I recently needed to choose the best Australian cruises for next spring. Australia is opening now, but I will probably take the better part of the year before cruising gets back to normal. Also, there have been some things happening with cruise lines you have to watch out for—even if you’ve been booking Australian cruises for many years.

I was selecting cruises for two couples who were both well-traveled seniors. One couple had never cruised in Australia before, and the other had been on five or six Australian cruises in the past 20 years. Before the pandemic, both couples were booked on the Silversea Silver Muse on a cruise going from Bali to Sidney by way of Komodo Island—home of the endangered dragons whose bites…

It may seem strange to say I go to Africa to meet Americans, but it is one of the good things that happen when I attend Africa’s Travel Indaba, as I did in Durban, South Africa, May 3-5.

One of the many benefits of attending Indaba is being able to meet travel agents from the US who have been hosted by South African Tourism. Throughout the year, the tourism board works the trade show circuit in the US and singles out travel agents who are ripe for opening up business in Africa. Then, every year when Indaba rolls around in May, SAT brings a select few of them to South Africa. On one trip, SAT exposes them to the broad spectrum of the African travel industry…