Americans have one of the lowest percentages of passport ownership in the developed world — so quite naturally, the cost of getting one is going up. Nor is that all.

Every time I get within hailing distance of my backlog of blog posts, somebody makes more work for me, and nobody’s better at that than the United States government.

Their latest addition to my workload comes in the form of a small but highly annoying Associated Press story out of Washington DC:

“It’s…getting more expensive if you want to keep your U.S. citizenship and need a passport to prove it. The application fee for a passport is jumping by 27 percent, from $55 to $70 with a 100 percent increase, from $20 to $40, in the passport security surcharge.

“In addition to the increase in the application fee, the department will now charge $82 — up from nothing — to add new pages to a U.S. passport.”

All this is coming from the same State Department that wants you to know that March 12 is Passport Day, a day when any American who doesn’t now hold a valid U.S. passport should seriously think about applying for one.

What makes this especially galling is knowing that Americans already have quite possibly the lowest percentage of passport-holding citizens in the developed world, around 30 percent.

All those who think these fee increases from the State Department are going to help raise that percentage, raise your hands — preferably while holding your checkbooks.

Even the cost of renouncing your U.S. citizenship, which was the original “lead” of the story, is going up, spectacularly — from being free to $450. In the view of the State Department, that’s what your U.S. citizenship is worth today — four Benjamin Franklins and one U.S. Grant.

Imagine that, $450 just to officially and legally say “I quit this bytch!”

You can read the entire AP story here.

Last fall, I did a six-day buzz tour of China with 30-plus other Americans and the Kobe Bryant of Chinese tour guides, David Li, who made a point to remind us to keep close tabs on our passports.

“A man without a passport,” he said more than once, “is a man without a country.”

Which brings me to another point.

If you do have a passport and you’re thinking about traveling outside the United States this year, check the expiration date on that passport. If it’s due to expire in less than six months, a lot of countries won’t issue you a visa.

You can usually count on travel agents to remind you of this, and many airlines, cruise lines and other online travel providers are diligent about this, as well. But if you forget and get tripped up by the deadline, all is not lost.

You can make use of passport expediters to renew your passport for a fresh ten years and get it delivered to you in a week or less, hopefully leaving you enough time to get your visa.

For a substantial fee, naturally.

There’s one sure way to avoid this hassle: Treat your passport as if it were good for only nine years instead of ten.

At the start of its last year, send it back to the State Department, along with an application for a new one, along with a fresh couple of passport pics and the inevitable renewal fee.

No need to spend extra money on an expediter, and you’re good to go anywhere for the next nine years and change, without deadline worries.

Meanwhile, if you’ve never had a passport, there are lots of good reasons to get one, and we’ll be looking at some of those periodically between now and March 12.

Edited by P.A. Rice

If it’s true that, in the words of country singer Rascal Flatts, “life is a highway,” then it’s also true that we sometimes find ourselves taking detours, and not always by choice.

I’m taking a detour from the theme of travel after awaking this morning to the news that Don Cornelius had apparently committed suicide.

Mr. Cornelius created Soul Train, a half-hour TV show devoted to the popular music of black America.

If you are an African-American of a certain age, Soul Train is one of the cultural mile-markers of your life. It was our American Bandstand and we loved it. Before there was MTV, before there was BET, there was Soul Train.

And a lot of folks of my generation will tell you it was better than all of them.

Saturday morning wasn’t Saturday morning until you turned on the TV to be greeted by that animated, rhythmically chugging locomotive, those high-stepping dancers dressed in their disco best — and above all, the signature Afro hairdo and smooth-as-butter baritone of Don Cornelius himself.

From that moment on, you knew your weekend was “gonna be a stone gas, honey.”

You can ready more about the life of Don Cornelius and his signature show in this USA Today story here.

By now, a lot of people are asking aloud how he could do something like this. He was successful. He was famous. He had money. He was a household name across black America, a man loved and admired by millions.

As if any or all of that could guarantee a happy, pain-free life. It doesn’t.

And if you hurt long enough, badly enough, for whatever reason, you reach a point where you just want the pain to stop…by any means necessary.

I know.

I was 20 years old, failing in college, feeling like I was failing at life in general. I’d done everything I could possibly do to turn things around, but nothing had worked. Every day was just 24 hours of unrelenting misery, sorrow, regret.

Which is how, on a cold December Saturday in San Francisco, when I should’ve been at home watching Soul Train, I was standing on the Golden Gate Bridge, quite ready to jump.

I had both hands on the rail. There was nothing to stop me. Nothing except a single question that popped into my head as I pushed on the handrail:

What if I’m wrong? What if I really haven’t done everything I can possibly do?

When I realized I didn’t have a good answer for that, I walked off the bridge.

Odds are, you know someone who feels their life is running at a low tide that just won’t rise again, who feels they’re alone with their misery, who just wants the pain to stop.

Be the one who watches for signs and signals, the one who listens with empathy and without judging. The one who shows that they give a damn. Be the answer to that question, the answer that says no, you’re wrong, there is still something you can do — and you’re not alone.

You could save a life that way.

Meanwhile, here’s wishing you what the creator of Soul Train used to wish us all, a life of “love, peace…and soul.”

Don Cornelius was 75. Rest in peace.

Congratulations to travel journalist and IBIT reader Lola Akinmade Åkerström for winning not one, but TWO gold medals for her work.

For those of you who haven’t met her yet, Lola Akinmade Åkerström is a Nigerian expat living in Sweden.

If you check out pics of her on her Web sites or her Facebook page, one thing you’ll instantly notice is that Lola likes to jump, and she jumps a lot. I’m never sure whether she does that because of her irrepressible energy, or simply to keep warm in Scandinavia.

Well, now she’s got a reason to jump for joy. Two reasons, actually.

In addition to having an NBA-worthy vertical leap, Lola also happens to be a terrific travel writer/photographer. And it looks as if the North American Travel Journalists Association agrees with me.

Lola took home not one but two gold medals from the 2011 NATJA Awards competition, both involving culinary travel.

One was for an article entitles “Slow Food in Sapmi” for the Wed site Sweden.se.

The other was for a piece published by the Matador Network entitled “Revamping Classic Irish Tea at Dublin’s Merrion Hotel.”

Please join me in wishing Lola congratulations and continued success!

All images by Greg Gross and property of I’m Black and I Travel unless otherwise identified. All rights reserved.

The Los Angeles Times Travel Show is history for 2012. Lots to tell you about.

It’s been a busy January — two major travel trade shows in the Los Angeles area two weeks apart. The second one, the Los Angeles Times Travel Show, wrapped up last Sunday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The first one, the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show, took place in Long Beach two weeks earlier.

More about all that later. There’s a lot to pass on to you from the past weekend.

AMERICAS
Don’t look now, but Mexico’s on the comeback. They had one of the larger pavilions on the exhibition floor, presenting both national tourism information and regional info from Baja California, Baja California Sur and elsewhere. All of them were pulling heavy crowds both days, and that was good to see.

It could be that we’re finally starting to lose our hysterical fear about going to Mexico, which has always had a lot to offer the traveler.

(Just FYI, TV chef and professional culinary antihero Tony Bourdain, he of the popular Travel Channel series “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations,” was down in Baja California last week, checking out the food and drink scene in Tijuana and Ensenada. If his tweets are to be believed, he came away impressed. I’m not surprised.)

Two of the biggest sponsors of this show are a couple of relative underdogs in international tourism that are trying to raise their travel profiles in their respective parts of the world. In the Americas, that’s Ecuador.

They’re pushing a concept they call “conscious tourism,” an amalgam of sustainable tourism, eco-tourism and what they call simply “a good way to live.” Diverse climate, diverse geography, diverse cultures. Being considered the gateway to the famed Galapagos Islands doesn’t hurt, either.

Farther north — much farther, actually — you had the folks from Frontiers North selling polar bear tours on what they call their “Tundra Buggy.”

Think hotel built on an all-terrain-vehicle configured like a train, which allows you to get nice close-up shots of polar bears — without becoming Tourist McNuggets.

Polar bears may be the most beautiful of all the bear species, but why do you have to see them from an armored vehicle when you can see grizzly bears from your car in a place like Yellowstone National Park? Because polar bears are one of the few animals on the planet known for stalking human beings.

The shrinking polar ice cap may be turning polar bears into an endangered species, but when you’re within tooth-and-claw range of one, the endangered species is you. Hence the Tundra Buggy.

EUROPE
This year is the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, and both Ireland and Northern Ireland, where she was actually built, are going all out to commemorate it.

As part of the commemoration, there’s a guesthouse/restaurant in Belfast, North Ireland called Rayanne House that re-creates the dinner served to First Class passengers aboard the Titanic.

They’ve reduced the original 11 courses to nine, but even that sounds ridiculous:

1. Canapes a’L'Amiral
2. Cream of Barley Soup, finished with cream and Bushmills Whiskey
3. Asparagus and Watercress Salad with Champagne–Saffron Vinaigrette, served with Roast Squab
4. Poached Salmon with Mousseline Sauce garnished with Cucumber and Fresh Dill
5. Rose Water and Mint Sorbet
6. The entree — Pan~Seared Filet Mignon topped with Foie Gras and Truffle drizzled with a Cognac, Madeira and Red Wine Reduction served with Potatoes Anna, Creamed Carrots and Zucchini Farci
7. Spiced Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly and French Vanilla Ice Cream
8. Cheese and Fruit
9. Coffee and Petit Fours

Forget the iceberg. That meal alone would’ve been enough to sink me.

The Rayanne House head chef, Conor McClelland, showed how those courses were prepared and passed out samples, describing, as he did so, how men would get themselves “suited and booted” for an evening of dining, drinking and cigars that would start around 6:30 p.m. and last until midnight.

“You have to remember that back then, ships didn’t have all the shows and entertainment that cruise ships have today,” he said. “On the Titanic, your entertainment was the food.”

Turkey was well represented this year at the LA Times show, as they were at the Long Beach show. If you think about it, the country is actually a dual gateway — between the continents of Europe and Asia and also between the Christian and Muslim worlds.

It’s a Muslim nation that wants to be treated as a part of Europe, and that fact alone ought to be enough to make it worth a look. All the history, the glorious architecture, the great food, the modernity and the famously friendly people could just be treated as a bonus.

AFRICA
As usual, the emphasis was on safaris, and the interest level among the show-goers was off the chain. Africa travel providers generally don’t take up the largest amount of space on the exhibition floor, but they definitely were pulling more than their fair share of the crowd.

Regular IBIT readers know that safaris really aren’t my thing, but even I managed to find one that hooked my interest, on two levels.

The outfit is called Rhino Africa Safaris. It organizes trips in part to help raise funds to help African rhinos, which are being devastated by some of the most cruel and vicious poaching you can imagine.

And the trips it organizes include…wait for it…bike tours.

Bike tours, in Africa. If I say that aloud too many times, I want to start packing. Immediately.

Rudy Maxa

If there’s a travel expert who knows more about European travel than Steves, I haven’t seen him. He’s always got some useful insights on how to, in his words, “carbonate your travel experience.”

The bad part: He makes you sit through a seemingly endless string of sales pitches for his books and his tours and his bags to pick up those bits of insight.

This year those bits included:

1. Get out of your car or off the bus and engage with the locals. Put yourself in the mix. Don’t worry about not speaking the language; he doesn’t, either.
2. The best way to beat the tourist mobs in popular destinations: Become what IBIT calls a “travel guerrilla.” The tour buses dominate a place during the day? Make it a point to own the night or at least the late afternoon/early evening, after the tour buses have withdrawn and the locals start to reclaim the place. Even better, spend the night, and have both the early morning and the nights there to yourself. If you’re on the bus yourself, wander off the programmed routes and stop and discover the place for yourself.
3. Castles: Find a ruined one that doesn’t draw tourist buses. You may have it, and its history, all to yourself.
4. If you’re planning your own itinerary, the cheapest fare may not always be the most efficient. Do what works the best for your trip. If you don’t, your “cheap ticket” could actually end up costing you money.
5. Don’t be afraid to see Europe on your own. Most big-bus group tours, in Steves’ view, amount to little more than “a self-imposed hostage crisis.”
6. If you’re visiting several European countries, start with the ones culturally closest to what you’re used to at home and work your way up to the more exotic destinations. As he put it, “Why get diarrhea early?” Also, the more exotic the destination, the cheaper it’s likely to be, so save the bulk of your shopping for last.
7. Don’t be afraid to go to any country that truly interests you. Statistically, Europe overall is a lot safer than the United States, so don’t be afraid to visit, don’t be afraid to go on your own and don’t give in to what he called “our news hysteria.”
8. Open-jaw trips, in which you arrive in one destination and return home via another, might make more sense for you than a simple round-trip flight. I’ve done these myself and he’s right.

Another good speaker was veteran travel writer/broadcaster Rudy Maxa, who had to contend with the whirring and screaming from the zipline next-door as he spoke.

He spoke of the new Department of Transportation rules that require airlines to reveal all the costs of a given airfare — including all their taxes and fees — up front.

(Not surprisingly, some of the airlines are chafing against this rule, especially Spirit Airlines. More about that in coming blog posts.)

But in Maxa’s view, the new DOT rule that the mainstream news media have been overlooking is that you now have the right to cancel an air reservation within 24 hours — without penalty. He says that’s huge, and he’s right.

He’s also big on the idea of not paying retail prices for anything when it comes to travel, and he mentioned a few sites on the Web that can help you with that.

He mentioned two sites — Cruise Compete and My Best Fare Finder, that have cruises bidding for your booking instead of the other way around. Kind of a reverse-Priceline, so to speak.

For hotels, he mentioned Jetsetter and a href=”http://www.bloomspot.com/” target=”_blank”>Bloomspot.

However, a third site he named, France’s Voyage Prive, sounds a bit shaky:

“Voyage Privé stopped publishing travel deals on the U.S. website. We sincerely thank you for your continued loyalty and your interest in the offers we secured for you.

We would like to invite you to join our unique partner ideeli to gain exclusive access to luxury hotels and resorts around the world, as well as sought-after brands in fashion home and beauty – all at up to 80% off : JOIN IDEELI NOW >

Despite the closure of the US website, Voyage Privé continues its business in other countries around the world, and we would be delighted to see you join one of our alternative exclusive clubs: United Kingdom | Brasil | France | Spain | Italy

If you have a booking with us, please be assured that your booking will not be cancelled. For any inquiry, please contact us via email at customerservice@voyageprive.com or by phone at +1 877 456 3459.

The team at voyageprive.com”

Oh, dear…

As always, there was a lot more at this show than I can bring you in any one blog post, so expect to hear a lot more over the coming months.

The world is traveling in 2012. What are you doing this year? Got passport?

ALSO CHECK OUT:
LA Times Travel Show, Day 1
LA Times Travel Show, Day 2

Edited by P.A.Rice

10:18a
Sundays are usually slower than Saturdays at these shows, but if the number of folks who came streaming into the show as late as two hours before closing time yesterday is any indication, today could prove to be an exception.

Rick Steves is on tap for today. Am always curious to see what new he has to say about European travel, and he almost always comes up with something useful.

Am also going to touch base with Jen Leo of the Los Angeles Times. She’ll be talking about her favorite travel apps for you iPhone users out there. (I’ll try to overlook the fact that I’m one of those bitter Blackberry users.)

One of the more intriguing exhibitors I ran into late yesterday touts what they call “British style cruising” around Northern Europe and some Mediterranean ports.

What, you ask, is British style cruising? From what Greg Abbott of Cruises and Maritime Voyages USA told me, it’s what I would call “old-school cruising.”

“Our cruises are very destination-oriented,” he said. “We don’t do mega-ships. No big Broadway shows. no ziplines, no rock climbing walls, no tennis courts, no casinos.”

A typical ship cruising in this style carries a maximum of about 800 passengers. Nowadays, one of those “behemoths of the seas” might have that many passengers on one deck.

We’ll be exploring this in more detail in subsequent blog posts. Right now, it’s time to hit the floor…and hope it doesn’t hit me back!

It’s going to be hectic. Day 1 always is. And it starts of with IBIT having to make a critical choice.

The Godfather of Travel, Arthur Frommer, is speaking at 11 a.m. His theme this year: “Thinking Outside the Suitcase — Injecting New Life Into Your Vacation Plans.” If anyone would know how, he would.

Fifteen minutes after he starts speaking, however, there’s a very high-powered panel that gets underway, featuring Travelzoo senior editor Gabe Saglie, Doug Miller of LivingSocial and John E. DiScala, aka Johnny Jet, who put together one of the world’s most comprehensive travel sites back when the Web was still in its infancy.

Their topic: “More For Your Money: Budget Tips for Savvy Travelers.”

Having yet to master the ability to be in two places at once (my clone’s still at the cloners, you see), I have to make a very tough choice here. Which session would you rather see IBIT cover? Post a comment here or on the IBIT Facebook Page before 11 a.m. with your preference.

The majority decides where I go.

I don’t usually do the culinary demonstrations at travel shows like this, but there’s one this year I may not be able to pass up.

Were you, like most of the world, enthralled with the movie “Titanic?” As part of Tourism Ireland’s presentation, chef Conor McClelland of Rayanne House is going to re-create the dinner prepared for First class passengers on board the doomed liner.

Lisa Ling, currently of Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network, will be talking later about “The Importance of a Global Perspective,” something we Americans definitely need in 2012.

Okay, time to scout out some breakfast and then take my short four-block walk from the Sheraton Los Angeles Downtown Hotel to the convention center.

Walking…in LA…what a concept!

11:11 a.m.
It’s on, and the crowds are pouring in.

The Africa section of the main floor is already jumping and the reason is clear.

“Everybody’s asking about safaris,” said Michael A. Madison, president of Arbor Travel Associates in Inglewood, CA, who’s working the Africa Travel Association booth, representing the Los Angeles chapter.

“Nobody’s asking about Egypt, nobody’s asking about North Africa. It’s all safaris — East Africa, Kenya, South Africa. Safaris, safaris, safaris.”

I’ve already found the first folks to hook my attention, and they’re in Turkey. Would you fly halfway around the world to spend your vacation in a cave? The thought never crossed my mind — until I came across the Cappadocia Cave Suites. More about them later.

Fallout from the dueling Los Angeles travel shows is already becoming evident. People are walking up to me, asking if certain countries have booths here in the Los Angeles Convention Center. They don’t.

Reason: hey were in Long Beach two weeks ago at the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show. It’s an issue and we’ll get into that later.

Okay, off to cover my first session.

2:10 p.m.
This is crazy.

I’m bouncing from one session to another, with half my brain listening to one set of speakers, while the other half anguishes over the 2-3-4 others I’m missing — because they’re all going more or less at the same time.

With great reluctance, I skipped Arthur Frommer’s presentation this year to catch the three-member panel on how to save money on travel. And wat did I learn there?

Something I really don’t like — and I guarantee tta you won’t, either.

You already know how the airlines are raking in billions of dollars with all their add-in fees for everything they can think of, nickel–and–diming consumers for srvices that used to be included with the cost of your ticket.

In industry terms, they call this “unbundling.”

Well, the hotel industry may be looking in this direction, too. There was buzz among the panelists about hotels charging extra for their traditional services. Ten dollars extra per day to get your room made up or to get fresh towels?

Oh, HELL to the no.

I couldn’t find anybody who’d run into this themselves…yet. If you have, or know anyone who has, please:

• Give me an email shout at greg@imblacknitravel.com.
• Leave me a message on the IBIT Facebook page.
• Hit me up on Twitter @ImBlacknITravel

Any hotel chain that embraces this idea is guaranteed to get raked over the coals by the traveling public — and I’ve got my rake right here.

One good piece of advice they had for saving money on international travel was to keep track of major events around the world, especially sporting events, with an eye toward visiting that country after the event was over.

Reason: Many countries, especially developing countries, sink a lot of money into huge improvements in infrastructure — stadiums, airports, hotels, highways and the like.

Once the events are over and the throngs have departed, they still have to pay for all that stuff. So they will be in need, perhaps dire need, of tourist revenue for the foreseeable future.

Yet another tip, courtesy of Johnny Jet himself:

When you’re paying for something with a credit during your international travels, and the merchant asks you if you want to pay in the national currency or in dollars, always, ALWAYS pay in the national currency. “When you pay in dollars, (the merchants) take a hefty fee out of that.”

A fee that gets added to your bill after you get home.

I also checked out the presentation on Ecuador, if only to see if they would give any mention at all to that country’s African cultural heritage. To their credit, they did. They didn’t delve into it in any great detail, but hey, any mention is better than none.

Almost every place in the world where the Spanish conquistadores and their accompanying priests set foot, they left behind a legacy of enslaved Africans. That’s why today, you’re hard-pressed to find a country anywhere in Latin America that does not have not only an African heritage, but an African population, blending indigenous, Spanish and African traditions.

That is but one reason for a traveler to take an interest in Ecuador. Not many places on Earth where you can go from an ocean coast (the Pacific) to one of the world’s major mountain ranges (the Andes) and wind up in a tropical river basin (the Amazon) — all on the same trip, on the same day.

The other major presenter I caught was Lisa Ling, currently of Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network, talking about the need for Americans to have a global perspective. One thing she said really hooked my attention:

“In North Korea, people are prevented from knowing anything about the world. In the United States, we have unlimited access to information — and yet, how many of us actually seek out information about the world?”

It’s a good question, especially when you juxtapose it with something that CBS News travel editor Peter Greenberg told me at the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show a couple of weeks back:

“Americans are the most geographically-challenged people on Earth.”

Okay, time to grab a sandwich, then hit the floor and talk to some exhibitors.

2011 LA Travel & Adventure Show | ©IBIT G. Gross

Los Angeles is set to kick off its second major travel trade show in two weeks. They’re gonna make me lose my MIND up in here!

You’ve heard of Star Wars, Storage Wars, Shipping Wars, even Monster Bug Wars. To that semi-illustrious list, you can now add:

Los Angeles Travel Show Wars.

The opening shot was fired two weeks ago at the annual Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show. Only this “Los Angeles” show was actually held at the Long Beach Convention Center.

This weekend, the Los Angeles Times Travel Show kicks off its debut exhibition at the Los Angeles Convention Center, right next-door to the Staples Center, where Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers hang out.

For me, shows like this are an exercise in information overload. It literally takes me months to process and write about all the interesting, important and valuable things I learn from the speakers and exhibitors from just one of them.

Now, Los Angeles is going to hold two, two weeks apart? If you see white smoke in the sky this weekend, it won’t be coming from the Vatican. It’ll be coming out of my ears.

IF YOU GO
WHAT: The Los Angeles Times Travel Show (see Program Schedule here)
WHERE: Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90015
WHEN: 10 a.m. — 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday
COST: Tickets $10 ($2 off if you buy early online). Kids 16 & under free.
Parking $15 a day at the convention center lots, no in–and–out privileges.

For the last few years, the Los Angeles Times teamed up with Unicomm LLC to put on the Travel & Adventure Show, one of a series of such shows Unicomm holds around the United States.

For reasons I don’t yet know, the Times decided to break off and start doing their own thing. Unicomm took theirs to Long Beach; the Times opted to stay in LA.

Round 1 took place the weekend of Jan. 14-15. From Unicomm’s standpoint, it appears to have been pretty successful, well-attended both days. Prominent in the crowds were young brothers and sisters, as well as black families with their children in tow, a sight that definitely warmed my heart.

Now, the Times is up to bat with its travel show this Saturday and Sunday. Round 2 coming up.

THE GDDFATHER
The highlights of all such shows are the featured speakers, and there’s none bigger than the Godfather of Travel, Arthur Frommer. He never fails to pass on valuable, money-saving advice, but his love and enthusiasm for travel may be worth even more than his tips.

I mean, the man is 80-something years old, he’s been writing travel guides since the end of World War II, and he’s still traveling the globe with the same spirit he did when he was half my age.

Arthur Frommer is who I want to be if I ever decide to grow up. He’ll be speaking on Saturday.

Rick Steves, the European travel maven of American public television, also will be back. He’s a big one for getting off the beaten path and off the tourist bus, two ideas I heartily endorse. But it’s his sheer love for Europe, more than anything else, that will make you want to start packing.

This being an LA Times show, you know there will have to be some journalists involved. TV’s Lisa Ling will be speaking, as well as some of the Times’ own travel staffers, chief among them my good friend, Christopher Reynolds, who’s been to almost as many places as Arthur Frommer.

In addition to the speakers, there are the exhibitors, hundreds of them, from virtually every corner of this cornerless world.

But for all the presenters who will be in Los Angeles this coming weekend, there are plenty who won’t be. Why? Because they were in Long Beach two weeks ago. A representative of South African Airways broke it down for me.

“A lot of people you see here came all the way from their home countries for this show,” she said. “They can’t afford to hang around for two weeks and put up another booth in Los Angeles.”

Which is why there’s a sizable number of exhibitors whom you won’t be seeing this weekend, including South African Airways.

The flip side, of course, is that there are exhibitors whom you didn’t see in Long Beach whom you will see this weekend in Los Angeles, and all of them will be worth a visit. But there are a few in particular that hold special interest for this traveler.

A RAINBOW OF CULTURES
One is Afro-Brazil Tours, which specializes in tour of Brazil’s Salvador Bahia region, where the heart and soul of Africa still beats in every aspect of the Brazilian culture.

And naturally, I have to hit up the folks at Fulani Travel, a British outfit that offers tours to 13 countries in North, East, West and Central Africa.

Are you surprised that African travel companies will be “in the house” in Los Angeles? They were in Long Beach, too, and for good reason: Southern California sends more travelers to the Mother Continent for recreational travel than any other region of the United States.

I’m also interested in meeting the folks from the Azerbaijan Tourism Association.

Azerbaijan for years was one of those obscure republics under the shadow, if not the heel, of the former Soviet Union. When Ronald Reagan’s Evil Empire went bankrupt and dissolved back in 1991, Azerbaijan was able to step out of that long, red shadow and show its true face to the world.

It’s one with a rich cultural heritage, a portion of which is tied directly to the legendary Silk Road.

LOTS OF ASIAN TRAVEL
Another outfit that interests me: Ceylon Express International, for a couple of reasons. For one, it offers tours not only to Asia destinations, but to Ethiopia. How many Asian travel companies do you suppose include Africa in their offerings?

The other reason: It offers tours to Sri Lanka and Myanmar, two destinations back in the world’s travel sights after years of being “off the grid — Sri Lanka because of a terrible civil war and Myanmar because it was a military dictatorship with human rights “issues.”

Peace has returned to Sri Lanka, and Myanmar — the country we used to know as Burma — appears to have cleaned up its act, to the point that the United States resumed diplomatic relations with Yangon (or as my generation grew up calling it, Rangoon) only last week.

Both countries are awash in tropical beauty and fascinating culture, as well as wrenching poverty.

There will be plenty other Asian travel exhibitors here, too, just as there were at the Long Beach show. Asian nations are pushing hard on their tourism at shows like this, and have been for the last several years.

Taiwan is consistently one of the biggest sponsors of all these shows and it hits you with a mega-presentation literally as you walk through the door. It did it two weeks ago in Long Beach; I fully expect it’ll do it again in LA.

China also will be “in the house,” as will Japan, still struggling to rebuild its tourism after last year’s earthquake/tsunami disaster.

Korea, Guam, India, Singapore, Thailand, Fiji, Malaysia and more — they’ll all be there to “represent.”

For you who want your adrenalin-overdose thrills closer to home, there’s…Extreme Tornado Tours? Oh…uhhhh, okay!

According to Times spokeswoman Hillary Manning, the paper wanted to place a special emphasis at this year’s show on family and kid-friendly travel, so you’ll see exhibitors specifically devoted to that, along with a special kids area. You’ll also see a Cruise Pavilion, dedicated to cruise travel, and a Travel in Style Pavilion, focusing on luxury travel.

If you can’t be in Southern California this weekend, check out IBIT for the reports I file from the convention center as the Los Angeles Times Travel Show makes its debut. Otherwise, I’ll see you on the floor.

And if anybody there asks how you heard about them, be sure to tell them about IBIT!

ALSO CHECK OUT:
LA Travel & Adventure Show 2012

Edited by P.A.Rice

United Air Lines, which lays claim to being the largest airline in the world, divides the United States into five regions, each containing multiple major airports and served by hundreds, or even thousands of airline pilots.

For the first time in United’s history, one of those regions will be under the command of a black man — Capt. James Simons Jr.

A 22-year veteran of UAL, Simons is now chief pilot for the Northeast region, which gives him charge of 1,450 United pilots at a half-dozen of the largest and busiest airports in the United States:

• WASHINGTON DC — Reagan National (DCA) and Dulles (IAD)
• NEW YORK CITY — John F. Kennedy (JFK), LaGuardia and Newark (EWR)
• BALTIMORE — Baltimore/ Washington Thurgood Marshall (BWI)

This makes Capt. Simons one of United’s top administrators, but it does not make him a desk jockey. He still has to do a certain amount of flying to keep his certifications up to date. He’s currently qualified to fly the Boeing 767 to Europe, Africa, South America and anywhere in the United States.

Not bad for the brother. And not bad for an airline that had to be dragged by the courts — twice — into abandoning its practice of routinely discriminating against minorities and women who wanted to fly for them.

The “friendly skies” just got a wee bit friendlier.

You can read about Capt. Simons in this story by the NorthStar News & Analysis here.

United’s announcement of Capt. Simons’ promotion comes:

• Just before the month of February, which happens to be Black History Month in the United States.
• Just before the movie Red Tails, telling the story of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, debuts in theaters across America, and

And I get to share it with you on what happens to be the birthday of Bessie Coleman. How perfect is that?

WHO WAS BESSIE COLEMAN?
If you know who Amelia Earhart was, then you need to know who Bessie Coleman was, and for essentially the same reason.

Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman (1892-1926) was the first black American woman to become a pilot, the first to hold an international pilot’s license.

When no one in America, white OR black, would teach her to fly because of either her race or her gender, she took French classes from Berlitz in Chicago and took herself to Paris — not once, but twice — first to learn the basic skills of flight, then again to become good enough to become a stunt pilot.

Had they known a little more about the woman’s background, they would’ve known that their refusals were unlikely to stop her. This was a woman who walked four miles a day to school and back.

From the age of six.

By the time she returned to the States for good, she was a barnstormer and as much a media sensation as Earhart.

And like Earhart, she died before her time. Flying. Amelia was 39. Bessie was 34.

The vertical trajectory of the career of James Simons Jr., reminds us that black history isn’t strictly an artifact of the past, to be celebrated once a year. It’s something happening — and something that deserves to be recognized — every day.

Something you could make a piece of yourself.

So the next time somebody tries to tell you that black men can’t achieve their dreams, tell them about Captain Simons. And the next time you get discouraged in pursuing your own, remember Bessie Coleman. Above all, remember what we say around here at IBIT:

Small dreams are a waste of sleep.

Edited by P.A. Rice

ALSO CHECK OUT:
Charles L. Gittens, Secret Service 1928-2011
Eleanor Joyce Toliver-Williams, 1936-2011
NIGERIA: One BAD brother!

If the name Pauline Frommer rings a bell with you, it might be because she’s the daughter of the man I call the Godfather of Travel, Arthur Frommer. However, she’s an accomplished travel writer herself with her own published guidebook series.

In her presentation at the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show in Long Beach, she focused on cost-conscious travel, specifically on knowing when to splurge and when to scrimp.

LODGING
If, like most of us, you’re not blessed with unlimited discretionary funds, you’ll be heartened to hear that she mostly leaned toward scrimping, and she recommended a few Web sites to help you do that.

One of them was Hotels Combined.

“Hotel Combined looks at (other hotel) sites and picks out the best deals,” she said. “They do not sell anything.”

Indeed, that seems to be developing into a theme in the travel industry. Hotels, like airlines, are increasingly looking for ways to get around the Expedias and Travelocitys and Orbitzes to market themselves directly to their online customers.

(Just today, in fact, The Economist magazine reported that six major hotel chains — Choice, Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Marriott and Wyndham — have joined forces to create Roomkey.com to sell their rooms.)

“(Hotel) chains no longer want to pay fees to third-party sites,” Ms. Frommer said.

(Nor is it just fees. If you find a lower room rate at, say, a Sheraton on Expedia than you can get from Sheraton’s own Web site, you’ll learn that Sheraton can’t match it, even if you call the hotel yourself. Why? As it was explained to me by the Sheraton reservations clerk, Expedia has bought up and controls its own block of rooms within the hotel. Crazy, huh?)

Another site she recommended for tracking down hotel bargains was Hipmunk, which lets you tailor your hotel search not only by price, but by location and any number of other specific factors you have in mind.

Say you want to track down the best room rates in the section of town closest to the theater district. Hipmunk will map them out for you.

Conversely, if you want to see which hotels are located in the parts of the city you want to avoid, it’ll show you that, too. That feature literally could save your life.

Other hotel sites she recommended included:

• Trivago
• Dohop

She also is a big fan of vacation rentals as an alternative to hotels, along with home stays and home exchanges. Good for saving money, she said, and also for getting a true feel for a place.

“When you rent a home, you get into the parts of the city you want to see,” she said. “You meet the locals. It’s a real cultural experience.”

Her recommended sites include:

• Zonder
• Flipkey
• Homeaway
• Airbnb
• Home Exchange

When it comes to home exchanges, “go with the companies with lots and lots of members,” she said. “The more members it has, the more opportunities you have to go places.”

AIRLINES
She didn’t have much good news when it came to airfares (no one does), but she did point out that the quest for airfare bargains has moved into the realm of social media.

“Airlines are putting limited sales on Facebook and Twitter,” she said. “Sales may last a day, maybe two or three hours. You have to ‘like’ the airline’s page on Facebook.”

No matter where or how you decide to shop for airfares, timing is everything. And the weekend is the worst possible time. You’re better off booking Tuesday or Wednesday.

“Airlines know most people search (for airfares) on the weekends,” Ms. Frommer said. “Prices will be higher then.”

Other airfare tips:

• Book early, but not TOO early. No more than three or more months ahead. Any earlier and you’ll be paying the highest rates possible.
• Sometimes, booking a pair of one-way flights may be cheaper than a single round-trip ticket.
• Likewise, flights with one or more stops are often cheaper than direct or non-stop flights.

CAR RENTALS
The news on car rentals was even worse than airfares. Rates have jumped 30 percent in the last two years.

Your best bet here, she said, is to make use of local car rental companies that offer lower rates than the big boys, even so-called “rent-a-wreck” outfits that rent older cars that have more than a few miles — and maybe a few dents — on them.

Here, too, she had a Web site to recommend. Autoslash finds coupons from car rental firms that you can apply to your rental, even if you’ve already booked your vehicle. Find a coupon that applies, then rebook at the lower price. Sweet.

DESTINATIONS
Like many other travel experts these days, she’s touting Eastern Europe. For 2012, Ms. Frommer is especially fond of Poland, which she described as an “extraordinary destination.”

“Krakow has the largest public square in the world. Warsaw was 93 percent destroyed by the Nazis during World War II; it’s been completely rebuilt. The country has churches and cathedrals as beautiful as anything in Western Europe. The food is delicious, fresh fruits, fresh fish. You an buy a good meal for a couple of dollars.

“It’s Western Europe at half the cost.”

Travelers also will benefit from the fact that one of the world’s major annual soccer tournaments, the UEFA Euro2012, is split this year between Poland and Ukraine, she said. The European Union is pouring money into Poland to bring the country’s infrastructure up to western standards ahead of the tourney.

Another destination she liked was Guatemala. Let’s face it, there aren’t that many places in the world where you can toast marshmallows over an active volcano. She’s been there and done that.

“Great poverty, but great, great beauty,” she said of the country.

FOOD
This was one of the few areas in which she came down on the side of splurging, if only on occasion.

“If you don’t try the great restaurants in the world’s great cities, you’re missing out,” she said. “If you’re going to splurge on anything, splurge on the experience.”

She expanded on that idea — and so will IBIT in a subsequent post.

Edited by P.A.Rice

Q. With this being an Olympic year in London, would this be a good year to bypass Western Europe altogether?
A. No, absolutely not. Europe has positives and negatives in terms of its affordability.

The positives are that a lot of it’s in crisis. As you probably know, the debt of a lot of Europe was just downgraded by Standard & Poor, which is going to make it much harder for them to borrow and will really hurt their business travel. So you go to cities like Barcelona, Madrid, Athens and other parts of the so-called PIGS nations, which are Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain — the ones that have the most severe crises — and you can stay much less expensively in these recently expensive businessmen hotels than you could before. So there are good deals to be had because of Europe’s financial crises.

There are also, unfortunately, more expenses. Because Europe has just imposed a carbon tax on airfares, airfare to Europe is about to get more expensive. And there also are a lot of little local taxes where governments in desperate need of money are adding on that can badly impact the traveler, so it’s a mixed picture.

To give one example, I was in Northern Ireland this summer and in Ireland, and it was much less expensive than it was five years ago because of their deep recession. Food was less expensive, lodging was less expensive. Overall, it was a cheaper vacation. So I say don’t write off Europe, just do it in a savvy way.

Prague is as expensive as any Western European city because it’s Prague and it’s so, so popular. However, if you go out into Bohemia, if you go into the little towns that make up the Czech Republic, prices drop in half. You’re greeted with open arms. They’re glad to see you because they don’t get that many tourists. And these are often well-preserved medieval enclaves that simply don’t get the tourism they deserve.

Q. What about Turkey?
A. Turkey has seen a hug uptick in the amount of its tourism in the last year, mostly because of (the) Arab Spring. People who used to go to Egypt are going to Turkey. But Turkey can be done affordably and it’s an incredible place to go, with wonderful food, welcoming people.

The only danger is that you’re going to buy a rug. Even if you didn’t expect to buy a rug, you’re going to buy a rug. It’s nearly impossible not to. We have a Turkish rug, which I deeply regret…but it was fun buying it.

Q. Do you ever have trouble getting Americans to grasp the idea that Turkey is actually a part of Europe?
A. Yes. Actually, it’s on the border. It’s half–European and half–Arab. It’s always been the gateway between those two cultures. The culture there is so rich and vibrant. They want to be more a part of Europe.

My daughter goes to a day camp in New York City and one of her best friends there is a Turkish girl whose mother brings her to the US every summer because she was born in the US and she wants to make sure she speaks English. According to this woman, the fundamentalists are taking over in Turkey in terms of who’s getting elected to local governments and the larger government, and she’s very, very worried that Turkey’s taking more of a hard line away from Europe more toward fundamentalist Islamic culture. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be welcoming or wonderful for Americans to go to.

Q. Egypt was one of the first countries caught up in the Arab Spring. Is it now a viable tourist destination again?
A. Egypt is a tough one. Egypt, as we all know, had this extraordinary uprising, where a terrible dictator was finally removed. Unfortunately, it looks like it might’ve been a soft coup by the military and you are having major disruptions and violent occurrences in Tahrir Square, and unfortunately, Tahrir Square is right near the Khan-al Khalili bazaar, right near the Egyptian Museum…it’s the area that tourists are lodged in and go to. On a personal level, I would not go right now. I just think the safety situation is not stable enough. It’s a tinderbox, unfortunately. And it’s a tragedy because one in 10 Egyptians works in the tourist industry. Without that income, the society is going to be destabilized even further.

And it’s a place where you should go, because it’s an extraordinary country to see, the cradle of civilization. But right now, I would not feel uncomfortable recommending that people go.

Q. Are there any destinations in that part of the world you feel comfortable recommending?
A. Israel is amazing. People don’t think of it as being a bucket-list destination, but it should be. To see the places where Mohammad built his mosque, where Jesus walked his last steps, where for centuries Jews have prayed at the Wailing Wall. As a destination, it tells you more about what it means to be a human being than most other places in the world. Just the issues that they’re dealing with and the history there and the richness of the culture. It’s just extraordinary. You’ve got to go.

Q. China seems to be an impossibly cheap destination these days. How are they pulling that off?
A. They can offer such incredible deals because the Chinese currency is so devalued. It really is extraordinary what you get for what you pay.

Q. Panama seems to be turning up increasingly on the travel radar. Why is that?
A. Panama has been very, very smart. They have really raised their profile in the last couple of years. They have that wonderful musician who (was) their minister of tourism (Rubén Blades, 2004-09). He has become the face of Panama. And they are really competing with Costa Rica because they’re cheaper than Costa Rica but they have the same they have that the same natural wonders and they have something Costa Rica doesn’t have, which is the Panama Canal, one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century.

My father went and spent a week in Panama City and absolutely loved it. A lot of Americans are retiring there, too. But he thought that just in terms of value for the money, just extraordinary. And the diversity of the cultures, because you have a lots of indigenous peoples there, living in very traditional ways. And you can visit them and see that. You also have extraordinary nature sites, beaches.  I think it’s going to give Costa Rica a real run for the money, if it isn’t already. And it’s safe.

Q. Asia is really pushing hard in the international tourism market, and it looks now as if there’s a new player entering the game: Myanmar.
A. Oh yes, yes. That’s very exciting. I’ve never been because I wouldn’t. Aung San Suu Kyi said don’t come, that it would just feed this horrific regime. And I didn’t want to; I couldn’t in good conscience. But they seem to be making some really good decisions and taking some baby steps toward democracy. Yeah I really want to go, it’s supposed to be extraordinary — colonial cities beautifully preserved, these extraordinary temples, the jungles, pristine beaches, and not that many tourists. (Secretary of State) Hilary (Clinton) just went there.

Edited by P.A. Rice