New Florence. New Renaissance.

Travel Experience Designers

In September the former contributing international editor at Condé Nast Traveler opened a new breed of travel agency, Prior LLC. As he says, the company is “less concerned with the existing benchmarks of luxury—status, thread counts, infinity pools—and more about ­extracting the essence of a place.” 

 

 

The concept is half bespoke travel agency, half modern-day Explorers Club. Members ­hoping to join Prior submit applications online and are chosen for their like-minded cultural curiosity; they pay an annual fee of $2,500 (which is applied as a travel credit) and gain access to unlimited travel-planning services and a slate of members-­only events. The personality test ensures that clients are on the same page as Prior’s consultants in terms of taste, and adds an element of camaraderie to group voyages.

BusinessWeek

 

Healthful Hotels

A growing number of brands offer guests a range of ways to restore themselves during their stays. Six Senses, which operates 16 hotels around the world from Portugal to the Maldives, offers spa treatments and wellness coaching along with cultural and culinary experiences. The new Six Senses in Bhutan, which will open fully in early 2019, comprises five lodges scattered across the world’s happiest country. As guests complete the circuit of lodges, they can visit meditation pavilions, hike to Buddhist temples, and fortify themselves with hot-stone baths. If you’d rather relax with a riverside glass of wine, you can do that, too. Closer to home, the newly renovated Carillon Miami Wellness Resort , a former Canyon Ranch spa, offers a massive gym and 300 weekly classes but also allows guests to splurge on foie gras and beet-infused Moscow mules in its restaurants

Afar

Vid of a Six Senses property in Vietnam

 

Wolves for Yellowstone

The reintroduction of gray wolves (Canis lupus) to Yellowstone National Park is the most celebrated ecological experiment in history. As predicted by population models, the rapid recovery of a wolf population caused both temporal and spatial variability in wolf–ungulate interactions that likewise generated temporal and spatial variation in the expression of trophic cascades. This has amplified spatial variation in vegetation in Yellowstone, particularly with willow (Salix spp.) and cottonwood (Populus spp.) in riparian areas, with associated changes in food webs. Increasing influences of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos), cougars (Puma concolor), and bison (Bison bison) are making what initially was predominantly an elk–wolf interaction into an increasingly complex system. Outside Yellowstone, however, humans have a dominant influence in western North America that overwhelms trophic cascades resulting in what appear to be bottom-up influences on community structure and function. Complex and unexpected ecosystem responses to wolf recovery in Yellowstone reinforce the value of national parks and other protected areas as ecological baseline reserves.

Journal of Mammalogy

 

Delta fights turbulence with technology

Since the days of Wilbur and Orville Wright, pilots have done an admirable job trying to keep each other posted on weather conditions based on their actual experiences in the sky. The Pilot Report, or PIREP, works as such: pilot experiences turbulence, pilot reports turbulence, other pilots do their darnedest to translate that report into something useful. The problem with that, of course, is that no two pilots can be in the same place at the same time, with the same aircraft type, at the same altitude. So while it’s not useless data, it’s not highly accurate. It’s also tough to act on. You have to overcompensate, which can lead one report to close down entire lanes of flight when a pocket of turbulence is only in a very narrow slice of air.

Delta Flight Weather Viewer has made the PIREP obsolete by collecting and analyzing “hundreds of thousands of data points,” with a plan to boost that to “millions,” creating a model that forecasts turbulence with a level of confidence heretofore unseen.

The airline’s approach to modeling turbulence, leveraging data from as many places as it can find, has consistently improved. We’re still in the first inning of outsmarting bumps, but if the trajectory continues, it’s not difficult to envision a world where more airlines jump onboard. This is a rare case of a rising tide truly raising all boats.

The Points Guy – thanks to Nick Hortovayni for pointer

If you want a career in meteorology in aviation world, Emery-Riddle Aeronautical U should be on your radar

 

Snow exports from Dubai?

Dubai-based retail giant Majid Al Futtaim -- the company behind Ski Dubai, the Middle East's first indoor ski slope -- has announced it is helping develop what it claims will be the world's largest indoor snow and ski resort for Shanghai.

The company says the snow park, called Wintastar Shanghai, will be 90,000 square meters (nearly 1 million square feet) -- or more than three times the size of Ski Dubai, the largest indoor ski resort in the world when it opened in 2005.

CNN

Here is a video on Ski Dubai

 

America’s Best Idea

National Parks have been called America’s Best Idea and I have to agree.  I certainly did when I was younger. I swore I would collect the iconic “Unigrid” design brochures for every park and get stamps on my park Passport. Then I gradually realized the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior did not just manage the 60 major parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone, but another 354 National Monuments, Battlefields, Seashores and other designations.

Then came family and the definition of parks changed. Disney, Anheuser-Busch and other corporations provided park destinations for a couple of decades.

Now that the kids have moved out, Margaret and I are back to visiting National Parks again.   I am not sure we will get to 414 brochures and stamps but it is good to see a growing number of digital resources on each park.

Matt Holly works as a Park ranger but on his own time he’s created a massive site with over 1,700 free high-res maps on the parks. National Geographic has a series of episodes on parks.  One way to appreciate many parks even if you cannot physically make it there. And when you get to one, there are plenty of digital resources to mine on your phone.

As for us, we enjoy a few minutes with rangers like Matt when we visit these parks. Some memorable conversations have been at bottom of a cave at Carlsbad, on a cruise boat on Glacier Bay in Alaska (only two cruise boats are allowed a day and rangers come aboard and provide commentary for several hours), with a Park Policeman at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.

Teddy Roosevelt has moved up in my list of favorite US Presidents for his pioneering support of Parks. And I am very grateful to visionaries like John Muir and Henry David Thoreau for inspiring the country to preserve millions of wild acres for generations to come.

Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica

The new map, named the Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica (or REMA for short), was created by researchers at Ohio State University led by professor Ian Howat. His desire to create the incredibly detailed map was the simple fact that, up until now, maps of Antarctica were just plain bad.

To construct the map, Howat and his team had to sift through an immense amount of data that was constantly being gathered by satellites cruising over the continent. To aid in piecing together the various high-resolution images, the researchers built a tool that matched the images up, overlapping edges and aligning it to be as accurate as possible.

The end result is a map that is not only incredibly sharp, but also extremely large in terms of file size. The full map’s size actually tops 150 terabytes. Yes, you read that correctly. Assuming the smartphone in your pocket holds around 64 GB of data, you’d need over 2,300 of them to hold the amount of data in this one map image.

BGR

Image

My blood runs cold. My memory has just been sold.

Apologies to J. Geils Band but this is not about humans being digitized into centerfolds. This is about digital screen savers and wallpapers being turned into human touch and feel experiences.

My wife and I spent a weekend recently in and around Page, AZ on the Utah border in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Center. One of the highlights was a visit to Upper Antelope Canyon and a boat ride on Lake Powell, a man made reservoir on the Colorado river, through the canyon walls.

You have probably seen digital images of Antelope Canyon on your PC or TV. Going to this slot canyon in person is a spiritual experience. We both left our tour group and explored the “cathedral” and the “heart” of the canyon on our own. Indeed, it is a sacred Navajo site, like nearby Horseshoe Bend where the Colorado river makes a spectacular U-turn, the Rainbow Bridge Monument, the Grand Staircase all of which adorn many digital pages on the web.

It’s a bit of a trek to get there – we drove from Las Vegas and wove in and out of Nevada, Utah and Arizona through time zones and speed limits to get there. The journey has several rewards – within a couple of hours are 3 national parks – Grand Canyon (the less visited North Rim is accessible from this side), Zion and Bryce Canyon.  Lake Powell must be the house boat capital of the world. The view of the shooting stars at night is spectacular.

Lots of technology angles I noticed on our trip – the NOAA Weather Radio and alarm horn to warn of flash floods that are common to Antelope Canyon, the 8 generator, 1320 MW Glen Canyon dam, the 2250 MW coal -fired Navajo generating station, the technology on the luxurious house boats and RVs that visit the area.

Beyond the rugged beauty of the area, I was fascinated by the local history – that of the Navajo, Hopi and other tribes, the history of the 3 states under the Spanish and since, the silver rush to many places in the area, the history of how Lake Powell came to be and more.

Much of that history is controversial – environmentalists hated the damming of the Colorado river, others cannot wait for the coal-fired plant to be shut down. The Mormon migration to these parts and the treatment of the Native Americans invariably raises emotions.

Go with an open mind and enjoy the breathtaking vistas. Go touch and feel the eye candy which adorns your PC screen. 

The discount Euro-rail model

Soon, rail operators such as France’s SNCF and Germany’s Deutsche Bahn AG could face a similar shake-up as Europe pushes for competition in passenger train service. Lower fares could attract “millions of new passengers,” says Jacques Gounon, chief executive officer of Getlink SE, the company formerly known as Eurotunnel that manages the English Channel Tunnel. Getlink already runs a car-and-truck shuttle through the tunnel and is considering a discount high-speed service that would challenge Eurostar International Ltd., which now offers the only high-speed passenger service through the tunnel, with fares often topping £400 ($510) for a London-Paris round trip. “We’re convinced the demand is there” for a lower-priced alternative, Gounon says.

Businessweek

Denver’s massive Great Hall project

Denver International Airport (DEN) has embarked on a renovation of the Great Hall, which is the area under the tents of the airport’s Jeppesen Terminal. The Terminal encompasses 1.5 million square feet. Overall, the Great Hall Project will enhance security, provide a more flexible and open airline check-in space and add new dining and shopping options. It will also increase capacity of the Terminal, update the aging facility and improve the overall passenger experience at DEN.

The video below shows early renderings of the scope of work and the improvements expected

More humorously, the airport is tackling a slew of conspiracy theories that have swirled around the giant airport in the prairie since it opened two decades ago

“"Since the airport’s opening in 1995, there have been endless rumors and theories. People say our underground tunnels lead to secret meeting facilities for the world’s elite. Our blue horse is thought of to be cursed. Some believe we are connected to the new world order, the Freemasons, and are home to the lizard people."