Procuring and exhibiting art in all forms has been synonymous with the hotel experience for several decades now, with both luxury and midlevel brands highlighting local artwork and museum-quality pieces rather than predictable poster reprints. Guests like it: In a 2018 survey conducted by the nonprofit organization, Americans for the Arts, 72 percent of respondents…
Now that the hotel industry has largely embraced bans on plastic straws, one major hotel group aims to eliminate the next set of plastic targets: mini bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion and the like. On Tuesday, July 30, IHG will announce it plans to replace all “bathroom miniatures” with bulk supplies across all of its…
The 52 Places Traveler Image A brass band from Fribourg paraded along the shore of Lake Geneva during the Fête des Vignerons.CreditSebastian Modak/The New York Times The Swiss aren’t known for dancing all night to ABBA, but in the town of Vevey, the 52 Places Traveler found, every 20 years or so they let loose.…
On a cold and damp Iowa evening last October, I sat in a tent and thought about Abraham Lincoln. More precisely, I thought about Lincoln signing a minor piece of legislation deeding the Yosemite Valley to the state of California. It happened in 1864, while the Civil War raged. It is important because of just…
The offer seemed too good to be true: a three-day cruise to the Bahamas for $129. At a minimum, that’s room, meals and transit abroad for about the price of an average hotel room. Budget cruises abound in the ever-growing industry, where some 18 new ships are expected to launch this year, according to the…
The Goûter Refuge — a futuristic structure that clings to a cliff at 12,516 feet — is, for many people, the final stop en route to the top of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Western Europe, straddling the border between France and Italy. Every summer at least 20,000 people attempt the 15,776-foot summit. The…
After watching a performance of the Shaw Festival’s “Brigadoon,” the streets of this magical town on Lake Ontario might seem like a real-life version of the Scottish village depicted in the Lerner and Loewe musical. On a recent evening, the place felt frozen in time, with horse-drawn carriages rolling down a main street lined with…
When the producer Simon Fuller reached out to Lupita Nyong’o to gauge her interest in narrating his latest project — a wildlife documentary directed by John Downer — the Kenyan-Mexican actress was intrigued. But once she watched the first two episodes, she was sold. Ms. Nyong’o understood that these shows can be mundane and repetitive,…
One sweltering night last July, I found myself inside a small auditorium in a Norwegian valley called Setesdal for a community concert. A young woman stood in the right aisle, dressed in the valley’s traditional bunad dress, a billowing black skirt with red and green stripes at the hem, a full-sleeved white blouse, and a…
The 52 Places Traveler The 52 Places Traveler was one of four tourists on the remote Falkland Islands, also known as Las Islas Malvinas. But there were thousands of penguins. Jul 23, 2019 Image More than a thousand breeding pairs of king penguins make their home on East Falkland Island.CreditSebastian Modak/The New York Times Our…