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

Boomers are into spiritual journeys to India

Shame on you
The new trend in airline travel isn’t better service—it’s taking revenge on fellow passengers. According to Yahoo!, a new social trend encourages users to snap pics of travelers engaging in bad behavior and emailing them to passengershaming@gmail.com to be viewed on Passenger Shaming’s Instagram and Facebook accounts. Great idea, but we sure will miss clipping our nose hair during meal service.

Virtual vacay
Want to visit a black sand beach from the comfort of Times Square? According to Wired magazine, Marriott Hotels is launching its first virtual travel experience this week in New York City which will transport visitors (via 4D technology) to either a platform atop London’s Tower 42 skyscraper or a beach in Hawaii. Knowing our luck, we’ll dip our toes in the water and have our leg virtually bitten off by a shark.

Senior-itis
Boomer travel is booming, especially for women. According to Forbes, female baby boomers (women born between 1946 and 1964) are exploring the world both solo and in groups, including exotic treks like hiking Glacier National Park, polar bear-watching in Norway and spiritual getaways to India. What, no group outings to Burning Man?!

Starry eyed
If the only twinkling lights you see in the sky are coming from tall buildings take heart: Buzzfeed has compiled a list of the 13 best places in the U.S. to stargaze in the U.S. including familiar locations like Death Valley National Park in California and exotic places such as Denali National Park in Alaska. Oddly enough, Hollywood was missing from the list. Seriously, last time we were there we saw stars everywhere.

A fresh-smelling way to travel
Thanks to a patent pending by Airbus, future airline travel might look, sound and smell a whole lot better. According to CNN, the European aircraft manufacturer is working on in-flight virtual reality sensory isolation headgear that will allow passengers have audio, video and odorous substances piped directly into their ears, eyes and nose. The company has not yet indicated how it will address the issue of hat hair.

Tagged: California, Hawaii, New York