• 24
  Jun
  2009

• Points to ponder while selecting travel insurance

  
  Filed Under: Blogging
  Author: Blog Contributor
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Travel insurance can cover you for a range of problems when travelling abroad, from the catastrophic to the merely inconvenient. When you buy a holiday or a flight, you’ll almost certainly be offered travel insurance to go with it. It’s all too easy to say yes to this travel insurance, and add the cost to the bill, but you’re probably better off shopping around and taking out a travel insurance policy independently.

You need to decide if you should take out a travel insurance policy that will cover you just for one holiday, or take out an annual travel insurance policy that will cover you for all the trips you take (within limits) for a whole year. You don’t have to be a very frequent holidaymaker to save with an annual travel insurance policy – for example, an adult travelling within Europe would need to take only three holidays in a year to make a multi-trip travel insurance policy worthwhile.
Travel insurance normally covers you if your baggage and belongings are lost, stolen or damaged – up to a certain limit. As well as an overall limit, travel insurance policies have a limit on individual valuable items such as digital cameras and laptops. Some travel insurance policies won’t pay for the cost of buying new spectacles if they are stolen or damaged while you are away.

Since September 11, 2001, many are looking to travel insurance to safeguard their trip against any unforeseen terrorist attacks at their destination. Many policies now have an “Acts of Terrorism” clause that will reimburse you if you miss or are delayed in getting to our origination or ending destination because of acts of terrorism.

If you’re an adventure traveler who has paid $3,000 up front for a white water rapids package deal in a remote area of South America and you won’t receive any refund if you cancel, then you might want to consider both trip cancellation and emergency medical evacuation insurance. So before you say YES to any travel insurance take a couple of minutes to ensure a smooth trip with a good travel insurance policy.

• 23
  Jun
  2009

• Real Estate Scams in South America

  
  Filed Under: Blogging
  Author: Blog Contributor
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It is very easy for Americans, Canadians and other first-world citizens to get scammed in South America, because protections do not exist for land zoning, title insurance, real estate disclosure laws. Here are a few tips to avoid scams.

- Don’t believe hotel or resort operators. They may seem nice at first and capable of speaking in English, but they’re most likely just trying to make money off the tourists. Hire your own local translator. First, ask the broker to disclose their brokerage fee up front. Then ask to meet the land owner and discuss the selling fee directly with them so that you know the actual selling price. And remember, the seller should pay the brokerage fee, not the buyer. Failure to follow this strategy will get you screwed about half the time in Ecuador.
- Bring your own 50-meter tape measure, and measure the boundaries of the land yourself! There is a good chance that the seller is trying to sell lesser land than agreed. Also, don’t use the surveyors recommended by the person selling the land. Hire your own surveyors.
- This scam results in someone selling you a piece of property and you thinking you own the property even though someone else still has a lien on the property. Without title insurance and a title search, there’s no way to know about this in advance. One day you simply find out that someone else has a claim on your property. Since liens are sometimes very complicated in South and Central America, this is one to be especially careful about. Hire your own attorney and make sure your attorney looks over everything first, while watching out for YOUR interests!
- Never buy a piece of land without seeing it. Do not rely on websites or photos to give you an accurate sense of what’s really there. You might show up and discover you bought a piece of land right next to the city landfill or a smelly pork ranch.

The bottom line for people seeking land in Central or South America is that you should beware of real estate scams and do not have blind trust in any local laws to protect you, because chances are, there are NO local laws! There are no zoning laws, no real estate laws and no laws governing property titles.

• 22
  Jun
  2009

• Tourism in these times of Recession

  
  Filed Under: Blogging
  Author: Blog Contributor
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It is an open secret that tourism industry is experiencing major crisis today just as many other spheres of economy. International travel demand suffered a strong slowdown beginning in June 2008, with growth in international tourism arrivals worldwide falling to 2% during the summer months. The effect of this slowdown is being felt by the airlines and hotel industry strongly. Many of them have adopted measures to sail through these tough times.

Airlines have been shaving spoon sizes and dumping in-flight magazines in a bid to make planes less heavy and save fuel during the credit crunch, reveals the International Air Transport Association. According to Paul Steele, director of the environment at IATA, US’ Northwest Airlines axed spoons from its cutlery pack if the in-flight meal does not need one. Similarly, JAL of Japan reduced a fraction of a centimeter from its entire cutlery to take some weight off the plane. “When you are talking about a jumbo jet with 400 people on board, being served two to three meals, this can save a few kilos,” The Telegraph quoted Steele as saying. “You work out how much fuel that consumes over a year, and you can be talking about a considerable amount of money,” he added.

As far as the hotel industry is concerned, since October 2008, 25 hotels in Norway have gone bankrupt. And the reason as can be expected is the number of foreign visitors to the hotel has fallen by more than 40% so far in 2009; the drop is especially large for American visitors. And the way adopted by the hotel industry to beat the recession blues is by offering free night promos.

Will these strategies adopted by the tourism industry prove to be penny wise, pound foolish, only time will tell.

• 19
  Jun
  2009

• What are we doing for ourselves and our planet?

  
  Filed Under: Blogging
  Author: Blog Contributor
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Ever since the Industrial Revolution, 200 years ago, we the people, have been living in a way that puts pressure on Earth’s natural resources. Driving everywhere in our own cars, flying often, using stacks of plastic bags and leaving lights on everywhere we went. The planet after years if neglect and thoughtlessness, is in a bad shape as a result. The measure of the ills that we do to our planet is measured through carbon footprint. Carbon footprint is the measure of the impact an individual has on the environment through the emission of greenhouse gases.

There is so much we can do in our own small way to reduce our carbon footprint on earth. Are we ignoring the fact that making small concessions is only helping us lead a healthier life in a less polluted environment?

Did you know that approximately $1200 million worth of energy is wasted every year by TVs, stereos, laptops and other electrical appliances left on standby? This releases 4 million tones of carbon dioxide.

It may be a relief for you to know that dishwashers and washing machines are actually a lot better on the environment than washing up the clothes and utensils by hand under running water. Infact don’t pre-rinse the crockery under a running tap , instead just scrape the food scraps after a meal and load it in the dishwasher.

The distance food travels to your plate is measured in food miles. Food transport adds to the carbon dioxide emissions that are contributing to global warming. The catch here is that the further food travels the less fresh it is. It loses vitamins and its nutritional value decreases. It is healthy and less polluting to walk up to the close by local store to buy the groceries rather than drive down to a supermarket which would have heavily packaged food items from all over the world. Remember to carry your own bags and not bring home lots of plastic.

This is but a small glimpse of how we can help ourselves. Do take a minute and rethink the way we have been going about our daily routine and be assured that Earth will keep you happier for longer time.