Not much travel, but a lot of travel planning for our first post-lockdown international trip to Italy. Trying to thread our way through changing COVID rules and Alitalia’s bankruptcy throes. I’m getting inundated with discount offers for Clear’s fast-pass service. I’ve resisted them so far, because I remember back to when the first incarnation of Clear wanted to sell its members’ biometric data. We then talk to Xovis Technology‘s Cody Shulman about how airports are better managing all sorts of lines in airports. Finally, air passenger traffic is dropping again because business travelers are still MIA.Check out this episode's show notes here

TravelCommons

High-Tech Airport Lines; Business Travel Still Missing

Last month's travel got me wondering what travel changes are going to stick after the COVID pandemic begins to recede. With all the restaurant and bar closures caused by COVID lockdowns, I'm updating my recommendations list based on recent travels. And, I'm way overthinking our first post-lockdown international trip.Check out this episode's show notes here and the blog post with my 2021 restaurant and bar recommendations here

What Remains from Pandemic Times; Best Restaurant and Bars

After a 2-week, 2,500-mile driving expedition through the Northeast, there wasn't much time to write a new episode. So, I mined recent interviews for stories that got left on the cutting room floor. Also talk about COVID planning for a fall trip to Italy and mourn the demise of American Airlines’ in-flight magazine.Check out this episode's show notes here

B-Sides and Rarities

Business travelers are getting itchy. They know Zoom calls can't replace a face-to-face meeting, but they can't meet with people who aren't in their offices yet. We also talk about how surprisingly great the LaGuardia Terminal B renovation is, and then talk about airport history with Professor Janet Bednarek, professor of history at University of Dayton.Check out this episode's show notes here

Why Business Travel Is Coming Back; Learning Airport History

I can feel travel beginning to come back. TSA checkpoint volumes are hitting post-pandemic highs, business travelers are starting to come out from behind their Zoom sessions, and vaccination rates are prompting more people to make travel plans. So on this episode, we first talk to Paul Melhus, CEO of ToursByLocals about the state of the local tour market and then about how frequent travelers are starting to stretch their atrophied travel muscles.Check out this episode's show notes here

How to Find Local Tour Guides; Rebuild Travel Muscles

Looking at the Beer section of this new website design, I saw I needed more content. So I got hold of Rob Cheshire of the This Week in Craft Beer podcast to talk about our approaches to taproom tourism and to trade taproom travel stories. I also talk about mask hassles on a couple of recent flights, Hertz's continuing downward service spiral, and Uber and Lyft driver shortages.Check out this episode's show notes here and the uncut video of Rob's and I beer chat here

How the Pros Plan Their Taproom Tourism

As travel bookings beginning to rise with vaccination rates, we talk with Michael Giusti of InsuranceQuotes.com to find out what's changed over the last year. I make the rounds through all my frequent traveler programs to reset impending expiration dates. We also talk about yet another travel data breach, a favorite beer bar is a COVID casualty, and bankrupt Hertz is starting to let its cars get old.Check out this episode's show notes here

What's New in Travel Insurance; Keeping Ahead of Expiring Miles

Escaped the Chicago winter for a week of hiking in the mountains around Tucson and searching for good Sonoran food. We also talk with Mike Kennedy, CEO and Co-Founder of Koala about how he’s making it easy to rent timeshares without buying into them. Also, how travel planning got hot but then cooled back down, and trying to extend the life of my Avios pointsCheck out this episode's show notes here and my Tucson trip blog post here

Timeshares Without the Pitch; Notes on Tucson

Was all set to head to San Diego for a week’s break from Chicago’s grey January and then looked at the COVID restrictions… and then pivoted to Arizona. With people starting to think about 2021 travel, I pulled together my top 5 travel planning tips. Slow vaccine roll-out will probably keep us restricted for longer than we thought. Andrea Amico of Privacy4Cars joins us to talk about the dangers of leaving our data behind in rental cars.Check out this episode's show notes here

Data Privacy and Rental Cars; 2021 Travel Planning Tips

No Thanksgiving travel, but looking at the travel volume for this, the busiest travel week of the year, shows just how far things have fallen. The Qantas CEO said “No vax, no fly”, so we dig into the emerging world of digital vaccine passports. And then I trace my travel genealogy, wondering if road warrior-ism is hereditary.Check out this episode's show notes here

Show Me the Proof; Hereditary Road Warriors

No travel since the last episode, so I had some time to think back through my post-lockdown travel and come up with my top 10 gift ideas for your pandemic travelers. We look at the start of the year-end efforts by airlines, hotels, and credit card companies to keep their grounded travelers, unpack the work-from-hotel offerings from Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt, and dissect the latest hotel reservation system data breach.

Pandemic Holiday Gift Guide; Year-End Status Offers

Trying to recover from a long weekend of eating and drinking through the neighborhoods of South Philly. Our movable feast reminded me that food may be the one experience of a place left that can’t be easily exported and bought on-line. We talk about the FBI’s cybersecurity warning to work-from-home types using hotels for getaway offices, and are a bit amazed at how fast last year’s 'flight shaming' gave way to 'flights to nowhere.' And we think about 'quarantine theater' — how cities and states are focusing on activities to signal they are serious about COVID, but that most folks know aren’t really effective.

Surviving Quarantine Theater; Traveling for Food

Drivable getaway to Michigan's Upper Peninsula; looking back 6 months to start of pandemic; downloading 12 years of TripIt data; what to do with travel card points we can't use?

6 Months On; Why Keep Travel Cards?

Travel planning amidst changing quarantines and lockdowns; writing off Barcelona trip; Emily Thomas and her new book "The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad"

What Is The Meaning of Travel?

Experiences on my first post-lockdown flight; Hertz's new cleaning program; reviewing my new pair of Bose headphones, wonder when business travel will return

165 — First Post-Lockdown Flight; When Does Business Travel Come Back?

The Frequent Traveler's Podcast. The voice of the frequent traveler -- more about the journey than the destination