Hotel tips

In the last two decades many UK seaside towns have undergone a quiet transformation. Art galleries, boutique hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants are breathing new life into once down-at-heel resorts such as Blackpool and Margate, while coastal hotspots like Padstow, Southwold and Whitby continue to draw the crowds on sunny days. While these places are popular for good reason, we’d love to hear about your favourite “unsung” seaside towns – the places that don’t often grab the limelight or become unpleasantly overcrowded, but which have kept their charm intact. You could win a £200 holiday voucher (sorry if you were hoping for a cuddly toy or some candyfloss).

For years, road-trippers whizzed right past Yamba, just south of Byron Bay at the mouth of the Clarence River in northeast New South Wales. The under-the-radar fishing town has long been blessed with wild beaches, rocky ocean vistas, and an easygoing surf scene, but a crop of openings has turned it into a place to linger awhile.

People living in the New York Tri-State area are always captivated by the magic of Manhattan's world-class dining, entertainment, and cultural attractions. But fighting crowds and public transportation woes? Not so magical.

As a full-time, on-the-go content creator, I practically live at airports and am always looking for ways to make my travel experience easier.

Bilt Rewards members can now transfer points to Hilton Honors at a 1:1 ratio. With this news, Bilt members can transfer points to four of the most popular hotel loyalty programs in the U.S. After all, Bilt members could already transfer points to World of Hyatt, IHG One Rewards and Marriott Bonvoy at a 1:1 ratio.

Even though Halloween is months away, this is the time of year when theme parks release information on their fall spooky season offerings — and even put tickets on sale. It may seem early, but we can assure you it is not. Popular dates sell out quickly, so you need to plan ahead if you don't want to miss out.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Julie Williams, 60, a semi-retired woman living in Devon, England, who has used HomeExchange more than 100 times over the last decade to travel the world. The website helps facilitate accommodation exchanges between 150,000 users in 145 countries. Williams estimates she's done about 140 exchanges since joining the site.

Just as sports obsessives will travel to Paris this summer for the Olympics, pop music lovers with a penchant for camp will travel to Malmö for the Eurovision Song Contest.

One of Marriott's newest and most affordable brands is slated to grow in one of the world's most-visited countries.

Destination weddings are a great way to see the world. That's why I was ecstatic when my best friend asked me to be her plus-one to a ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa, one of the top unique wedding destinations for 2024 and 2025.

Hard Rock International's new loyalty program has a star-studded kickoff to its global rollout.

There are European country house hotels, and then there is Casa Palmela, about a 45-minute drive south of Lisbon. Located a couple of miles beyond the sleepy port city of Setubal, it’s surrounded by lush countryside covered in vineyards and dotted with cork trees. A very long and grand walled driveway takes you into a spacious courtyard, letting you know in all its 17th-century splendor that you have arrived.

Southwest Airlines just rolled out the ability to pay with a combination of both cash and points.

New Yorkers know how to brave the cold. Five inches of snow? Twenty-mile-per-hour winds? The challenges are met with a shrug, a grimace and an extra layer. Here, life keeps moving no matter the weather. I try to remember this as I’m standing before Forbes Travel Guide’s Four-Star The Spa by Equinox Hotels’ cryotherapy chamber, but find, faced with three minutes in a negative 150-degree chamber, my mask of Manhattan blasé is slipping.

If you’re planning to attend the Paris Olympics and see a bit of Europe this summer, you have a variety of plush new hotels from which to choose (though they’re likely to fill up quickly). Whether you’re going to the Games or simply going on vacation, you’ll find fresh boutique properties in Paris and many more that are an easy flight away, be it to the French Riviera, Rome, or fittingly, an island in Greece, the birthplace of the ancient games.

There’s something quite particular about small but perfectly formed Assos – butterscotch and rose-pink houses line a horseshoe bay, with Venetian ruins scattered between the narrow alleys. There are two small beaches, but the real joy is to rent a motor boat and discover the small bays and coves that fringe this part of the Cephalonian coast. Walkers can follow the path out on to the headland to the ruins of Assos’s 16th-century castle; there’s not a huge amount to see, but the views make the walk worth it. Roi Suites is a bougainvillaea-clad cluster of well-equipped studio flats in a waterfront neoclassical building, with gorgeous sea views from the pool terrace. Doubles from £117 (minimum seven nights), roisuites.com

Stargazing, seals and sandbanks in MandøDenmark’s wilderness zones and sparsely populated isles have long been havens for nature lovers and stargazers. Mandø, on the south-west coast of Jutland, is the most recent addition to the country’s four Dark Sky Parks. A small island in the Wadden Sea National Park, Mandø is most easily accessed at low tide via tractor bus over the causeway from the mainland – adding to the adventure and reducing the chances of latecomers’ annoying car headlights ruining your night vision. By day, you’ll likely want to visit the lovingly preserved, thatched and white-walled Mandø House museum (an early 19th-century shipmaster’s home), not to mention the island’s landmark windmill and church. Observe thriving seal and migratory bird species on a bike ride around the marshes and sandbanks.

It’s almost summertime, and those family vacations aren’t going to plan themselves. If you are hoping to earn points and miles for upcoming trips to sunnier (or cooler) climes, there are some travel promotions that can double or triple those loyalty program earnings. And for the jetsetters who want to redeem those hard-earned points and miles, now is the time to start looking to find the best deal.

British Airways Executive Club recently introduced a tempting new offer to reduce the price of any BA-operated flight to just 1 British pound (about $1.25) by using Avios, but here's why it is not a good deal.

Building on efforts in 2022 to increase the minimum stay length to 90 days at non-resort-area short-term rentals in Honolulu, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green signed a bill into law clarifying the countiesʻ authority to regulate transient accommodations.

‘She’ll come to your hotel, looking incredibly elegant, charm everyone and then at 4am you’ll get an email full of highly insightful suggestions because she’s also a farmer’s daughter and she works around the clock.’