While you were away: This week’s top travel stories

Grumpy Cat probably felt less than fabulous in Las Vegas

A purr-fect snapshot
Grumpy Cat, the Internet star who has a perpetual frown on her face took over Las Vegas this week to meet with fans and sign copies of her second book, The Grumpy Guide to Life: Observations from Grumpy Cat. According to the Las Vegas Sun, she enjoyed her own private ride on the High Roller, the new observation wheel on the Strip and the tallest of its kind in the world. Not a smile was had, but after a few rounds of slots doesn’t everyone in Vegas have a grumpy look on their face?

Wedding bell blues
A hotel in Hudson, New York is under fire (and has since ceased and apologized) for its policy of fining wedding parties for negative online reviews. According to CNN, reviewers took angrily to Yelp in response to an online policy that states it will fine $500 for every negative review placed on the Internet by any member of a wedding party. The hotel owner says the policy was a joke. You mean like the one about the hotel that’s about to go out of business?

Survey says…
As part of its Annual Readers’ Choice Survey, Conde Nast Traveler has ranked the friendliest and unfriendliest cities in the U.S. Topping the list of hospitable spots are Southern cities Charleston, South Carolina, New Orleans and Savannah, Georgia while bottom-ranking destinations included Newark, New Jersey and Oakland, California. Note to Newark: Try offering beads for boobs and letting your citizenry walk around wasted all the time.

Off point
Travel rewards are going to waste. According to Today.com, while there are more than 634 million travel rewards programs in the U.S. alone, there are an estimated ten trillion unused frequent flier miles out there and 20 percent of all frequent flier miles are wasted. While Orbitz Rewards are easy to use (and therefore unlikely to go to waste, right?), the Today site offers tips for not losing your points, including “track expiration dates” and “use them, don’t hoard them.” Um, here’s an idea, how about gifting them to us? (Seriously.)

Tagged: Las Vegas, New York