Survey Reveals World’s Best Food Destinations

Does food play a role in where you decide to take your vacation? For those interested in taking a delicious trip, Hotels.com surveyed 27,000 international travelers to find out what they believed the best destinations for cuisine were.

According to news.com.au, 32% of respondents said Italy had the best food because of its mouth-watering pizza, pasta and gelato. France, the country of baguettes and pastries, came in second with 24% of the votes. And, in third place with 18% of the votes was Japan with their sashimi, sushi and tempura. Next came mainland China, followed by Spain, the United States, Mexico, Thailand, Taiwan and India.

When the survey analyzed American’s food and travel habits, they found that:

  • On average, Americans spend 25% to 49% of their daily budget on food when traveling abroad
  • Americans believed the top three places for food on a budget were the United States, Italy and Mexico
  • Fifty-six percent of Americans named barbeque as the must-try dish when visiting the United States
  • Americans believe France is the number one destination for a posh dining experience
  • Americans named the United States, Italy and Germany as the best places to go for family dining

“Sampling the local cuisine when travelling can be such a rewarding experience and it’s no wonder it plays such a big part in the decision-making process for travellers,” Hotels.com spokeswoman Katherine Birch said.

What’s your favorite food destination?

75,000 teddy bears left behind in hotels every year

This has got to be the saddest statistic I’ve heard in a long time.

Just think of it–seventy-five thousand teddy bears wondering why they got left behind. Seventy-five thousand distraught owners. Seventy-five thousand hotel owners frantically calling Teddy Bear Protection Services to get the bears emotional support.

It gets worse.

The figure is only for bears lost and returned last year at one hotel chain–Travelodge. Granted it’s one of the biggest budget chains in Europe with 380 hotels and 6.5 million guests last year, but think what the statistics must be globally. While Travelodge has made heroic efforts to reunite teddies with their families, it’s obvious the UN needs to gets involved.

Faced with this problem Travelodge did a bit of research and surveyed 6,000 people about their teddies. They made the surprising discovery that teddies are popular with adults too. A third of adults go to bed with a stuffed animal, and 25 percent of men take teddies on business trips with them. Respondents said it’s comforting to go to bed with a teddy, and psychologists say having a cuddly friend from home helps people feel comfortable in a strange place.

It’s heartening to see teddies enjoying travel. Some bears even have their own blogs, like Travel Schlepp, who is currently in Taiwan and offers some good advice on what to pack when going to Asia this season. BBC travel correspondent Misery Bear tells of the dangers of visiting the beach.

Just remember, teddy friends, to check your bed before checking out. You don’t want to leave your best friend behind.

Cute teddy photo courtesy user Mike R via Wikimedia Commons.

50% of air travelers will fly with the flu to avoid a fee

I’m a one of the those people who always seems to get sick after a long plane ride. A few days post-trip, I suddenly get a runny nose, sore throat and all the other telltale signs of a cold, most likely contracted from a sick passenger. Usually it’s minor, and I’m out of commission for only a few days.

I guess I’ve just been lucky that it hasn’t been the flu, because, according to a recent TripAdvisor survey, over 50% of travelers would choose flying with the flu over paying a fee to change their flight. As if we needed more reason to get a flu shot before we travel this season, now we know that someone with the flu may end up on our flight, just to avoid the fee.

Out of 2,327 people, 51% said they would fly while sick with the flu rather than pay the $150-$200 fee (plus any change in price) imposed by most airlines in order to change their flights to a later date. This is obviously, alarming news, but I can see why it is the case that people would rather cough up some germs on their fellow passengers than cough up the extra cash to change the tickets. Especially because costs for the new dates will often be higher, meaning you may end up paying more like $300-$400 per ticket for the change.

In the case of inescapable commitments, I can understand why someone would not change the ticket. But for a leisure trip, I would consider it. Of course, I don’t want to get others sick, but from a purely selfish standpoint, I don’t want to spend my time in the air shaking and shivering with the flu, or to spend my entire vacation laid up in bed. But then again…if I felt well enough to get on the plane despite having the flu, I would definitely do it rather than incur the extra charges and have to change all my travel plans.

On his blog, Christopher Elliot offers a solution – airlines need to lower or waive the change fees during flu season. We need to stop financially penalizing those who get sick and allow them to change their flights easily, or they will continue to fly and risk spreading the flu to other passengers.

New “most expensive” cities list names Tokyo in top spot

The results for Mercer’s 2009 Cost of Living survey are out, and while there are some changes, most of the rankings for the most expensive cities are just about what you would expect. Moscow, Geneva, Zurich and Hong Kong are expensive (duh), as are Copenhagen, New York, Beijing and Singapore, which all took spots in the top ten. Japan took top (dis)honors with Tokyo and Osaka taking the number one and two spots, respectively. London dropped a whopping 13 spots to number 16.

Some big moves were made by Caracas, which shot up to number 15 from 89 last year, and Dubai, which jumped from the number 52 to number 20 spot. Several U.S. cities became significantly more expensive – at least, according to the rankings. Los Angeles moved from 55 to 23, White Plaines jumped from 89 to 31, San Francisco went from 78 to 34, Honolulu climbed from 77 to 41, and Miami rose from 75 to 45. My home city of Chicago rounded out the top 50 list (which has more than 50 cities on it because some are tied) as it moved up from being number 84 last year.

The survey takes into account the average cost of over 200 items in each city including food, housing, clothing, transportation, and entertainment. The survey compares 143 cities and uses New York, with a base score of 100, as the measuring stick. In the top spot with 143.7 points, Tokyo is nearly 1.5 times more expensive than New York.

The cheapest city? Johannesburg, South Africa, which replaced Asuncion in Paraguay.

Enterprise receives highest rank for rental car companies. What are the others?

According to J.D. Power and Associates, the company that conducts a survey on customer satisfaction with rental cars, Enterprise-Rent-a-Car came out ahead. Good for Enterprise. This is the fifth consecutive win for this company. They are the only company to receive a 5 out of 5.

Other top rankers-with 4 out of 5, are Hertz and Alamo. Maybe Alamo listened to customer complaints because that company improved its service since 2007.

What makes great car rental service? Car companies were ranked according to “cost and fees, pickup process, rented car, return process, reservation process, and shuttle van/bus” according to this summary at MotorTrend. Cost and fees were what most people were after.

One in ten people report a problem at the rental desk which is a problem in today’s economy when less business people are traveling. Keeping customers satisfied is one way to increase their likelihood of returning.

The companies that ranked 2 out of 5 from bad to worse are:

  • Thrifty
  • Dollar
  • Payless
  • Advantage Rent A Car
  • Fox Rent A Car

The photo is of Enterprise’s hybrid fleet, perhaps another item that makes customers satisfied.