Travel updates

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive

Sea-Tac opening new south terminal

Construction is winding down at the new South Terminal at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and new security checkpoints and ticket counters are due to open this month.

The new security area on the ticketing level replaces the previous checkpoint in the South Satellite Transit Station and will serve passengers bound for the South Satellite and for the new Concourse A when it opens in June.

Five airlines will be moving their ticketing operations to the new South Terminal by the end of this month — Aeroflot, Asiana, British Airways, EVA and SAS.

Reports sees small travel spike

Eight out of 10 Americans plan to spend as much or more on vacations this year as they did last year, according to a new survey from Roper Reports.

And 58 percent plan to take a leisure trip in the next six months. While that's only 1 point higher than the percentage who made leisure trips last year, the telephone survey of 1,000 Americans found differences in this year's destinations.

Six percent of those planning a trip are going to Europe, 3 points more than from last year. Eleven percent have destinations in Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean in mind, 2 points higher than last year.

Ireland goes puffless; so do others

A pint and a butt might seem an inextricable part of the Irish bar scene — but no more. As of last week, smoking is banned in Ireland's bars and restaurants and other public spaces.
 
It's a trend that's on fire. Uganda recently banned smoking in public spaces. Norway will adopt a ban April 8; Sweden, July 1; New Zealand, Dec. 1; and Bhutan, Dec. 31.

An international treaty to ban smoking in public places has been signed by 101 countries, says John F. Banzhaf III, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health. Ratification is pending.

The United States hasn't signed the treaty, but travelers who smoke and those who hate it, take note: Smoking is banned in restaurants and bars statewide in California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and Delaware. Smoking is banned in restaurants but allowed in bars in Florida, South Dakota, Vermont and Utah. The law is similar in Maryland, except that bar areas in restaurants may allow smoking.

Singapore now apparently considers smoking even worse than chewing gum: The nation this month will lift its 12-year ban on chewing gum to make an exception for nicotine gum to help smokers quit.

Hobbits 1, Cows 2 in New Zealand

Hobbits, wizards and orcs are helping draw so many tourists to New Zealand that travelers are about to vanquish dairy farmers as New Zealand's No. 1 export earners.

The runaway success of local director Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, with its panoramas of pristine New Zealand wilderness, combined with the country's image as a safe haven from the world's troubles, have turned this remote South Pacific nation of 4 million into a must-see location for several million travelers each year.

Dairy farming has been the nation's main foreign exchange earner for 50 years; tourist earnings are counted as export income. Strong growth of about 8 percent is expected to lift traveler arrivals to a 12-month figure of 2.2 million by midyear, making the sector the nation's biggest earner.

The next seven wonders of the world?

The hanging gardens of Babylon aren't on this list, but Conde Nast Traveler's list of the "Next Seven Wonders" of the world does feature two concert halls, a museum, two stores, a church and a hotel. They are:

• Tenerife Auditorium, a curving, soaring concert hall on Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

• The Kunsthaus contemporary art museum in Graz, Austria, a blue, other-worldly building with light flowing in from 16 nozzles, dubbed the "Friendly Alien" by locals.

• The six-story Prada tower in Tokyo with a facade made from diamond-shaped grids of glass, some concave, others convex, illuminated from within at night.

• The Jubilee Church in Rome, comprised of three concrete shells, soaring skylights and glass exterior walls that fill the church with light.

• The Selfridges store in Birmingham, England, a futuristic pod of a building with 15,000 glittering aluminum disks covering its wavy walls.

• Hotel Unique in Sao Paulo, a boat-shaped semicircle, complete with round nautical-style windows.

• Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, known for its acoustics and stainless-steel exterior.

— Seattle Times wire services

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company