By Richard Bangs In the early days of Expedia.com, our business strategy was based on the agency model; taking a small commission on every hotel booking. Problem was, it usually cost more to process a booking than the commission brought in, so what we lost in margin we made up for in volume. Then a … Continued
Puerto Rico is a portmanteaux of geographic personalities, an overstuffed valise of seductive charismas and tropic endowments. If geography is destiny, then Puerto Rico atones for the ill-tempers of other parts of the world, and instead is blessed with an island-wide jocund, incited, in part, by its natural features…its mountains, forests, beaches, rivers, lakes, cliffs, … Continued
By Richard Bangs There is no place on the planet with such a nimiety of magic. Every stage, every song, every bite and brew, every light is so sufficiently perfected as to be indistinguishable from sorcery. So, what goes on behind the curtains here? How do they do it? I decided to find out, and … Continued
“Placed on this planet since yesterday, and only for a day, we can only hope to glimpse the knowledge that we will probably never attain.” -Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, 1796 Dateline: Mount Pilates, Switzerland I’ve penned a few books that have been placed in the category of “wilderness travel.” But perhaps the first to stock this … Continued
THANK YOU TO ALL THE WRITERS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE WE SAID GO TRAVEL 2015 INDEPENDENCE WRITING CONTEST! A special thanks goes out to our finalists: Jessica Tsuzuki, Richa Gupta, Shayanne Coppock, Alan Seeger, Zainab Suleman, Sarah Shin, Gina Nelson, Heather Whitehall-Trochon, Amelie Gagne, Mark Schmitt and Hailey Hennessy for your incredible articles. We are … Continued
Richard Bangs is a judge in our We Said Go Travel Writing Contest. The Gratitude contest will close December 10, 2015. Please share your story of gratitude! When our rafts were bitten by crocodiles or hippos, complications presented we hadn’t imagined. We were in Ethiopia making a series of first descents down big rivers that fall … Continued
Richard Bangs is a judge in our We Said Go Travel Writing Contest. The contest is extended for two weeks to December 10, 2015. Please share your story of gratitude! When word got out I was thinking of taking a group to Burma this November, I received this email: Dear Mr. Bangs: I strongly advise … Continued
This is a story about brilliant branding. It’s about Ireland, but it begins in Chile. In the early ’90s one had to head to the far south of South America to sample the tasty, thick, snow-white fillets of a large, deep-water cod called the Patagonian toothfish. No eatery in the U.S. wanted to serve a … Continued
When I was a high-school student in Bethesda, Maryland, and beginning to think about college, my parents sat me down and set a parameter: they would only allow a school within 1000 miles of our home, with the idea that I would be more likely to visit over holidays if within that range. My elder … Continued
My father, usually a quiet man, burst through the door and hustled the family in front of the television set. He said we were on the verge of something terrible and we needed to see and understand. It was October 22, 1962. My father, a career officer at the C.I.A., seemed distressed with things he … Continued