Travel News to Know - May 23

Life lately, paid subscriptions, weekend reading

Hi friends -

Just popping in to give a little update and get all of these links out of my open tabs and into your inbox.

The flowers around our house have been amazing this month!

Some housekeeping: going forward, I’m going to send the regular newsletter on Mondays and posts about traveling with kids on Wednesdays. Fridays will be travel news updates, links, and recommendations.

Also, starting in June I’m turning on paid subscriptions.

I know it’s short notice, but the newsletter always takes significant time to put together and thus gets abandoned for weeks at a time while I give my attention to other, paying work. I don’t want this to be the case! I have lots of saved ideas and interviews and things I’m excited to get to here, but realistically the newsletter has not been able to be a top priority because of rent, food, travel costs, etc.

The Friday newsletter will always be free. There will be a price for the Monday newsletter, and a slightly higher price if you subscribe to the Monday and Wednesday newsletters. Paying subscribers will get access to an AMA chat at the end of each month, as well as other perks I’m working on.

What’s the regular be a better traveler newsletter? Posts like why USAID matters for travel, how to be a better traveler in Venice, a guide to Alaçati and are the Maldives worth it? The traveling with kids posts include topics like this guide to 10 days in Tunisia with a baby, everything you need to know about Flying RyanAir and EasyJet with a baby (coming Wednesday), travel stroller reviews, etc. More details on how to subscribe/pay next week.

Where are you traveling this summer? I will try to tailor the next month of posts to some common trips.

Travel news to know

• Tourism is wayy down in the U.S. The United States is projected to lose $12.5 billion in travel revenue in 2025, a 7 percent decline from last year. Out of 184 countries analyzed by the World Travel & Tourism Council, the U.S. is the only one projected to lose tourism dollars. It’s not only tourism. Business travel to the U.S. from Europe is also tanking. The linked articles have lots of actual numbers, but even anecdotally, I have talked to many people in Europe who are cancelling trips this year, including many Americans with European spouses who don’t want to deal with immigration issues.

  • Related: “Some travelers have taken the U.S. off their summer travel plans. Grocery stores in Denmark and Sweden are marking European products with stars or other emblems, while some shoppers are turning American goods upside down, in a collision of nationalism and protest. Influencers are trying to wean themselves from U.S. social media platforms. Demonstrators have burned Teslas in Germany and Italy and sabotaged a Tesla robot in London, in flares of anger at Trump adviser Elon Musk.”

  • Related 2: Domestic tourism is still going strong, and Americans still plan to visit national parks. But with limited staff thanks to Trump administration cuts, rangers are concerned there could be dangerous waits for emergency support if needed. “Just three full-time employees remain in both the Yellowstone and Bozeman ranger districts to manage 19 rental cabins, 60 bathrooms, 21 campgrounds and other infrastructure spread across 1 million acres.” What to know before you go.

• Meanwhile, in much of the rest of the world, overtourism continues to be an issue. Canary Island residents plan to protest this weekend; Spain ordered Airbnb to remove 66,000 listings; Italian cities have put restrictions in place on Airbnb; Japan is promoting lesser-known regions to disseminate tourists; the U.K. is restricting coaches from entering a Cotswold village; and on and on.

• Train travel is booming in Europe. Rail travel is on the rise and dozens of new routes make it easier than ever to get around the continent.

• Newark Liberty International Airport has been plagued with issues. Some annoying, some dangerous. A new Harris Poll commissioned by The Points Guy found that 65 percent of Americans said they are more nervous about flying because of recent incidents. Should you fly through Newark? (FWIW, we’re going to the U.S. in June and just changed our flights to fly through Toronto instead of Newark, but this was mostly to attempt to avoid delays after an already long travel day with a baby than fears about safety.)

• And airport gate greetings are back, at least at some airports (with a pass)

• U.S. citizens visiting the U.K. now need an ETA. (This happened a few months ago but I haven’t mentioned it yet. I did it in March. It’s very easy!) And you now, actually, for real this time, they’re serious, need a Real ID.

Weekend Reading

• If you read only one thing. And please read it all the way through!

  • Related: why facts don’t change our minds.

  • Related: copyediting can change a story

• What was the summer vacation? I really liked this issue of Culture Study. For me, family vacation was piling in the car and driving across the country to Bethany Beach, Delaware, for crab cakes, beach time, and a day on the Ocean City boardwalk. That and lots of camping.

• “Regular readers of this column know that I am a fan of cheap wine, and an avowed enemy of the wine industry, which has somehow convinced its own customers to be ashamed of their tastes, embarrassed to experiment, and fearful that everyone else knows more than you do.”

• The Mediterranean diet is a lie. (Sad to read this while living in Italy!)

• I spoke with 20 people in Gaza after the ceasefire. My heart broke 20 times.

  • Related: Sharing links about travel and food always feels incredibly pointless and stupid when thousands of children in Gaza will starve if they do not get aid, and the whole world knows but is doing nothing about it.

• The secret history of risotto (loved)

• The U.S. government runs on Celsius.”Every generation gets the energy boost it deserves, and so we get Celsius: a Goop-ified version of Red Bull, with a “Make America Healthy Again” vibe.”

• Why it’s getting harder to fly to China

Updates & Recs:

Where I’ve been: All over the place! We spent Easter weekend at Lake Eibsee in Germany (so pretty), 10 days in Tunisia, last weekend in Copenhagen, a week in London in March, all over northern Italy…it’s becoming a blur.

Read: I cannot stop thinking about The Orphan Master’s Son. I finished it almost a month ago now and I still think about it daily. Someone make it into a movie!

Listen: The Eurovision 2025 playlist! My brother, sister-in-law, Nathan and I started a tradition of watching Eurovision together last year in Lake Garda. We draft countries and whoever gets the most points picks the location for the following year. This year, we watched in Copenhagen and Nathan had the winning entry (Austria) on his roster. Next year we’ll be watching from Poland.

Cook: Made Jacque Pepin’s ratatouille a few nights ago. Simple, summery, and even better cold the next day for lunch.

The Giro d’Italia is coming through Vicenza this afternoon and the whole city is excited. If you’re watching on TV, it zooms right past our house twice–maybe you’ll see us cheering outside our front door!

–Rebecca 💛