Travel Calendar

Travel bloggers can now coordinate with their visitors through proper usage of website chat. This is possible with the help of Chatwing. This simple chat application is known for its high rate of connectivity and ease of access.

Detroit, MI (PRWEB) April 27, 2012

One of the most famous niches of blogging today is travelling. This is because of the fact that many people are looking for ways on how to travel easily. Adding to that, they also want to discover new places. The developers of the Chatwing chat box have realized the strength of the travel niche. This is why they upgraded Chatwing’s new release, making it more efficient and reliable than ever.

Chatwing may appear as a simple free chatroom that can be used by everyone. In a way, this is true. Simplicity is one of the main goals of Chatwing’s developers. However, this rate of simplicity has also contributed to Chatwing chatrooms overall rank. Because Chatwing is straightforward, people can use it without a fuss. According to travel bloggers, this simplicity is a gold mine. A straightforward chat application saves much time and delivers messages clearly to blog visitors.

Itinerary and vacation blogs have also benefited from Chatwing’s latest release. With a handy online communication tool, people can now post their inquiries. This has been proven useful for people who are always on the go, such as businessmen and travel writers. Adding to that, people also use Chatwing to gather tips on how to travel easily. Common travel discussions noted in Chatwing are survival in remote areas, travel experiences, best landmarks to see, language and culture exploration, and dealing with travel jitters.

Installation of the Chatwing website shout box also doesn’t take a large portion of time. It can be accomplished in just minutes. First, the user must register his blog or website’s domain name. After that, he must create an official Chatwing account that will serve as his dashboard. With that, he can now proceed to customization. The user can customize the height, width, color, and title of the widget. If there is no title provided, Chatwing will generate a random string. Once everything has been completed, Chatwing will generate the needed HTML code.

People who want to use Chatwing can visit its homepage. Alternatively, they can also check out Chatwing’s Facebook page for updates and fresh content.

About Chatwing

Chatwing.com is a free shout box for all web pages or blogs. It also lets anyone create free chatrooms on any website or blog. The Chatwing.com website chat offers users the ability to signup and create a customizable live chat box instantly with few details. Users have the ability to select the size, dimensions, and colors of the shout box. The ability to live chat with Facebook, Twitter or guest avatars is a unique feature which includes social sharing features in real-time. Chatwing is free chatroom software available to any user.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/4/prweb9450129.htm

NEW YORK — Shares of online travel companies advanced Friday after Expedia Inc. reported first-quarter results that beat Wall Street expectations and a Citi analyst said booking trends could be accelerating.

Expedia, which also operates Hotels.com, the corporate travel-management business Egencia and other subsidiaries, said Thursday that it handled 18 percent more transactions than a year ago, including a 24 percent jump in room nights rented. Average room rates were flat, however.

In a note to clients Friday, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney said that the booking trends in the U.S. and abroad suggests growth could be accelerating. He raised his full-year revenue expectations for Expedia by 4 to 5 percent and his earnings- per-share forecast by 3 percent.

Expedia posted a first-quarter loss, but its adjusted results beat Wall Street’s expectations.

Excluding one-time items, the company said it would have earned 26 cents per share. Analysts, who usually exclude special items, expected earnings of 15 cents per share, according to FactSet.

Revenue climbed 12 percent.

Shares of Expedia rose $9.39, or 28.8 percent, at $42.02 in midday trading. Peer companies got a boost as well. Priceline.com was up $26.29, or 3.6 percent, at $759.56. Orbitz Worldwide Inc.’s stock gained 35 cents, or 10.3 percent, to $3.74.

The Portland Timbers will be traveling to play the Montreal Impact April 28, and will be characters in a story very familiar to the Rose City side. Like the Timbers of last year, the Impact are an expansion side beginning their season with a heavy road schedule, and being frustrated by it.

The Impact are waiting for renovations to be complete on their home stadium, Stade Saputo. Like Portland’s journey with Jeld-Wen Field, the upgrades involve adding seating to an existing facility. Another common factor will be great attendance. The Impact have been able to have home games in Stade Olympique, or Olympic Stadium.

Two former USL sides with much in common

The Timbers have sold out every game at home since their step up to the MLS. For the two home games the Impact have played at Stade Olympique, the crowd size has averaged over 40,000, so it’s not hard to imagine them regularly selling out the 20,341 seats. That’s almost exactly the seating capacity of Jeld-Wen Field, which is 20,438. Another commonality is the home and away record.

Want another? The Impact’s captain, in his first year as a captain on an MLS side and on a new team, is a good friend and former teammate of Timbers’ captain Jack Jewsbury. Like Jewsbury did last season, Davy Arnaud came to an expansion side and was given the armband.

The Impact are unbeaten with a win and a draw in Olympic Stadium, and are 0-5-1 on the road. Both teams are struggling this season, and seem to be confronting some of the same challenges. Giving up goals late, squandering leads, and suffering periods of disarray on the pitch. The question of the day will be which team can put those faults behind them.

Portland looks to have made great strides to turning their season around thanks to the performance against Sporting Kansas City. The Timbers won the game because of their solid defense throughout the entire 90 minutes. Can they keep it up on the road?

Montreal shouldn’t be underestimated

Yet another shared trait the Impact have with Portland is the ability to be very good at times. The Impact have some good players, and are backstopped at goalkeeper by the very talented Donovan Ricketts.

Portland and Montreal played to a scoreless draw in the preseason, in a physical match that was at times ugly. The Impact were coming out in a style that attempted to push the Timbers off the pitch, and will likely take a similar tactic April 28. SKC brought a strong physical game and were held scoreless.

Portland will likely bring a lineup nearly identical to what was fielded against SKC, especially since Kalif Alhassan probably won’t be available. It’s a great chance for the Timbers to get three points on the road and build on the momentum of their win over SKC. If the Timbers are to compete for a playoff spot by the end of the year, these are the kind of contests they need to win.

Jeff Musall has been a fan of the Portland Timbers since moving to the area in 2001. He is excited about the 2012 season and wants to see the Rose City side build on the SKC win to get back in the hunt for a playoff spot.

Image via MissTravel.com

Are you an attractive young woman with an urge to see the world, but you lack the funds to fulfill your travel dreams? Are you a gentleman who has had some difficulty with the ladies, but you have money to burn on airfare, high-end hotels, extravagant dinners, clothing, shoes, and entertainment?

Well wanderlust no more and find your match at MissTravel.com, where the glamour of being a mail-order bride for a week meets the unmatchable pride of paying to have a beautiful girl on your arm in the world’s greatest cities.

Miss Travel claims to connect 20,000 Generous globetrotters with Attractive sight seekers – everyday people who have different attributes but similar travel goals. Though each of the site’s categories is gender non-specific, ninety-nine percent of the Generous users are men. About six percent of the site’s users are gay. It’s a dating service, not an online bordello with millimeter-wave scans, claims the website. Some critics see it otherwise.

Neetzan Zimmerman at Gawker says “it’s really the #1 prosti-travel website,” and describes the website’s founder, Brandon Wade, as an “e-pimp.” And Zimmerman has a point: Wade’s other websites – SeekingArrangement.com and WhatsYourPrice.com – are pretty straightforward sugar daddy and escort sites. The New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune have all but called Miss Travel a prostitution service. (A Google ad that cut the Tribune’s story in half read: “Sugar Daddy For Me: Our site has 4 women to every 1 man 1000s of women ready to please you!”)

Wade argues that escorts are not allowed on his site, and that no sex or money is discussed on Miss Travel – he even has a disclaimer page, so you know it’s true. It’s hard not to see the wink there, and it’s pretty obvious that the website will largely serve as a way for prostitutes and escorts to see the world – all while building up frequent flyer miles. That’s almost romantic, in its way. Audrey Hepburn was at her most charming playing a high-end call girl, and Holly Golightly did it just to pay the rent and stay fabulous.

But there will also be women who will use the site much as one would any other dating website – women who have certain priorities and think a cruise is as good a setting as any to get to know someone. Financial security and practical considerations are an important part of many lasting marriages – hell, one could make an argument that if money weren’t a part of most relationships, many more men would choose to stay home and play Call of Duty in their underwear rather than hack it every day in an office just to make the money necessary to attract a woman or sustain a relationship. I’ve had those Call of Duty days. Many women don’t particularly care for them.

Miss Travel’s no-escort policy is clear. It is even underlined.

Lindy West at Jezebel, a Gawker sister site, acknowledges the comedy potential of the site and signs up as an Attractive to test the travel-buddy waters and see what kind of gentlemen are Generous enough to make it rain airline bonus miles. She finds cornballs, fakes, “really, really sad and lonely people who are painful to look at, and a F***TON of gross married dudes.” She argues that though it is sex work, she doesn’t have a problem with Miss Travel in theory, but worries about the naïve Attractive girl “who winds up 5,000 miles away from home with ExecutiveDong4U and realizes she doesn’t want to put out.” And she’s right – Attractives might want to leave an itinerary with a friend and keep enough money in an account to pay for a flight home. Nothing lasts forever and some things don’t last a week.

All disclaimers aside, it’s pretty obvious that most of the men who will pay for the extravagant trips the website dangles in front of its Attractives will probably expect to at least get laid on their vacation. Is that prostitution?

People have hooked up for reasons worse than Rome.

Reuters

11:15 a.m. CDT, April 27, 2012

The Obama administration eased U.S. travel restrictions to Cuba by announcing last year it would grant licenses to selected travel companies to lead “people-to-people” tours to the Communist-led nation. The action meant Americans, who have been essentially prohibited from visiting the island for the past 50 years, could now travel to the country legally.

Alabama-based International Expeditions received a license and has begun offering 10-day tours of Cuba that start in June. As the name implies, “people-to-people” trips underscore interactions between Americans and locals, ones aimed at creating a dialog between residents of the two countries.

The itinerary includes discussions with botanists at the Soledad Botanical Garden, a visit to the Zapata Wetlands in search of bee hummingbirds and talks with farmers during a trip to a tobacco farm. Of course, places such as Havana, the Bay of Pigs, Cienfuegos and other hot spots are part of the itinerary too.

The trip begins with an overnight stay in Miami. Travelers must have proof of legal travel from International Expeditions before they are allowed to board a charter flight from Miami to Cuba (charters are approved a few weeks before departure). Note too travelers must follow the planned itinerary; no free travel is allowed while in the country.

When: Trips depart from Miami on June 7, 14 and 21. (Other dates for fall and 2013 are being added.)

Price: $3,898 per person, double occupancy. It includes lodgings, most meals and on-island transportation and activities. Airfare to and from Miami and charter airfare from Miami to Cuba is extra.

Contact: International Expeditions, (800) 234-9620

The U.N.’s World Trade Organization says 1 billion people will cross international borders as tourists this year for the first time. That’s about 4% higher than last year. The top three destinations? The U.S., France and China . . . . United has moved its John Wayne Airport ticket counter operations to Terminal C. The temporary move (eight weeks) is necessary to allow the TSA to make security upgrades to the baggage-handling system in Terminal B . . . . Grand Canyon National Park celebrates endangered species and wildlife May 18-19, a Friday and Saturday. For info, click here . . . . San Francisco’s North Beach Festival returns to historic “Little Italy” June 16-17, with live music, street painting and more than 150 vendor booths . . . . . The 18th Annual E Hula Mau, a celebration of Hawaiian culture, returns to the Long Beach Terrace Theatre on, Aug. 31-Sept. 2. The Polynesian festivities will feature performances, arts and crafts, workshops, and island-style cuisine. Info, click here . . . . Take free fly-fishing lessons from the San Diego Fly Fishers club on Sunday mornings, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Lake Murray in La Mesa. Info: www.sandiegoflyfishers.com . . . . . Hikers can experience the early settlers’ journey across the Sierra Nevada mountains in the 20^th Annual Donner Party Hike Oct. 13-14 in Truckee . . . . Starting off Moab, Utah’s busy summer: the Moab Arts Festival,  May 26-27, featuring jewelry, pottery, sculpture, fine art and photography, plus entertainment, food and activities for the kids. Admission is free. Info, click here . . . . Two new police recruits have joined the Los Angeles Airport Police. The L.A. Airport Police Division is the fourth-largest law enforcement agency in the county, with more than 1,100 law enforcement, security and staff personnel . . . . The Globe Corner travel bookstore, which closed its Harvard Square location last summer, is getting a second life with an independent bookseller in Brookline, Mass., a suburb of Boston. Info, click here . . . . Travel quote of the day:  “A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” (Moslih Eddin Saadi)