Travel and hospitality goes to the dogs

With all due respect to our canine friends, Travel has literally gone to the dogs.  Man’s best friend can now holiday with him, thanks to the evolution of the travel industry. Now several hotels and resorts allow their guests to bring their pets and some properties even have special packages for them.

Even Disney seems to be getting more dog friendly. Over the weekend, I came across a report that said Walt Disney World in Florida will be opening a pet resort later this month. This facility not only has rooms for dogs, cats, hamsters and pigs but will also have play-groups for these pets. That is not all. The resort also provides high-end services like villas with patios, (bedtime) story-reading, flat screens to watch doggie movies.

Looks like we are also seeing a number or travel guides, other publications and websites that primarily cater to dog travel, giving information to hotels and destinations that allow pets and what these places have in store for them.

Way to go travel industry!

An earlier post  - Pet Airways ushers in …

Pet Airways ushers in ‘petter’ air travel

Pet Airways? A carrier exclusively for pets? Why didn’t anybody think of this before?

Now our dear cats and dogs have a petter way to travel; a respite from having to vie for that limited cabin space commercial flights or having to travel as checked-in luggage. We’ve heard of pooches having to brave the biting cold and scorching heat during stop overs. Oh, those poor creatures! Canine and feline aficionados can now stop biting their nails over the condition of their travelling pets having to bear with those hazards of cargo-type travel, now that Pet Airways is here.

This carrier, a brain child of Alysa Binder and Dan Wiesel, promises state-of-the-art travel for pets with pet lounges, potty breaks and what more: pet attendants to check on them ever quarter hour. What more can pet owners ask for?

For now, if this carrier flies within New York, Washington, Denver, Chicago and LA alone, the company does have plans to expand its operations and reach out to other destinations in due course.

Now that Pet Airways has opened up a new avenue in the travel world, we can look forward to more carriers and more services and more competition in this sector. Let’s look forward to hearing about first class travel and economy class for our purring pals and frequent flier programmes for our tail-wagging playmates. If man can have these privileges, why can’t `man’s best friend?’

Tourism industry, here’s `something’ to smile about

Owing to the economic condition in India and abroad, which is far from good, business houses and individuals have only been cutting down on travel so as to curtail expenses. Little spoken about is the tourism industry that has been hit hard because of the current state of affairs.

There have been fewer foreign tourist arrivals and the hospitality sector is complaining of a drop in occupancy levels in hotels and resorts. To add to the already pathetic picture, Lok Sabha elections coincided with IPL and the matches had to be shifted to foreign soil, further reducing the hope of the Travel and Tourism industry. 

In the midst of all this doom, there’s a surprising mention of tourism, this one, as one of those election promises. And look who’s talking: Mamata Banerjee. She says she will develop Bengal’s Digha beach resort and turn it into a `Goa,’  the Dooars into Asia’s Switzerland and Kolkatta into a city like London, if voted into power in the State Assembly elections. Now the Assembly elections in West Bengal do not happen until 2011. But atleast somebody is talking tourism. And this industry– if not anything else — has `something’ to smile about.