• At the end of 2023, I decided to travel around Europe to find a new place to call home.
• I visited cities in Spain, Greece, and the UK before settling in the perfect spot.
• I've now been living in London for a few months, and couldn't be happier with my move.

By the time I turned 18, I'd lived in four different countries — England, Kuwait, China, and the United Arab Emirates.

Sparked by my desire to live in one place — and the draw of reasonable university fees — I moved to my "home country" of the Netherlands, where my parents were from but I'd never lived before.

For almost 10 years, I lived there and ignored the growing sense of restlessness within me. However, I couldn't say I was truly happy.

Knowing it was time for a change, I decided to start thinking about moving somewhere else.

So, at the end of 2023, I gave up my apartment, stored my belongings in my mom's basement, and decided to travel the world to find my new home.

I started my journey in Spain

My first stop was Xàbia, Spain, a coastal town where I spent five weeks petsitting a red lab in a stunning house overlooking the ocean.

Here, I saw what it would be like to live somewhere I could spend my weekends at the beach or hiking.

I loved being in a place with an abundance of sunshine, but ultimately, it didn't feel like home. So, I decided to move on to my next destination.

Next, I spent two weeks in Belfast

I had never visited Northern Ireland before, and I immediately fell in love with the country's dynamic energy. I loved the comedy clubs, cozy pubs, and history lining the streets.

However, I felt like something was missing, and didn't find enough variety in the restaurant scene to satisfy my cravings. So, I continued my search.

I headed to Kythira, an island in Greece

Every year, my friends and I take a two-week vacation to a different Greek island.

So, when we traveled to Kythira, I was curious to see if it was a place I'd want to call home.

I pictured spending a year on the sandy beaches with the sun shining down on me. After a long day of work, I could even take a dip in the ocean.

However, after talking to locals, I learned the island was pretty empty outside the summer season. So, I realized I'd always be chasing that summer holiday feeling.

After struggling to find a place that felt like home, I decided to return to the country I was born in

After several misses, I decided to try England, the place where I was born and lived until I was three. However, I'd only visited a few times in the years since.

I spent three weeks dogsitting in a small village in Bedfordshire, which is north of London. The idyllic countryside beckoned me, with long walks in the forest, Sunday roasts in the same pub, and evenings spent reading in the garden.

I yearned for this tranquil existence, but recognized it wasn't time for me to live this type of lifestyle yet. With my isolating work and single status, finding my people in such a small village would be hard.

So, I decided to try two weeks in Cambridge, a city I'd heard so much about. I loved working in various cafes, visiting museums on weekends, and meeting people my age.

However, Cambridge is a student city at its core, which didn't feel right for where I was at during this part of my life.

I finally ended up settling in the perfect city

Finally, I spent a month in London when my sister asked me to watch her pomsky.

I assumed the expensive, busy, and overwhelmingly gray city wasn't for me based on previous short visits. However, during this trip I got to see another side of London.

I loved the large parks that made me forget I was in a city, the dazzling theater scene, and the cozy cafés where I could type away without feeling lonely.

I grabbed coffee with fellow journalists I met online and recognized a potential community. Because London is a highly populated city, I felt like I had the best chance of finding my tribe — something I'd been missing for the past few years.

After a few months in London, I couldn't be happier

I've been in London for a few months now, and still feel like I'm trying to find my feet. However, I'm slowly building a community and even reached out to high school friends who ended up in London after university.

I always visit the same local café, where I sit with my laptop and a dirty chai at least twice a week. I avoid crowded areas like Soho and Liverpool Street and push myself to visit a large park every weekend.

Sometimes, I feel like Carrie from "Sex and the City," and other times, I feel far less glamorous and far more cold.

I didn't think I could be happy in such a busy and urban setting, but I've loved carving out my piece of the city, and I plan to keep doing so.

• For my family's first trip to Disney World, we splurged on all-inclusive packages and extras.
• We thought doing this would prevent us from having more arguments about spending.
• Instead, my husband and I acted like monsters, obsessed with getting our money's worth on the trip.

Money has always been a minefield in my marriage.

My husband compares prices on toothpaste and won't toss a tube until every last drop has been squeezed from its lifeless body. I, on the other hand, operate on, ahem, vibes.

This difference in spending styles is especially pronounced when we travel. On vacation, I don't want to agonize over whether a $17 cocktail is worth it — I just want a lychee martini in my bloodstream as soon as possible.

And, more often than not, instead of having honest discussions about vacation spending, my husband and I just avoid them.

So when we planned our first-ever Disney World trip over February break, we thought we had cracked the code: Go all-inclusive.

We booked a room at Disney's Contemporary Resort and opted for the Disney Dining Plan. The idea was that if everything was prepaid, there'd be no decisions left to argue about.

Going all-inclusive quickly turned us into theme-park economists

At first, our plan totally worked! We tapped our MagicBands without a second thought to bickering over $12 Mickey-shaped pretzels.

When our 3-year-old had a full-scale meltdown at Chef Mickey's character dinner, we didn't feel the sting of wasted money — we just laughed and accepted that oversized cartoon heads on human bodies are, objectively, the stuff of nightmares.

But while the all-inclusive plan helped us avoid fights, it also unleashed something unexpected: the unrelenting need to maximize.

Suddenly, we weren't just skipping the money bickering — we were fully committed to extracting every ounce of value from our prepaid adventure.

This is how we found ourselves at 7 p.m., dragging two very sleepy children back into Magic Kingdom because, dammit, we paid for those full-day passes.

That's also how we ended up on The Little Mermaid ride, each adult cradling a completely unconscious child, whispering to ourselves, "This is the magic."

By day two, our warped logic had fully taken over. Did we need to be there for rope-drop at Epcot after staying out late for the Magic Kindom fireworks? No. But we could, and it was included, so we must.

Ironically, the very thing meant to reduce stress drove us into full-blown vacation optimization mode.

Fortunately, there are ways to find the sweet spot for sanity

By the time we left, my husband and I were both relieved and deeply aware of our own absurdity.

Yes, the all-inclusive plan helped us avoid our usual debates over spending, but it also made us act like we were strategizing for a corporate retreat rather than enjoying a vacation.

If you and your partner approach spending differently, especially on vacations, here are a few things I've learned:

Agree to a budget ahead of time — but allow some flexibility

Before you book anything, have the hard conversations upfront and decide on a spending plan together.

If one person needs a clear budget to feel comfortable, set that one in advance. If the other (hi, it's me) wants some spontaneity, build in a little wiggle room for guilt-free indulgence.

For example, next time, we'll establish some "no-questions-asked" splurge zones so our family can chug every mug of LeFou's Brew at Gaston's Pub without thinking too much about how it's basically just apple juice with a lot of ice.

Give kids their own spending budget

Walking the parks, it's easy to go overboard every time your kid begs for yet another $35 light-up fairy wand (especially knowing you could get almost the same thing back home at the dollar store).

For our younger kids, we told them they could each pick one souvenir under $40. My friend with older children actually gives them cash to buy whatever they want within that amount. Anything they don't spend is theirs to keep.

This is a sensible way to curb impulse buys on things you know are overpriced without having to argue.

Consider prepurchasing souvenirs

Another friend takes this a step further — she buys Disney-related toys on sale before they leave, hides them in her luggage, and surprises the kids with them throughout the trip.

It's a genius compromise between splurging and budgeting.

Remember not every expense needs to be optimized and that time itself is a valuable asset

An all-inclusive package can be great if it prevents constant cost calculations, but don't let it force your schedule.

Sometimes the best use of your vacation budget is simply resting — lounging in the shade with a Frozen ice cream shaped like Olaf's head.

Time is its own kind of currency, and spending it well is just as important as spending money wisely.

Balance efficiency with actual enjoyment

Yes, Disney is expensive, and yes, you'll want to make the most of yor trip — but the goal is still to have fun, not to create a perfectly executed itinerary.

Your kids won't remember if you got your money's worth on lunch. However, they will remember if you were relaxed enough on the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger ride to enjoy shooting that infrared laser cannon at Buzz's arch-nemesis. (And hopefully, they'll forget the expletives you uttered every time you missed).

Next time, we'll shoot for a balanced trip

On our next Disney trip — note that we need at least two to four years to recoverfrom this one — we'll aim for a middle ground.

Maybe we'll book a resort for the perks but pay for meals à la carte. Perhaps we'll accept that not conquering every ride is OK if it means we're actually soaking up moments instead of sprinting between them.

Because, in the end, the best vacation strategy isn't about spending more or less. It's about making room for the magic to happen without turning "magic" into another item on your to-do list.

… and it's about triple-checking that your "all-inclusive" includes babysitting for at least one night, so you can focus on what's really important: ditching your kids to ride Space Mountain.

• Lindsey Granger and Kolyn Boyd travel with their toddler for a docuseries.
• Their toddler has spent over 80 hours on long-haul flights since she was a baby.
• They shared their tips for a successful long-haul journey with a young kid.

Denver-based journalist Lindsey Granger and producer and director Kolyn Boyd have spent over 80 hours on long-haul flights with their 3-year-old, Kynsley, in tow.

They've been traveling with Kynsley since she was an infant. The globetrotting tot has flown over 167,000 miles to 12 states and seven countries. Granger and Boyd document their family travels on the international docuseries "World of Travel" on Samsung TV Plus, which was recently renewed for a second season.

Over the past three years of trips with Kynsley, Granger and Boyd have learned from their travel mistakes — from overpacking to missing flights. They told Business Insider their biggest tips for a successful long journey with a young kid.

Take your child on long-haul journeys as an infant — it will make flights easier as they get older.

One of Boyd's top tips for flying with kids is to start them young.

"You just have to jump out there and get your baby used to doing these flights," Boyd said. He added that flying with an infant is challenging because they can't express their needs — not to mention frequent diaper changes.

"With a toddler, it's a little easier because she's able to go to the bathroom, notice the TV, and play with toys," Boyd said.

Since she flew so much as a baby, Boyd said that as a toddler, Kynsley doesn't seem anxious when the plane takes off. Instead, she finds it fun to go faster and faster until they're soaring through the sky.

Granger said that while she and Boyd may get nervous during storms and turbulence in the air, Kynsley seems unbothered.

"She's really the cool, calm, collected person," Boyd added. "Her being calm actually helps me because I think, 'I can't be scared if my baby's not scared.'"

Travel with family and friends to lighten the load.

Granger and Boyd advise traveling with a group who can help with parenting duties.

"I always recommend traveling with family or a friend who's willing to watch the baby and let the adult be an adult," Granger said. "We had a bunch of family and friends with us on the same flight to South Africa."

Granger added that having so many loved ones around on their 15-and-a-half-hour flight to South Africa seemed to make 3-year-old Kynsley feel more comfortable on the plane, too.

Do your research to ensure you don't overpack large items like strollers or car seats.

"One of the big lessons we learned as a group is how to condense and pack appropriately for the trip," Boyd said, adding that they'd made the mistake of packing the wrong stroller and unnecessary car seats.

Granger advised that before checking your car seat, find out if there will be one at your destination, especially if you're renting a car. When deciding on strollers to pack, do your research to ensure they'll suit the destination.

For example, she said bringing a bulky industrial stroller on their trip to Greece was a bad idea because they had to take about 10 ferries.

"Look at the landscape. Is there cobblestone everywhere? Then you can't bring your cheap umbrella stroller because your wheels will break like ours have," Granger added.

Shift your baby's sleep schedule the night before so they're more likely to rest on the plane.

When the family took a red-eye flight to Greece in 2023, Boyd remembers everyone around him sleeping — except for 2-year-old Kynsley.

"She stayed up the entire night until it was time to land, and I had my opportunity to get one hour of sleep," Boyd said. "She was super excited, so she wanted to play the entire time."

Granger said this often happens when she doesn't adjust Kynsley's sleep schedule the night before a flight.

"Let's say she went to bed at 7 p.m. and our flight is at 5 a.m. — she had her 8-hour rest already, so she's wide awake and ready for the day," Granger told BI. "But if she went to bed a bit later, waking her up around 5 a.m. would throw off her sleep, so she might go right back to sleep and give me a peaceful flight."

Allot extra time for TSA screenings to avoid missing flights — especially if you're bringing milk.

"I used to pump a lot and then bring a lot of milk through TSA, which parents should know you are allowed to do," Granger said. "It's just a rigorous process where they scan every bottle."

When traveling with milk through TSA, Granger recommends arriving at least two hours before departure for domestic flights and three hours before international flights.

If you're traveling with a toddler and no milk, she suggests arriving one and a half to two hours before domestic flights and two and a half to three hours before international flights.

"If your child is mobile or prone to meltdowns, give yourself extra buffer time for security and bathroom stops," she added.

Don't stress over missed flights.

When I asked Granger and Boyd if they'd ever missed a flight with Kynsley, they chuckled.

From long TSA stops to ill-timed diaper changes, they said they've missed multiple flights — some by two minutes and others by a full hour.

"At this point, we just laugh it off and get something to eat," Granger said. "We travel a lot, so we know there will be mishaps. We just figure it out day by day."

Maintaining a light mood after a missed flight has led to some special memories for the family of three.

"I'll never forget when we missed a flight to New York before we went to Greece," Boyd said.

As they waited for the next flight, 2-year-old Kynsley was bored, so Boyd gave her his GoPro for the first time.

"I wanted to see what she would do, and she started taking pictures and filming our experience in the airport," Boyd said. "And now she really loves cameras because of that moment. So it was actually a really good day."

Respect the people seated around you on the flight.

In Granger's experience, other passengers are typically courteous and understanding of a sightly bothersome young child — but there's a limit.

"It is a tough time traveling with your kid, but you have to be a good neighbor still — you can't let your kid stick their arm through the middle of the seat, throw stuff, kick the seat," Boyd said. "You have to be a responsible parent and make other people comfortable as well."

Granger and Boyd's strategy is to find something else she'd be interested in doing, like walking the aisles or getting a snack box as a reward for stopping.

When babies cry and toddlers have tantrums, keep calm.

Boyd said that when Kynsley cries or throws a fit on an airplane, he goes through the list of things she may want or need, from food and cuddles to walking the aisles and playing with toys.

"If your child is throwing a tantrum, just be calm because no matter what, it just is what it is," Granger said. "So just relax, engage with them, and see what they need or want or how you can play with them so that maybe you could stop the tantrum."

Let kids be kids, and ease restrictions you may have at home.

As a toddler, Granger and Boyd give Kynsley more freedom on flights, from what she wears to how she passes the time.

Throughout long-haul flights, they ask Kynsley what she wants to do — whether it be watching a movie, playing with toys, having a snack, walking the aisles, or even using the iPad, a device they don't allow at home.

"It's really about making her comfortable, especially because, at the end of the day, she didn't ask to travel," Granger said. "She's still a toddler, but she's autonomous, and we want her to feel excited about flying rather than 'Do what I say' for 10 to 15 hours."

Granger said she also allows Kynsley to pack her own bag "full of nonsense" for flights now that she's a toddler.

"Kynsley brought her Halloween costume to South Africa in November," she said. "She actually wore it and felt like the trip was fulfilling to her — even just the journey."

David Vanderhoef was concerned about his guidebook to Kenya. A 39-year-old former bar manager from Connecticut, Vanderhoef had been on a grand world tour for several years with his partner when he picked up the latest guidebook from Lonely Planet, the legendary travel company, ahead of his trip in October.

That year's edition was only about half as long as the 2018 version he also owned. Hotel and restaurant listings, store hours, bus routes, and other swaths of content historically found in Lonely Planet's meticulously researched guides were either significantly pared down or slashed entirely. In their place were a lot more photos.

More alarming to Vanderhoef, the new book made almost no mention of safety or crime.

"Even the staunchest Kenyan patriot will readily admit that one of the country's biggest problems is crime," the 2018 edition said. It extensively warned travelers of everything from carjackings to "violent armed robbery" and featured detailed tips on avoiding "dangers and annoyances." The 2024 edition omitted almost all of these warnings. It mentioned the word "crime" only three times in the space of 107,000 words, one of them in the context of where to buy good crime fiction. Excised, too, were references to official security guidance from Western governments — despite the fact that parts of the country are under US State Department Level 4 "do not travel" restrictions due to the resurgent Al-Shabaab militant group and the risk of kidnapping.

"Safety is a really important thing to us when we're traveling because it can be really unsafe out there," Vanderhoef tells me. "A big problem with travel in general is trying to beautify travel, which is happening on Instagram. But it's happening now on Lonely Planet, and it's not good."

Founded in the 1970s, Lonely Planet has long been an icon of travel — the blue-spined backpackers' holy text that has provided generations of readers with invaluable lists of the best places to eat, sleep, sightsee, and party throughout Earth, while providing a crash course in local history and culture. "The one thing you always had to have to go to a country — first thing on your list after your backpack, basically, and your passport — was a Lonely Planet," David Zetlamb, a 55-year-old Californian academic living in Amsterdam, says.

But over the past decade or so, the storied brand has lost its way. It's one of numerous media properties that have tried to pivot in the face of the internet — from Encyclopedia Britannica's hard turn toward artificial intelligence to the Sports Illustrated brand's second life as a ticket seller and sports stadium name. Lonely Planet has bounced between various owners, trying myriad strategies to stay relevant. There have been multiple ill-fated apps, a TV show, credit card tie-ins, even an AI-powered trip planner — and, most recently, a radically redesigned, leaner guidebook that has raised hackles among longtime fans. Meanwhile, its digital competitors, including Tripadvisor, Yelp, and Google Maps, and legions of travel bloggers and influencers have not only eaten Lonely Planet's lunch but also reshaped how humanity conceives of travel.

Lonely Planet's slow, strange decline and the accompanying shift in travel media may stand as a parable for all our lives: The internet has reshaped how people find information and make decisions, disempowering the old sources of authority and uplifting independent voices — and not always for the better.

"When I was a young man, I would backpack through Europe and, of course, everyone was carrying this Lonely Planet guidebook, and it was a brick-sized travel bible," says Tim Hornyak, a Tokyo-based writer who contributed to several Lonely Planet guidebooks, including on Japan and South Korea, in the 2000s. "Naturally there was a cachet — 'Oh, you're a Lonely Planet author. Wow, that must be such an interesting job!' And it was. But it's a lot of grunt work."

Created in 1973 by Tony and Maureen Wheeler, a British-Australian couple then in their early 20s, Lonely Planet became an indispensable part of any budget-conscious traveler's vacation planning. It almost single-handedly popularized the concept of backpacking. As of 2007, it had sold more than 80 million books. It was so popular it created the "Lonely Planet effect," in which any out-of-the-way spot, upon being featured in the guidebook, was said to become immediately swamped with tourists, jack up its prices, and lose its hidden charm.

In 2007, the Wheelers finally decided to cash out, offloading the property to the BBC for a cool £130 million.

"We weren't the Murdochs. It wasn't going to be a family dynasty," Tony Wheeler, now 78, says. "In retrospect, we sort of left at just the right time, when the internet was going to have this huge influence on things. But we didn't see that."

Lo and behold, the "Instagram effect" would soon dwarf the Lonely Planet effect. Launched in 2009 and owned by Meta since 2011, the photo-sharing app helped transform how people decide where to go and how they experience the world. It encouraged travelers to reflexively document every moment of their trips, while contributing to the overtourism of hyped-up photo spots. Influencer content can also fill hyperniches that any single guidebook could never hope to serve — whether that's travel suggestions for parents with epileptic children or mountaineering guides for deaf people. Lonely Planet knew the existential threat the app posed: "Instagram has infiltrated the very core of travel; how people interact with places, where they choose to go and the art of telling travel tales," a Lonely Planet contributor once wrote on the company's blog.

Meanwhile, Lonely Planet also had to contend with the rest of the internet. In 2006, guidebook sales across the industry in the US totaled a reported 19 million. By 2019, they were just 6.9 million, Circana Bookscan found.

After just six years, the BBC offloaded Lonely Planet in 2013 for £50 million — an enormous loss — to a Kentucky tobacco tycoon named Brad Kelley. Kelley quickly raised eyebrows internally with his choice of CEO: Daniel Houghton, a then-24-year-old former photojournalist whom he'd hired to run his media holding company, NC2.

"You could argue that this is a bad time to get into the business," Houghton told Outside magazine the following year. "But I think otherwise. The best time to get into an industry is when it's in flux."

Over the next decade, Lonely Planet experimented with several different avenues. It launched one failed app, Guides, then another, Trips, which Fast Company described as "a Medium-meets-Instagram approach to travel reporting." It invested in digital media. "Everybody was running their own parts of the business but completely siloed," says a former senior employee who, like several former Lonely Planet employees who spoke to me for this story, asked to remain anonymous over concerns about professional consequences. "There was no overall vision. There was no overall strategy. There was no sense that we were working together."

In early 2019, Houghton exited the business, and Kelley replaced him with Luis Cabrera, a BCG consultant who had previously worked with the company. He promised to "reinvigorate" the brand as a "travel platform" with personalized content.

Then the pandemic halted the world's travel plans.

In 2020, industrywide guidebook sales plummeted by more than 40%. By some estimates, Lonely Planet laid off two-thirds of its workforce of several hundred. Its offices in London and Melbourne, Australia, were essentially shuttered.

That December, Red Ventures swooped in. The sprawling South Carolina-based media conglomerate, then valued at $11 billion, had been gobbling up an array of media brands, from Bankrate to CNET. It had a well-honed business model, with web articles driving readers toward lucrative partnerships and referrals — from The Points Guy encouraging users to sign up for credit cards to Healthline's deals with wellness companies.

"The social content and the web content is all there to funnel you into some sort of affiliate fee ecosystem," a former Red Ventures employee who has worked in travel media says. "That's their bread and butter."

But Lonely Planet was a different beast: For all its abortive web efforts, at its heart, it made and sold a physical product. Some Lonely Planet staffers chafed at a culture clash, from their new parent company's company's laser focus on analytics and business to Red Ventures CEO Ric Elias' frequent reminders to his staff that he'd survived the "Miracle on the Hudson" US Airways water landing in 2009. (Red Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.)

Red Ventures knew it had its work cut out for it. "Lonely Planet finds itself unsure of its purpose," a slide from a company all-hands meeting in 2021 said. "As the world moved online, Lonely Planet struggled to replicate the success of its books in the digital space. Today, LP lacks a coherent identity."

Under the new leadership of Philippe von Borries, a cofounder of Refinery29, the media firm both explored initiatives and closed old endeavors, with an internal mission of becoming "the go-to discovery engine for travel." It tried out publishing premium long-form content and toyed with the idea of launching a hard paywall, though it never ultimately introduced one. It shuttered Guides, the smartphone app.

To the chagrin of die-hard Lonely Planet fans, the company also shut down the decades-old travel forum Thorn Tree in late 2022. Though popular with readers, it had been an albatross inside Lonely Planet long before Red Ventures — not generating much revenue and occasionally attracting problematic conversations about sex tourism, drugs, and other deeply unsavory travel-adjacent topics.

Today, Lonely Planet has about 3.3 million followers on Instagram. It's a respectable following — but individual travel bloggers, including Murad Osmann (3.2 million) and Jennifer Tuffen (2.6 million), can handily rack up similar numbers single-handedly. Throngs of travel-content creators big and small are stealing attention from Lonely Planet, and they're going about things very differently.

When I call Maddie Smith, a travel influencer from the Washington, DC, area, she's planning for a "girls trip" to Croatia with a handful of her 230,000-plus Instagram followers. She's one of a new breed that doesn't just make media about vacations — but also sells them.

Guidebooks and traditional travel journalists have typically had strict rules around accepting hospitality or freebies, lest they be seen as anything other than paragons of impartiality. ("The quote was 'nothing more expensive than a cup of tea,' or something like that," Leif Pettersen, a former Lonely Planet guidebook writer, says.) Influencers have not had the same compunctions — routinely striking partnerships and deals with hotels, local tourism boards, and other businesses to produce glitzy content on demand about locations.

"I have up to, I'd say, 30 revenue streams, any given month," Smith says.

Now there's a proliferation of services letting creators get paid more directly. Smith's Croatia trip is being organized through TrovaTrip, which enlists influencers as tour guides to paying travelers selected from their audiences. GetYourGuide offers holidaymakers various tickets, tours, classes, and other experiences, paying influencers for referrals. And Rexby, an Icelandic startup, lets creators either sell their own custom guidebooks or consult directly with tourists on their travel plans for a fee.

Smith got her start in food content before switching to travel; prior to the pivot, she hadn't traveled a whole lot, she says, and hadn't heard of the Lonely Planet brand before I emailed her asking to chat.

In the face of dwindling appetite for traditional travel content, legacy travel media is now also trying to get a slice of the pie from vacation sales. In 2022, Lonely Planet acquired Elsewhere, a holiday-planning startup, for an undisclosed amount and affixed "by Lonely Planet" branding to it — enticing customers to "cut through the noise with tailored recommendations based on our boots-on-the-ground knowledge and personal connections."

Rough Guides, a longtime competitor to Lonely Planet, also offers a vacation-planning service that promises to deliver "a trip based truly on your preferences and created by a local travel specialist, including all aspects of your travel in the destination: hotels, transportation and unique excursions." And The Outdoor Journal, a glossy travel magazine, is building Outdoor Voyage, a platform for booking boutique "adventures."

In 2023, Lonely Planet had yet another leadership shake-up. Von Borries left Red Ventures, and Paul Yanover — the former CEO of Fandango and a longtime Disney exec before that — stepped in.

Around the same time, the company overhauled its guidebooks — introducing more photos and prospective itineraries, while stripping away much of the content traditionally found in them. In the most recent edition of the Lonely Planet guide to Brazil, for example, the page count shrank from 734 to 592. Nearly every page has a photo, maps are simplified, and it features frequent mini-interviews with locals. Restaurant recommendations are dialed back, opening hours and other logistical details are largely removed, and museums and locations don't have the same depth of information as they did in the previous version. (These redesigned guidebooks are distinct from the brand's "Lonely Planet Experience" books, a series that debuted in 2022 and features magazine-style content, positioned as an "anti-guidebook.")

"In this world where people can just pull it up on Google or go to the company's website, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have it in a physical book that we can only change every two years," a former employee said of Lonely Planet's rationale for the changes.

The redesign hasn't been without pushback. Lonely Planet's books have historically been consistently well reviewed online, but reviews poured in on Amazon slamming many of the new guidebooks.

The 2023 edition of Madagascar has 3.1 stars out of five, compared with its predecessor's 4.6. "No idea what's happened to LP, but this book is really third rate at best," one reviewer wrote. That year's Brazil edition has 3.2 stars, while Argentina has 3.4.

"This book is a useless brochure," an aggrieved one-star reviewer wrote for the latest Argentina edition. "It's just a pointless picture book. It is an extraordinary achievement for a travel guidebook series to make its newest editions 1000% times less useful than older editions, but the pitiful new Lonely Planet books have actually managed to do this."

Tony Wheeler, the Lonely Planet cofounder, says that despite being out of the business for decades, he sometimes receives unsolicited complaints from customers who've bought newer guidebooks. "What disappoints me, in a way, and it disappoints a lot of people who use Lonely Planet books, or used to use them and don't find that they work the way they used to, is — I'm not going to say dumbed down, but yeah, I sort of mean that," he tells me.

For nearly 20 years now, Lonely Planet has grappled with a fundamental disconnect: It has an enviable archive of print content but no way to access much of it online apart from e-books. Under Red Ventures, the company has been talking for years about launching an app, perhaps with a subscription for unlimited access to content, to help users plan trips and build itineraries.

Last year, Red Ventures released Guide, a generative-AI-powered trip planner that uses Lonely Planet data. It's not clear how widely used it is, and it's fairly bare-bones — much of the information appears to be pulled from Google Reviews. It generates notable errors: When I asked for a trip to the Cotswolds, a scenic part of England, it encouraged me to book a science-themed bike tour of Valencia, Spain.

There are further headwinds to come. Red Ventures' empire has been built in part on savvy search engine optimization — figuring out the best way to climb the results on Google, then funneling users into profitable products like credit card referrals. But generative AI from the likes of OpenAI and Google itself threatens to produce a world in which far fewer people actually click through — imperiling the business model.

Still, for some, guidebooks remain a trusted one-stop shop that cuts through the noise of vacation planning. Guidebook sales are steadily growing across the industry from their pandemic lows, Circana found, reaching 5.7 million in 2024 — albeit still down from 2019's 6.9 million.

"We've had a good couple of years, partially because, I think, a lot of people are recognizing that a lot of what they read online is simply disguised marketing," Pauline Frommer, the editorial director of the Frommers guidebook brand, says. "There has been a certain segment of the population turning back to the traditional sources because there's been this insane flood of crap on the internet."

To Vanderhoef, the Connecticut traveler, Lonely Planet was once a real-life "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." "It was the ability to go into a foreign, strange place and have no idea where you are or what you're doing, but to know, 'OK, there's a good restaurant over here,' and it's a start," he says.

He recently moved to Portugal, buying a copy of Lonely Planet before he left, but he hasn't gotten around to opening it. When we email in our last follow-up, he's on the verge of taking a trip to Vienna. For both Vienna and Portugal, he's been relying on a combination of Google Maps, random search results, and online travel media.

"But my primary source of information," he says, "will likely be to simply ask people."

Rob Price is a senior correspondent for Business Insider, writing features about technology and society. You can contact him via Signal/WhatsApp at +1 650-636-6268 or email at rprice@businessinsider.com.

New York State Republicans are demanding the ouster of the city's transit chief, citing poor subway service despite an infusion of cash from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s "congestion pricing" Manhattan toll zone.

A press conference came on Wednesday, days after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy visited Dover, N.J., to assess a massive sinkhole that had closed down I-80. Republicans are also calling for an audit of the entire transit agency. 

There, Duffy criticized Hochul for failing to rescind congestion pricing and said New York officials need to get a better handle on subway crime. 

"If you want people to take the train, to take transit, then make it safe, make it clean, make it beautiful, make it wonderful, don’t make it a s---hole, which is what she’s done," he said. 

"We don’t have to be at war over this," Hochul reportedly said in that regard.

NY LAWMAKERS BLAST MTA AFTER COMMENTS ‘DISMISSIVE’ OF CRIME ISSUE

State Sen. Steve Chan, R-Bath Beach, announced a bill at the Albany conference that would add two more members to the state-owned MTA’s board: one representing NYPD transit police and another representing the transit police union.

Chan, a retired NYPD sergeant and immigrant from Hong Kong, condemned a string of dangerous incidents on the rails in and around his Brooklyn district, including the nationally reported case of a passenger set on fire in nearby Coney Island.

"If it takes two men two days to dig a half a hole, then how long would it take one guy to dig a hole?" Chan asked at the presser.

"The question can be answered by [MTA Chair] Janno Lieber, because that's what he does every year: dig himself a hole," he said.

"The motto of the MTA seems to be, ‘the higher the cost, the less we have to offer you.’ So every year around this time, the MTA comes with their hand with a tin cup, ‘We need more money,’ and year after year, the Democrats in Albany bend the knee to a mismanaged, misguided and bloated, lackluster transit system."

Chan said that during his decades as a cop, he saw the best and worst of the subways, but today they're leaning toward the worst. 

He said there was once a time only a few years ago when solo passengers could feel safe underground at 3 a.m., but not today. 

"I know private companies that could run the MTA better. I bet I can take a company and give them one single bus line. They'll turn a profit right away."

Chan lamented what he called a criminal "free-for-all" in the subway system, arguing that claims of reduced crime are the result of lax enforcement and downgraded charges.

SUBWAY MAYHEM SPURS CUOMO TO URGE HALT TO NEW NYC DRIVING TAX

Sen. Bill Weber, R-Clarkstown, said his constituents north of the city have had to pay a surtax to the MTA for what he called inefficient service and have to choose whether to brave the indirect transit options or the congestion pricing tolls.

He suggested the MTA is blaming NJTransit, which operates MTA trains that pass through the Garden State on their way to either Spring Valley or Port Jervis, and he also called for Lieber’s ouster.

"Two bills that I'm proposing today … will bring more money back into the pockets of Rockland [County] taxpayers and hopefully will get the MTA moving in the right direction," he said.

Sen. Jack Martins, R-Mineola, added that he hopes the MTA succeeds but has long doubted it.

"Their success is our success. Their success is New York State's success," he said, calling the agency’s $19.9 billion budget an appropriation without results.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"[For] every dollar that comes out [of a New Yorker's] pocket that goes to fund the MTA, and frankly, we get nothing for it. It's time for congestion pricing to be repealed. It's time for an audit and a real audit that goes into the waste, fraud and abuse that exists at the MTA."

Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, R-Niagara Falls, closed the conference by saying the GOP caucus wants the MTA to succeed, and that harsh criticism should not be misconstrued as wishing for failure.

"[But] every time we throw them more money, we're part of the problem. If we want accountability, the easiest way is to say, ‘The spigot's turned off until you show us that you're willing to make changes with the billions of dollars that you get, then we can have a conversation about other things we can do financially.’"

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a top MTA official rejected the collective claims and criticized Martins in particular.

"The LIRR is operating with record on-time performance and crime on the subway is down 24% since last year. And the MTA has a balanced operating budget, so it’s mind-boggling how some politicians are apparently not capable of reading a budget," MTA chief of policy John J. McCarthy said.

"Mr. Martins has a track record of being wrong. He fought improvements on the LIRR, opposing the Third Track Expansion Project [in Nassau County] – a project that only moved forward when Martins left office."

"Now Mr. Martins is back in office, the project is done, and he is trying to make believe there is no improvement – meanwhile it only happened because he was out of the picture." 

An MTA official acknowledged that NJ Transit does run service to Rockland and Orange counties and that it could be better, in regard to Weber's critique.

Planning a trip usually starts with hours of search and comparison—flipping through dozens of tabs, reading endless reviews, and trying to piece together inspiration from scattered sources. But for a new generation of travelers, that’s not how it works anymore. […]

The post Unravel raises $7M to transform travel booking with TikTok-style AI video commerce first appeared on Tech Startups.

• I spent over $900 to visit a gorgeous remote corner of the Grand Canyon region.
• Havasupai Falls is a series of stunning turquoise waterfalls located on the Havasupai Reservation.
• Before visiting, guests must reserve three-night camping reservations, which cost $455 per person.

When I came across an Instagram photo of waterfalls cascading over rocky red cliffs into turquoise pools, I knew I needed to learn more about this magical place and how I could get there.

A quick internet search led me to pursue my dream bucket-list trip at Havasupai Falls.

Havasupai Falls, which refers to a series of stunning waterfalls, is named for the First Nation tribe reservation where they're located — in a remote corner of the Grand Canyon ecosystem, outside the jurisdiction of the national park.

The first step in the journey was securing reservations

The first part of planning my trip was securing permits to visit Havasupai Falls.

Unlike other popular hikes like The Wave and Half Dome, which use Recreation.gov to issue permits, the Havasupai people manage their own permit process through their official website.

Havasupai management uses the term "reservation" instead of "permit" since the process involves reserving a physical space at the campgrounds. Reservations cost $455 per person for the minimum three-night, four-day reservation.

Through the Havasupai website, I created an account and accessed the cancellation and transfer list, which allows visitors to take over reservations made and forfeited by other travelers.

To my surprise, I was able to snag a reservation just 17 days in advance.

We packed up our car and headed out for our trip

My husband and I loaded our backpacks into our camper van in early February with everything we would need for the strenuous hike.

We waved goodbye to the comforts of our Las Vegas home and drove 2 ½  hours to our first stop: a required check-in at the Grand Canyon Caverns Inn in Peach Springs, Arizona.

We met with a Havasupai representative who issued all the necessary paperwork after providing our proof of ID and printed reservation documents.

We were given trail maps and directions for the 60-mile drive through the Havasupai reservation to arrive at our starting point, Hualapai Hilltop.

Once there, we hoisted our 35-pound packs onto our backs and took the first nervous step to begin our adventure.

We began the 10-mile hike to our Havasupai campsite

We started the 10-mile hike to the campground at noon. The sharply descending trail dropped us through layer upon layer of colorful rocks, and had my legs shaking from effort even though I'm an experienced backpacker.

Admittedly, I was anxious about what was to come for the rest of the hike if this was just the intro.

My nerves gave way to excitement when the trail led us gently downhill through gorgeous, picture-worthy canyons before arriving in Supai Village.

As we walked into Supai Village, we saw signs stating that photography is strictly prohibited. The tiny village is an active community and a home-base hub for the Havasupai people, who cherish their privacy.

We hiked past wooden houses with grazing horses and burros lingering in side yards, nodding to the few hikers who had opted to stop to rest their legs.

The well-marked route led us out of Supai Village, with a bend in the dirt road quickly obscuring any sign of the community we left behind.

Our feet were officially tired by this time, but the remaining 1.5-mile hike to the campground gave us a glimpse of Havasu Creek, the legendary source of the blue-green waters.

After 9 miles of hiking, we encountered our first waterfalls

At around 9 miles into our hike, we encountered our first three Havasupai waterfalls — Fifty Foot Falls, Little Navajo Falls, and Old Navajo Falls — before arriving at a makeshift plywood bridge.

We crossed the bridge one by one and ventured on until we got our first jaw-dropping look at the cascading Havasu Falls.

Suddenly, we understood why Beyoncé filmed her "Spirit" music video at this unique natural wonder.

We grabbed a spot at the Havasupai Campground

After taking pictures of Havasu Falls, we headed down the steep path to the official entrance to the campground.

We slowly hiked through the long stretch of first-come, first-served campsites, designated solely by a picnic table nestled within the narrow confines of soaring canyon walls.

My insistence on finding the perfect place to pitch our tent paid off when we came upon a beautiful campsite in Havasupai.

We inched toward the drop-off into the canyon 100 feet below and realized we were looking over the edge of one of the most famous Havasupai waterfalls: Mooney Falls.

The highlight of our trip was hiking the Havasu Creek Trail

Time went fast during our four days in Havasupai.

Our favorite hike of the trip was on the Havasu Falls Trail, which stretches from Mooney Falls to Beaver Falls.

This "Goonies"-style hike was described by the Havasupai people (and the ominous waiver we signed) as being "extremely treacherous."

We descended stone tunnels and moss-covered wooden ladders to get to the bottom of Mooney Falls. But in the end, we saw a view worthy of all the pictures we could take, frame, and hang in our home.

The 2.5-mile trail led us past grazing bighorn sheep, through multiple river crossings and countless unnamed waterfalls.

Soon, we arrived at our turnaround point and Beaver Falls, a terraced work of art created by minerals deposited by Havasu Creek.

Before leaving, my husband and I vowed to return to Havasupai Falls

When our time at Havasupai Falls came to an end, we didn't mind the long 10-mile uphill hike to get back to our car or the over $900 we spent on this utterly unique adventure.

We begrudgingly trudged along like two kids who didn't want this one-of-a-kind trip to ever end.

We consoled each other by swearing that we'd be back again to see Havasupai Falls, a place we'd fallen hopelessly and insatiably in love with.

This story was originally published on February 28, 2024, and most recently updated on April 3, 2025.

• I took a four-hour economy flight with Porter Airlines from Toronto to Los Angeles.
• There were no middle seats on the plane, which was a major perk.
• I also got to enjoy free WiFi, snacks, and alcoholic beverages during my flight.

I'm a frequent flyer who usually enjoys business-class flights because of the service, comfort, and upscale food and drinks that come with the experience.

These days, though, I've been more vigilant about where I spend my hard-earned dollars, especially when some business-class perks are nothing to write home about.

So, when I stumbled upon a reasonable economy flight on Porter Airlines from Toronto to Los Angeles in December, I knew I had to take advantage of the deal. The roundtrip flight cost about $460 CAD, which breaks down to about $160 USD each way.

In some ways, my economy experience with the Canadian airline was just as good as the business-class trips I've been on.

The seats weren't perfect, but I had plenty of space to get comfortable

One of the major perks of this flight was that the plane I was on had no middle seats. So, I could choose between a window or an aisle seat (I picked the latter).

As a result, the plane felt more spacious, and it wasn't a hassle to get in and out of my seat to access the bathroom. I only wish the leather seat had more cushion to it to make the four-hour trip more comfortable.

I was shocked that I had access to free WiFi

Most airlines charge for WiFi access, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that, as a member of the free VIPorter rewards program, internet access was complimentary for the entirety of my flight.

However, even those without a rewards account could access free WiFi by watching an ad every 30 minutes.

The internet connectivity made the time pass quickly since I could get some work done or watch Netflix on my phone.

Having access to streaming platforms was a huge plus, especially because I was underwhelmed by the movies and shows available to watch through the airline.

I enjoyed free snacks, drinks, and alcoholic beverages

Porter Airlines provides all passengers with complimentary snacks, drinks, and alcoholic beverages.

On my flight, I could choose from snacks like shortbread cookies, cheddar fava beans, and roasted almonds. I also appreciated that the airline spotlighted local Canadian alcohol brands like Jackson-Triggs wine and Steam Whistle or Beau's beers.

The beverage pours also felt very generous.

However, the meal I purchased wasn't worth it

After having a snack, I was still a little hungry, so I decided to buy one of the ready-made meals on the menu.

I chose the cheese plate, which cost $12 CAD (about $8.40 USD). The description said a local cheesemonger had curated the varieties.

Although the cheese was delicious and flavorful, I couldn't find any information about what types I was eating. Ultimately, I didn't think the small portion size was worth the price, especially when the crackers took up the majority of the tray.

I enjoyed my flight with Porter Airlines

Because of the smaller size of the plane (and the number of respective passengers on board), entering and exiting the plane was also quick and easy.

Overall, I really appreciated the quality of the complimentary food and drinks and the ease of access to free WiFi.

The flight's only major drawback was that the seat wasn't super comfortable — but next time, I'll bring a neck pillow to sit on for a long flight.

Otherwise, I'll definitely book with Porter again if I'm traveling to destinations within two hours of Toronto.

I had a pleasant flight and would recommend it to friends and family if they're seeking a cost-effective alternative to fly with.

The risk for travellers is very real, write Frédéric Dimanche and Kelley A. McClinchey

• Abby Stacey, 23, said she's been on 53 cruises, averaging about eight a year since becoming an adult.
• She uses cruise casino perks and earnings from her YouTube channel to fund her travel.
• Stacey has a traditional 9-to-5 but hopes to become a full-time cruise content creator.

Abigail Stacey operates a superhero-like double life.

From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., her coworkers know her as a data analyst.

But when the workday winds down and the weekend rolls around, Stacey, 23, dedicates herself to her passion project as Abby, The Life of a Cruiser.

Her superpower? Using her YouTube videos and expertise to dispel stereotypes folks her age might have about vacations-at-sea — while using the earnings to pay for her future voyages.

Stacey told Business Insider she's been on 53 cruises, having already achieved Royal Caribbean's second-highest Diamond Plus status. Recently, she's averaged about eight voyages a year, many of which have been quick weekend sailings.

While she does occasionally stay in inside cabins, "I definitely do not travel budget-friendly," Stacey said, noting the MSC, Celebrity, Princess, and Royal Caribbean suites she's vacationed in. "It's like when you fly first class, you just can't go back."

The expert cruiser estimates she spent about $5,000 for 10 sailings and 41 days at sea in 2024. She declined to share specific earnings but said her channel and brand partnerships "generally cover my cruise-related expenses."

It's certainly not chump change for a vacation industry that touts its relative affordability. But the frequent cruiser has two secrets for affording the lifestyle: onboard casinos and her budding YouTube side hustle.

Of her 10 voyages last year, four were comped by casino points. The remaining were either family trips or paid for using the income from her YouTube videos.

She declined to share specific earnings but said her channel and brand partnerships "generally cover my cruise-related expenses."

Frequent cruisers can earn perks like free drinks, WiFi, and even future cruises by spending big to accrue status and points at onboard casinos. If you play your cards right, the amount you gamble away could be significantly less than the cost of the sailings you'll ultimately win.

It's a hack Stacey saw her cruise-loving parents often use (her family whizzed her onto her first floating resort the moment she was old enough to sail — about seven months). And as soon as she turned of gambling age, "I decided that was the route I wanted to go to get the most cruising opportunities for as low of a price as possible," she said, adding that she maintains casino status with Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Princess.

Stacey said she's been on 10 casino-comped cruises since turning 21. However, these perks don't often cover new ships — and she has been on Royal Caribbean's latest Utopia of the Seas thrice since its July 2024 launch.

She told BI she uses the revenue from her YouTube channel to pay for the rest of her voyages, similar to a startup CEO reinvesting profits back into their business.

For Stacey, these sailings aren't just vacations — they're an opportunity to generate more content. It's quite the symbiotic relationship, posting videos about cruises to earn money for more cruises.

Stacey said she started her full-time job and side hustle around the same time, about two years ago. She monetized her videos within a year of launching her channel, but for now, just shy of 2,000 subscribers, it's a "passion project until it's a full-time job," she said.

Yet, she's committed to reinvesting her YouTube earnings into creating the most informative videos possible — "My biggest goal is to bust the myth that people have about cruising while showing them that no matter how old you are, where you're from, or what you like, there is a cruise ship for everyone," she said.

Her channel is an impressive gallery of cruise-related videos, including ship walkthroughs, cabin tours, and dining reviews. She cycles between new versus older casino-comped ships and suites versus cheaper cabins to target a variety of viewers. She's yet to sail with Carnival but wants to for the content.

"Despite being young, I think I've fortunately done a decent job of showcasing my expertise in this area," Stacey said. "I've only been doing content creation for a little while, but I'm grateful to have seen a lot of growth in recent years."

Going full-time is the goal — "and I think it can happen," she said.

• Fewer Europeans are choosing hotels in the US, the CEO of hotel giant Accor said.
• Airline bookings by Europeans haven't yet dipped like those from Canada.
• Trump's new tariffs look set to spell further disruption for the travel industries.

Canadians aren't the only people losing their appetite for a stateside vacation.

Forward bookings for Europeans visiting the US this summer have fallen by a quarter, Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin told Bloomberg on Tuesday.

One of the world's biggest hospitality companies, Accor operates more than 5,000 hotels, with brands including luxury options like Fairmont and Raffles to cheaper ones like Ibis.

While forward bookings are up as much as 5% overall, Bazin told Bloomberg, there's a "pretty strong deceleration across the Atlantic."

European customers were instead choosing to travel to Canada, South America, and Egypt, he said.

His comments come a week after data showed plummeting airline bookings for Canadians flying to the US.

Compared to last year, travel data firm OAG reported a 70% fall in bookings for every month through September — although Air Canada and WestJet said their declines weren't quite so stark. Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, reported a 23% fall in bookings for April.

For now, at least, transatlantic air routes haven't experienced the same drop.

The corridor is a vital source of income for European airlines, and CEOs are staying alert.

"We probably all agree something is happening out there. Globalization is changing," Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr told the Airlines for Europe Summit last week, in comments reported by Skift.

On the same panel, Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith described the situation as "concerning for us," and added that the airline group is watching developments "very, very closely."

Europe is heading the same way as Canada

The contrast between Canadian and European airline bookings also matches the extent of political tensions.

Trump provoked the US's northern neighbor with his talk of it becoming the 51st state, but his tariffs have been far more detrimental.

They sparked a retaliatory "Buy Canadian" movement, with some American-made products, like liquor, removed from the shelves. "The Star-Spangled Banner" was booed at sports games.

Last Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada's old relationship with the US, "based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over."

While tensions have also been stoked with Europe, as in JD Vance's visit to Greenland, the relationship hasn't reached the same boiling point.

It's highly unlikely to stay that way for long since Trump announced tariffs on Wednesday — charging the European Union with a higher rate of 20%.

Even travelers who aren't put off by American isolationism may still be wary of harsher border security.

Germany and the UK last month updated their advisories for travel to the US, warning of stricter entry rules following more reports of Europeans being turned away at the border.

For example, France's higher education minister told Agence France-Presse that a scientist had been denied entry to the US after he was found to have sent texts criticizing Trump.

"Aviation is part of the globalization that we've seen growing in the last decades," Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury told a company summit in Toulouse last month.

"We are obviously in a more fragmented world, and that's probably even more true by the day, and that brings challenges."

With hotel bookings already falling ahead of a looming trade war, transatlantic travel could be next to sink.

Air traffic controllers at Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport are being offered crisis counselling following a fight in the control tower and a near-miss incident, just two months after a fatal midair collision.

• I recently visited Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah, for the first time.
• I stayed at a five-star hotel in Salt Lake City and a three-star hotel in Park City.
• My rooms were similarly priced, but they offered completely different experiences.

Park City may be Utah's central ski hub, but Salt Lake City offers luxury stays at a lower price.

I visited the area along Utah's Wasatch Front for the first time in January 2025 and booked hotels in both towns that cost about $300 per night.

I spent two nights in Salt Lake City's five-star Grand America Hotel and one night in the Sheraton Park City, a three-star Marriott hotel.

My experiences at each hotel were so different that I couldn't believe they were roughly the same price.

Park City has more luxury hotels and resorts than Salt Lake City — and they typically cost more than double the price.

Home to two world-class ski resorts, Park City is a place where you can wake up and hit the slopes right away. Salt Lake City, however, is about a 40-minute drive from Park City and has fewer five-star hotels that typically come at a lower price point.

Park City has eight five-star hotels listed on Booking.com, with an average nightly rate of $760. Four-star hotels cost roughly $660 per night, and three-star hotels cost $340 on average.

Salt Lake City has only two five-star hotels listed on the same site — the Grand America Hotel, where I stayed, and the Hyatt Regency. The accommodations here cost less than half the average per night, at about $150 for three-star hotels, $220 for four-star hotels, and $310 for five-star hotels.

I spent my first two nights in Utah at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City.

The Grand America Hotel was the first five-star hotel to open in Salt Lake City. It was built in 2001 for a specific reason — to host the 2002 Olympic Committee.

"One of the stipulations to bring the Olympics here was to build a five-star hotel," a hotel representative told Business Insider.

The hotel, known for hosting celebrities and professional athletes, was ranked among the 50 best hotels in the world by CN Traveler's 2024 Reader's Choice Awards.

The Grand America Hotel stretches 24 floors on 10 acres in Downtown Salt Lake City. It has 775 rooms and four tiers of accommodation, with a starting rate of $300 per night during peak season (depending on hotel occupancy), the representative told BI. That rate gets you a 700-square-foot premier room that includes a lounging area, a marble bathroom, and a wall of windows.

I stayed in the second-tier room, an 880-square-foot executive suite that cost $340 a night, though BI received a media rate for the two-night stay.

Aside from the size, the rooms are quite similar.

Then, I spent one night at the Sheraton Park City.

Sheraton Park City is a premium Marriott hotel built in 1983. Before an upgrade in 2019, it was known as the Park City Marriott.

The three-star hotel is about 10-minute drive from world-class ski resorts, Deer Valley and Park City Mountain, and the hotel has a shuttle service, making it a convenient stay for skiers.

A hotel representative told BI that the hotel has 199 rooms and four tiers of accommodation, with a starting rate of $300 during peak season.

I booked the lowest tier — a guest room— for about $300 for one night.

The Grand America Hotel had a posh European feel.

The Grand America Hotel is drenched in old-world glitz and glam. With Italian marble floors, glass chandeliers, and antique decor in every direction, I felt like royalty as I stepped into the lobby.

The Sheraton Park City had more of a southwestern mountain vibe.

The Sheraton Park City had a more modest feel. The lobby had an elevated cowboy-era look, with wood and leather furniture, a stone fireplace, and stacks of logs on the shelves surrounding it.

My executive suite at the Grand America Hotel was 880 square feet and included a living room.

My executive suite at the Grand America Hotel had accents and decor that matched the upscale, European look of the rest of the hotel.

The suite had a large living room with a lounge and desk.

If I had booked the lower room tier for $300 a night, I would have had a smaller, sectioned-off seating area in addition to the bedroom.

Sliding doors in the living room led to the bedroom.

The bedroom felt elegant with antique furniture, one of the coziest king-sized beds I've ever had the pleasure of sleeping on, thanks to a customized mattress, and a small balcony overlooking Salt Lake City.

When I stay at hotels, I love waking up to a wide view of the destination I'm visiting because it gets me excited to start my day of exploring.

My room at the Sheraton Park City was 350 square feet.

My room at the Sheraton Park City had two queen-sized beds across from a dresser and a small work desk. It looked more like a typical hotel room than my suite at the Grand America Hotel. The beds were comfortable, and I appreciated the local artwork on the walls.

I didn't have a balcony, and my room's window faced another side of the building, but I imagine that rooms on higher floors offered better views.

Although it was a bit plain compared to the Grand America Hotel room, my Sheraton Park City accommodation was clean, modern, and functional. It was certainly on par with other three-star hotels I've booked.

A large walk-in closet led to the bathroom at the Grand America Hotel.

The closet felt huge. Inside, I found terry cloth robes with matching slippers and amenities like an iron, steamer, safe, and extra linens.

There was also a vanity on one side of the closet and two mirrored doors that led to the bathroom.

If I had booked the lower-tier room, I would have had a smaller closet and bathroom, yet with all the same amenities as the executive suite.

My room at the Sheraton Park City had a smaller closet in front of the bathroom.

On the way to the bathroom, there was a small closet. It had an iron and ironing board inside. Across from it, I appreciated the brightly lit sink and vanity.

My bathroom at the Grand America Hotel was spacious and coated in marble.

Handpicked Italian marble coated the floors, counters, and some of the walls in the executive suite bathroom.

The bathroom had a soaking tub, a glass-walled shower on one side, and a toilet stall on the other. It was stocked with travel-sized toiletries.

The lower-tier rooms' bathrooms are smaller, but they have the same decor and include a tub and separate shower.

My bathroom was smaller at the Sheraton Park City, but the shower felt larger.

This bathroom was decent for a 3-star hotel. There was no tub, but the shower felt larger than the one in my Grand America suite.

Inside, there were two shower heads and full-sized toiletries.

The Grand America Hotel had indoor and outdoor pools.

The indoor pool was in the 20,000-square-foot Grand Spa, which also has saunas and 18 service rooms. The outdoor pool was surrounded by trimmed trees in a courtyard.

The Sheraton Park City had an indoor atrium pool.

The pool area sat in a courtyard atrium in the middle of the hotel and had an indoor-outdoor feel. Although there was no spa at the Sheraton Park City, the pool area had a hot tub and a sauna.

The Grand America Hotel was packed with amenities.

In addition to the spa, the Grand America Hotel had a fitness center, a European-style coffee shop and bistro, a strip of high-end boutique shops, multiple bars, 24 business venues, and a 35,000-square-foot courtyard with intricate landscaping.

The Sheraton Park City had convenient amenities, too.

With two restaurants, a coffee shop, a convenience store, a fitness center, a game room, a business center, and 11 event venues, the Sheraton Park City had plenty of amenities for a three-star establishment.

After staying at both hotels, I realized I'd rather sacrifice convenience than luxury.

I thought the Sheraton Park City was worth the $300 price point. The three-star hotel would be perfect for a budget traveler who wants to wake up and hit the slopes right away.

But the Grand America Hotel was just as luxurious as hotels that have cost me $1,000 a night or more in other cities.

After a tiring day of winter sports, I imagine retiring to a lavish room for a warm bath before stretching out on a custom mattress would be worth the drive.

• Vice presidents started traveling by plane via Air Force Two in 1959.
• Vice President JD Vance flies in a C-32, a custom military version of a commercial jetliner.
• It features a communications center, stateroom, and 32 seats for journalists.

For vice presidents of the United States, frequent travel is in the job description. Luckily, they get to travel in style.

While traversing the country and the world, Vice President JD Vance flies in a custom C-32 plane featuring an advanced communications center, conference room, and private stateroom.

The plane measures 155 feet long and can fly 5,500 nautical miles without refueling. When Vance is on board, it's known as "Air Force Two."

Take a look inside the vice president's plane.

Any Air Force plane carrying the US vice president is called "Air Force Two."

Similar to the president aboard "Air Force One," the designation of "Air Force Two" refers to any Air Force plane carrying the vice president, not a specific jet or model.

Over the years, several different planes have carried the Air Force Two title, transporting vice presidents and their staff around the world. The most commonly used jet is a C-32, a customized military version of a commercial Boeing 757-200 plane.

The vice president is generally prohibited from flying on "Air Force One," a plane carrying the president.

The president and vice president don't travel together for security reasons.

It's customary for presidents and vice presidents to salute service members as they board and disembark presidential planes.

Service members are required to salute the president as commander in chief, but not the vice president. Still, it's customary for troops to salute vice presidents, as well.

Richard Nixon was the first vice president to travel internationally via jet on official business, visiting what was then the USSR in 1959.

Nixon, who served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice president, flew on a Boeing VC-137A Stratoliner to visit the USSR in 1959. 

Beginning with the Ford administration in 1975, this DC-9 jet flew as Air Force Two until 2005.

The jet was first used by President Gerald Ford's vice president, Nelson Rockefeller.

It featured a VIP cabin with 10 seats and a main cabin with 32 first-class seats.

The plane was retired from service during the Bush administration in 2005 and placed up for auction by the General Services Administration in 2013.

Vice President Al Gore decorated the VIP cabin with family photos.

Gore worked on his acceptance speech for the 2000 Democratic National Convention aboard Air Force Two.

The cabin also featured a clock with different time zone displays.

The clock featured the time in Washington, DC, and whatever destination Air Force Two was bound for.

The updated C-32 plane most commonly used by vice presidents first deployed in 1998.

With a wingspan of nearly 125 feet, each engine features 41,700 pounds of static thrust, according to the Air Force.

As vice president, Joe Biden hung a map of the world in his Air Force Two work area.

Biden traveled over one million miles on Air Force Two during his time as vice president.

Mike Pence's staff decorated Air Force Two for his birthday in 2017.

Staffers celebrated the vice president's birthday with streamers and balloons aboard the jet.

Kamala Harris also celebrated birthdays on the plane.

Harris brought cupcakes and sang "Happy Birthday" to her domestic policy advisor, Kate Childs Graham, in 2021.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff traveled aboard Air Force Two, as well.

Air Force Two is occasionally used by the first lady and Cabinet members.

Emhoff filled out his March Madness basketball bracket en route to Las Vegas in March 2021.

The back of Air Force Two contains 32 business-class seats for members of the press.

Vice presidents and staff occasionally hold informal briefings with reporters known as "press gaggles" aboard Air Force Two.

The press area features TV screens that can play cable news.

The rear cabin also contains a galley, two bathrooms, and closets.

Vice President JD Vance has taken several international trips on Air Force Two, including to France, Germany, and Greenland.

In February, Vance visited France and Germany with his wife, Usha Vance, and their three children. Vance attended the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris and the Munich Security Conference.

In March, the vice president and second lady toured Pituffik Space Base, the only US military base in Greenland. Usha Vance was originally scheduled to visit historical sites and attend Greenland's national dogsled race on a solo trip. The visit was scaled back amid tensions between the US, Greenland, and Denmark as President Donald Trump doubled down on his longtime goal of acquiring Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, in the interest of national security.