Hurricane Irma’s Impact on the Caribbean

Analysis Paralysis. That’s how one of our latest members described the galling task of going through thousands of pages on the web to decide where to go, where to stay, where to eat on your next vacation. A recent study said that the average traveler spends 29 hours on the web researching his next trip. 29 hours! There’s nothing with doing a little exploration to get yourself excited about your next vacation, but 29 hours definitely sounds like analysis paralysis to me. One of the reasons we started ActiveTravels.com is to give unbiased travel advice on the 80-plus countries I’ve already visited as a travel writer. We can cut through the layer upon layer of unnecessary travel content and pinpoint the exact locale that suits each client based on his or her passions. By all means, research a country to your heart’s content, but please call us to hear our viewpoint long before analysis paralysis sets in!
The Kingdom Trails, which I’ve often praised as my favorite mountain biking spot in the Northeast, just reopened this past weekend. This has prompted the owners of the Wildflower Inn (another one of my top New England picks), which borders the Kingdom Trails, to offer a Pedal and Paddle Package. For as low as $375 for two people, you receive two nights lodging, full country breakfast each morning, picnic lunch, trail pass for the Kingdom Trails, a $25 voucher good for their restaurant, Juniper’s, and a half-day canoe rental on the Clyde River, part of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. Deep tissue massages, perfect after a day of riding hard, are just down the road at Stepping Stone Spa.
We always ask new members of ActiveTravels how they found us. As we enter into our fifth year of business, more and more clients are saying that they came upon us in a Google search. Very few things make me happier than having complete strangers from around the globe ask us for our travel expertise. Sure, we love referrals, but there’s something terribly exciting about getting an email or call from the UK, Switzerland, New Zealand, and across the US from someone out of the blue. I mentioned this to our social media guru, Ross Lasley, owner of the acclaimed Internet Educator, and it resulted in one of his columns. I came across it recently and I was flattered. Ross understands that nobody finds you on Google by luck. It comes from years of hard work, getting your business out there through all channels of social media. I’ve been blogging regularly since 2009, probably the same I time I joined FaceBook and LinkedIn. The Twitter account came in 2011, Instagram this past year. It’s a steady stream of content, not unlike the hundreds of articles I wrote the 20 years prior. Build it and through hard work they will come.