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- Hunting hippos in the Okavango Delta
- The man who brought beer to Palestine
- 5 things airlines could learn from hotels
| Hunting hippos in the Okavango Delta Posted: 08 Mar 2013 01:59 AM PST Under the midday sun, with water sloshing gently at our sides, we glide on canoes nearly silently across the water, through lily pads and papyrus reeds. This is the Okavango Delta, a swamp area in Botswana where water from the Okavango River collects, having traveled a thousand miles from Angola. The delta is home to dozens of species of game, plants, fish and numerous ethnic African tribes. It also lures roughly 120,000 tourists every year. Travelers are enticed by the chance to hunt or photograph the wildlife or to learn about the lives and culture of the area tribes. But we're here to seek out its most famous residents -- hippos. Click through the gallery above to see the sights of the Okavango Delta by canoe. Getting thereOverland tours to Okavango Delta are available from Johannesburg (www.nomadtours.co.za). Daily tours of the delta cost BWP 500 (US$63) for two people, and include a tour in a makoro (30 minutes to two hours), one game tour and transport. Camping in very basic camp costs BWP 50 (US$6). The Okavango Polers Trust is a community-run, eco-tourism project that provides affordable alternatives to luxury lodges in the delta. The Trust provides a livelihood for local polers and a chance for visitors to experience the delta in a unique way. www.okavangodelta.co.bw      |
| The man who brought beer to Palestine Posted: 07 Mar 2013 10:00 PM PST
"In most countries, there is a pot of honey and the leaders have a little taste and then give the rest to the people, but here in Palestine it is the other way round," he shouts, as the car bounces violently over a pothole. "They give us a little taste and then they eat the whole jar." I nod and smile as he offers me another cigarette and ploughs on towards our destination, the tiny village of Taybeh, still half an hour away. "Aha! And now here are our Israeli cousins!" he suddenly shouts, laughing as an Israeli military base appears to our left, heavy guns and barbed wire atop the concrete barriers. The bored soldiers hardly look up as we speed past, Khaled waving and smiling –- ironically, I sense –- with a cigarette lodged between his fingers. Travel in Palestine is always intense, usually due to highly charged political conversations, ubiquitous military checkpoints or Israeli soldiers waving assault rifles. But the intensity of the hills and mountains that cascade down into the Jordan Valley are another thing entirely. Here, tiny villages and mosque spires punctuate a rolling, olive-green landscape and in the spring or autumn clear air, cool breezes and blue skies are reminiscent of the best days of an English summer. Lodged firmly amid this landscape is Taybeh, some 12 kilometers away from Ramallah in the hills north of Jericho, and a village once famous for hosting Jesus and his disciples for a few days before he returned to Jerusalem. More on CNN: Around the world in 10 great beers From Boston to the West Bank
Nadim studied beer making in Boston in his teens and, inspired by American beers such as Sam Adams, moved back to Palestine to set up Taybeh after the 1994 Oslo Accords. Since 2005, Taybeh has welcomed hundreds of foreign and Palestinian beer aficionados to the village for its annual Oktoberfest. Taybeh beer is served throughout Israel and the Christian cities of the West Bank -– as well as Japan, Sweden, Germany and Belgium. As the village appears, Khaled gets lost. But luckily the villagers are used to seeing taxi drivers and nervous-looking foreign passengers trawling around looking for the brewery. A couple of u-turns, a gravel track and a huge steel gate later and we pull up outside the main building, where a vast opening gives way to huge steel drums, a production line and an overwhelming smell of hops. With his bushy moustache and modest beer belly, Nadim Khoury looks like a brewer. He rises from a cluttered desk just inside the entrance and shakes my hand with a disarming smile. As I sit down on a tattered couch opposite a glass cabinet of Taybeh merchandise, workers chat over the hum of the machines, bottles clink in the background and Nadim walks to the fridge and brings back two bottles of cold beer.
I pick it up and take a swig. "And what do you think?" he says, immediately. "It's delicious," I say. Nadim smiles, his top lip disappearing into his moustache, and relaxes in his chair. "You know, Taybeh actually means 'delicious,'" he says, pushing a plate of snacks toward me across the coffee table. "Now try it with the snacks," he says. I do. It's still delicious. 'We still don't have a country, but we have a beer'It sounds too good to be true, but Taybeh –- or its root, Tayeb –- actually can mean delicious in Arabic, but is more commonly understood to mean "good" or "pleasant." One legend has it that the legendary Arab warrior Saladin, who once controlled much of the region, named it Taybeh because the he thought the people who lived there were so good-looking –- although it's more likely that its location, on the top of a picturesque hill, was a pleasant site for a village. "This is a peaceful resistance actually," Nadim says, after a momentary silence, and looks at me as I raise my eyebrows. "No, it is. Making beer and making business and being here. We still don't have a country, but we have a beer, and I'm proud of that." Nadim produces three beers –- a lager, dark ale and an amber –- is building a hotel and looking to move into producing wine in the village. "There are 17 types of grapes in Palestine and nobody has ever analyzed them, so for the past four or five years I have been experimenting in my basement," Nadim says.
A tour bus arrives, and Nadim rises to meet a gaggle of American tourists that have been bussed in from Jerusalem, one of some 60 or so trips Taybeh Brewery receives every year. Often the tour groups are religious pilgrims, stopping off on their way back from visiting religious sites at Hebron or Jericho, but increasingly backpackers and solo travelers make a liquid pilgrimage to Taybeh. Before we say our goodbyes, I ask Nadim about the stigma attached to Palestine, particularly by tourists who have grown up with news reports of violence and unrest in the West Bank. "Well, we need to change that," he says. "Some day it will happen. Maybe someday we can toast peace with Taybeh beer." On the way back to Jerusalem the driver blares Arabic pop as the wind rushes through the open windows. The sun is going down over the mountains, which will soon give way to the burning skips, congestion and filth of the Qalandia checkpoint; the tension of Jerusalem, its bloody history and disputed sites. I think of Taybeh and its meaning and I think Saladin, warrior par excellence though he was, undersold it. Brewery tours
Tours are free and last approximately 30 minutes, which includes a seven-minute video of the brewing process and short history of the company. Visitors are given a free Taybeh beer sample, then a guided tour inside the brewery. After the tour, all visitors will have the chance for a Q&A discussion and can hit the gift desk for souvenirs and beer. How to find it: Taybeh Brewing Company, Taybeh Road 1, Taybeh, Ramallah District; +972 (0)2 289 8868; Taybehbeer.com. Taybeh village is just outside Ramallah, 20 kilometers from Jerusalem.    |
| 5 things airlines could learn from hotels Posted: 07 Mar 2013 01:55 PM PST Air travel, for many, is something to be endured rather than enjoyed. The aviation industry "has been in survival mode for as long as we can remember," says Eric Léopold, director of the passenger program at the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Fairly or not, the industry's triage mentality has undermined public perception. But does it have to be that way? The hotel industry, so connected to air travel and yet worlds apart when it comes to reputation, could prove an inspiration, if only airlines would change. With the help of experts in both the airline and hotel industries, we've put together a list of ideas that could make flying fun again. 1. A recognized rating system
One of the first things potential hotel guests check is the star-rating of their hotel. It helps to manage customer expectations and provides a clear sense of the value, rather than simply the cost, of a stay. Airlines don't employ this system. Although one already exists -- the Skytrax Global Airline Ranking -- few air travelers know about it. This means airline customers are often unsure of what to expect and may feel entitled to an unrealistic level of comfort. "No one expects to go back to the glamour days of Pan Am, especially if they're flying economy," says Lori Lincoln, director of corporate communications at Shangri-La International Hotel Management. "But major airlines could improve by addressing the lack of consistency in terms of product and service. When you fly certain airlines, you never know what you're going to get." 2. Dedicated staff
Ask any top-end hotel executive for the secret of the brand's success, and you'll invariably get the answer: the people. Airlines will agree. Skytrax CEO Edward Plaisted says that staff service is "critical" to achieving five-star status in a company's rankings. And yet staff service after you board an airplane is often a poor substitute for what you receive when you check in at a good hotel. Incentive is an important factor. While a hotel receptionist or porter could rise to a management position over the course of a career, the ceiling is lower for flight attendants. Timothy Wright, general manager of the Kowloon Shangri-La hotel in Hong Kong, says that "thorough training and development opportunities throughout the employee's career" are crucial to maintaining a high level of service. For example, staff at Shangri-La are carefully chosen for their ability to engage customers and extend genuine care and hospitality. "The core values of helpfulness, flexibility, anticipation and honesty are very important," says Wright. 3. Restore the human touch
Humanity in modern travel means making sure the customer feels properly looked after. At hotels, this might be achieved with something as simple as a hand-written welcome note, or having the bar staff remember a guest's drink from one cocktail hour to the next. This kind of attention to detail might be easier to sustain in a hotel environment, but airlines could certainly do more to make passengers feel like individuals and less like numbers on a manifest. American low-cost carrier JetBlue, for one, had a mission to bring humanity back to air travel. Now, says Lincoln, some people will give up miles they can earn on major carriers to fly JetBlue, "because they prefer the experience." "From the very beginning we understood something was fundamentally inadequate with the service in our industry and knew that we had to be the change if we wanted to succeed," says Allison Steinberg, spokesperson for JetBlue. This ad campaign for the airline outlines some of these changes, which include offering more legroom in economy class and giving passengers the whole can of soda instead of just a cup. 4. Personalized experiences
Good hotels avoid the perception of commodifying the travel product by focusing on personalized guest service. Wright, at Shangri-La, says, "We keep extensive records of guests' preferences so that we can make them feel at home." Loyalty programs and, potentially, social media should allow airlines to do the same, but they rarely do. "As an airline passenger, you often feel like a widget being shuttled about instead of a person," says Lincoln. She also observes that while airlines expect flexibility from customers, they rarely reciprocate. Small offerings, such as a personal greeting and a bottle of water for frequent fliers in economy class, could make a big difference. In a "white paper" released at the World Passenger Symposium in Abu Dhabi in October 2012, IATA's Simplifying the Business (StB) think tank even describes an onboard concierge as a feature of air travel in 2020. "With all the technological advances to support customer service, airlines should be able to make flight experiences just a little more personal," says Lincoln. "That could go a long way to making flying more hospitable." 5. Improved efficiency
While hotels can influence their customers' experience from the moment they disembark -- for example, with a meet and greet service at the airport and shuttle or limousine transfer -- airlines have comparatively little control over what happens between check-in and boarding. IATA recognized this in the StB paper, which introduces a new program and a vision of how efficiently people might travel in the future. Its "vision 2020" for the airport experience is fast and seamless, as well as "predictable, secure and globally consistent." IATA is the organization that introduced e-tickets and bar-coded boarding passes to streamline the passenger experience. In response to its recent Global Passenger Survey, new initiatives at IATA aim to provide more self-service options across the journey, phase out the check-in process, develop a "risk-based" security model that "minimizes the need to unpack or disrobe" and standardize automated border control. The goal is to make flying simple and satisfying. If airlines could adopt a few of these measures, perhaps it could be.    |
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