Let’s take a look this week at some destination-related stories that I really wanted to share with you.
A fashion note for clients who are visiting North Korea.
Should the topic of what to pack come up in discussions with our North Korea-bound clients, it needs to be noted that skinny jeans for men have now been banned.
The so-called hermit kingdom feels that tight jeans are a manifestation of “decadent” Western culture. I have included this in my North Korea notes along with photos of the 15 currently approved hairstyles for men and women.
Iceland offers free vacations to housewives.
At the beginning of the modern women’s rights movement in Iceland in 1960, a law was passed that states that homemakers should get paid vacation time just like any other workers in the country.
Since then, towns have offered women vacations. The vacation might be to another part of the country or overseas. The applications for this benefit had slowed during the Covid shutdown, but they are soaring again. Local advisors assist with these paid vacation arrangements.
Iceland is now one of the most expensive countries in the world for travelers. The country is doing extremely well financially, and the vacation stipends for housewives are not insignificant.
Are we leaving out an important component of every text message we send to clients?
A new survey of 2,000 Americans over the age of 21 by Talker Research found that 41% of respondents believe that a text message that does not end with at least one emoji is “incomplete.”
The study becomes more interesting when broken down by generation. When it comes to Gen Xers, 70% feel that any text message should include an emoji; a text without one is deemed “unprofessional.”
Of those surveyed, 58% of believe that emojis improve the way humans talk to one another and that their primary purpose seems to be to provide a convenient way to express emotion when mere words are not sufficient.
It might be wise for agencies to think about designing their own emojis for use in text communications.
Here’s why a Taylor Swift concert can be earth-shaking.
Swift’s “Eras” tour came to Seattle last year, and seismologists have determined that her fans’ singing, dancing and jumping up and down with joy caused a minor earthquake — 2.3 on the Richter scale, to be precise.
Swift is impacting the tourism sector in some major ways. Each domestic concert is averaging 54,000 fans who are purchasing hotel rooms, airfare, food and more. The average spend factor for a Swift attendee in the U.S. is said to be in the range of $1,327.
In Illinois, the governor and tourism officials announced that in June 2023, thanks in part to Swift’s Chicago concerts, the state broke its hotel revenue record.
In advance of Taylor’s six concerts in the Los Angeles area, the California Center for Jobs and the Economy estimated that Los Angeles County’s GDP would increase by $320 million and employment would increase by 3,300.
In its June 2023 analysis of economic conditions, the Federal Reserve said that “May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the start of the pandemic,” and it attributed this in large part to “an influx of guests for Taylor Swift concerts in the city.”
Swift ought to be nominated for numerous tourism awards.
