What to know as a tourist in New York
Subway etiquette is a major point of frustration, with locals urging visitors to understand MetroCards, let passengers off first, sit down if a seat is available, and move away from doorways.
Drivers are criticised for not yielding to pedestrians at crosswalks and for excessive horn use, highlighting a lack of awareness for the city's pedestrian-centric movement.
Tourists taking selfies at sensitive locations like Ground Zero are also a source of annoyance due to a perceived lack of respect.
The core message from New Yorkers is that tourists should be aware of their surroundings and adapt to the city's fast-paced rhythm to avoid disrupting daily life.
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Reuters
16 minutes ago
- Reuters
Holiday Inn owner IHG's US room revenue falls in second quarter
Aug 7 (Reuters) - Holiday Inn owner InterContinental Hotels Group reported a fall in U.S. revenue per available room (RevPAR) in the second quarter on Thursday, as economic uncertainties dent consumer spending in its largest market. U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs on trade partners and rising geopolitical tensions have rattled the travel and hospitality industry as waning consumer confidence threaten to reverse post-pandemic recovery. "While some shorter-term macro-economic uncertainties remain, many are subsiding," IHG CEO Elie Maalouf said in a statement, adding that the company remains on track to meet annual profit and earnings expectations. The hotel operator said U.S. RevPAR fell 0.9% for the three months ended June 30, compared to 3.5% growth in the first quarter. Global RevPAR growth for the first half of the year came at 1.8%, compared to 3% a year prior.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Why Canada isn't the trouble-free alternative to America you think it is
Canada is having a moment this summer with bookings by European holidaymakers reportedly surging by 32 per cent – and almost all of this increase comes at the expense of the United States. Travellers are avoiding the US because of its newly hostile environment, a steady stream of visitors reporting arbitrary, despotic US border officials, and even, this past week, a possible requirement for visitors to the US to pay a deposit to enter its borders. Canadians call their country's soaring popularity the Trump Bump. Canada is often seen as an idealistic antidote to this American era: a safe, welcoming destination with spectacular scenery, no xenophobia, no guns, universal friendliness and politeness, a sensible government, and no thorny visa or ESTA requirements. All of this is true, as my partner and I, as well as others, discovered last month – apart from the visa bit. Because what most people don't know – and flight booking sites and airlines mostly hide – is that Canada has a rigid Electronic Travel Authorisation (eTA) regime. And that if you don't have an eTA, which is a visa in all but name, your airline will turn you away at the airport, no exceptions. The Canadian eTA has existed since 2016, but wasn't enforced strongly at the start. The eTA is often issued online in a couple of minutes, much like the Australian version, which became the first in 1996. The Canadian immigration department says eTAs can take up to 72 hours to be issued. But for no given reason and with no way of speeding up your application, it can, in reality, take several days. Facts we weren't aware of when, in May, we booked a well-priced flight on Expedia to Calgary, flying Delta Air Lines via Minneapolis. It was only when we checked in the maximum 24 hours before the flight, that Delta warned us we needed to get the £4 eTA. We applied. My partner received hers within two minutes. Mine still hadn't come the next morning when we left for Heathrow. But having flown into Canada in 2018 without an eTA and driven in just last year without one, I assumed it was not mission-critical. However, Delta refused to let me board. They can be fined €9,000 for every passenger they carry not correctly documented to their destination, they explained – I didn't even have the option to leave the flight at Minneapolis (I have a US visa) and make my own way for the final leg. We went home despondent and with no option but to buy two new tickets. The cheap ones we had were non-transferable. My eTA arrived after 35 hours from the Canadian immigration department, with no reason given for the delay. I spoke with Expedia, who said visas and eTAs are not their responsibility, and that their small print warns that travellers to check for visa requirements themselves. It does indeed, if you can find it in the small print – but Expedia link you to a visa shop that charges £180 per person for the eTA – triple the rate of even other opportunistic commercial visa sites and 46 times the £3.93 charged by the official Canadian government eTA site. Since we fell foul of the eTA trap, we have, without trying hard, found two families merely from our small group of friends affected by it. The ex- Times journalist Michael Crozier, from north London, got caught out having also not been warned by his airline. He and his wife applied for the eTA at Spokane International Airport in the US. They were flying to Vancouver. Hers came in 20 minutes, but his took five hours – so they missed the flight. 'We booked the flight three months in advance, and it really wouldn't have been hard for the airline to warn people clearly that some will need this visa,' Crozier told me. 'We had no idea about it. The onus should be on the airlines and booking sites. What reason could they have for not flagging it up?' Simon Hewitt, from Hampton, almost lost his family holiday because he knew nothing about the eTA requirement. The Hewitts were booked to fly to Calgary earlier this week. He bought the tickets weeks ahead, but got no warning, again, from Expedia or from the airline, that an eTA was needed. Simon is the marketing manager for a large German company, well-travelled, and famously ultra-organised. After our disaster, I had warned him to apply. The family still had two weeks to get the documentation. His wife's and teenage kids' eTAs came within minutes, but his took 10 days. As the days went by, Hewitt tried to contact the Canadian immigration department. 'It was like a labyrinth,' he says. When I asked Expedia, Air Canada and British Airways why they don't simply flag up clearly that your flight to Canada cannot go ahead if you don't have an eTA, all predictably and wordily took the 'it's in the small print' approach. Expedia – who defended recommending a company that charges £180 per person to obtain the visa on your behalf as an 'optional, additional service' – showed that deep within its terms and conditions, they do link to the official Canadian government application site. I asked the government body, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, if they were having difficulties due to the influx of applications for eTAs this year. 'Most applicants get their eTA approval (via email) within minutes,' they replied. 'However, some applications need more time to be processed. For example, some applicants must submit official documents that take several days to obtain from the appropriate authorities in their country. To avoid travel delays, applicants should get their eTA before booking their flight to Canada.' I asked an experienced Canadian immigration barrister, Will Tao of Heron Law Offices near Vancouver, if he was hearing stories of chaos from within the immigration service. 'The system has always been mostly automated,' Tao says, 'I think they must have expanded the number of rules and flags, to triage more humans in the interventions and take into account their power of cancellation, which was expanded in January. But only the department can possibly confirm this.' 'They used to advertise eTAs as taking no more than 7 minutes. Go figure!' the lawyer adds. The strangest thing about the Canadian eTA, meanwhile, is that while it is supposedly to maintain their borders, it doesn't apply to land and sea entries to the country. The rationale, Tao says, is in the original proposal for the eTA, which says, 'It is not anticipated that travellers will switch their mode of transport to avoid the $7 fee.' Right. Regardless, a lesson. And one to remember: for all travellers in the coming year, the eTA issue is going to expand far beyond Canada. Australia and New Zealand have an eTA, but their systems are easy, efficient and quick. A new eTA system in Britain is up and running, but by all accounts, is running smoothly. From next year, British travellers will require an eTA to go into the EU. Canada has a relatively efficient bureaucracy. With the likes of many EU countries, the same can't be said.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
The North Coast 500 sold a Scottish dream to the world. A decade on, locals are counting the cost
There was a flutter of excitement in the car park. I had pulled in to admire the curving Kylesku Bridge, but the smartphones were pointing in the other direction. I squinted and saw a red deer on top of a little mound by the road, silhouetted against the lightbox-white sky. It's a funny thing. There are hundreds of thousands of red deer in the Highlands, so many that they have to be culled. The back-lighting was poor and this wasn't even a stag. Then again, the way tourists behave doesn't always follow conventional logic. The deep valleys and high peaks of Scotland have been here for hundreds of millions of years. But only in the last decade, in this narrow lay-by of history, have the tourist hordes thought to visit. Ten years ago, the North Highland Initiative launched the North Coast 500, a scheme to boost footfall in Scotland's remote northern regions. I visited shortly after its launch in 2015 and there was a sense of cautious optimism around the project, although many were sceptical about just how busy things could feasibly get somewhere as remote as this, on the same latitude as Alaska. But there was something about the branding of the 'North Coast 500' that captured imaginations. The loop drew comparisons with Route 66; Top Gear came to visit. Soon, our social media feeds were populated with moody Highland cattle 'Passing Place' signs and – yes – pensive roadside deer. By the second season, there were reports of traffic build-ups on single-track lanes, visitors sleeping in cars, and litter (or worse) piled up by the roadside. This year, Fodor's listed the NC500 in its 2025 'No List' of places to avoid, due to its 'untenable popularity'. Ten years after the launch of the North Coast 500, I revisited to see if the Far North was thriving or buckling under the weight of its new-found fame. 'A South Coast 500 might be a good idea' Driving the North Coast 500 anti-clockwise is like watching a movie in reverse, in that the cinematic conclusion, the mountainscapes and golden beaches of Wester Ross and Sutherland, comes straight away. The snaking Bealach na Bà (or Applecross Pass), reminiscent of the great French Alpine passes, is often held up as one of the highlights of the road trip. Although on my visit, something was different. The big road sign warning of the treacherous road ahead, once unreadable due to the thousand touring stickers that had been slapped on it, had been elevated beyond reach. 'You can't say it's not good for business,' said Judith Fish, landlord of the Applecross Inn at the finishing line of the pass, when I asked her about the North Coast 500. 'But I've been here for 37 years, and worked very hard in a magical location,' she added, gesturing across the glassy bay, which is about as scenic as pub gardens get. 'We were already made, which is why I'm not paying the fee to be part of the North Coast 500. I've done the hard work, I'm not paying,' Fish insisted. The annual fee for a business to be listed on the North Coast 500's products ranges from £110 to £970, depending on the size of the business. Fish laments that, since 2015, there has been a rise of reckless rally drivers, breakdowns on the pass (a crucial road for locals to reach hospitals) and international guests arriving at her pub, without a booking, at all hours of the day looking for food or shelter. Some locals were so perturbed that they suggested getting Applecross removed from the route entirely. So what's the answer? It's almost as if the question is so broad, the issues so deep-rooted, that she could only respond to such a question with a joke. 'The South Coast 500 might be a good idea,' she said. 'Get them all down to Devon and Cornwall.' A land of island mountains North of Applecross is a landscape of peculiar inselbergs, 'island mountains', sandstone monoliths that appear to have dropped from the sky. They have names that evoke quests: Suilven, Stac Pollaidh (Stack Polly), Cùl Mòr. It is a land of deep lochs, long views and rich folklore. One man, Griogair MacAllein, has made a living out of regaling the mythology of the region. We met on a drizzly day in a tract of woodland on the outskirts of Lochinver. Despite the wet, he was dressed for the part in a kilt, woolly jumper and leather belt as he told tales of the mermaids and spirits of the Highlands with a degree of sincerity that felt more factual than folkloric. While he wrapped a little red ribbon around a tree trunk (used to ward off evil spirits) I broke the spell by asking about how Scotland's north is coping with its new-found fame. 'It's the few who spoil it for the many,' he said. 'The NC500 is the attraction, and it certainly serves a purpose. If people respected it, it would be better. But some people use it as a race track or leave their waste in the ditches on the side of the road. There's no excuse for that.' I was driving the North Coast 500 in late spring, in order to avoid the tourists (and, more importantly, the midges). So while I didn't see any of the issues at their worst, there were hints of the challenges the region faces. A rally of Mini Coopers zoomed past me in a fairly hazardous fashion on one stretch of road. I did see some barbecue-scorched patches of grass near beaches, and also a quite dramatic wildfire. But I sat in zero traffic jams and saw no litter on the roadsides. Now, in peak season, the locals paint a different picture. Facebook groups including 'NC500, the dirty truth' and 'NC500 the land weeps' show heaps of litter, campervans parked illegally by the roadside and long traffic jams on single-track roads. It makes you wonder if, having put the region on the map, the people behind the North Coast 500 are doing anything to solve these problems? 'It's a serious game we're involved in' 'The NC500 Facebook group attracted 30,000 followers within a few weeks,' says David Richardson, Development and Engagement Manager at North Coast 500, reflecting on the early days of the project. This was the first indication that they were onto something big. When it first launched, the NC500 was nothing more than a website and some flyers distributed at Inverness's Classic Vehicle Show. And, strictly speaking, it was a re-branding of an existing road trip called the 'North and West Highlands Tourist Route'. No new tarmac was laid. No potholes filled. Yet within three years, visitor attraction numbers were up 30 per cent. B&Bs were selling out a year in advance. A regional tourism economy at risk of stagnation was, suddenly, thriving. The fact that there have since been multiple copy-cat initiatives is testimony to the NC500's impact. Since 2015, we have seen the launch of the the Heart 200 (Central Scotland), the Kintyre 66 (Argyll), South West Coast 300 (south-west Scotland), the North East 250 (around the Moray Firth coast), the Yorkshire 600, the South West 660 (Somerset and Dorset) and The Lakes 100. 'We've done no promotion since 2020. It's all about advice, help and managing expectations and responsible behaviour,' Richardson said. As of this year, there are 18 rangers on patrol in the region, and there are plans to launch an app to monitor the built-up areas along the route using live data. These days, on the NC500 website, the first thing you see is a 'Visitor Pledge' encouraging tourists to respect the environment and support local communities. It is a noble idea, although the pledge has only amassed 4,000-or-so signatures since it soft-launched last autumn. There were 8.4m visitors to the Scottish Highlands in 2023. One quibble I heard on the road was that the NC500 – initially funded by the charitable and King Charles III-backed North Highland Initiative – is now owned by the Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, Scotland's largest private landowner. Some people query whether one man, and his company, should be able to wield such influence over such a large area. 'It's a very serious game we're involved in. It's not about people profiteering at residents' expense. Nobody who has invested money in the North Coast 500 has made a penny out of it. We're a tiny organisation and we've made a loss every year. We're doing it because it matters,' says Richardson. Venturing into the forgotten East As I progressed around the circuit, the roadsides decorated with the most spectacular yellow gorse, I made detours to the golden beach of Sandwood Bay, explored the cavernous wonder of Smoo Cave, and scrambled up to the tumbling ruins of Ardvreck Castle, watching the gigabytes of available space in my phone rapidly reduce. But I knew that soon, somewhere around the village of Tongue, my camera roll would begin to dry up. There's another side to the North Coast 500. In the eastern half of the loop, the terrain is flatter. A large part of the north coast is fringed by the world's largest blanket bog, the Forsinard Flows. There are more grandiose castles like Dunrobin and Mey, and high-calibre distilleries like Glenmorangie and Clynelish (whose futuristic visitor experience must be seen to be believed), but this half of the route also passes through some of the most deprived towns in Britain. In Thurso, the local economy has suffered since the run-down of the Dounreay nuclear power plant in the 1990s. A stroll along the high street suggests that little of the £20m (or so) that the NC500 generates annually for the local economy has trickled into this town. Most of the tourists who do stop in Thurso are either surfers catching a wave, or people killing time before catching a ferry to Orkney. In Wick, a once-thriving herring port, the high street is despondent with its shuttered shops and bookmakers. The distribution of the NC500's economic benefits are, clearly, inevitably, limited. Although it's not true that these towns are seeing zero gain from the initiative. 'We are seeing people on their third visit, which is wonderful. I had a man called Silvester and his family in twice, and they said they won't see us for quite a few years because next time they're going to Durness to explore the area there,' said Murray Lamont, owner of Mackays Hotel in Wick. As he spoke, a tourist emerged outside the door and posed for a photograph. Mackays Hotel is located on the shortest road in the world, called Ebenezer Place, measuring just 2.06m (6ft 9ins) in length. Indeed, Mackays has a page on its website advertising this very fact. 'There was somebody who has a wee shop on the North Coast 500. He was in here one night, complaining about people coming into his shop asking for lattes,' said Lamont. 'He sells newspapers and tins of soup. So I said, 'Well, maybe you should consider selling lattes.' But he wasn't interested. He bought his business as a lifestyle, selling morning newspapers and not doing much for the rest of the day. 'The people who are critical of the NC500 speak out louder than the people who support it. And yes, the infrastructure could certainly do with some investment. But overall it has been so good for the area,' he adds. On the final stretch towards Inverness, thick granite clouds quickly descended – not for the first time, during my week in Scotland's Far North – and a rainbow arched over the road. It was the kind of scene that would look perfect on a North Coast 500 poster, I thought. A moment of something quite brilliant emerging from something quite bleak. And, if Griogair MacAllein had taught me anything, there would be pots of gold out there, somewhere, ready for the taking. Where to stay Greg Dickinson (writer) and Hana Kelly (videographer) stayed as guests of the Highland Coast Hotels, which has comfortable and convenient outposts in Kylesku (including Kylesku Hotel and Newton Lodge), Plockton, Inverness, Dornoch, Brora and Tongue. Doubles in high-season start from £215 per room per night. In autumn, rooms start from £149 and winter doubles start from £129. The Telegraph has expert reviews of all of the best hotels in the Scottish Highlands. When to visit Shoulder season is the best time to tackle the North Coast 500. Roads will be much quieter, and you have every chance of landing upon a lucky streak of sunshine in April (avoiding the Easter holidays, ideally) and September. How to do it Take your time and dare to veer off the official route. Detours to Orkney, Plockton, the Black Isle, Strathpeffer, Achiltibuie and the Summer Isles will be hugely rewarding. The more creative tourers are with their itineraries, the greater the economic distribution of the NC500, and the more evenly spread the tourist footfall.
