This shouldn’t be news to anyone by now, but tourism and hospitality stand to be the worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and, to add injury to injury, probably face the slowest recovery. All accommodations with the exception of the most robust hotel chains will hear a near-death rattle at…

I spent a few hours making this topical/evergreen “Wash your hands” coronavirus t-shirt design and it turned out great. It’s been suggested that people might like to *buy* my little project. So! I’ve designed two shirts: One with the “Wash your hands” multilingual design on the front and a second…

Here’s something I hope people will consider after the coronavirus pandemonium calms down. About half the people I talk to about switching to solar power for their homes decline to do so, because they won’t save money and/or it will cost them a little extra money per month ($2-4). In…

In truth, all these reasons can be summed up in one statement: “A baffling lack of understanding about the situation.” Sorry to call you out like that smart people, but unless your inaction is due to climate change denial or undiagnosed head trauma, this is the only other explanation. You…

tl:dr – If you work in travel and tourism, and are younger than 50, these issues are going to affect you sooner or later. You’re going to want to be proactive, not reactive, if you want any hope of your business/destination surviving and maintaining a career in this industry until…

tl:dr The numerous flaws in TripAdvisor and Booking hotel reviews are dizzying and likely beyond rescue. I’ll preface this post by saying that I have no new hard evidence to present here. There’s no conclusive DNA test, no bloody murder weapon, and no one caught red-handed with 12 kilos of…

tl:dr It’s bad, getting much worse, and it’s going to dramatically change tourism, but ultimately tourism is not the problem and it’s long past time the industry demanded change. I’ve been suffering some weapons grade cognitive dissonance about air travel for tourism for quite a while now. At this stage,…

Extrapolating information from the current climate crisis predictions—which seem to worsen every other week, but we’ll work with the current snapshot of abject doom—it’s conceivable that some or all of the following will occur in our lifetimes: A decade from now (A.K.A. 2029 – how old will you be then?…

On March 1st of this year, with no notice, MinnesotaCare dropped my health insurance coverage. Despite their usual passion for sending paper mail to its customers for every trifling reason, before, during and after what happened next, MinnesotaCare never sent anything to alert me about this crucial change. I had…

When I staggered into the emergency room, bent in half and moaning in agony with every breath, I was met with a completely empty desk. No one in sight except for a handful of patients in the waiting area chairs. I figured someone would hear me and come out to…