Category: Travel

A Northwest Portland startup that facilitates group travel said Tuesday it has raised an additional $15 million, reporting rapid growth as the pandemic wanes.

TrovaTrip facilitates multiday travel to international destinations. It offers tools to help hosts gauge interest in potential destinations, helps them budget and price the excursion and market the trip. Its clients include social media personalities seeking to boost revenue by arranging trips with their online followers.

TrovaTrip says 15,000 travelers have booked through its site and it had bookings of $15 million last year, despite the lingering effects in the pandemic. The company said “rapid growth” has continued this year.

Founded in 2017, TrovaTrip has now raised $20 million in total. Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group led the funding joined by prior backers including the Oregon Venture Fund, Elevate Capital and the Portland Seed Fund.

TrovaTrip employs 56, including 52 in Oregon. It said it will use

This week, Visit California (the state’s tourism marketing arm) revealed plans to launch a new online platform designed to promote Indigenous tourism destinations, experiences and enterprises in California.

Visit Native California will launch on VisitCalifornia.com in March 2023 with blog posts, suggested itineraries and podcasts that highlight opportunities for travelers to visit and learn more about California’s 109 federally recognized tribes and tribal communities.

The announcement was made at one of the centerpieces of tribal-based tourism in California, the Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza in downtown Palm Springs, which is set to open sometime early in 2023.

Native Californian tourism

State officials and tribal leaders from across the state gathered for a press conference last week to discuss the new platform and call attention to a few of the destinations it will promote.

“Our Native cultures discovered, protected and preserved the

(CNN) — The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday moved three tropical island getaways and one Middle Eastern nation into its “moderate” risk category for Covid-19. There were no new additions to its “high” risk category this week.

Previously, Dutch Sint Maarten had been listed as “Unknown,” which happens when the CDC doesn’t have enough data to make a risk assessment. The other three places dropped down from “high” risk, or Level 3.

Just over

(CNN) — The Chinese government on Monday, September 19, issued draft regulations that aim to bolster tourism along its border and make it easier for some foreigners to enter China.

According to a draft policy document released by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Monday, tour groups organized by travel agencies in China’s border areas will be able to choose their port of entry and exit “flexibly” — however, further details on locations and dates weren’t provided.

China has shut its borders to foreign tourists since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, only allowing certain groups of foreign nationals to enter the country, such as those holding valid visas.

In recent weeks, the Chinese government has significantly tightened Covid restrictions to contain the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant. In September, multiple megacities were placed in full or partial lockdowns.

Under the new draft policy, foreign tourists will

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a joint news conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Moscow, Russia August 31, 2022. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/Pool

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 13 (Reuters) – The United States has given Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a visa to travel to New York for the United Nations’ annual gathering of world leaders next week with half the delegation Moscow requested, a Russian diplomatic source said on Tuesday.

Moscow had asked Washington for 56 visas, according to a Sept. 2 letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia. The Russian diplomatic source said on Tuesday the United States had approved 24 visas.

Nebenzia had also noted in his letter that the flight crew for Lavrov’s plane had not received visas. It was not immediately clear if Washington had granted visas for the Russian flight

We’d be remiss to exclude New Hampshire’s White Mountains — particularly for hiking enthusiasts — even if it is one of the region’s best-known destinations for fall trips.

For easy access to hikes in Franconia Notch State Park, Haley Hamblin, a Washington Post photo editor from the region, recommends staying at an Airbnb in the town of Franconia, at the base of the mountains. The park has hikes for different skill levels, from shorter, kid-friendly trails to multiday backpacking routes. Plus, “it’s still very close to the rest of the Presidential range and easy to hop onto the famous Kancamagus highway,” Hamblin says.

Her other suggestion is Littleton, a town 20 minutes from hikes with a lovely downtown for dining and shopping. Whichever you pick, “keep in mind we get our first snow around Halloween most years, so people should be prepared for cold weather,” Hamblin says.

Another option

(CNN) — Their daughter Mia was just three years old when Canadian couple Edith Lemay and Sebastien Pelletier first noticed that she was having vision problems.

A few years after they first took her to see a specialist, Mia, the oldest of their four children, was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic condition that causes a loss or decline in vision over time.

By this point, Lemay and Pelletier, who’ve been married for 12 years, had noticed that two of their sons, Colin, now seven, and Laurent, now five, were experiencing the same symptoms.

Their fears were confirmed when in 2019 the boys were diagnosed with the same genetic disorder; their other son Leo, now nine, was given the all clear.

“There’s nothing you can really do,” says Lemay, explaining that there is currently no cure or effective treatment to slow down the progression of retinitis pigmentosa.

“We don’t