Unexpected News
Hack attack: In the wee hours in the morning of July 7, Disneyland‘s Twitter and Instagram accounts posted a mixture of racial slurs, calls for violence, and foul language. The posts went up prior to 5 a.m. and were quickly removed, but not before they went out to Disneyland’s 1.5 million followers on Twitter and 8.4 million followers on Instagram. Source: USAE News
“Take a look at the new design for Boom Supersonic’s Overture, which will be manufactured and assembled right here in North Carolina.” The world’s fastest airliner is optimized for speed, safety, and sustainability. The design was revealed this week in the U.K. at Farnborough International, the world’s largest airshow, where the Concorde debuted 51 years ago. Sources: Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina and Boom
SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, has announced a new influencer agreement that allows anyone paid to advertise products via their individual social media platforms to be covered by the union. The new agreement categorizes “influencer-generated branded content” as a form of advertising; SAG-AFTRA members doing that type of video and/or audio work will qualify for health and pension benefits. Producers of still images are not covered. Previously, the union had covered advertising done by YouTubers. This new influencer agreement takes it further to cover advertising work across all social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Source: Backstage.com
Starting Nov. 1, 2022, employers advertising jobs in New York City must include a “good faith salary range,” showing minimum and maximum salary for every job, promotion, and transfer opportunity advertised. The new law applies to employers having four or more employees (including owners) in any location, in NYC or elsewhere. Fact sheet here.
TikTok has started laying off employees as part of a global restructuring. Several U.S.-based employees had their roles eliminated, including the brand’s Monetization Product Leader. Sharing the news, David Ortiz indicated that 2.5 years ago, he had been TikTok’s first hire outside of China. Source: Ad Age
Yikes, BA.5! The County of Los Angeles is expected to reinstate an indoor mask mandate to take effect July 29, unless there’s a sudden turnaround in Covid tracking metrics. It would apply to indoor shops, offices, events, schools and more. The order would be rescinded once case levels begin to drop again.
Also, indoor mask mandates are already reinstated at several important national parks: Denali, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Yosemite.
The Federal Reserve Board has recommended exploring government-managed digital currency. Called CBDC, for central bank digital currencies, these are legally recognized currencies that allow customers access to digital tokens without a commercial bank account. This would be “faster and cheaper,” says the Federal Reserve for consumers to move funds without a middleman. Dozens of other countries are examining or already developing CBDC setups.
Costa Rica has been recognized as one of the happiest countries on Earth by the Gallup World Index and the Happy Planet Index. Now, they take digital nomad to the next level. President Rodrigo Chaves Robles has finalized the regulations for the Digital Nomads Law (Law No.10,008). This was the final step required to implement the new law, which allows foreign remote workers and their families to reside in Costa Rica for a term of one year, extendable to two years in total. Benefits include no income tax or import tax on job-related equipment. Applicants must have a minimum income of $3,000 USD per month or $4,000 if traveling with a family.
In France, several heavily visited natural sites are sounding the alarm; some villages and sites in rural France are putting caps on the number of tourists. France 24 reports, “The signs of overtourism are everywhere: overflowing rubbish bins, hollowed-out hiking trails from so much foot traffic, more-frequent landslides, up to 400 kg of pebbles a day carried away from the beaches.”
The lost luggage mountain grew so big that Delta Air Lines sent an empty plane to London Heathrow Airport to fetch 1,000 misplaced bags. Delta said it took the ‘creative solution’ and pledges, “We will then forward the bags on to our customers.”
Red alert. London was hotter than the Caribbean and the Sahara Desert this week. Temperatures climbed to 40º Celsius — that’s 104º Fahrenheit — and people were urged to stay off the Underground. Central London = deserted. Note: Air conditioning is simply *not a thing* in most homes and offices throughout the U.K. and (editorial comment) The Queen’s Guard should not have to stand at attention wearing 19-inch tall bearskin hats, heavy-as-weights marching boots, and buttoned up woolen costumes!
Speaking of England, there’s now a ticket landing page for the new permanent Princess Diana – Tribute Exhibition due to open in August 2022, which will actually be located in Las Vegas. (!?!) The 10,000-square-foot royal exhibit will assume long-term residency inside The Shops at Crystals on the Las Vegas Strip.
Start your engines…Chicago is making sports history with NASCAR! 🏎️🙌
The thrilling sport is coming to downtown Chicago on July 1-2, 2023 when a NASCAR Cup Series street race debuts against the backdrop of Lake Michigan and Grant Park. OK!
Jumbo Typo
More Tourism News
Milwaukee has been selected by the site committee to host the 2024 Republican National Convention. The decision still needs to be voted on by the party at its August summer meeting; Nashville was the other finalist. There are three potential blocks of dates for the event in July or August of 2024, with that decision expected by the end of this year. It’s projected the RNC will bring roughly 45,000 attendees from around the USA and up to $200 million in economic impact.
Got plans for July 14 – July 30, 2028? The Los Angeles organizing committee has announced the dates for the Olympics Summer Games. The LA28 Paralympic Games will kick off August 15 and close August 27. This is the third time for the city as Olympics host, including 1932 and 1984, and the first time for the Paralympics.
According to the latest Longwoods International tracking study of American travelers, 44% say they are reducing the number of trips and shifting to destinations closer to home because of record-high prices at the pump. This figure is up from 36% in May. Only 12% surveyed said that rising gas prices are not impacting their travel plans. “Fuel costs continue to be a drag on the travel industry recovery,” said Amir Eylon, President and CEO of Longwoods International.
Last week, nearly 500 tourism-related organizations and associations signed a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and National Park Service Director Chuck Sams III to urge action on an improved reservations system for the NPS. The letter described short booking windows as a major deterrent, threatening to stall the recovery of international inbound tourism. International visitors represented 35% of all U.S. national park visitation in 2019.
(Photo — At Presidio Tunnel Tops in San Francisco where 14 acres has been added to an urban national park, a former military base, by sinking a portion of highway near the Golden Gate Bridge. The project lead was James Corner Field Operations of the High Line in NYC. Twenty years in the making, $98 million was raised in private funds.)
(Credit: Tourism Ireland, James Higgins)
“Swap skylines for coastlines,” says Tourism Ireland. Aiming for 54 million impressions, the ‘Press the Green Button’ campaign has been rolled out in the USA on major television networks in key gateway cities: New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles plus streaming services: Hulu, WarnerMedia, YouTube TV, Sling TV and Discovery+. Outdoor in New York, Boston and Chicago includes wrapped trains and subways.
“Bay Crafted” is a relaunch of Visit Tampa Bay‘s successful campaign and trail focused on craft breweries and craft cocktails. Turns out there’s 130 years of beer culture in Tampa. Check it out on the landing page.
Meet Minneapolis joins the city in celebrating the second annual Black Business Week July 25 – 31 prior to National Black Business Month in August. Several entrepreneurs opened businesses recently in Minneapolis, adding to a thriving community of Black-owned restaurants, shops, and arts organizations that will easily fill a visitor’s itinerary. These new businesses are all striving to bring equity and empowerment to the community they serve through social enterprise efforts and sustainability.
The “Road to PTO” quiz and a recent poll from Samsonite, conducted online by The Harris Poll among 800 US adults, found that while 65% of full-time employees agree that they urgently need a vacation, 72% have used less than half of their vacation days for the year. Also, 20% of full-time employees say they do not have any paid vacation days scheduled for the next three months.
Rhode Island has enacted new Tourism Improvement District legislation. “Seeking to provide a stable solution for the industry, Kristen Adamo and the team at Go Providence teamed up with Representative Lauren Carson of Newport to pass the Tourism Improvement District enabling legislation for all municipalities in Rhode Island,” reports Civitas. “As the first state to enact statewide enabling TID legislation in 2022, Rhode Island follows the 2021 TID Laws passed in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Louisiana.”
Destination Vancouver and Michelin announced the MICHELIN® Guide Vancouver, the latest expansion of the MICHELIN Guide. Vancouver joins Toronto as the only MICHELIN Guide destinations in Canada. In the USA are New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, Chicago, California, and Tampa/Miami/Orlando.
“The MICHELIN Guide is constantly observing the evolution of culinary destinations around the world. Michelin works with Destination Marketing Organizations, or tourism boards, to promote the travel industry in the respective locations; however, the MICHELIN Guide selections process remains completely independent. While selections remain fully independently determined by Michelin inspectors, Michelin is working with Destination Vancouver on marketing and promotion activities only.”
