Worldcrunch
For 200 years, the Black Forest spa town of Baden-Baden has been the destination of choice for Russian tourists, with oligarchs shopping in the luxury boutiques and buying up swathes of property. Now Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has changed all that and the town’s once-bustling streets are empty.
Finland has recently joined Sweden in seeking NATO membership in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Now Finnish politicians say they also support blocking Russian tourists from coming across the 1,340-km-long border the two countries share. It would be a bold move.
European cities dominate both the top and the bottom of the Urban Work Life Index, according to findings in the Expat Insider survey.
The likely defection of Russian tourists this summer is clouding the prospects of tourism professionals in the South of France, whose activity is still recovering from the pandemic. An emblematic snapshot of the after-effects of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
There is a charming little sector of central Madrid where towering figures of Spanish literature lived, loved, wrote … and mocked each other.
We’re nearly two years into a global pandemic that has seemingly changed everything in our economy from how we shop to where we eat. COVID-19 indeed may transform our economic lives entirely – except how we work.
*¿Dónde está la playa?
A global pandemic and weariness in many places of cheap, mass tourism may hasten a real paradigm shift in the travel sector. Or not.
Eight months after cutting itself off from the world, the Chinese megalopolis is coronavirus-free and back to business as usual, albeit with a healthy dose of propaganda.
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, no sector in the economy has been hit harder than the travel industry. Following rolling global lockdowns through last spring, and resulting border closures and travel bans, both tourism and business travel was at a virtual standstill, with an estimated 98% drop in the number of international tourists […]
For a long time, urbanization has been one of the defining features of our societies — a tendency that has accelerated with the growth of the information economy, with now half the world’s population living in cities. But some believe that we may have reached a peak, as COVID-19 has not only paused the trend […]
From Bali to Mexico and everywhere in between, countries that have come to rely on a steady stream of tourism revenue are experiencing serious fallout from the pandemic.
Earlier this week, as I packed my things for my first post-pandemic vacation, my eyes and mind dwelled on the object I spend more time with than any other: my laptop. Of course many things have changed since last summer’s break. Instead of flying, I’ll drive from my home in the northern city of Milan […]
SAINT-BLIMONT — Two years ago, my partner and I set off across Europe in our campervan. We called it Foxy — and it was our home on wheels and ticket to freedom. In France, they still call it “la vanlife” — that ultimate mix of wanderlust and practicality that was popularized during the 1960s in […]
Last year 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals were recorded globally. In 2020, with borders closed and airplanes grounded, the tourism industry has been decimated and its recovery could take years. The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development anticipates a 45% to 70% decline in the tourism economy — amounting to losses between $295-$430 billion for […]
A Venice-based novelist reflects on the disappearing tourists, imploding economy and politicians siding with the apocalypse.
I’ve shared photos before of a trip to central Turkey’s Göreme National Park, with its troglodyte cave-like dwellings and fairy chimney rock formations. Only recently did I dig up this image from a visit a few years earlier, and was reminded of how strange and powerful the landscape is.
On the unpaved roads of inland Indonesia, this worker was relying on the strength of his water buffalo to bring building materials to a construction site. A couple of days later on the same trip, I would get to see some even less fortunate bovines, in an indigenous Toraja village.
I had to be quick to snap a photo of this little fellow in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, before it dashed back into its burrow. I’d always assumed it was a groundhog, like those I’m used to seeing in the French Alps. But looking at it now, I’m quite sure it’s a […]
When I was a young man, a major folklore festival came through my hometown in eastern France, with musicians and dancers in colorful costumes from all over Europe. Spotting this photo 58 years later, I knew right away what I didn’t know when I took it: this perfectly rotund tuba player almost certainly hailed from […]
The red-brick Gothic castle on the Lithuanian island of Trakai looks like it’s straight out of a fairy tale. However the spell was broken when a full garrison of soldiers made their rowdy entrance in the courtyard.
The woman and the boy in the foreground were walking toward the members of my guided tour to try to sell knick-knacks. There were only two of them selling souvenirs in front of the Royal Tombs, and my fellow visitors and I had the whole Petra site pretty much to ourselves — which I’m told […]
Le petit oiseau va sortir…! “Here flies the little bird!” is what we say in France when we want our subjects to pay attention and look at the camera. That time in Manaus, one of the gateways to the lush Brazilian rainforest, these vibrant orange birds didn’t fly away just long enough to get this […]
Sure, there’s the Taj Mahal. But at this moment in the Jain temple of Ranakpur, in northwestern India, everything an amateur photographer like myself could ask for fell into place: the whiteness of the marble contrasting with the visitors’ colorful garments, the rays of sunlight gently filtering in, the symmetry of the architecture, the depth […]
The venerable old city needs to embrace innovation and stop putting all of its eggs in the tourism basket, writes Italian-born architect and MIT professor Carlo Ratti.
All across Europe, you may stumble, as my wife and I did many times, upon discreet scallop shell symbols: They mark the ancient “Camino de Santiago” routes that lead to the Christian shrine of the apostle Saint James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The facade of the Casa de las Conchas in Salamanca is definitely […]
The fauna and flora of South Africa rank among the most impressive I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Near Durban in the east of the country, I caught them both on vivid display, as a tree filled with white ibis.
Fish, fruit, pottery, an endless selection of drain pipes: the massive open-air markets were a vivid memory from the northern Brazilian city of Belem.
The government recently gave foreigners the go-ahead to visit 137 peaks in four states, paving the way for a potential flood of visitors to the world’s tallest mountain range.
My clearest camel memory from this same trip to Turkey 30 years ago was witnessing the millennia-old tradition of camel wrestling. Just a few miles down the road, near the Ancient Greek site of Ephesus, this fellow was in the mood for nothing of the sort.
With many in the Northern Hemisphere now making their way back to the office, it’s time to share stories and rankings of our respective summer vacations. One question that always comes up: How crowded was it? Indeed, travels to popular foreign destinations continue to grow worldwide. In 2018, there were an estimated 1,4 billions international […]
Some 7,000 kilometers away from my neck of the woods in eastern France, Martinique feels like home. In this French overseas region in the Lesser Antilles, people speak French, pay in euros … but perhaps the most strikingly familiar feature is the unmistakably French yellow mailboxes across the island.
Svolvaer is one of the first scenic stops upon entering the famous Lofoten archipelago of northern Norway. The fishing village, with its typical wooden red houses, offers a nice warmup to the insular (and chilly!) world of dramatic mountains and pristine bays.
Air travel is booming despite the current climate debate. But vacationers have to rethink their summer breaks — not only for the environment, but also for the sake of people.
For a moment, the streets of Sibiu turned into a fashion show — and that woman didn’t seem too convinced by the man’s dress sense … Was it the traditional căciulă sheepskin hat, or something else?
There are millions of people who travel every year. But for some, exotic cultural exploration can lead to psychological trouble.
The “Five Wells Square” in the old Croatian city of Zadar is not a misnomer: For some reason, I could only squeeze four of them in that shot. Oh, well.
These wrinkly clay busts were sitting in the backyard of a Sardinian sculptor’s workshop. With the sun on their grimacing faces, this felt like the right image to share today as temperatures broke records across my native France.
Carthago delenda est. “Carthage must be destroyed.” As I was wandering the ruins of the ancient capital (near modern-day Tunis) I had Cato’s famous oratorical phrase stuck in my head … Clearly a remnant of my Latin-learning years!
There are things photographs capture well: the lush hills that flank the Li River, the fishermen on their frail-looking bamboo rafts, the strange rock formations you get to see along the way. But this moment remains in my memory for what you can’t see: my (mostly Chinese) fellow passengers on that cruise boat who seemed […]