News and Deals: July 17, 2012 – Tourism chief lambasts forecasters for depressing reports, Frustrated With Your Hotel? No Need to Be Loyal, Needles found in airline sandwiches Delta says and ‎Latest cruise amenity: Unlimited Coke machines

Why cruise

Tourism chief lambasts forecasters for depressing reports
Daily Mail

Weather forecasters are obsessed with rain, and delight in highlighting the current dreary weather.

This is the unhappy assessment of a tourism chief in one of the UK’s most popular holiday regions – as Britain continues to ‘enjoy’ a ‘summer’ of heavy downpours and grey skies.

Malcolm Bell, the head of Visit Cornwall, is struggling to put a positive spin on the current inclement conditions – but is unhappy at weather forecasters who, he thinks, add to the gloom.

‘I despair when weather presenters all too often seem to delight and get excited about poor weather and skip over the periods of fair weather,’ he comments.

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Frustrated With Your Hotel? No Need to Be Loyal
‎New York Times

I DON’T much like my bank. Yes, I know, welcome to the club. Also, I am not particularly fond of any airline. Yes, I know, welcome to that club, too.

Nevertheless, I’m wedded to my bank, if only because it would take enormous effort to untangle all the various auto-pay deductions, direct deposits and other arrangements. And airline service? I wish I had real choices, but with capacity and route cuts, mergers and the overall commoditization of air service, none of us do anymore.

But hotels? That’s where we do have a veritable cornucopia of choice. Business travelers who used to trade expertise about airline mileage loyalty programs are now more likely to swap advice and anecdotes on the ins and outs, and especially the considerable perks, of hotel loyalty programs.

That is why a management consulting firm called CG42 will be publishing this week a study that surveyed more than 3,200 high-volume travelers belonging to various loyalty programs at the nine leading hotel companies.

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Needles found in airline sandwiches Delta says‎
ABC Action News

Four turkey sandwiches found on separate Delta Air Lines flights from Amsterdam to the United States contained what appeared to be sewing needles, the airline said Monday.

The objects were discovered in food on planes as they were en route from Schiphol Airport to Minneapolis, Seattle, and on two flights to Atlanta, according to Delta spokeswoman Kristin Baur.

Two of the needles were found by passengers, she said, at which point Delta told all 18 flights from Amsterdam to stop serving the sandwiches.

Two more needles were discovered, including one found by a Federal Air Marshal.

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Latest cruise amenity: Unlimited Coke machines
USA Today

Royal Caribbean has begun rolling out specially-designed, all-you-can-drink Coca-Cola machines across its fleet.

The new machines are a modified version of the Coca-Cola Freestyle dispensers that Coca-Cola began unveiling in 2009, which are capable of offering 125 flavors of various Coke products using medical micro-dosing technology and flavor cartridges.

Royal Caribbean is the first cruise line to debut the machines, which can produce everything from orange-flavored Coca-Cola to peach-flavored Fanta Zero.

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About the Author

Matt has a true passion for travel. As someone who has a bad case of the travel bug, Matt travels the world in order to share tips on where to go, what to see and how to experience the best the world has to offer. Also follow Matt on Twitter, Facebook and