You can’t travel better if you don’t know what’s going on in the world around you. That’s why each week, ESSENCE will bring you the latest in trending travel news to keep you informed, discover new adventures, and provide you with useful tips that will help you journey deeper and cheaper.
This week, we’re getting a taste of first-class lounge life with Qantas, plotting on direct flights to New Zealand with American Airlines, escaping to the Motherland in Tanzania. Check out our weekly round-up of what’s trending in travel right now.
Article continues after video.
NEWS
- Airbnb is changing its platform, eliminating ‘party houses’ after tragedy
Airbnb has announced a commitment to a series of changes designed to ban “party houses” from its platform, as a response to a shooting at a crowded Halloween party that left five dead. - You can now buy your way into Qantas’ first and business class airport lounges for as little as $35
At select lounges around the world, including London, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong, travelers who aren’t even flying Qantas let alone business or first class will be allowed to pay for entry. - LAX apologized for the catastrophic roll-out of a policy banning Uber and Lyft drivers from picking people up outside the terminal
Passengers vented their frustrations at LAX on social media, with some saying it took them an hour to get an Uber or Lyft. - American Airlines Is Finally Making It Easier to Fly to New Zealand
The airline announced its plan to launch the only nonstop route between Los Angeles International Airport and Christchurch, New Zealand starting in October 2020.
DEALS
- FLIGHT DEAL: United / All Nippon Airways: Washington D.C. – Bangkok, Thailand. $596. Roundtrip, including all Taxes
- FLIGHT DEAL: Lufthansa / Ethiopian / Swiss: San Francisco – Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. $636. Roundtrip, including all Taxes
- FLIGHT DEAL: Non-stop from New York to Athens, Greece for only $388 roundtrip
- FLIGHT DEAL: Cleveland, Ohio to the US Virgin Islands for only $295 roundtrip