Best Leisure Time Blog

The history of reality shows has begun in far 1992 when “The Real World” was first broadcasted by MTV. It turned to become a great success though it had been made as an experiment. People from different places and backgrounds were put to live together in a single house for several months. All their movements and actions were filmed 24 hours a day. This show was so popular that in a year’s time reality TV shows has taken a considerable part of air time.

Another super popular reality show appeared in 2002 and was called “Survivor”. A group of people had to survive on a deserted island. The prize was a fantastic one million dollar sum. The first “Survivor” reality TV show has started the whole series of “Survivors”. Casting agencies still continue to arrange survivor auditions.

Today we experience a reality TV show boom. Almost every big channel has its reality primetime show. But modern shows are a bit different from their forerunners. You can’t even call them reality (real-life) shows, as people act there as if they were common people but they are just actors. Everything is done to get popularity, money and rating. You won’t ever get to a reality show nowadays unless you contact a casting agency. You also need to possess definite moral and physical characteristics in order to get in. Reality show competition is so high that no one can afford to film common people. It is a straight road to bankruptcy.

The communal bond that keeps fans of Led Zeppelin listening and hoping is strong, if not stronger, than it was when first forged by the hammer of the blues-loving gods in the late 1960s. It has withstood the death of one member, long absences by the other three and occasional cameo reminders of what is and what will never be.

When the three remaining members — Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones — reunited with drummer Jason Bonham, son of the late John, for a concert last December in London to honor the late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, Ron Laffitte considered not attending, even though he obtained a ticket more precious than Willy Wonka’s gold ducats.

“I’ve been a fan since I was 11,” said Laffitte, a managing partner at Red Light Management, which handles acts like Alanis Morissette, The Decemberists and Band of Horses. “I bought ‘Physical Graffiti’ in 1976. I didn’t get to see them when they toured in ’77, when I was 12.

“I almost didn’t go to the show (in December) because I thought, ‘What if I fly all the way to London and they suck?’ All of my life, this band meant so much to me. If they suck, it will destroy the illusion.”

But naturally, he went.
Love or money?

Plant is 59, Page is 64 and Jones is 62. When they were about 27, 31 and 29, respectively, I saw them at Madison Square Garden, in 1975. (The exact ages are unclear because research reveals they played the Garden at three different times of that year on their North American tour, and I can’t find my ticket stub). It was about as spiritual an experience as a high school-aged kid could have while breathing hemp fumes from the blue seats and grooving to “Dazed and Confused” while being wonderfully dazed and confused. I’m not a religious man, but this scripture I could dig.

Roughly 32 years later, the band returned, with Jason being embraced by band members and fans alike for having his dad’s genes and his own wicked beat. The show at London’s O2 arena was a smash hit, fueling speculation that Led Zeppelin might just turn the one-night stand into a thing.

Just why has Led Zeppelin resisted the lure to tour all these years when many of their rock and roll brethren — the Rolling Stones, Eagles, Police, to name a few — have ignored their “been there, done that” instincts to perform for thousands and rake in millions? Why are Plant, Page and Jones the last holdouts?

Obviously, when John Bonham died, something within the other three went with him. Yet with Jason such an accomplished and honorable replacement, there isn’t that obstacle anymore.

I understand the Led Zeppelin fan’s catch-22 as well as anyone: I want them to tour, but I want to remember them as they were. That’s what Laffitte experienced going in.

“It completely lived up to the hype,” he said. “The feeling in the room was incredible. The anticipation was incredible.”

‘Serve the fans, serve the music’

Cameron Crowe understands this better than most. He went looking for that confounded bridge like the rest of us, only he got there. Now an acclaimed writer-director, his experiences as the youngest-ever contributing journalist for Rolling Stone were chronicled in his film, “Almost Famous,” for which he won an Oscar for best original screenplay. Led Zeppelin was one of the famous groups he made even more famous in the ’70s.

Source: msnbc

The mobile-phone industry has finally developed a worthy successor to AT&T’s Digital One Rate. Late last month, Verizon Wireless ushered in the era of “all-you-can-eat” pricing. For a $99.99 monthly fee, customers can make unlimited domestic mobile calls. The basic plan includes voice calls. Another $20 a month gets you unlimited monthly text messaging too.

The last time that I used a hotel-room phone, about a dozen years ago, I got dinged for $11 for a two-minute call from Phoenix to New York. This was during the phone wars, a nasty era for business travelers that lasted for years after the government broke up the old AT&T monopoly in 1984.

During that time, hoteliers would mark up domestic calls by 500 to 600 percent, and three-digit prices for short calls from overseas hotels were standard. Business travelers essentially opened their economic veins whenever they plugged their phone modems into a hotel system and downloaded their email at the then-blazing speeds of 14.4 or 28.8 kilobytes.

Pay phones were even more ridiculous. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, telecommunications companies would put goofy proprietary pay phones in airport concourses. One I remember particularly well had a pullout keyboard, acoustic couplers for the handset, and a miniscule monitor. For two or three bucks a minute, you could laboriously dial into AOL or Compuserve—and be disconnected before you retrieved a single message.

Back then, I carried a separate little travel wallet stuffed with calling cards, all claiming to shield me from the telephonic havoc. During those years, I had three flavors of AT&T cards; a call-back card that routed all my calls through some Caribbean country; and even a phone card from American Express—which saved me a lot of money, assuming that I was willing to dial 32 digits to phone home.

Fortunately, mobile phones made the phone wars irrelevant. In the years since their widespread adoption, some telecom experts say that hotels have lost as much as 80 percent of their calling volume and revenue from in-room phones. Pay phones have all but disappeared from airports and city sidewalks. And do you know any business traveler who still uses a calling card?

It’s easy to pinpoint the moment when mobile phones changed the game for business travelers: In 1998, one of the many mobile companies that have been called AT&T introduced the Digital One Rate plan. Customers paid just 11 cents per minute for a mobile call from anywhere in the nation—no roaming charges, no surcharges, and no other tricky fees. With mobile service truly national and predictably priced, business travelers converted in droves.

It’s taken a decade, but the mobile-phone industry has finally developed a worthy successor to Digital One Rate. Late last month, Verizon Wireless ushered in the era of “all-you-can-eat” pricing. For a $99.99 monthly fee, customers can make unlimited domestic mobile calls. The basic plan includes voice calls. Another $20 a month gets you unlimited monthly text messaging too.

Verizon’s major competitors reacted in a flash: Within hours, AT&T essentially matched the Verizon deal (but pointedly excluded the Apple iPhone from the offer). T-Mobile, generally the cheapest of the major firms, went even further—its $99.99 monthly plan includes unlimited calling and unlimited text messaging. T-Mobile’s catch? You must extend your existing contract to qualify. Verizon and AT&T allow existing customers to switch to all-you-can-eat pricing without adding time to their current contracts. Sprint Nextel finally joined the fray last week, unveiling its own $99.99 endless-talk plan.

Market analysts are skeptical about the flat-rate pricing, of course. They worry that the plans will erode the profit that mobile companies wring out of heavy users like business travelers. They also insist that flat-rate prices will further commoditize the mobile-telecom industry.

There’s no such carping from business travelers. In fact, a predictable monthly price for mobile calls and messaging is the next-to-last front. “A hundred bucks a month for my mobile?” one frequent business traveler emailed me last week. “I’ve spent more than that on one phone call from my hotel room back in the bad old days.”

Now that we’ve got a path to taming our domestic calling costs on the road, all that’s left to conquer is international mobile calling prices. An overseas cell-phone call can cost as much as five dollars a minute, and the calling protocols and roaming regimens remain daunting.

“I wouldn’t hold your breath on the international front,” one mobile-phone executive told me the other day. “We have a hard time figuring out what we pay to provide international service, so I don’t think we’ll be in a rush to cut fees there too quickly.”

Jessica Simpson will join rock act Disturbed and comedian Carlos Mencia in Kuwait during a concert for U.S troops next month.

The event, to be held March 10, is set to be broadcast live on the social networking site MySpace.com.

“It’s truly an honor to perform for the troops,” Simpson said in a statement. “Through Operation MySpace, I get to serve my country by doing what I love to do in front of thousands of brave men in uniform. It’s every girl’s dream!”

Other acts are expected to be added to the bill, which also includes Filter and DJ Z-Trip.

“For years troops stationed all over the world have utilized MySpace as a lifeline to communicate with their loved ones back home,” said MySpace’s co-founder, Tom Anderson. “Many of them have been generous enough to share their unique experiences with me through messages on MySpace. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to thank them in person and bring along the entire MySpace community.”

An abbreviated version of the concert is set to air April 12 on the cable network FX.

So you’re not into skiing? There’s still plenty to do atop the mountain.

When Calum Clark, vice president of events for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, selects locations for Olympic-caliber competitions, he might consider Tamarack, Idaho, where he says a 22-foot half-pipe allows snowboarders to go “higher, bigger and more aggressive.”

Or he might think of Beaver Creek, Colo., where elite racing hill Birds of Prey is a favorite of competitive skiers.

“Part of [our] strategy is to go to the places with the very best terrain for the competition,” says Clark. He also looks for passionate resort staff and advanced snow-making technology. “That converts into a great skiing or snowboarding experience … which carries from the competitive to the recreational skier.”

Good news for avid winter athletes: These areas are open to the public and frequently offer more than just skiing and snowboarding; snowshoeing, hiking, tubing and even dog-sledding are all alternatives to spending a day on the slopes. Top spots include Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy, Holmenkollen in Norway and Petite-Riviere-Saint-Francois in Quebec, Canada. With this winter’s U.S. snowfall already much better than 2007’s, and European slopes seeing snow in January, now is the best time to venture into the white.

By the numbers

Vacations or day trips to snowy areas can range from moderately priced to quite expensive. A two-hour drive to a nearby national or state park for tubing or hiking might involve only the cost of gas, an entrance fee and meals, whereas a weekend trip to a ski resort can quickly add up from ski rental to lift tickets to hotels to airfare. Two adults, for example, can expect to pay between $894 and $1,719 for a weekend stay at the Tamarack Resort, not including airfare and other expenses.

Still, the costliness of such resorts failed to deter the 55.1 million people who visited U.S. ski areas during the 2006-2007 season. Though there were fewer visits than in previous years, improved snow conditions in the U.S. this season may reverse that trend. The national daily average snow depth over a four-week period between January and February in 2007 was 3.8 inches; so far this year it’s been 6.3 inches, according to data from the National Weather Service.

To prepare for all that powder, travelers are stocking up on gear, says Alicia Allen, a spokeswoman for SnowSports Industries America, a trade association, including snowshoes and twin-tip skis, which allow a greater range of movement. Since 2006, specialty store sales of each increased by 21 percent and 32 percent, respectively, and may reflect a growing trend toward diversifying snow sports largely dominated by alpine skiing and snowboarding.

“People feel trapped [indoors], especially if they’re not a skier or snowboarder,” says Bobbi Sankey, marketing and outreach coordinator for the American Hiking Society. “But winter activities like hikes, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing can be just as enjoyable as fall activities.”

Winter hiking does not require a lot of gear — just sweat-wicking, non-cotton clothes, which keep a hiker warm and dry, and proper footwear to provide traction. Hikers should also pack high-quality snacks and water.

Top trails

A few of Sankey’s favorite winter hikes are on trails in Hollowell Park in the Rocky Mountain National Park and in the Wasatch Mountains near Salt Lake City. These areas are also home to premier slopes like Park City in Utah and Beaver Creek, where resorts offer an array of sporting activities like ice skating, bobsledding and snowmobiling.

The international traveler is not without options, either. Tourists can experience a piece of ski history in Holmenkollen, Norway, where the world’s oldest ski museum is located alongside a famous 330-foot jump. Kitzbühel, Austria tempts countless skiers with hills that feature 85-degree angles in some places and opportunities for adventure hiking.

Those who prefer to keep it simple should try tubing. According to the National Ski Areas Association, 51 percent of 175 American ski areas surveyed last year offered visitors the chance to hurtle down a snowy embankment on an inner tube.

“Tubing is very easy,” says Troy Hawks, a spokesman for the NSAA. “A lot of resorts consider that a gateway sport to the outdoors.”

Information is taken from: Forbes

Want to know if you’ll get seasick, or gain weight? Answers for newbies.

1. What should be my first cruise?

There are two ways to go here. Most first-time cruisers choose a short cruise with lots of port calls; they do this because they’re afraid they’ll go crazy if they’re stuck aboard ship. While this is a good strategy if you just want to get your feet wet, I recommend looking for a longer itinerary with some “sea days.” That way you can relax and enjoy the ship’s facilities. It’s really the only way to find out what “cruising” is all about. So, look for a cruise with some balance between sea days and port days.

2. What about seasickness?

It may have all the amenities of a shoreside resort, but a cruise ship does travel on open water. Your body will register that motion no matter how big the ship is or how well it is stabilized. Therefore, if you experience severe motion sickness on land or on airplanes then cruising may not be for you.

Ordinary motion sickness can be relieved by remedies like Dramamine and acupressure bands. (If you forget to pack them, don’t worry; they are always available in the ship’s store.) If you’re susceptible to motion sickness, book a cabin on a lower deck in the middle of the ship where motion is minimized. Even better is a balcony cabin in the middle of the ship; fresh air really does help with motion sickness. If the going gets rough, you can get a motion sickness shot in the ship’s medical center, but understand you’ll be charged a fee ($75 on up).

3. Do I have to get dressed up every night?

If you love dressing up, then by all means do so. But cruising has become less formal in recent years, so fancy dress is optional. In fact, many new ships offer several informal dining venues (e.g., sushi bars, pizzerias, buffets and snack bars) where you needn’t dress up at all. Still, most ships continue to offer two formal nights in the main dining rooms: the Captain’s Welcome and the Farewell Dinner. Formal-night attire ranges from tuxedos to dark suits for men; for women, formal dress ranges from long gowns to dressy pantsuits. More casual dress is appropriate in the dining rooms on other occasions, but most ships do not allow jeans, shorts or sleeveless men’s tops in any dining venue.

4. Do I have to sit with strangers at dinner?

One of the best parts of cruising is getting to meet people from all walks of life. But if you are uncomfortable sitting with people you don’t know, you can arrange a table change with the maitre d’ - but you must do so as soon as you get on board. If you wait too long, the staff may not be able to accommodate you. Understand that tables for two are scarce aboard ship except on luxury cruise lines like Silversea.

5. What about tipping?

Except on a few luxury cruise ships that have “no tipping required” policies, passengers are expected to tip their cabin steward, dining room waiter and assistant waiter. Many lines recommend that each passenger tip about $10 per day, as follows: cabin steward, $3.50; dining room waiter and assistant waiter, $5.50 (shared); and bistro service waiter and cooks, $1. Bar bills are automatically charged a 15 percent gratuity for the bartender. Special service personnel such as the maitre d’, deck stewards and bellmen should be tipped as service is rendered.

Some cruise lines offer to add the suggested gratuities to your shipboard account; the accounting office then distributes the tips at the end of the cruise. On other ships, you leave cash in an envelope on the last evening of your cruise. Understand that ships’ crews work very hard to make your cruise top-notch. Unless the service has actually been poor, tip the recommended amount. For outstanding service, add a little more. To get an idea of how much to tip, visit Cruise Tip Calculator, a nifty Web site that lists tipping amounts for each crew member on most cruise lines.

Here’s a tip from me to you: Get your cash tips in order before your cruise and have them organized in separate envelopes for each crew member. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than waiting in a long line at the cruise desk on the last night of the cruise to get all your cash tips in order.

6. Will I gain weight?

Cruising is the ultimate “see food” diet — you see food, you eat it. Yes, most passengers end up with more to love after a cruise. But you don’t have to become a sloth in a deck chair; there are plenty of active pursuits to enjoy aboard ship. Most ships have exercise rooms, pools, jogging tracks and fitness classes covering everything from aerobics to yoga. Newer cruise ships like Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas offer boxing, rock climbing and surfing classes, while traditional ships like the Queen Mary 2 offer walk-a-mile deck-lapping sessions and aerobics.

7. Can I do my laundry on board?

Most ships have self-service laundry rooms with ironing boards. On most mainstream and premium cruise lines, you’ll have to pay to use the washers and dryers. On luxury lines like Crystal, Regent, Seabourn, Silversea and Regent, the self-serve laundry is complimentary. Don’t want to waste valuable vacation time doing laundry? Then send your clothes to the ship’s laundry or dry cleaner; there will be a per-item charge. During the cruise, many ships offer a “laundry bag special”: For a set fee (usually $10-$20), laundry crew will wash everything you can cram into the laundry bag.

Cruising is a vacation like no other. It offers vast open seas, and the scenery changes every day. The food and service are better than in a resort hotel, all food and entertainment is included in the price, and you have to unpack only once. Believe me, once you try cruising, you will be hooked for life.

While some winter vacationers are happy to nurse cocktails on a beach, others — the few, the hardcore — take trips specifically to dive. In the middle, of course, are plenty of us who like to switch it up: dive for a few days, enjoy the beach, soak up the electric green of a rainforest and the incandescent blue of tropical skies. And maybe nurse a few of those cocktails, too.

The quest to determine the world’s best scuba sites is practically its own cottage industry. Considering that only about a third of this planet exists above sea level, there’s a surfeit of good options just below the surface. Ours is not a competing line-up of the top diving spots around the world; rather, it’s a look at the best winter diving escapes. When it’s cold outside and the sky is gray, these places beckon with not only world-class diving, but sunny shores, remarkable vistas and luxurious accommodations.

To make this list, each of these diving destinations offers premium underwater visibility and, of course, a high probability of seeing magnificent sea life and vibrant reefs. But that’s not all. They must also feature plush accommodations, exotic locales or unparalleled above-water scenery. And while it would be easy to populate this list by focusing solely on the Caribbean, we’ve instead assembled a global panel of experts to assess the best winter scuba escapes —from Costa Rica to Queensland. Think of these places as rehab for the winter doldrums.

There’s quite a range to these sites. Cocos Island off of Costa Rica requires divers to pony up for live-aboard ships; and the Lakshadweep Islands, offshore from India, have few established accommodations. The Maldives, on the other hand, are stacked with all-inclusive luxury resorts. But that doesn’t mean the first two destinations are anything less than spectacular; most visitors will spend part of their vacation on the mainland Pacific Coast of Costa Rica or tropical Kerala in South India, respectively — the diving is just part of the overall trip.

For North Americans, Central America is a surprisingly quick three- to four-hour flight from the southern states. An emerging winter scuba escape is Panama’s Coiba Island, the largest island in Central America. A penal colony for most of the 20th century, it remains underdeveloped and is one of the last places in Central America where the scarlet macaw still thrives in the wild. Matthew Firestone, who has covered Panama and Costa Rica for Lonely Planet Guidebooks, explains, “Fed by the warm Indo-Pacific current through the Gulf of Chiriqui, Coiba is home to a unique underwater ecosystem atypical of this region, and attracts large populations of pelagics including sharks, whales, dolphins and manta rays as well as enormous schools of fish.”

Brazil is represented twice on this list. The Fernando de Noronha archipelago off the northeastern coast is generally recognized as one of the best places to dive in South America. The islands also present a cornucopia of other water sports, on-land adventures and idyllic beaches. Adriana Schmidt, owner of the innovative Noronha-based travel agency Your Way, lives on the archipelago and is a certified PADI Dive Master. When not enjoying Noronha’s ideal diving conditions, she likes to travel south to Abrolhos Marine National Park in the state of Bahia. Just 45 miles off shore, the group of five volcanic islands claims some 80 million square feet of coral reefs. The area is known for its unique coral pinnacles called chapeirão, which look like enormous mushrooms topped with domes of brain coral and fans of colorful fire coral. Back on land, it’s a short trip to blissed-out beach towns such as Trancoso and Morro de São Paulo, or up the coast to the animated state capital, Salvador.

Sri Lanka-based Gaya Sriskanthan, senior program officer for Marine and Coastal Ecosystems for IUCN (The World Conservation Union), suggests that the Lakshadweep Islands off of India “have the lovely, off-the-beaten track dive sites … while the best commercial sites are bound to be in the Maldives.” Adrift in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives are more than 1,000 coral islands grouped into 26 atolls. (The English word “atoll” actually comes from the local term “atholhu”). Here, you will find some of the planet’s best underwater visibility and access to large open water marine species. Luxury and seclusion are not hard to come by either — more than 80 of the islands have resorts. Many are single resort islands, so it’s more difficult to find crowds than it is to discover your own private stretch of sand.

When it comes to reef diving, it doesn’t get any more tremendous than Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The world’s largest single structure made by living organisms lies off the coast of Queensland, Australia’s “Sunshine State.” The state capital, Brisbane, is worth its own trip. Between the street festivals, the Queensland Ballet and the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) — the largest modern art gallery in Australia — there’s plenty to help you decompress from winter gloom.

Information is taken from: Forbes Traveler

Star rapper is working on a book titled, ‘The Way I Am,’ due out this fall.

Eminem is working on a book that’s “every bit as raw and uncensored as the man himself,” according to his publisher.

Dutton Books, an imprint of The Penguin Group, announced Wednesday that it would be publishing the best-selling rapper’s “The Way I Am” this fall.

“It will be illustrated with never-before-seen photographs of Eminem’s home and life along with original drawings,” Dutton said in a statement.

The rapper’s spokesman, Dennis Dennehy, said the memoir “is still in the process of being written and edited.”

The book was described as an intimate look inside the life of Eminem, who has sold tens of millions of records since he made his provocative debut in 1999.

“Offering a window on the star’s private thoughts on everything from his music and the trials of fame to his love for his daughter, Hailie, this title is every bit as raw and uncensored as the man himself,” Dutton said.

The Grammy and Academy Award-winning rapper has published one other book, “Angry Blonde.” The 2002 work detailed his lyrics.

Eminem has not released a new album since 2004’s “Encore,” and his representative said there’s no CD scheduled to be released from the rapper at this time.

Source: The Associated Press

Album will be singer’s last release for Warner Bros.

Madonna has dubbed her final album of new material for her longtime Warner Bros. label “Hard Candy,” and will release it on April 29, her publicist confirmed on Tuesday.

The album, which features such songs as “Candy Store” and the first single “Four Minutes,” is the follow-up to ”Confessions on a Dance Floor,” which debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. pop chart in November 2005.

The title and release date were first reported by Entertainment Weekly’s Web site, and the details were confirmed by Madonna’s spokeswoman, Liz Rosenberg. Entertainment Weekly quoted Rosenberg as saying the 49-year-old singer “loves candy.”

“Hard Candy” will be Madonna’s last studio release for Warner Bros. before she begins a wide-ranging 10-year recording, touring and merchandising deal with Artist Nation, a new initiative launched by concert promoter Live Nation. Warner Bros., a unit of Warner Music Group Corp will also release a hits collection.

DUBAI on a budget sounds like an oxymoron. The most ostentatious of the seven city states of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai is where travelers go to find a self-proclaimed seven-star hotel, indoor skiing and artificial islands springing up from the seas in the shape of palm trees. A stay at that “seven-star” hotel, the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab, starts at more than $2,000 a night.

Yet now a number of budget hotel chains are moving into this playground for the rich. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the serial entrepreneur who founded the budget airline easyJet, was in Dubai two weeks ago to break ground on the first of six easyHotels to be built in the emirate.

The hotels, based on the easyHotel model introduced in Europe in 2005, will have rooms a little bigger than those in existing easyHotels — but still small, around 160 square feet, with just the basics, including a bed, a shower, a flat-screen television and an Internet connection. Prices won’t be announced until the opening, but are expected to be around 250 to 300 dirhams, or about $67 to $80 a night at 3.75 dirhams to the dollar.

InterContinental Hotels plans to open its first Holiday Inn Express in Dubai this summer; with 244 rooms, the hotel will be significantly larger than its counterparts in the United States.

Ibis, an economy brand of Accor, the giant French hotel company, which already has one hotel in Dubai, plans to expand with a 480-room hotel there in December and a 365-room hotel in 2008. The existing Ibis World Trade Center Dubai, linked to the International Exhibition Center and Convention Center of Dubai, has rooms from around 70 euros, $95 a night at $1.35 to the euro. And Whitbread’s budget brand, Premier Travel Inn, Britain’s biggest hotel chain, is building a 300-room hotel at the Dubai Investments Park. Room rates are expected to be in the 400-dirham range.

The extreme emphasis on luxury in Dubai over the last decade is precisely why the market for budget travel is wide open. While most hotel guests continue to stay at high-end places, statistics show a growing demand for lower-priced accommodations.

The number of guests who stayed in five-star luxury hotels in Dubai increased just 10 percent, to nearly 2 million, in 2005 from the previous year, according to the latest statistics available online from the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing. By contrast, the number staying in one-star, limited-service hotels jumped 32 percent in that same time, to about 600,000.

It’s not only hotels that have taken notice of the budget traveler. Anticipating a shift toward more economical vehicles in the next few years, Hertz is adding small cars like the Honda Jazz hatchback and Toyota Yaris to its Dubai fleet — cars that rent for about $55 a day, compared with $110 for a mid-size vehicle or $220 for an S.U.V.

“The place has gotten very expensive,” said Bob Farrow, general manager of Hertz Car Rental in Dubai. “Everybody would love to drive a big car on vacation, but they want to pay for a small one.”

Five years ago, small cars made up just 10 percent of the fleet at his outlet, but in the next year or so, Hertz plans to increase that to about 25 percent.

While more travel companies are catering to budget travelers in Dubai, for now it can still be difficult to find the cheaper alternatives. A call asking about budget options a couple of weeks ago left a spokeswoman flummoxed at the New York office promoting Dubai tourism.

“We really focus on the high end,” she said. “Truly, it’s a luxury market.”

The head office in Dubai wasn’t much more help. Asked by e-mail about typical rates and recommendations for travelers on tight budgets, Mohamed Abdul Mannan, a spokesman for the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, replied with just one line — a Web address for an online article about the recent easyHotels announcement of plans to build there.

The spectacle of modern Dubai is a product of many years of intensive development. Once a fishing and pearl-diving village, it grew into a modest commercial city in the 19th century and wasn’t transformed into a metropolis until the last couple of decades. Even as Dubai’s reputation as a luxury travel destination took off, savvy travelers continued to score deals — although less remarkable ones as time went on — even without the new influx of budget chains.

“My wallet has seen the changes,” said Jesse Long, 34, a photographer in Brooklyn who has been traveling to Dubai on business for the last five years. Hotels where he used to stay for $30 or $40 a night are now charging four times more, he said, “and they haven’t really improved anything.”

To get the best deal, Mr. Long stays in the central Bur Dubai district, where modestly priced accommodations can still be found, particularly along Khalid Bin Waleed Road. Last month, he stayed at the Hotel Ascot in that area for about $130 a night and dined at nearby Indian restaurants for less than $5 a meal.

For discounted hotel accommodations, he recommends www.wired-destinations.com.

It’s also possible to find a bargain by consulting the tourism desk at the airport, but to avoid any confusion later, be sure to get the terms in writing, including the rate and any incentives, like free breakfast.

Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar, when people of Muslim faith fast from dawn to dusk, can be a good time to find bargains since hotels tend to be less crowded and may be more willing to negotiate on price. (This year, the start of Ramadan, which varies slightly by region, begins around Sept. 12.)

While working hours are slightly altered and many restaurants are closed much of the day, there is an air of festivity after dark, said Daniela Bonanno, a sales manager at Absolute Travel in New York who has visited Dubai during Ramadan. “After sunset, everyone celebrates because that’s when they can eat,” Ms. Bonanno said.

Shops and malls stay open longer, and hotels and restaurants offer special Iftar buffets to break the fast.

If you’re on a budget, you might want to avoid traveling during the wildly popular Dubai Shopping Festival, which typically runs from late December through January, when you’ll face high rates as you compete for rooms with crowds of well-heeled travelers.

‘Future Begins,’ starring Christian Bale, expected to be first in new trilogy.

The fourth movie in the ”Terminator” franchise will reach North American theaters on May 22, 2009, coinciding with the U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend, distributor Warner Bros. said.

Christian Bale will star as rebel leader John Connor in “Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins,” which is scheduled to begin production in the spring in New Mexico.

“Charlie’s Angels” filmmaker McG will direct the movie, which is expected to be the first in a new “Terminator” trilogy.

The series, which originated in 1984 and made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star, centered on a robot from the future where machines wage war against humanity, whose goal was to kill Sarah Connor, the mother of the future leader of the human resistance. As the movies progressed, the son, played by Edward Furlong in 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and Nick Stahl in 2003’s “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” took a more prominent role.

Sony Pictures will handle international distribution. Warner Bros. and Sony had a similar arrangement for “Terminator 3,” which grossed $433 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.

Source: Reuters

The dollar used to be the universal tourist currency, accepted almost anywhere, from the streets of Hanoi to the plains of Africa. But the continued slide of the dollar against other currencies has led the greenback to be shunned in unexpected places, creating new problems for American travelers and pushing prices higher.

The Taj Mahal has stopped accepting dollars for the entrance fee, under a new edict from the Indian Ministry of Culture that also affects other national tourist sites like the 13th-century minaret known as the Qutb Minar and Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi. As a result, for entrance to the Taj Mahal, Americans must now pay 750 rupees, about $19, at the rate of 29.74 rupees to the dollar, compared with $15 previously.

Some tour operators say they have encountered newfound resistance to dollars in parts of Vietnam and Peru, especially in villages that are off the beaten path.

”It used to be a $100 bill was universal everywhere, from Moscow to Mozambique,” said Peter Rudy, the North America director for KE Adventure Travel, a Denver-based outfit that books adventure trips throughout the world. ”It’s not now.”

Even in New York, some shops are encouraging payment in foreign currency. A recent article in The Villager, a Manhattan neighborhood newspaper, noted that East Village Wines, a liquor store at 138 First Avenue, accepts payments in euros as well as dollars.

Over the last year through mid-January, the dollar has depreciated about 9 percent against the euro, 10 percent against the rupee and 12 percent against the Chilean peso, said Jay Bryson, global economist at Wachovia.

In the past, savvy travelers could hedge against the weakened dollar by buying a prepackaged tour. Tour operators set prices as much as 18 months in advance, so they can be printed in brochures and other marketing materials. Those travelers were essentially getting a built-in discount during the last couple of years as the dollar fell against other currencies. But not this year.

Some American tour operators are now tacking on so-called currency surcharges, in much the same way that airlines have bumped up fuel surcharges in the face of rising oil costs. Others are raising package prices to help make up the difference.

Last month, Group Voyagers, the parent company of Globus, Cosmos, Monograms and Avalon Waterways, added a currency surcharge of about 5 percent to many of its European tours. For example, Globus’s $1,699 Taste of Italy package starting on May 3 now includes a surcharge of $110 a person. Over all, travelers can expect to pay $20 to $190 extra a person for the European tours.

Nearly 60 percent of members of the United States Tour Operators Association serving Europe and Britain said their prices would increase up to 15 percent because of the weak dollar, a December survey showed.

And it’s not just Europe. KE Adventure Travel raised prices for a handful of clients who booked winter tours to Patagonia, Bolivia and Nepal — partly because ground agents were demanding more money to make up for the decline of the dollar. Some agents are even requesting payment in euros instead of dollars.

”It’s a monstrous change in the business and it’s affecting every one of us,” Mr. Rudy said, adding that KE Adventures never before raised prices in midstream for its clients in its 25 years of operation.

Despite the currency surcharges, prepackaged tours can still offer some savings. The roughly 5 percent surcharge imposed by Globus is less than the 10 percent devaluation of the dollar against the euro since it priced its vacations in June. To help ease the blow, Globus is offering a limited-time $200 discount on air-inclusive Europe vacations booked by Feb. 29.

And other tour operators are simply absorbing the loss. After Globus announced its currency surcharge, a flurry of tour operators including Brendan Worldwide Vacations, Insight Vacations and Collette Vacations sent out news releases emphasizing that they did not plan to levy currency surcharges. These tour operators use a hedging strategy that mitigates the effects of currency exchange fluctuations.

Recognizing the challenge American tourists are up against, some hotels with a large American clientele have also begun to guarantee some rates in dollars. The high-end Hotel Carl Gustaf in St. Bart’s, for example, is guaranteeing winter rates for travel through April 19 in dollars. While the listed rates begin at 1,100 euros, or $1,672 at $1.52 to the euro, the hotel is offering rates beginning at $1,300 a room a night with a three-night minimum to travelers who ask for the United States-dollar rate. One place to find hotels that are offering similar deals, said Stacy Small, owner of Elite Travel International, is the Web site of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, www.slh.com. The collection of upscale hotels ”has a number of properties that consistently promote U.S. fixed-dollar rates,” she said.

For example, the Capital hotel in London is offering a three-night package in an Executive Double room with airport transfers and access to a health club for $1,399, not including tax. A three-night stay in that category of room would normally cost £855 or about $1,700, at $1.99 to the pound, without the transfers or club pass. The St. James Paris is offering a City Escapes package through April that includes breakfast for $470 a room, not including tax. Rates normally start at 380 euros, about $577.

To get the most bang for your buck, consider destinations where the dollar hasn’t declined. The dollar is flat against the Mexican peso compared with where it was a year ago, said Mr. Bryson of Wachovia, and is up about 2 percent compared with a year ago against the Argentine peso. And countries like Panama and Ecuador use American dollars as their official currency.

For her mother’s 89th birthday, Lynda Balkam of Coronado, Calif., came up with what seemed like the perfect unexpected gift: a three-day Mexican cruise in May, with her family on the ship. But when Ms. Balkam made the reservations, she was the one who got a surprise.

Because of stricter national security rules going into effect in January, all 17 of the relatives going on the cruise — even though they are American citizens — will have to produce passports, not just birth certificates and driver’s licenses, to get back into the United States on their return. Getting the passports for the eight adults and five children who don’t already have them will involve not only an unexpected chore, but unanticipated fees totaling $1,186.

“It’s just another expense we weren’t planning on at all,” said Ms. Balkam who, like many Americans, has become accustomed to crossing borders to nearby countries without a passport. The family is still going on the cruise, but she and her husband plan to help pay the extra costs.

For years, an American adult needed only a valid driver’s license and birth certificate to go back and forth between the States and Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, Panama and most Caribbean islands. Children needed just birth certificates. But as of Jan. 8, passports will be required for almost everyone entering the United States through airports and seaports, no matter where they are coming from. The same requirement will go into effect for land crossings from Canada or Mexico on Jan. 1, 2008.

The change could catch a lot of vacationers off guard. The Department of Homeland Security says airplane and cruise passengers who do not have passports will have to go through a secondary screening to verify their citizenship, an extra step that will inevitably cause delays.

And there are some real concerns about how well equipped the government is to handle the likely crush of passport applications. “If there were to be a rush on passports for people taking a cruise trip in the first quarter of next year, we’re not sure they could keep up with demand,” said Rick Webster, vice president of government affairs at the Travel Industry Association, one of several trade associations pushing to delay the deadline.

The State Department estimates that 73 percent of Americans now lack passports. The fee to acquire one is $97 for adults and $82 for children under 16. Demand for passports could increase to 16 million in the 2007 fiscal year, beginning today, from about 12.3 million in the year that ended Sept. 30. To help handle the work, the government has hired about 250 new employees and added some new locations where people can file applications, bringing the total to more than 8,000. (Commonly, these passport acceptance locations are post offices, county clerk offices and libraries.) But the few federal centers where the applications go next — for the actual processing — have already been struggling just to keep up with a steady increase over the last few years.

Though the State Department says that applicants ordinarily receive passports within six weeks of applying, it can take longer. René Mack, 47, of Wyckoff, N.J., applied for a passport for his year-old son, Aidan, at a special open house at the Fairlawn, N.J., post office in June. Though he was told the passport would be processed in six to eight weeks, he didn’t receive it until 12 weeks later.

“I can only imagine what will happen to people waiting for passports over the holidays in December, when the mail is traditionally at its heaviest volume,” said Mr. Mack, who was aware of the coming changes in the rules because he handles public relations for travel and tourism clients in Canada and the Bahamas.

There are shortcuts — for a price. Someone in urgent need of a passport can pay an extra $60 for expedited service, which typically cuts wait time to two weeks. A traveler leaving in less than two weeks can make an appointment to go in person, with proof of travel plans in hand, to one of 14 passport agencies located in major cities, including New York, Boston and Los Angeles, by calling (877) 487-2778. There are also private rush services that specialize in speeding customers through the bureaucracy. For varying fees, these companies can often get passports approved in as little as 24 hours. (A list of expediting services is at www.napvs.org.) But in recent years, some passport agencies have been reducing the number of daily submissions such rush companies are allowed. The New York regional passport agency used to allow them to submit applications in unlimited numbers; in February it limited each company to 20 or fewer a day.

WHAT we have here is a situation of clearly increasing demand over the last couple of years,” said Rob Smith, director of the National Association of Passport and Visa Services, a trade group for the expediting companies. “That demand is likely to be heightened by the sea and air requirements coming up this January, followed by the land requirements a year later.”

The travel industry, fearing confusion and passport delays, has been pushing for an extension for the new rules. For now, cruise companies and travel agencies are urging travelers not to wait to get their passports. Ada Brown, owner of Seaside Travel in Long Beach, Calif., points out that even on cruises to Hawaii or Alaska passengers may need passports, because many of those ships make foreign stopovers. “The Alaska cruises from Seattle all touch base in Vancouver, and that’s a foreign port,” she said.

With tourism dollars at stake, some Caribbean resorts are offering to foot some of the bill for customers who need passports. Ladera Resort in St. Lucia is offering to reimburse any guest staying there next year for the $97 new-passport fee when the guest presents the new passport and a receipt. In Aruba, the Westin and Renaissance resorts are both offering food and beverage credits of $50 to $75 to guests whose first international destination in 2007 is Aruba. SuperClubs will apply the costs of new or renewed passports to a 2007 four-night stay at one of its 10 Caribbean resorts if booked by Nov. 20.

Travelers can avoid the need for a passport altogether, of course, by seeking out island getaways that don’t require them — in the United States Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico or Hawaii.

“For us, it has already been a reassuring selling point for destination wedding groups,” said Richard Doumeng, managing director at Bolongo Bay Beach Resort in St. Thomas. Brides, he said, “don’t have to worry if their sorority sisters can attend depending on whether or not they have a passport.”

Information is taken from: NY Times 

Billionaire Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling would feel “exploited” if a fan’s unofficial encyclopedic companion to the boy wizard series was published, she said in court papers made public on Thursday.

Steve Vander Ark has written “The Harry Potter Lexicon” — a 400-page reference book based on his popular fan Web site (www.hp-lexicon.org). Rowling and Warner Bros. are suing RDR Books, which planned to publish the book last November.

“I am very frustrated that a former fan has tried to co-opt my work for financial gain,” Rowling, 42, who wrote the seven hugely successful Harry Potter novels, said in a declaration filed in U.S. District Court this week.

“I believe that RDR’s book constitutes a Harry Potter ‘rip off’ of the type I have spent years trying to prevent, and that both I, as the creator of this world, and fans of Harry Potter, would be exploited by its publication,” she said.

The lawsuit filed in October names RDR Books, an independent publisher based in Michigan, and unidentified persons as defendants. It seeks to stop publication and requests damages for copyright and federal trademark infringement and any profits to be gained.

Rowling has said she plans to write her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia, which would include material that did not make it into the novels, and donate the proceeds to charity. The novels have sold more than 400 million copies.

“I feel intensely protective, firstly, of the literary world I spent so long creating, and secondly, of the fans who bought my books in such large numbers,” said the British writer ranked by Forbes as the world’s 48th most powerful celebrity.

RDR Books has said Vander Ark, a librarian, had spoken at Harry Potter academic conferences in Britain, Canada and the United States and that a timeline he created was used by Warner Bros. in DVD releases of the Harry Potter films.

The company and Vander Ark have said the book would only promote the sale of Rowling’s work and that Vander Ark’s Web site, used by 25 million visitors, had been called “a great site” by Rowling herself.

Warner Bros is a unit of Time Warner Inc, which owns the copyright and trademark rights to the Harry Potter books.

Source: Reuters

Lounging on the sun deck of a cruise ship as it navigates the warm waters of the Caribbean or Mediterranean, perhaps with a cooling cocktail in hand, is how many travelers envision spending a cruise. But others seem increasingly drawn to a vacation where the ice isn’t just in their drinks, but in the very waters that surround them.

Among the fastest growing trends in the cruise industry are itineraries that take passengers to the coldest parts of the world — not just Alaska, of course, which has long been a popular cruise destination, but places like the Baltic Sea, the northern reaches of Canada and Greenland, and even Antarctica.

Indeed, more than 35,000 tourists are expected to visit Antarctica this spring and summer, compared with just 6,750 during 1992-93, according to the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat.

Among the cruise lines heading to Antarctica with new itineraries are Crystal Cruises (www.crystalcruises.com), whose Crystal Symphony will offer a Christmas and New Year’s trip around South America, Cape Horn and Antarctica, including a stop in Puerto Montt, Chile, and a cruise around Elephant Island, Antarctica (rates start at $7,995).

Hurtigruten (www.hurtigruten.us) is offering a 17-day round-trip cruise out of Buenos Aires aboard its newest expedition ship, the M.S. Fram. With the help of smaller PolarCirkel boats, the cruise will go farther south on the Antarctic Peninsula — all the way into the rarely visited Marguerite Bay — than it ever has in the past. Departures are next January and February, and rates start at $5,799. (The Fram will also head to Greenland this summer, with eight-day trips that include viewings of Jakobshavn Glacier — ”the world’s most active glacier,” according to the company — and walking tours of several Inuit villages and towns.)

Among the other cold-water options for 2008:

Cruise North Expeditions (www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com), a company based in Kuujjuaq, in northern Quebec, and owned mostly by Inuits, will sail the Arctic in northern Canada this summer, including a trip stopping at Beechey Island to visit the remains — grave sites and all — of the famously ill-fated Northwest Passage expedition led by Sir John Franklin.

Hapag-Lloyd (www.hl-cruises.com) will offer two 14 and 15-day trips to Greenland in July and August aboard its 184-passenger expedition ship, the Hanseatic, above, that include stops at Disko Bay and some Inuit settlements

Princess Cruises (www.princess.com) will have eight ships, more than in any previous year, sailing to Alaska destinations in 2008. With first-time stops in Kodiak, Seward and Valdez, the line will offer 37 new options for shore excursions, including one that will take travelers to the Columbia Glacier in Valdez.

Abercrombie & Kent (www.abercrombiekent.com) is offering a two-week trip in July aboard its 118-passenger ship Clipper Odyssey that sails round trip out of Nome, Alaska and includes stops in Siberian Russia, including the Chukotka area, which is home to reindeer-herding nomadic tribes, and Kamchatka, a peninsula that has 29 active volcanic craters.

Source: NY Times