business travel

Podcast #107 — Serious About Hotel Reviews; TSA Gets Something Right!

Brushing aside the cobwebs to make my way back into the TravelCommons studios, we talk about the growing importance of TripAdvisor hotel reviews and the checklist I walk through when writing a review. I also continue to gush about the TSA’s PreCheck program, even if this autumn’s rapid expansion seems a bit rough-&-ready at times….

Read More

Managing travel itineraries — Digging Deeper into Trip Management Apps

In the last podcast, I did a side-by-side comparison of the free versions of the leading trip management apps. In an article on the Tnooz website, I dug deeper, expanding my comparison to the free and paid versions of TripIt, TripCase, and WorldMate. My conclusions didn’t change much. THE TCRITIC TAKE: TripCase for smartphone only;…

Read More

Podcast #92 — Not-So-Upbeat Traveler; iPad 2 vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Into the summer travel rhythm with a mix of vacation and business travel. Using an Apple iPad 2 and Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet during this mix gave me enough real world experience to make some recommendations. A couple of recent web links describe this podcast as “not as upbeat as others” which…

Read More

Table for One: Eating Alone on the Road

Dinner time on my last visit to Philadelphia  and I was sitting at the bar of Tinto, a Spanish restaurant in Philadelphia. My dinner was a couple of plates of tapas — one of grilled octopus, another of sautéed wild mushrooms and caramelized shallots. I put in the order for mushrooms and shallots immediately after the…

Read More

Podcast #89 — Trains Over Planes; Fit 2 Weeks in 1 Carry-On

My business-vacation combo trip to London, Paris, and Venice provides the source for most of this episode’s content. Wanting to pack light, I had to figure out how to pack for 10 days, 3 cities, two business meetings and a week’s vacation in a single carry-on bag. After landing in London, I skipped the airports and…

Read More

What’s in My Bag: Traveling Light But Prepared

One of my annual New Year’s travel resolutions is to “unpack and repack my briefcase.” Some people re-do their closets; I do my briefcase.  I’m always amazed at the stuff that accumulates over the year. Why did I think I needed a half-dozen pens, two sets of earphones, $5 of loose change in three different…

Read More

Podcast #71 – Winter Travel, Last Year’s Travel, Tatty United

Recorded in the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, back doing my thing to support the travel industry with lots of travel in January. We talk about some recent TSA observations, good and bad; my latest spin of the “travel roulette” wheel, trading the plane for a train in an East Coast snow storm; a look…

Read More

Podcast #70 – Packing a Suit, Videoconference over Travel, Watching Winter Flight Delays

Recorded in the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago after finishing up my travel for the year. But there was a good bit of travel before the year-end, including one of the craziest/stupidest(?) itineraries I’ve done in a long time — Chicago-London-Denver in a little more than a day. Many of the subsequent Twitter comments I…

Read More