Cleveland named top destination

Cleveland named top destination

CLEVELAND

The city of Cleveland is getting some attention from the travel press as a top destination.

Fodor’s last week named Cleveland as one of its 25 must-see travel destinations for 2015. That distinction — notes The Plain Dealer newspaper — comes on the heels of the city being named by Travel + Leisure magazine as one of the “50 Best Places to Travel” next year.

Fodor’s Travel, which publishes popular guidebooks, websites and mobile apps, lauded Cleveland as a “Rust Belt-chic town for art and culture vultures, basketball fans, and stalwart foodies.”

The city was listed by Fodor’s alongside Paris, Singapore and Barbados as top travel destinations.

Holiday travelers

AAA projects 98.6 million Americans will journey 50 miles or more from home during the year-end holiday season, an increase of four percent from the 94.8 million people who traveled last year.

This upward trend marks the highest forecast growth rate for the year-end holiday season since 2009 and the highest travel volume for the holiday period on record. (AAA data dates back to 2001.)

The year-end holiday period is defined as Tuesday, December 23 to Sunday, January 4.

Geography quiz

Q. What is the highest point in South America?

A. Mount Aconcagua, Argentina. Located in the Andes, just north of Santiago, Chile, it tops out at about 22,841 feet.

App for geysers

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo.

Yellowstone National Park fans can get a heads up on when Old Faithful and five other geysers are set to erupt thanks to a new app available for smartphones and tablets.

Yellowstone has the largest concentration of active geysers in the world.

The geyser app also features a link to a webcam so people can view live eruptions of Old Faithful and other nearby geysers.

There’s also a FAQ section that provides answers to frequently asked questions and other details about Yellowstone’s geysers.

The National Park Service geysers app is available in the Google Play and Apple app stores.

Las Vegas breaks own record

LAS VEGAS

Las Vegas tourism officials say 40 million people have visited the destination in 2014, breaking an all-time record for the gambling and entertainment hub.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority announced last week that the record number of visitors had been reached.

The agency’s spokeswoman Courtney Fitzgerald says the number includes overnight stays — not day-trippers — so the group’s research team works hand in hand with the destination’s hotels to tabulate the monthly and annual visitor counts.

Combined dispatches