Millennial Business Travelers Are Rejecting Corporate Travel Policies

by Elizabeth Seward on

Millennial business travelers don’t care much for corporate travel policies, according to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek published today. Company-designed travel booking methods don’t seem to be clicking with the young professionals, who happen to make up the largest chunk of traveling employees for most companies. Since these workers are already spending so much time away from home and typically working in positions that are highly lucrative for companies, like sales, many companies seem hesitant to simply stop reimbursing employees for self-booked travel.

Part of the problem appears to be that internal booking systems aren’t “fun.” They don’t offer rewards or social interaction like many public booking sites or apps do. To address this growing problem while hopefully appeasing the millennial traveler, some companies are working toward developing more engaging and rewarding internal platforms for booking corporate reservations.

Map: The Most Popular Chain Restaurants By State

by Elizabeth Seward on


Americans are notorious for our love of fast food, and now, thanks to Thrillist, we can identify the home (founded or headquartered) of individual chain restaurants by state. The clever-map-creating folks over at Thrillist HQ impressed us all with their Booze Map of the USA, but their latest map, “Red, White, & Food” (full-size here), leads me to believe that they might just be getting started with these diagrams. Some of the findings illustrated in this map won’t come as much of a surprise — like that fact that Washington is linked to Starbucks, New York to Sbarro, California to In-N-Out, Vermont to Ben & Jerry’s or Ohio to Wendy’s — but other chain restaurant homes seem less intuitive.Other maps we love:

World Health Map
Fascinating Map Of London
Cold War-Era Map Of No-Go Zones For Soviets
French Wine Metro Map
Hipster Heat Map
Map Of World Currency
Zombie Survival Map
US Stereotypes Map
US Highways As Subway Map

How Does Music Affect Your Hotel Decisions?

by Sean McLachlan on

Music is becoming common on hotel websites, but does it really make us want to book a room?

A scientific study has come up with the answer: yeah, kinda. The journal Psychology of Music has published an article titled, “Congruency between instrumental background music and behavior on a website.”

As the author states in the abstract:

“Instrumental music (jazz and djembe) was played or not [played] while participants browsed the website of a well-known seaside resort and participants were instructed to select a type of accommodation. It was found that djembe music was associated more with a choice of outdoor accommodation while jazz music was associated with greater interest for hotel accommodation. Both music conditions showed a significant difference from the no music control condition. The ability of instrumental music to prime different memories and feelings is used to explain these results.”

So basically when we hear jazz we think of sipping bourbon in smoky interiors, while djembe makes us want to dance the night away in the moonlight. Um, OK.

Reading the article further, it turns out there’s a whole field of study devoted to figuring out what background music will do to our buying habits. Classical music makes us buy more expensive wines, for example, and playing French music will make us more likely to buy French wines. And here I thought the major determining factor was the physical attributes of my date.

The results of this study are pretty impressive. Eighty percent of the participants in this experiment picked a hotel room when they heard jazz, while 62.5% of the djembe listeners picked camping. For those who didn’t hear any music, 27.5% picked the hotel and 30% picked camping. It appears that mood music is aptly named.

Of course, hotel websites looking to get our money have to pick the right music. More often than not it’s some cheesy tune that makes us turn off the volume, or even worse for the hotel, click on another website. The annoyance factor is even higher if the music is clogging your slow connection or starts ringing out across your office, announcing to everyone that you’re slacking off.

So instead of spending money on music for their websites, perhaps hotels should spend more on music in their rooms. While Blind Willie McTell isn’t around anymore to play his 12-string guitar while you scarf down all the pillow mints, there are plenty of out-of-work musicians who would be happy to serenade you for a small fee.

Going To The Museum? There’s An App For That!

by Sean McLachlan on

Museums have a lot to compete with these days. With so much information available for free online, many people who are less than enthusiastic about going to museums may think there’s nothing new to be learned by peering into glass cases full of ancient artifacts.

But museums are fighting back. Museum apps are available for most major and many lesser-known museums. Generally they give a walk-through of the galleries and what’s on display, such as MoMA’s app, while others offer closeup views of famous artworks you can’t get in real life, like the Louvre’s app that helps you push through the crowds around the Mona Lisa.

Often museums create special apps for major shows, such as the British Museum’s app for their exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum. This app has interactive maps and timelines, detailed studies of more than 250 objects and heaps of information about the excavations.

As an incurable museum junkie raising a Mini Me museum junkie, I’m of two minds about museum apps. On the one hand, they’re great for enhancing a visit with all those flashy gadgets that kids love so much. It’s yet another way of beating museum fatigue while actually learning something.

On the other hand, it’s a grand distraction. A good museum can spark the imagination without needing extra technology. Take the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford, my vote for the coolest museum in the world. The display cases are jam-packed with everything from Melanesian war clubs to witches trapped inside bottles. The lights are turned low and the guards hand out flashlights so you can peer inside the cases and spot hidden treasures amid the jumble. Beneath the cases are drawers that pull out to reveal Indonesian cut-out puppets and scarab beetles from Ancient Egypt. My son and I love creeping around this place, pretending to be explorers and always discovering something we never noticed before even though we’ve been there countless times.

This is the kind of museum that kids pester their parents to visit. Does the Pitt-Rivers have an app? Maybe it does. I didn’t check because it doesn’t need one. Take note, museum directors: be cool and they will come.

Was This The Real Mona Lisa?

by Sean McLachlan on

Scientists in Florence are examining the bones of a 16th century nun they think served as the model for the Mona Lisa.

Lisa Gherardini Del Giocondo was the wife of a wealthy merchant and is rumored to have been the model for Leonardo da Vinci’s famous portrait. She was a famed beauty in her time and lived across the street from the famous artist and inventor. When her husband died she became a nun at the convent of San Orsula in Florence, where she died and was buried in 1542.

A team of scientists went looking for her in a crypt under the convent. DNA in the bones they found is now being compared with samples taken from the Gherardini family tomb in hopes of finding a match. The next step will be facial reconstruction to see what the woman looked like in life. Perhaps they’ll find the mystery to her enigmatic smile.

Facial reconstruction and DNA analysis have already been done for the remains of King Richard III, found last year under an English parking lot. Researchers are also examining the possible remains of King Alfred the Great.