The 2011 Tour de France begins today!

by Kraig Becker on

One of the biggest sporting events in the world begins today when the 2011 Tour de France gets underway in the Vendée region of western France. Over the course of the next three weeks, the best cyclists in the world will pedal through beautiful towns and villages, past sun flower-filled fields, and most importantly up the Pyrenees and the Alps, to determine who will eventually ride into Paris wearing the champion’s Yellow Jersey.

The pre-race favorites are without a doubt defending champion Alberto Contador of Spain and Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, who has finished second to Contador the past two years. Other contenders include Australian Cadel Evans, who led the race last year until he crashed, fracturing an elbow in the process. Samuel Sanchez, also from Spain, finished fourth in 2010 and has been boldly predicting a higher place finish this year, while Belgian Jurgen Van Den Broeck has proven he can ride with the likes of Contador and Schleck as well.

The physical challenges of the race are quite staggering. The riders face a route that is more than 2130 miles in length, spread out over 21 stages. Of those, ten are flat and designed for the sprinters to strut their stuff, while the climbers will have their turn on three medium mountain and six high mountain stages, four of which have a summit finish. There will also be an individual time trial and a team time trial thrown in for good measure, along with two rest days.

As usual, the 2011 Tour will most likely be won or lost in the mountains, and this year’s course features the famed Alpe-d’Huez, which has been missing from the route the past two years. That all important summit finish comes in Stage 19, two days before the ride into Paris, and will probably determine who stands atop the podium on the Champs Élysées.

On an annual basis, the Tour is one of the most watched events in the world. There will be more than 2000 journalists on hand to cover the race and it is broadcast in 188 countries across the globe. Additionally, an estimated 12-15 million fans will line the stages of the race, cheering their favorite riders on to the finish line.

Extreme Travel Search: coming soon to a travel agency near you

by Chris Owen on

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go on line and ask “I have $500. Where can I go and what can I do for that?” then get a nice selection of options? New search technology being tested right now is going to be able to do just that on line soon with an extreme travel search we could only have dreamed of not all that long ago.

Amadeus, a leading travel technology company for the global travel and tourism industry commissioned an international research organization to investigate the way that travelers book and search on-line. The study charged Amadeus to develop technological innovation that would engage and effectively serve the needs of the next generation traveler. Basically, it looks like someone finally came up with a search product that will let travelers ask open questions in real-time such as “where can I go on a beach holiday in Europe for less than 600 euros per person?”

Travelers will no longer need to enter origin and destination information, but can inspire their search by budget, type of activity or geography all on a single page and receive relevant responses immediately.
“Amadeus Extreme Search provides our customers with intuitive and efficient options where users can explore and determine their trip based on their holiday requirements.” Johan Elwin, Director of Business Development at European Travel Interactive who is piloting the program told TravelDailyNews.com. “The ability to inspire the traveler to search easily in the same way they think, with quality content, gives us a considerable competitive edge and serves the interests of today’s traveler.”

The underlying technology, leveraging the Amadeus Massive Computation Platform, processes billions of results based on the traveler’s query. The traveler receives practically instant results which are based on real-time availability and price. Unlike any other on the market, this multi-carrier solution provides the most exhaustive and complete choice of options (including more than 440 airlines), which are bookable and accurate over multiple destinations and during a full calendar year.

“Extreme Search is the natural evolution of today’s consumer practices, overthrowing established search methods based on destinations and dates” said Stephane Durand, Director Online & Leisure, Amadeus.

It looks like one-stop shopping too thanks to Amadeus Master Pricer, the comprehensive low-fare search and merchandising solution for online travel agencies and online sites of travel agencies, the shopping process is seamlessly integrated into the booking flow, including the purchase of the trip on the same website.

To get a feel for how it will work, check Lufthansa’s Trip Finder option that allows you to enter a starting airport location and a dollar budget amount then see were you can go for that price. The idea is about the same. Lufthansa was the launch partner of the airline version of the product.

So now, when you see these new intuitive options on your favorite travel search sites, you know where they came from.

Flickr photo by Identity Photogr@phy

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Americans still don’t like dollar coins

by Meg Nesterov on

According to an NPR story this week, the Federal Reserve is sitting on a billion dollars worth of the $1 Sacagawean and Presidential coins, and the program to replace dollar bills with the metal coins has largely been deemed a failure. The government spends millions annually to mint new coins in order to introduce all the US presidents, resulting in millions languishing in vaults a la “Scrooge McDuck” said Planet Money’s David Kestenbaum. Despite the fact that they are legal tender and the government’s many efforts to promote their use, Americans still distrust the dollar coin.

Why the reason for the distrust? Americans claim they are difficult to spend, not recognized by many merchants, or just weigh down pockets too much. Perhaps we should ask our foreign neighbors how they have integrated them into daily life. America is one of the few countries in the developed world to use a $1 banknote and the only one of the top five traded currencies (including the Euro, British Pound, Japanese Yen, and Australian dollars) to use a bill in such a small denomination. Canada replaced the dollar bill with the “loonie” coin in 1987 and the British pound note has been out of circulation since 1983. Is taking away the $1 bill the only way to get Americans to use the coin? We reported earlier this year on a possible way to earn frequent flyer miles by purchasing dollar coins, a legal (but not encouraged by the US Mint) practice that may actually contribute to this back log of currency. Maybe go out and spend the coins instead and hope the trend catches on.

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Photo courtesy Flickr user cometstarmoon. Hat tip to Honza Kerver for the NPR story link.

Check in (virtually) to check out later at Radisson Edwardian hotels

by McLean Robbins on

London hotel group Radisson Edwardian has just launched its new ‘Check In, Check Out Later’ promotion in honor of Social Media Day today. The feature, which will be available until July 31, gives digital-savvy guests the opportunity to extend their checkout by up to two hours by ‘checking in’ to one of Radisson Edwardian’s twelve London hotels or Manchester hotel location-based social media service Foursquare.

Once checked in, guests just need to show their smartphone at the front desk to enjoy all the benefits of a late checkout. For Foursquare, the late-check-in will be promoted using a ‘Foursquare special offer’ which customers can see when they check-in on Foursquare.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to enrich the hotel experience for our guests and this was a great opportunity to once again connect an online interaction with an offline benefit. Checking in on Facebook or Foursquare has been popular with our guests, so rewarding them with a couple of extra hours in bed seemed like a nice way to say thanks,” Amy Clarke, e-commerce manager for Radisson Edwardian, said.

As we noted yesterday, the increased attention of hotels to the consumer power of social media is encouraging – and it also benefits us, the traveler.

The hotel has also experimented with other social applications, including Quick Response (QR) codes to restaurant menus in 11 of its London hotels. The QR codes direct diners to an online video hosted on the hotel’s website to show the ‘dish of the month’ being prepared by one of the hotel’s executive chefs. The video gives tips and advice on how the dish is prepared and the ingredients used. Honestly, we’re not sure how exciting this is to the average user – we’d probably prefer to talk to our dining guests rather than watch a phone video. But still, the hotel’s level of commitment to social media and engaging guests is impressive. Let’s see if the rest of the service during a stay matches up.

Five overlooked art museums in Madrid

by Sean McLachlan on

Madrid is famous for its art. The Spanish capital boasts a “Golden Triangle” of world-class museums: the Prado, the Reina Sofia, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza. While these are all worth a visit, Madrid has dozens of other art museums that are generally overlooked by the casual visitor. Here are five local favorites.

Museo Sorolla
The house of one of Spain’s most famous painters from the turn of the last century is preserved much the way he left it. The Museo Sorolla is an elegant old mansion with a quiet Moorish courtyard. The walls of the high-ceilinged rooms are covered in the paintings of Joaquín Sorolla Bastida, a prolific painter who favored sunny beach scenes like the one shown here. As interesting as the paintings are the many antiques he collected and knickknacks from his daily life, like a palette covered in colors next to a shelf stuffed with used tubes of paint. Looking at little details like this, you feel like Sorolla has just stepped out for a coffee.

%Gallery-127477%Museo del Romanticismo
Visit a mansion built in 1776 to see how rich folks lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the Museo del Romanticismo the ballroom, dining room, bedroom, and nursery are all fitted up with period furnishings. There’s even a velvet commode. The furnishings and artwork are all good examples of Romanticism, an art movement that was hugely influential at the time because it reacted against industrialization and science and hearkened back to a simpler age. Nostalgia is nothing new! The paintings often show Arcadian scenes or the exploits of famous adventurers. The collection of personal objects includes a bit too much lace and porcelain for my taste, but my wife loved this place.

Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando is a Madrid institution. Founded in 1744, it’s still teaching aspiring artists today. It’s housed in a grandiose Baroque palace and has an impressive permanent collection of Renaissance and early modern art, including works by Francisco de Goya, who used to be the academy’s director. The ground floor has a temporary exhibition space that attracts small but interesting shows. I saw an amazing exhibition on Ottoman calligraphy there once. Not what I was expecting but good on the eyes!

El Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales
Not technically an art museum, “The Monastery of the Barefoot Royals” houses a large collection of religious art. These nuns went barefoot as penance for their sins, but they lived well in other ways. First off, they were daughters of noblemen, so they came to the order with their dowries. This often included fine art. Since they’d been given a 16th century royal palace to live in, there was plenty of room to decorate. Check out the soaring church, fine tapestries, and even some religious relics such as a portion of the True Cross. This is still an active nunnery so dress respectably.

Museo Lázaro Galdiano
Another house museum like the Museo Sorolla, the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano has recently reopened after a long renovation. It’s a beautiful palace along Calle Serrano in Madrid’s poshest district. Galdiano was a millionaire and one of Spain’s most passionate collectors of art. When he died in 1947 his collection was turned into a museum. It’s especially strong in Old Master paintings, so if you didn’t get enough of that at the Golden Triangle, here’s your chance to see more. Plenty of Romanticism too, if visiting the Museo del Romanticismo left you wanting more of that too.

[Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]