constantly changing, and…
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Not much travel, but a lot of travel planning for our first post-lockdown international trip to Italy. Trying to thread our way through changing COVID rules and Alitalia’s bankruptcy throes. I’m getting inundated with discount offers for Clear’s fast-pass service. I’ve resisted them so far, because I remember back to when the first incarnation of…
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Business travelers are getting itchy. They know Zoom calls can’t replace a face-to-face meeting, but they can’t meet with people who aren’t in their offices yet. We also talk about how surprisingly great the LaGuardia Terminal B renovation is, and then talk about airport history with Professor Janet Bednarek, professor of history at University of…
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I can feel travel beginning to come back. TSA checkpoint volumes are hitting post-pandemic highs, business travelers are starting to come out from behind their Zoom sessions, and vaccination rates are prompting more people to make travel plans. So on this episode, we first talk to Paul Melhus, CEO of ToursByLocals about the state of…
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Spent a week in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula hiking, biking, kayaking, and running into a lot of other people getting away to do the same, which got me looking back six months to the start of the pandemic. I talk about a surprisingly good flight cancellation experience with American Airlines, and figuring out how to download…
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