Los Cabos’ famed Arch experiences infrequent natural phenomenon

by McLean Robbins on




Every four to seven years, the tide surrounding the iconic Arch of Los Cabos (El Arco) recedes to reveal a pristine, white sand beach. This natural phenomenon is happening today in Los Cabos. If you’re in the area, stop by and check it out!

Located in the region deemed “Lands End,” the southernmost tip of the Baja California peninsula, this arch is a popular destination for travelers looking to take scenic photographs. The swirling mix of blue and green waters mark the junction between the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Cortez.

Photo Courtesy of Ale Delao

Tracking devices in hotel linens thwart thievery

by Laurel Miller on

In case you wondered, Big Brother is watching. In your hotel room. A Miami-based company, Linen Tracker, has patented a radio-frequency identification chip that keeps real-time inventory of frequently misplaced or stolen items such as hotel linens. Like, you know, that plushy robe you planned to take as a souvenir, or that Egyptian cotton pillowcase that sent you into such blissful slumber. The chips are also designed to help hotel managers and maids stock rooms and order supplies.

CNN reports that three hotels, in New York, Miami and Honolulu, are using Linen Trackers, and the company’s executive vice president, William Serbin, sees a bright future for the devices. “Any given month, [hotels] can lose five to 20 percent of towels, sheets and robes. That gets expensive with the rising cost of cotton.”

Serbin was inspired by the sensors used on toll roads that he drove on in Florida. “We tweaked the technology, went through trial and error with different types of chips and put them in the correct place,” he explains. “Now, chip life exceeds 300 wash cycles.”

So far, the chips appear to be working: a handful of linen thieves have been apprehended, and asked to return the pilfered items to the hotel. Shame, it seems, is also an effective deterrent.

[Photo credit: Flicrk user C Ray Dancer]

American Airlines and Orbitz tangled in antitrust battle

by Tom Johansmeyer on

The online travel agency battle continues … and it’s getting ugly. The latest move comes from American Airlines, which is suing Orbitz and Travelport for alleged anticompetitive behavior. So, what started in November as a battle over fare distribution has escalated into an antitrust war.

Through the end of the year, Orbitz and American Airlines fought it out, ultimately winding up in court, where American emerged victorious. Along the way, the two sides in this commercial combat – travel suppliers, such as airlines, and online travel agencies – found other fields of battle, with Expedia, Delta, CheapOair and BookIt among those entering the fray.

American is claiming that Orbitz is trying to “control the distribution of airline tickets,” according to a report by legal magazine Corporate Secretary. The article gives some insight into the legal aspects of what’s happening:

‘The lawsuit raises innovative but real questions about market power and behaviors in the current airline structure,’ says Spencer Waller, professor and director of Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies at Chicago-based Loyola University. ‘But I don’t think this lawsuit will get to a resolution on the merits of antitrust claims. I view this case primarily as a continuation of the dispute and negotiations over fees in the online travel agency.’

For American, the disintermediation of online travel agencies would lead to direct ownership of the consumer, as well as wider margins on each transaction. Corporate Secretary continues:

‘The dispute raises real antitrust concerns because firms have substantial market power, and higher fees are being generated that are being passed on to consumers,’ Waller adds. ‘The antitrust law is looking at it from a consumer perspective and in the end, this law would want the airlines to produce lower fees.’

We hit a period of calm earlier this year, but the war in the travel industry is heating up once again. The parties are back in court, only a few months after American’s last victory, and it looks like we’ll all have to wait for the judge.

You can read American’s filing here.

China bans time travel, America still working on it

by Chris Owen on

In their latest effort to uphold the country’s values and not dare promote anything that would re-write history, Chinese censors told the film and television industry no more fictional time travel in the media. They should have waited a little while. Over here in America, physicists believe they have proved time travel is not even possible.

The Chinese government imposed a ban on all films centered on time travel, expressing that such films “Casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation” reports the National Post.

Meanwhile, physicists from the University of Maryland have created a specialized kind of material, called a ‘metamaterial,’ that mimics the mathematics of the Big Bang (theory, not television program) when light is beamed through it, reports wired. In a simulated Big Bang experiment they found that circular orbits of light, needed for time travel as we believed it to be, were not possible. That pretty much rendered time travel impossible too.

Actually, science fiction fans who live in China will probably be OK with all this. They can’t see time travel in films or television anymore but it really never existed before anyway and now we know it. Or so we think.

Don’t tell the physicists at Vanderbilt University time travel does not exist. Last month Gadling reported that Vanderbilt physicists set to prove time travel did exist using a different approach. Using world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, they plan to cause matter to travel backwards in time.

“One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.” reported Vanderbilt’s research news.

Professor Tom Weiler and graduate fellow Chui Man Ho think these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.

While they doubt a person could travel through time, they thought messages might be sent successfully.

“Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future.”

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You’re going to book travel online this year

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Business travel isn’t the only category on the rise these days: everyone else seems to be spending more on travel too.

I ran into an article on eMarketer’s blog this morning that shows leisure and unmanaged business travel is on the mend, after what’s been a tough couple of years. After falling in 2009, the sector ticked upward in 2010.

Leisure and unmanaged business travel spending are expected hit $107.4 billion this year, according to eMarketer’s estimates. That would be a gain of 8.5 percent over last year’s $99 billion.

People are traveling more, it seems. But, there’s more to it than that. We’re also spending more for the privilege of being bumped with the beverage cart and scolded for not turning off our Kindles and iPhones.

And, we’re increasingly likely to do our homework online. This year, more than 114 million would-be travelers will research their options on the web, says eMarketer, and 93.9 million will pull the trigger and actually book online. The average online travel buyer is likely to spend $1,213 this year, up from $1,145 in 2010.