Prepare for Take Off: Our Favorite Recent Travel Links

We’ve found (and tweeted) lots of great links and resources over the last couple of weeks. We thought we’d share some of our favorites with you here.

10 Travel Accessories Essential for Any Overseas Trip: Matador Travel offers its suggestions for 10 essential travel accessories. I don’t know that I’d classify them all as “essential,” but some pretty interesting things to consider for your next trip. Some of the essentials on the list assume travel to Europe or other “wired” country. I suppose that I’d consider the ability to stay connected through the Web and my phone would be essential. However, regardless of the power of your dongle, out of the way places and developing countries aren’t likely to have a 3G network to which you can connect. In that case, your “essentials” list might change a bit.

It’s Official: Business Travel Broadens the Mind: Mark Mortensen of the MIT Sloan School of Management and Tsedal Beyene of Harvard Business School have published a paper that concludes face-to-face business meetings have tremendous value over video conferences or conference calls. Cultural and business insights are vital for developing relationships. From the paper:

Most important, visiting people at their locales and gaining awareness of their point of view help you understand how you and your operations are perceived – what we call ‘reflected knowledge.’ In other words, you develop knowledge about you through the eyes of the other. This knowledge helps you adapt your own work processes and behaviors, which in turn, fosters mutual trust and reduces work misunderstandings.

Planning Summer Travels? Now’s the Time to Buy as Fares Point Higher: Wall Street Journal’s “The Middle Seat” blog offers some tips for planning summer travel, arguing that travel fares have likely bottomed out. The videos toward the end offer lots of helpful “power travel” tips, too.

10 Easy Tips for Becoming a Carry-On Traveler: I always wonder how short the trip would need to be for me to really feel like I could be a carry-on traveler. I’m not sure these tips answer that question for me, but they do provide some help for packing light. (However, the author says he can pack for a 10-day trip in a 20-inch carry-on… that’s hardcore.) An important tip is that you can do laundry on your trip – even having it done at the hotel is likely less expensive than paying for a checked bag these days.

Photo credit: Caribb via Flickr

Tips for Stress-Free Kid Travel

Spending time with your family is important, but traveling with kids can be awfully stressful.We searched the interwebs and found some of the best sites with the best tips for family travel.

TravelWithYourKids.com has a ton of great tips and resources for, well… traveling with your kids. Everything from packing to how to pick your seat on a plane and how to pick the most kid-friendly destination and even tips on moving abroad.

About.com Family Vacations: About.com is always a great resource and this topic is no exception. The expert guide, Teresa Plowright, provides ideas for kid friendly travel destinations, along with travel tips.

Travel for Kids: Want to get some ideas about fun things to do with your kids in Germany? or how about Finland? Costa Rica?Ethiopia? This site has you covered! Lots of kid-centric tips and ideas.

Traveling with Kids from the TSA: Getting through security checks at the airport is challenging enough for a single adult, but add kids to the mix and a even a sane parent can get quickly flustered and frazzled. The TSA offers video tips on its Web site for making the process a little easier.

Spend some time planning and enjoy your vacation with your kids. They’re only young once!

The Best Airports for Business Travelers

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Experts call it “dwell time.” It’s that time that passengers at airports spend once they’ve cleared security and are waiting for their flight and the average is 70 to 90 minutes. With an increased dependence on technology to do our daily work, business travelers need dwell time to be productive time. The best American airports for doing just that:

• Denver International Airport (DIA): We may be a little biased (we’re based in Denver), but we’d agree with this 2008 Business Traveler Magazine 2008 Award winner for best North American airport. With access to business center services and reasonable wi-fi costs, DIA allows biz travellers to stay productive. If you’d prefer a little down-time the airport can accommodate with shopping, dining and massage services.
• Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport (MSP): This Northwest Airlines hub has one of the best on-time records in the industry. Ranked as the best airport for biz travel by CNN in 2006, the extras available at this airport will make sure the second leg of your flight is as productive as the first. Hypercharge stations scattered around the terminals will charge laptops, PDAs and cell phones faster than normal outlets and a full-service day spa will massage away all the travel kinks.
• San Francisco International (SFO): With an average security wait time (during peak hours) of five minutes, SFO makes it quick and easy to get to your gate. And with meditation rooms, business centers and outstanding food options, that dwell time is a little more tolerable.

Other airports recognized for the biz travel services include: Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) is a great alternative to Atlanta and includes free wi-fi, business center and a day spa; Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP) for free wi-fi and beautiful grounds; and Dallas-Fort Worth International (DFW) because it has comfy chairs, smart parking systems and fast trains between terminals.

What is your favorite airport?

Best Eco-Travel for Coffee Lovers

Here at tugo we value a delicious cup of coffee. And in honor of Earth Day, we found the best eco-tourism locations for coffee lovers. Book your tickets and pack your french press – off we go.

Panama: Boquete, Panama has the world’s best coffee. That, according to coffee connosieurs the world over. Lonely Planet says CoffeeAdventures.net has the best coffee tour in the area. Each tour takes you from plant to cup to learn the process of growing, harvesting, roasting and drinking coffee. The tour also highlights fair trade practices and the emphasizes the processing plant’s environmental sustainability.

Costa Rica. Coffee has had a tremendous impact on the culture and society in Costa Rica. The Finca Maquengue Falls Resort focuses on eco-education and eco-tourism, offering a variety of activities, including a coffee plantation tour in this beautiful county. If you’re staying in Monteverde, you can take the Monteverde Coffee Tour, which includes not only coffee but a tour of other sustainable crops including bananas, plantain, orange and lime. The tour in Monteverde is offered in cooperation with Cooperativa Santa Elena, a fair-trade certified organization that ensures that farmers receive a just and honest price for their product.

Tanzania: On the other side of the ocean, you can also find a tour that will take you to the small coffee producers on the slopes of Mt. Meru in Tanzania. The Nkoaranga Village Coffee Project, a local fair-trade coffee growers’ cooperative supports local farmers with micro-finance loans. And if you can’t travel to Tanzania, you can buy the coffee online. See wild-tracks.com for more info on tours and coffee purchases.

Happy travels! And happy Earth Day! Tread lightly and drink good coffee.

Goodies Galore at the Travel Goods Show

The 2009 Travel Goods Show, presented by the Travel Goods Association at the Las Vegas Convention Center March 3-5, 2009, was the official “launch” of the tugo! We were located in the New Exhibitors Pavilion so all the folks in the surrounding booths were also newbies, although many had been to other shows before. We had no idea what to expect and were a bit nervous, but quickly felt like a part of the travel family because everyone was so friendly and excited for us to be “launching” at the show.

Team tugo: L-R Myself, my mom Karen (the brainchild!), my stepdad Tom, and my aunt Doris

Seeing all the products available was quite entertaining; each time I took a trip to the coffee bar I took a different route to see all there was being offered at the show.

I didn’t need to go far for my favorite item by far, my new purse from MY oilcloth. Across the aisle, Michelle and Yvette (MY, get it?!) were from the Boston area and barely made it to the show because of the bad weather out east. They were extremely nice and gave us lots of tips and made us feel really comfortable. But best of all, the bags they sell are CUTE as well as WATERPROOF (I live in Oregon), being they are made of oilcloth.

Other fun goodies that I had to have:

• The FUMI (Fashionable Unique Multipurpose Innovation) can be a bracelet, a purse accessory, or a hanger for my
  

  "Can't hold your water? We'll hold it for you."

  MY bag that I can set over the lip of the table in the restaurant so that I don’t have to put my new purse on the floor.

• Spare Soles are basically fold-up, thin ballet slippers that you can stash anywhere. They recommended them as an alternative to bare feet for when you go out on the town and your shoes hurt so badly you can’t wear them anymore. My plan (as I don’t find myself in the former situation very often) is to keep them in the car for when I visit friends with hardwood floors to keep my feet warm.
• A waterbottle holder with carabiner clip from Boleo called “Hold Your Water” with a pretty darn cute logo (at right).
• For my sweetie: a clip-on, super-bright LED light from Pelican. He was thrilled and is already planning to get them for all his friends.

The majority of the booths featured luggage of all shapes and sizes. I wasn’t in the market for new luggage, as my budget for the trip consisted mainly of a small amount of cash for the slots the night after the show finished. I tried not to look too closely at the luggage, but if I could have I would have picked the Steamer Rolling Suitcase from Toss Designs at left. Darling!

Also good ideas:

• Ted, the licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, lived down the aisle from us and had his Jet Lag Formula on display. I didn’t try it, since Oregon is in the same time zone as Vegas, but I would certainly use it if I was going on a vacation to, say, Greece (my dream trip!).
• For wine aficionados, the wine travel bag from BottleWise makes a lot of sense. Since you can’t carry-on liquids anymore, this will help protect one or two bottles in your checked bag with the liquid-tight “Bot’lPaks.”
• In our neighboring booth, Devra and her company Miamica had a fun line of trendy travel accessories for the “art of packing.” A favorite were the tampon cases with clever sayings like “Don’t Cramp My Style” and “Gimme Sugar!”
• The Travel Nook inflatable pillow includes a cushion on either side of your head to prevent your head from lolling onto your neighbor’s shoulder. Because it has no padding behind the neck it eliminates the main complaint I have about typical travel pillows.

Who knew that there would be this much fun stuff?! I certainly didn’t expect it, but I’m already looking forward to seeing what they have next year.

Prepare for Take-Off: Our Favorite Travel Links of the Week

Celebrate National Park Week: April 18 – 26 is National Park Week. National Park Week is an annual Presidentially-proclaimed week for celebration and recognition of your National Parks. This year, take a moment, an hour, a day to visit the national parks near you. Want to find out about events near  you? You can find the schedule of events on the National Park Service Web site.

At ATL, Pro-Airport Messages Embedded in Classic R&B: Hanging out in the ATL, you might hear some unique versions of your favorite classic R&B. “Shake Your Groove Thing” by Peaches and Herb, “Bustin’ Loose” by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers and “Fantastic Voyage” by Lakeside have all been remade by the original artists – new lyrics from Doug Strachan, Creative Innovations Manager from the City of Atlanta Department of Aviation. (Wait… the Department of Aviation has a Creative Innovations Manager? No wonder ATL travlers get to hear “Shake Your Groove Thing.”

Experiential Travel Can Enrich Our Lives and the Communities We Visit: Going beyond the typical tourist cities and activities when traveling the world can be tremendously rewarding. Experential travel lets you live the places you visit, rather than just look at them; these trips are often less expensive and allow travelers to give back to the communities in which they spend time.

Top 10 Most Disappointing Tourist Spots in the World: I don’t know, seems awfully cynical to think that any of these spectacular/historic/remarkable sites would be disappointing. I’m curious what the authors would find not-disappointing.

Twitter Tips From Oft-Tweeting Travelers: Want to share your travel adventures with your friends on Twitter? Take a look at these 25 tips that don’t include “standing in line at Starbucks” as things worth tweeting about.

Photo credit: Caribb via Flickr

Are You Goodtugo?

A Denver mom has rolled up her sleeves and invented the next big thing to solve what travel experts call “dwell time” – that time between airport arrival and boarding the airplant – a universal challenge for airline passengers.  It’s aimed at helping airport travelers manage the unique combination of rushing and then waiting about 1.25 hours in the airport.

The invention, called “tugo,” was unveiled at the Travel Goods Show in Las Vegas in early March.

What’s a “tugo?”  It’s a pliable molded drink holder that securely nestles a drink between the upright pair of handles on your rolling carry-on, that inventor Karen Porte believes will improve the traveling experience of overburdened, multi-bagged, multi-tasking travelers everywhere.

“It happens to all of us,” says Porte, “Travelers have their briefcase, laptop, handbag, and  carry-on, in a hurry to get to the gate while juggling a meal and beverage purchased in the terminal -  they just run out of hands.”

Porte says her training as a multi-tasking mom made her uniquely qualified to solve the problem of not having enough hands to do all that she wanted.

How did Porte prepare for her entrepreneurial career?  “I’ve never worked in business, but I’m an emergency room nurse so I know how to solve problems,” said Porte.

But Porte wanted to do more than just solve problems; if she was going into business she wanted to do it the right way.  She is clear on what she wants:  manufacture in the USA, use recyclable paperboard packaging, and use phthlate-free materials.

“We want to showcase an idea whose time has come,” said Porte.  “We know that travelers ‘get it’ immediately when they see it in use, so we’ll be demonstrating how the product securely holds a coffee or a soft drink to show attendees.”