Financial worries may have bumped the pandemic as a top concern for travelers, but close to two-thirds of Americans still plan to hop on at least one overnight leisure trip in the upcoming three months — which includes the holiday season. Of those travelers, nearly half are planning to visit friends and relatives.

“Despite the challenges facing our industry, the outlook for fall looks stable,” said Erin Francis-Cummings, chief executive officer of Destination Analysts, in a livestreamed presentation of the latest quarterly State of the American Traveler report released Tuesday. The pre-holiday report and survey spans data collected from July through most of September.

A whopping 80% of US travelers confirm that they are excited about future trips, according to the report, with nearly a third saying they will take more leisure vacations in the next 12 months, compared to a year earlier.

That’s not to say that inflation hasn’t

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Travelers were able to enjoy lower airfare prices this summer, but with the holidays approaching, they should brace themselves for both higher prices and longer lines at the airport, one expert warned.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are two of the most traveled holidays on the calendar as people visit family and friends across the country. According to TSA checkpoint dataroughly 2.3 million people traveled the day before Thanksgiving in 2021 and around 2.1 million people did so the day before Christmas Eve.

“We’re expecting to see a huge surge in travel over this holiday season,” Hopper Lead Economist Hayley Berg said on Yahoo Finance Live (see video above).

In 2020, travel was extremely limited due to the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. While vaccines became readily available in 2021, the delta and omicron variants forced many travelers to scale back on their vacation plans over the holidays.

“We know that

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New guidance from the Biden Administration could make traveling with golf clubs easier.

Getty Images

It’s easy to get ripped off while flying with your golf clubs. As it turns out, a little too easy.

On Wednesday, the Biden Administration released new guidance about airline fees at improving cost transparency for customers as it relates to checked baggage, child seating, flight changes and cancellations. The proposed rulewhich was written by the Department of Transportation, would compel airlines to show complete cost information at the time of purchase, allowing consumers to understand the full, built-in cost of their flight before booking.

Under the Biden Administration’s proposed rule, airlines and third-party booking websites would be “required to clearly disclose” fee information about bags, changes, or companion seats when displaying information about flights traveling to or from the United States. These changes, the Administration said, would

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(CNN) — This week in travel: The wreckage of the ship that tried to warn the Titanic about the iceberg has been found. The world’s most spectacular airport is about to double in size. And the US has been bracing itself against Hurricane Ian.

Blue sky thinking

Singapore’s Changi is no ordinary airport. It has an indoor waterfall, a swimming pool, a movie theater, a butterfly garden and more. And now the spectacular megahub is set to get a whole lot bigger: Here are the latest details about the new Terminal 5which will be as big as all four present terminals put together.
And over at Washington state’s Grant
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Package holidays are great, but sometimes it’s more fun and rewarding to book your own bespoke trip, which you can tailor to your own particular needs, interests and schedule. There is, however, one common downside to this approach: the amount of time, energy and stress involved in organizing separately hotelsflights, car hire, day trips and more.

Why, you often think, isn’t there one single, easy-to-use website where you can organize all of these things at once? Well, the great news is that, if you’re visiting Iceland, there now is!

Guide to Iceland makes it simple to access the best Icelandic travel services, within one clean, uncluttered interface. So rather than making you tear your hair out, planning a trip can become part of the fun.

Even if you weren’t thinking about heading to Iceland, maybe you should. It’s only a short flight from the UK, and despite being

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The number you’re looking for is 225,000. That’s how many miles Phil Keoghan typically logs per year as the host and executive producer of “The Amazing Race.” “It’s the most ambitious reality show out there because we’re always on the move,” he says. “In any given season, we’re constantly switching countries thousands of miles away from each other.”

Keoghan’s work with the CBS stalwart — in which teams of two span the globe in hopes of winning $1 million — has led to 23 Emmy nominations and 10 wins since its 2001 premiere. But exhausted eliminating contestants at pit stops is just a small part of his journey. He’s also embarked on don’t-try-this-at-home adventures such as pedaling his bike from Los Angeles to New York City to raise money for MS Disease (documented in the film “The Ride”), enjoying a 5-star meal on top of an erupting volcano

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At long last, we can soon welcome you back to Japan as the country is reopening fully for international tourism. Starting October 11, Japan will resume visa-free entry and independent travel after two-plus years of tight border restrictions. The daily entry cap will also be scrapped along with the red-yellow-blue country classification scheme.

Some details are still being finalized by the government at the time of publication, but we will keep you updated as more information is released. In the meantime, here’s what we know so far about the new entry protocols.

No more quarantine

This is a big one. Until October 10, which of the three entry protocols travelers need to follow will depend on whether the country they are arriving from falls into the ‘red’, ‘yellow’ or ‘blue’ category. According to Nikkeihowever, Japan will ditch this red-yellow-blue country classification system along with the last of its quarantine

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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

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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.

ERIC ROSEN/THE POINTS GUY

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.

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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

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(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.

The four new places now at “moderate” risk, or Level 2, are:

• Fiji (in the South Pacific)
• Kuwait (Middle East)
• Saint Kitts and Nevis (Caribbean)
• Sint Maarten (Caribbean)

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

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