The Wrap has whizzed the world to bring you the best of the travel stories on the web this week
And the award goes to…..
In this corner of the Café, as regular readers will know, we never go overboard about industry awards.
Perhaps it’s because we have been privy to insider knowledge about how some of these awards operate.
PR companies love them because it offers them an excuse to email out lots of gushing words saluting the award winner – after which they send their client the bill.
Most annoying are those PR releases that never reveal the whole story. Okay their client may have been showered with superlatives for finishing runner-up in the category “Most admired yurt bathroom in Mongolia”, but who finished first – and third for that matter?
Chris Pritchard, writing in the Melbourne Age, has raised a quizzical eyebrow at the value – and the validity of travel industry awards. Read about it here.
A novel approach to airline gripes
Dear American Airlines is the story of middle-aged translator Bennie Ford stranded at Chicago's O'Hare Airport and forced to miss the wedding of his estranged daughter.
Jonathan Miles' novel, written in the form of a complaint to an airline, has hit a raw nerve with travellers, it seems.
Everywhere he goes to promote the book, he is confronted by a roomful of people with their own gripes about the deteriorating service offered by US airlines.
Miles’ next novel could well be Dear Qantas after a series of recent incidents forced the Australian flag carrier to defend its safety maintenance records.
Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said his airline remains "probably the safest" in the world, despite three emergency landings from mid-air faults in just over a week.
"We're a very, very conservative company - we turn back on just about everything and so we should, that's the way we've operated over so many years.
"And, by the way, that is why we do have such a good record and that record is still very, very good."
But there’s probably no point in complaining to Dixon – he’s due to be quit in November and be replaced by Irishman Alan Joyce.
You can read more about Jonathan Miles' novel here.
Emirates pours cold water on inflight magazine
Emirates A380
BOOT, the Business of Online Travel, has an interesting story this week on the decision by Emirates to ditch its inflight magazine while announcing that showers for passengers will be one of the facilities available onboard its new A380s.
The BOOT smells a rat and questions whether Emirates is right to claim the dumping of the magazine is an eco-issue, while it bulks up the weight of its mega jumbo A380s by taking on board all that extra water to splash over its premium passengers.
The BOOT is looking for your feedback here.
Sheer terror with a GPS
Never trust a GPS – at least that’s what a convoy of tourists in California must be thinking after their GPS stranded them on the edge of a sheer cliff.
They used a global positioning device to plot out a backcountry route to the Grand Canyon.
But the device couldn't tell how rough the roads were. One vehicle got stuck in soft sand, two others ran low on fuel. And the device offered suggestions that led them onto the wrong dirt roads, which ended at a series of cliffs.
"It was a nightmare — the vacation from hell," Daniel Cohen, back home safely in Los Angeles, told The Associated Press.
Read about it here.
