Drinking in Utah no longer for members only

by Tom Johansmeyer on
Four decades after making it difficult to get a drink, Utah realizes that buying liquor involves spending, too. Last week, the state decided to allow liquor to be sold to anyone with a valid form of ID. For the past 40 years, getting a drink has involved becoming a member of a private club – which required an application and a fee.

The cost of tradition, it seems, is $7 billion – the amount Utah pulls in from tourism every year. Officials figure they can add to that number by selling wine with dinner, among other liquors and situations.

You know what … it just might work.

I know a lot of people by liquor in New York, and I vaguely remember seeing people in Boston, Washington and Chicago spending cash on booze, too. It happens from coast to coast, as of July 1, 2009 without exception.

The private club rules that are now assigned to history were not particularly severe, but it’s not hard to see how they could become a pain in the ass. Annual membership fees started at $12, and you needed a separate membership for each bar. Tourists could buy temporary memberships, starting at $4 for three weeks, but they could only bring up to seven guests into a bar with them.

Hotels built the membership fees into their room rates, so they could drink at the hotel bars without fear of misstep. Bars that served only beer didn’t require memberships.

Yeah, you need needed a chart to keep the various rules straight. Now, it’s pretty easy. Belly up to the bar and order yourself a shot!

The newest weapon in the battle for your money – free booze!

by Scott Carmichael on

The battle for your summer airfare dollars is getting ugly (for the airlines). For years, Qantas has been the only carrier to offer unlimited free booze on the Los Angeles – Sydney route (at least since all US airlines removed that perk).

But now, Delta airlines has decided that booze may be just what passengers need to pick them over any other carrier.

The airline will offer passengers in coach free Amstel, Heineken and wine, so fans of hard liquor and cocktails won’t be too impressed with the offer.

Thanks to a massive fare war, passengers can head down under for as little as $320 (each way) , which is about the lowest it has ever been. After taxes and other surcharges, you can snag a ticket (on V Australia) for just $741 R/T.

Whether free booze will have passengers pick Delta over other carriers still has to be seen, but I’m sure there are some people out there who’ll be able to drink $50 worth of free beer on their long flight.

So, lets have a little poll here – if airline fares are the same, would you pick one airline over another if they offer free booze?

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Is encouraging alcohol consumption on planes a good idea? Click the images below to read stories of booze gone bad in the skies.

Travel, alcohol consumption up, according to TripAdvisor

by Tom Johansmeyer on

We’ve seen travel predictions all over, such as Memorial Day travel will be up with the summer down. Everyone’s weighing in. The latest from TripAdvisor is that little has changed in a year. Actually, this isn’t TripAdvisor‘s opinion so much as that of more than 1,800 of its readers in the United States. More than a quarter of those taking vacations plan to make them last from a week to 10 days, with 21 percent upping the ante to 11 days to two weeks. Nearly 20 percent are going for up to three weeks.

Just over half of TripAdvisor’s respondents (56 percent) are taking the same amount of vacation they did last year, while 7 percent will spend more time on recreation than they did last summer.

At least these 1,800 respondents are still interested in having a good time. Thirty-six percent of them are more likely to down a bit more booze on the road … and 28 percent exercise less, with 25 percent eating more junk food. Ice cream is the favorite food (44 percent), and margaritas are the favorite drink (44 percent).

This is only one way that we change our behavior while traveling. Respondents also connect to the internet less (63 percent), watch less television (56 percent) and return fewer calls and e-mails (52 percent).

The top destination this summer is the beach, with 58 percent of respondents ready to get some sand in their toes. Hogging beach chairs will piss them off, though. Thirty-two percent see this behavior while they travel often – nine percent always.

Still have doubts? Not Michele Perry, senior vice president of global communications for TripAdvisor: “Recession be damned, Americans are preparing to pack up the beach bags and boogie boards en masse this summer.”

“Vodka Pipeline” Links Russia and Estonia

by Kraig Becker on

An ambitious group of smugglers managed to build a 1.2 mile long pipeline across the Russian-Estonian border with the intention of pumping contraband vodka into the EU. According to this story from the Telegraph, they actually managed to get more than 1630 gallons across the border before their operation was discovered and shut down.

It seems that vodka is far cheaper in Russia than Estonia, so the plan was to circumvent the import tariffs by pumping the booze through the pipeline, and selling it for huge profits. Those plans were thwarted last Fall however when Estonian authorities discovered the untaxed vodka hidden in a truck. Now, the 11 bootleggers, some from Russia, some from Estonia, face up to five years prison, along with massive fines. All told, the group managed to avoid paying as much as 20,000 Euros in taxes.

The scary thing is that this isn’t the first time that someone has built such a pipeline. Authorities shut down the first one back in 2004 and another in 2006, although that one wasn’t in operation yet. You certainly have to salute the ingenuity and engineering prowess that goes into these projects. It’s also good to know that in the wake of the global economic downturn, at least the bootleggers are making some money.

[via Gizmodo]

Booze and air travel – a bad idea or a travelers necessity?

by Scott Carmichael on

If there is one thing we never seem to have a shortage of here on Gadling, it’s stories that involve drunk passengers misbehaving.

We’ve written about a planeload of 40 drunk Irish, a drunk Russian with an empty bottle of Chivas, a passenger so drunk he beat up his wife and blamed the airline and of course a passenger who drank so much, he killed 5 others (and himself).

Of course, this brings me to the bigger issue; are airlines creating these problems for themselves by refusing to serve some passengers, or should they simply stop service booze on all their flights?

Booze on aircraft is a big thing – it’s often the one time a year when some people get to drink fairly decent liquor and cocktails (assuming they are flying a decent airline and are not in coach), and when booze is free, why hold back?

I actually know several people who fly to drink – that’s right – they cash in their miles, use their elite status to liquor up in the airline lounge, and continue the binge on board. With mileage tickets costing as little as $25, it’s a cheap and efficient way to get hammered.

Some frequent flier boards are regularly filled with outrage when an airline changes its brand of champagne to something less expensive and some folks seem to obsess over the size of the glasses the booze is served in.

Some of the comments in recent booze related articles mentioned that alcohol is a major cash cow for the airlines, but I have to disagree – the expensive stuff is mainly served in first and business class, and is free. And alcohol sales in the back of the plane never really seem to be that high, certainly not on the flights I’ve taken.

So, would you survive a flight without booze? Airlines already banned smoking, so would removing the one final vice be that much of a blow to your comfort level?

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