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April 2005

Time For A Smile

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
A pessimist's blood type is always b-negative.
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
A successful diet is the triumph of mind over platter.
A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor
A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

Corduroy pillows are making headlines.
Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.
Marriage is the mourning after the knot before.
Acupuncture is a jab well done.
Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

Every calendar's days are numbered.
Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.
Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway.)
Sea captains don't like crew cuts.
A backward poet writes inverse.
Energizer Bunny arrested - charged with battery.
Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.
Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.
When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.
When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.
When you dream in color, it's a pigment of your imagination.
When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.
Reading whilst sunbathing makes you well-red.
With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
Without geometry, life is pointless.
A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.
A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.
A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.
In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.
A lot of money is tainted. It taint yours and it taint mine.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I used to work in a blanket factory, but it folded.
She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

Travel Trends

Consumers prefer booking online: A new study by Keynote Systems revealed steady growth in the number of consumers stating they use the Internet to book lodging accommodations, with 67% of consumers booking online, compared to 57% using the telephone. “We’ve seen a continual increase in consumer comfort and use of the Internet for booking travel arrangements, but this is the first time we have seen all the online options for booking beating the offline options,” said Dr. Bonny Brown, director of research and public services for Keynote. “We have come to a point where consumers with Internet access are now more likely to book online as compared to using the phone.”

European women booking travel online: Women are catching the men up fast when it comes to using the internet to book travel, new statistics reveal. Research company Neilsen/NetRatings said that women logging on to travel sites now account for 44 percent of visitors, compared with 36 per cent at the same time last year. Gabrielle Prior, European internet analyst for Neilsen/NetRatings, said: "Women value the speed and convenience of online shopping and it seems this trend extends to researching and booking travel online. We would expect this trend to continue, as we have seen in the US where 49 percent of users in this category are female."

Hotel rates and occupancies rise: PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts increasing occupancy rates at hotels, allowing these properties to raise daily rates significantly. PwC forecasted that average daily rate in 2005 would jump 4.3 percent, following a 3.9 percent increase in 2004. It expects rates to rise another 4.6 percent in 2006.

Lodging costs up five percent: AAA’s annual vacation costs survey shows lodging and dining costs set to increase by a combined average of five percent this in 2005. Lodging rates will average $129 a night, up 3.9 percent from 2004. Rising travel demand has pushed hotel rates higher in may cities and other destinations, according to the AAA.

U.S. Tourism Growth: TravelMole reports “nine straight quarters of growth in the U.S. tourism industry, with a 6.7% increase in 2004, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Sales of food, airline travel, recreation, and entertainment fueled the growth. Tourism sales last year rose to $960.7 billion from $900 billion the previous year. That marked the third straight annual increase in sales of travel-related goods and services. The biggest chunk of the growth, $548.6 billion, came from hotel accommodations, airfares, souvenirs or direct tourism sales.”

Web-savvy Seniors: Recent studies show that the percentage of older Americans who go online is steadily increasing. “In 2000, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that only 15% of Americans 65 or older reported access to the Internet. In 2004 that number had risen to 22%. And in a phone survey conducted in January of 2005, 26% of Americans age 65 and over reported having Internet access. As the population ages, however, more people who regularly used the internet at work are retiring and the over-65 set will probably have higher rates of connectivity and report higher rates of "high trust" activities.“

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Inns for Sale

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