things that have made travel better

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THE INNOVATION ISSUE
INFINITY POOLS
Where does the water end and the
horizon begin? That, in a nutshell, is the
question sparked by the best infinity
pools (also known as vanishing-edge
pools, infinity-edge pools and negativeedge pools)—now a regular feature at
many high-end hotels and resorts. The
first such pool? At Versailles, bien sur.
And we love this one, on the 57th floor
of the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
THINGS THAT HAVE
MADE TRAVEL BETTER
From the first transatlantic flights to boutique hotels and travel
apps, the world’s far-flung pockets become more accessible and
alluring every day. To celebrate Delta’s 85th anniversary, we picked
a (subjective) list of the top 85 innovations from the past 200 years
(or so) that make travel easier, safer and more exhilarating than ever.
B Y C H R I S C L AY T O N , E L I Z A B E T H D O Y L E , S A R A H E L B E R T, S T E V E M A R S H & J A S O N O L I V E R N I X O N
P O RT R A I T I L LU S T R AT I O N S B Y J O E L B E NJA M I N
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2 THE AIRPLANE
The Wright brothers are credited with bringing us wing to wing with the birds in
December 1903, when their Wright Flyer caught air in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
But New Zealand farmer Richard Pearce may have actually been the first in March 1902.
3 MOVING WALKWAYS
d e lta
If you need to run to make your
connection, anything that makes you
smove
k y /faster
j u niseworth
2 0 1 its
4 weight
85 in gold.
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JET ENGINE
Frank Whittle was a runty, 21-year-old math whiz in the
Royal Air Force when he invented the modern jet engine
in 1929. Whittle’s superiors didn’t let him fly a plane for
years after entering the RAF, but being grounded may have
helped him solve the first huge conundrum in aviation
history: Planes cruising at high altitude are able to fly
faster and farther because they encounter less turbulence,
but the higher a plane flies, the worse the piston engine
performs in the thin air. Whittle’s compression engine
solved this problem, paving the way for the modern commercial airliner.
SpaceX
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SPACE TRAVEL
Back in 1961, when Soviet
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin
became the first human to
make it beyond the Earth’s
atmosphere, it took the
heat of a Cold War to get
one of us up there. Today,
billionaires such as Richard
Branson and Elon Musk are
planning imminent private
space flight. Someday, we’ll
all be able to orbit in coach.
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6
THE GUIDEBOOK
The modern travel book
dates to Murray’s Handbook
for Travellers, from 1836.
Its publisher, the Baedeker
company, quickly became
the gold standard for 19thcentury travelers, while
Fodor’s and Frommer’s took
center stage after World
War II. Today, Lonely Planet,
Let’s Go, Rough Guides and
“prestige” books such as Mr.
& Mrs. Smith compete with
digital apps.
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Sure, they look ridiculous and aren’t the easiest to pack (unless
THE
86 d NECK
e l t a s kPILLOW
y / j u n e 2 0you
1 4get the kind that blows up), but ergonomic travel pillows
make all the difference on long flights. Try the $40 Kuhi Comfort.
The concierge team at The
Corinthia Hotel London
CONCIERGE SERVICES
Concierges have long been the
holders of the golden keys at hotels:
They can arrange everything from
theater tickets to far-flung demands.
The term originally hails from France
where the “concierge” controlled
the keys to the royal household and
oversaw a range of responsibilities.
In the late 1990s, concierges moved
from the world’s top hostelries to
stand-alone organizations 12 such
as Quintessentially Lifestyle and
Luxury Attache, which arrange
services and unparalleled access.
Luxury-minded credit cards offer
similar services, too, such as
American Express’ Platinum and
Black cards.
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DIGITAL CAMERAS
First sold by Fuji in 1989, they revolutionized
the way we record our experiences, making it
easier and cheaper to capture images on the go.
CHECK-IN KIOSKS
No one likes to wait in line if they don’t have to.
The automated machines were a great step in making
travel even more convenient.
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LIE-FLAT SEATS
Delta is the first
airline to have full lie-flat
BusinessElite seats with
direct aisle access on all
of its wide-body overseas
planes. Many of them even feature Westin Heavenly
Bedding, so your flight will soar by.
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MOBILE BOARDING PASSES
No more losing our paper boarding passes
between Starbucks and the gate! Delta offers
eBoarding passes in more than 200 cities.
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ONLINE TICKETING & CHECK IN
Each year, more than 23 million tickets are sold
in more than 104 countries worldwide via Delta.com.
IN-FLIGHT WI-FI
A decade ago, using the Internet at 30,000
feet was fantasy. But thanks to improvements in
satellite and air-to-ground networks, today you can
surf to your heart’s content. Delta now has Wi-Fi on
more than 3,400 flights daily—and it was the first
to announce that customers could use portable
electronic devices below 10,000 feet.
Hallelujah!
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SMOKING BANS (ON
PLANES, IN HOTELS AND
RESTAURANTS, ETC.)
ONLINE TRAVEL AGENCIES
When brick-and-mortar travel agencies
went on life support in the 1990s, online
planners jumped in to fill the void. Think
Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Travelocity—
one-stop shops that book and sell hotel
rooms, plane tickets and car rentals. And
because every successful business model
spawns a submodel, aggregators such as
Kayak and Hipmunk soon arrived on their
heels. Then again, you can always just go to
Delta.com and take care of your tickets and
travel plans the old-fashioned way: right at
the source.
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You’ll likely encounter plenty
of useful (and cool!) travel
innovations on your next Delta
trip. Here are a few we love.
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“I don’t want to get the same
looks I give people when
they get on a plane holding
a baby: ‘That’s a cute baby,
just keep walking, keep
walking, keep going, keep
going. . . .’ ” — ELLEN DEGENERES
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REWARDS
From Sky Miles to Starwood points,
travel these days can sometimes feel
like a big game. Get in on it!
FLY DELTA APP
You can plan your trip, buy your tickets,
check in, store your boarding passes, get flight
info, track your bags and more with this awardwinning app for smartphones and tablets,
which has been downloaded 11 million times.
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IN-FLIGHT MEALS
Delta has raised the bar on
airline food with award-winning chefs
such as Michael Chiarello creating inflight
BusinessElite menus on certain routes.
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FLIGHT ATTENDANTS
Imagine if you had to get up to get
your own drink. Yeah . . . exactly.
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THE GRAND TOUR
From the 17th century
until the mid-19th
century, it was a rite
of passage mostly for
gentlemen of a certain
class (especially
English landed gentry)
to take The Grand Tour,
a quasi-educational
tour through France,
Italy and, perhaps,
Greece. The goal was
to absorb art, culture
and music in cities such
as Florence, Venice and
Rome. Travelers on The
Grand Tour would then
return home months
later with crates filled
with art and books that
set them apart in terms
of their class standing.
Vestiges of The Grand
Tour continued well
into the early 1900s
after transportation
became easier and
more democratized:
Think literary character
Lucy Honeychurch
ambling through the
streets of Florence
without a Baedeker in
E. M. Forster’s classic
novel A Room with a
View. The typical Grand
Tour itinerary began
in Dover, England,
and continued on to
Belgium, France and
Switzerland before
a lengthy stay in
Italy. Today, the term
grand tour connotes
an extended tour of
continental Europe.
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STANDARD HIGH
LINE, NYC
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UNIQUE HOTEL
OFFERINGS
Ever wanted to learn the
ancient sport of falconry? The
Greenbrier in West Virginia
offers lessons. Or head to the
Maasai Mara game reserve
in Kenya and Cottar’s 1920s
Safari Camp for Maasai
warrior training. Today, hotels
are helping travelers immerse
themselves even deeper into
the local culture.
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VOLUNTOURISM
Global travelers are
increasingly choosing to
mix travel and philanthropy,
from building soccer
fields to helping orphaned
lion cubs. Some wellregarded programs include
Roadmonkey, Globe Aware
and Habitat for Humanity—
but there are many more.
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ECOTOURISM
We can get behind
environmentally responsible
travel that often pairs pristine
natural environs with sexy
ecolodges—from Samasati
Nature Retreat in Costa Rica
to Bulungula Lodge in South
Africa, co-owned by Xhosa
villagers.
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THE EURO
The official currency of the
eurozone debuted in 1999 to
eliminate fluctuation risks
and exchange costs while encouraging trade between the
18 member countries, thus
making it easier for tourists
to spend, spend, spend.
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THE BOEING 747
The jumbo jet, queen of the
skies! Boeing debuted this
two-story commercial jet
in 1969, and it flew its first
commercial flight (with Pan
American World Airways)
from New York to London
the next year. Since then,
the 747 fleet has logged 42
billion nautical miles—or
101,500 trips from the Earth
to the moon and back.
EVOLUTION OF
CRUISE SHIPS
The passenger cruise
industry began in England
in the 1840s, and it quickly
burgeoned, offering both
steerage and plush transatlantic crossings. The industry
recalibrated thanks to large
passenger jets in the 1960s.
Today, the cruise industry attracts 20.1 million passengers
worldwide. And while some
cruise liners are enormous,
smaller ships cater to those
who want a more intimate
experiences. Think the historic Sea Cloud or lines such
as Seabourn, Silversea and
SeaDream Yacht Club.
THE BOUTIQUE HOTEL
Thank British lifestyle guru/hotelier Anouska
Hempel and American style setter/hotelier Ian
Schrager for launching the “boutique” hotel trend
in the 1980s. So what are the tenets of a boutique
property? Unique design and architecture.
Attention to service. Location. The ability to
“surprise and delight.” Think of the trend as a
response to the impersonal and sprawling hotel
trend of the 1970s. Today, hoteliers such as Sean
MacPherson (NYC’s The Marlton) and Jeff Klein
(LA’s Sunset Tower)—along with hotel groups
such as the Ace and André Balazs
Properties—continue to
move the needle.
BLAKES HOTEL,
LONDON
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SKYPE
Remember when you
had to pay soaring
long-distance rates
to talk to loved ones
back home? Or seek
out an international
calling card? Skype
(and Google, Facetime,
etc.) made that
unnecessary with
Internet-based voice
and video calling.
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INT’L
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d e l CALLING
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What you used to call your
parents and beg for more
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money while studying abroad.
TRAVELER’S CHECKS
First appeared in Europe in
1772, currently dying a slow
death by credit card.
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Whether using it on a plane, in a hotel, in an
WI-FI airport or wherever, many now take it for granted
that we can connect to the Internet wirelessly.
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“There’s nothing
American tourists like
more than the things
they can get at home.”
— STEPHEN COLBERT
TRAVEL GUIDE APPS
There’s an app for every
facet of travel these days, including the all-important city guide.
Many are crowd-sourced, including TripAdvisor’s and one called
Gogobot. Others, such as Tripomatic, specialize in itineraries by
organizing your activities around
specific travel days.
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PEER-TO-PEER RENTALS
Services such as VRBO and Airbnb are the wonderfully inevitable result of our civilization
becoming both more urbane and more networked. It’s a simple design efficiency. When I’m
not living in my amazing loft in Haight Ashbury or Ipanema, you should be, right?
THE HOTEL
MONACO,
ALEXANDRIA,
VIRGINA
THE LUMEN,
DALLAS
Delta Sky
Club at
HartsfieldJackson
Atlanta
International
Airport
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MICHELIN GUIDE
In 1900, brothers
Andre and Edouard Michelin
were trying to sell some tires
when they introduced the
first edition of the Michelin
Guide, a free pamphlet
containing maps of France
and a list of car
mechanics and
hotels. By 1926,
the brothers had
expanded beyond
the French
border and introduced
the star system. Today the
guides employ a mysterious,
completely anonymous
network of “inspectors” to
rate the best restaurants all
over the world.
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TRAVEL
AGENCIES
The first travel agency is
attributed to Englishman
Thomas Cook, who began
leading outings in 1841 (then
for a group of temperance
campaigners). About three
decades later, he and his
son formed Thomas Cook &
Son, and the modern travel
agency was born. By 1888,
the firm had offices all over
the world.
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THE SEAT BELT
Truly a lifesaver, whether
you’re traveling or not.
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THE RETURN OF THE AIRPORT
Pre-World War II airports occupied prime locations
close to city centers: Think NYC’s LaGuardia,
Tempelhof in Berlin and Croydon in London.
Eventually, airports moved out of the city and became sprawling institutions accessed via multilane
highways. Still, they retained a certain glamour:
In the 1970s, travelers often dressed up to catch
their flights. Today, the airport has come full circle.
Bespoke shopping and high-end restaurant options
abound, and rail services to city centers are being
implemented and upgraded. Airports in locations
such as Singapore, Amsterdam and Hong Kong
have become the stuff of legend.
CROWD-SOURCED
REVIEWS
Remember 10 years ago, before
Yelp and TripAdvisor, when
somebody would roll their eyes
and say, “everyone’s a critic” as
if it was a bad thing? Now we
can barely remember what we
did before socially networked
travel and dining sites and apps
began instantly giving us the
word from the ground. Yes,
sometimes Mike H. can be too
stingy or generous with a review,
but the ability to get a real-time
statistical mean from the man
on the street?
Game changer.
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NATIONAL PARKS
Congress began setting aside land as national parks
and monuments in 1872 with the creation of Yellowstone National Park. Dedicated to preserving
and protecting the country’s most stunning natural and cultural lands, the move showed foresight
and wisdom, and these often-sprawling spaces—
now numbering 401 parks, 2,461 national historic
landmarks and 49 national heritage areas—are
some of the United States’ most-visited places,
having drawn more than 11 billion visitors since the
creation of the National Park Service in 1916.
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EURAIL PASS
The friend of
backpacking college
students everywhere,
making cross-European
train travel a lot easier.
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TAXICABS
Named after
the taximeter, which
measures how far a
vehicle has traveled,
gas-powered taxis first
started appearing on
major city streets around
the turn of the 20th
century. (There are now
more than 13,000 yellow
taxis in NYC alone.)
Before that, you had
to hire a horse-drawn
carriage. Or walk. In fact,
some of today’s newest
taxis are going back to
the basics: legs, pedals,
wheels. From London
to Seattle, you can hop
in a pedicab 46 and let
someone else do the
legwork. For an updated
take on a traditional
taxi, just pull up your
Uber, Lyft or Taxi Magic
app 47 , order a car and
pay for it right on your
smartphone.
Lake Clark
National Park,
Alaska
GPS
When the U.S. Department of Defense
put the 24th and final satellite in place in 1993, the
global positioning system, or GPS, came online,
eventually giving everybody—after a little political
wrangling—the ability to know exactly where they
are on our planet.
A mustachioed
Lyft car
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CHEF-DRIVEN RESTAURANTS
It wasn’t until the late 1990s that chefs became superstars: Thank the Food Network
for launching the likes of Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay and Mario Batali and making them
cultural icons. Think back to the days when words such as mesclun, monkfish and kale
weren’t part of our everyday culinary lexicon. Fast-forward to today and chefs such as
Jamie Oliver, Guy Fieri and Giada De Laurentiis are household names with far-reaching
brands that extend well beyond the kitchen. For the euro-cognoscenti, there are
superstar chefs such as Heston Blumenthal, who made his mark at Fat Duck in the English
countryside near London, and Ferran Adria, whose elBulli occupied a pilgrimage-worthy
location near Barcelona. And how about chef René Redzepi at Noma in Copenhagen?
“People say there’s delays on flights. Delays,
really? New York to California in five hours,
that used to take 30 years, a bunch of people
used to die on the way there, have a baby,
you would end up with a whole different
group of people by the time you got there.
Now you watch a movie and [go to the
bathroom] and you’re home.” — LOUIS C. K.
GAME CHANGERS
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CELL PHONES
A phone. That
travels with you. Genius. The
first “noncar” mobile phone
was the Motorola DynaTAC
8000x (i.e., “The Brick”), which
was big, heavy, took forever
to charge and had very limited
talk time. The first one sold
for $3,995 in 1983. The first 3G flip phone was the
Motorola StarTAC, which debuted in 1996, and now,
of course, we have our miraculous smartphones. 50
Miami Vice
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COMMERCIAL
TRANSATLANTIC
FLIGHTS
The first U.S. aircraft to
carry passengers across
the Atlantic was a Pan Am
Boeing 314, which flew from
Port Washington, New York,
to Southampton, England, in
24 hours and 30 minutes, for
$375 one-way.
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AIRPORT NAP CABINS
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CREDIT
CARDS
Not that we didn’t
love traveler’s
checks, but what
a concept! An
(almost, not quite)
open-ended loan,
attached to a piece
of plastic, taken all
over the world.
Sometimes you just need a snooze. There’s Napcab in Munich;
Yotel in Amsterdam and London, Sleepbox in Moscow; Minute
Suites in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Dallas and Snoozecube in Dubai.
RADAR
The Germans
pioneered the idea of
tracking objects by
bouncing radio waves
off of them, but multiple
countries refined radar
technology before and
during WWII. Military
defense, air traffic
control and the forecast
would never be the same.
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FLIGHT DECKS
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THE INTERNET
Thank you, Al Gore!
These al fresco airport lounges are coming back: Think the
recently opened Sky Deck at the Delta Sky Club in Atlanta, which
d e l t a s k y / j u n e 2 0 1 4 91
was created in partnership with design guru Thom Filicia.
FRANK GEHRY
Walt Disney
Concert Hall in
Los Angeles
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HERZOG &
DE MEURON
The Prada Building
in Tokyo
WINGLETS
The bent tips on some planes’
wingtips help reduce drag, preventing a “tornado” effect in the
airflow behind the plane caused
by the differences in pressure on
the top and bottom of the wings.
Their use was promoted in the ’70s
in response to the energy crisis.
“Right now, I’m hankering for
new adventures. . . . Ninety
percent of the time I’m having
romantic-comedy fantasies in
which I’m wearing little pencil
skirts and hurrying down to
the subway.” — MINDY KALING
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REM KOOLHAAS
CCT Tower in Beijing
THE STARCHITECT
Frank Gehry was a well-respected 68-year-old
architect when he finished the Guggenheim Museum
in Bilbao, Spain. Gehry’s rippling titanium meringue
of a museum revitalized the Basque capital, bringing
in 1 million visitors a year and changing international
expectations of what architecture is supposed to do
and who it can attract. And it gave Gehry the most
recognizable name in his profession since Frank
Lloyd Wright. In fact, a whole new term was born:
Now people refer to him (and other big names in
his field, from Rem Koolhaas to Herzog &
de Meuron) as “starchitects.”
HIGH-SPEED RAIL
Built in Japan in 1964, the world’s first bullet train covered the
320 miles from Osaka to Tokyo in about three hours, topping out
at 130 mph (the 2014 version of that train can hit 275 mph). Today,
high-speed rail whisks tourists and commuters to all manner of
destinations around the world, including the famous London-to-Paris
Eurostar line that zips beneath the English Channel.
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HOSTELS
From student-friendly bunkhouses
to no-frills hotel rooms, hostels have
played a key role in democratizing travel
(i.e., keeping the poor backpacker in cheap
wine and baguettes—not that we’d know
anything about that).
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PORTABLE DVD
PLAYERS
Flights with children suddenly
became a whole lot more
enjoyable! Now many people
travel with tablets 66 or minilaptops (and children’s headphones), but
either way: A happy child is a happy parent.
SANTIAGO
CALATRAVA
Palau de les Arts
Opera House in
Valencia, Spain
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MAGNETIC ROOM KEYS
The original mechanical key lock
that operated thanks to a pattern of
holes, aka the VingCard, evolved into the
modern-day key card in the 1980s. Sensors
scan the programmed magnetic strip
on the credit card-sized key card, thus
allowing entry into a hotel room.
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GLOBAL ENTRY
The program allows low-risk travelers who have
been vetted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection
to breeze through customs when returning to the U.S. Place your
passport in the automated kiosk, scan your fingertips and make
a customs declaration and you are good to go. TSA PreCheck 61
works similarly on a domestic level and allows “known” travelers
to bypass the standard security lines at American airports.
NATIONAL
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d e l t a s k y GEOGRAPHIC
/ june 2014
The National Geographic Society was formed 126 years ago, and since then
many of us stricken with a particularly American variety of wanderlust
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have amassed a stack of these famously yellow windowpaned magazines.
THE FANNY PACK
Everything you needed, right around your waist! At
least until they became so uncool that “Weird Al”
Yankovic included them in his song “White & Nerdy.”
RENTAL CARS
Thank Joe Saunders of Omaha,
Nebraska, for opening the first car rental
company in 1916. After World War II, the
car rental industry blossomed in tandem
with the growth of the airline industry.
The airport car rental industry began with
Warren Avis in 1946 at Detroit’s Willow
Run Airport.
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COIN CARD
The Bluetooth card allows all of your credit and
bank cards to be stored on one supercard. Plus,
when paired with your phone, you can get an alert if you leave
your Coin behind. onlycoin.com
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TRAVEL CHANNEL
The folks behind the channel bet
on the fact that we’d tune in to travel
vicariously through its globetrotting hosts.
And they were right (big-time).
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COMPRESSION SOCKS
Most of them are pretty dang unattractive. But compression socks are
recommended for those who are at risk for blood clots—or deep vein
thrombosis—on long flights. Three cheers for knee socks!
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THEME PARKS
How can you make a kid’s dream come true? Take her to meet
Anna and Elsa at DisneyWorld. Or to the Wizarding World of
d e l t a s k y / j u n e 2 0 1 4 93
Harry Potter. Or to Legoland. Or Busch Gardens . . .
Fairmont Fit
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WIRED HOTEL
ROOMS
Personalization is a buzzword
in the lodging biz right now.
At Hotel 1000 in Seattle, for
example, guests can control
room temp and music
selection via a wall panel
connected to the building’s
greater IP infrastructure. Inroom Wi-Fi, meanwhile, has
become a requisite amenity
at hotels everywhere.
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AGRITOURISM
Today’s foodie travelers boast about eating at
restaurants that support local producers (think Manresa
in Los Gatos, California). And some are taking that notion
to the extreme by planning trips to “agritourism” regions
marketed for their culinary bounty. Think Tuscany, with
its celebrated vintners and cheesemakers. Many farms allow visitors to stay on site, such as Oregon’s Abbey Road
Farm B & B, home to a cherry orchard and dairy goats.
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Goats at Abbey
Road Farm
TRAVEL IN POP
CULTURE
Provence hasn’t been the
same since English writer
Peter Mayle wrote up his
“year,” and there’s no telling
how much industry Frances
Mayes stirred up under the
Tuscan sun. Think what Eat,
Pray, Love did for Bali, and
A Room with a View lured
us to Florence to seek love
among a postcard-perfect
backdrop. Looking back in
time, thank Herodotus for
his explorations of Egypt,
Marco Polo for his China
syndrome and Mark Twain
for being an innocent
abroad. And haven’t we all
channeled a bit of On the
Road or Into the Wild?
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Jupiter Hotel
INFLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
Long gone are the days of $5 headsets and trying to
situate yourself in your seat so you could see a sliver
of Three Men and a Baby playing on the screen six rows
up. Today, there are numerous monitors, if not individual screens in each seatback, allowing you to pick the
movie, TV show, music or game to pass the time. Most
also feature a real-time, interactive map to answer the
always-present question: “Are we there yet?”
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Manresa
INSTAGRAM
The nagging impulse to pull out your smartphone
and snap whatever vista or monument lies before you is
sometimes castigated as being egotistical or self-involved.
But with Instagram, there’s more and more evidence that
it’s well meaning—we really just want to share. Is that so
different than taking a Polaroid 77 ?
United States patent No. 3,653,474, the roller suitcase, was created in 1972 when a luggage exec
SUITCASE
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d e l t a s k y2.0
/ j u put
n e the
2 0casters
1 4 from a garment trunk on his too-heavy suitcase. Basically the best thing since
sliced bread . . . until the 360° spinner suitcase, which was even more amazing.
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THE MINIBAR
ROOFTOP BARS
We’re not sure when the first rooftop
bar opened for business, but we’re
guessing it’s sometime around
the construction of the first roof.
Beverage + view + sky = Win. Unless
it’s packed and steaming hot outside
and people are doing upside-down
margaritas, in which case, maybe not.
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Someday, in some intergalactic magazine,
the western world will be recognized for its
finest contribution to the good life.
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ECO-FRIENDLY
HOTEL
PROGRAMS
A trend illustrated brilliantly
by the doughnut-shaped
waste-reducing bar of soap
offered to guests at the
Jupiter Hotel in Portland,
Oregon.
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HOTEL FITNESS PROGRAMS
Hotels are catching up with travelers’ desire to stay
healthy on the road: Westin has teamed up with New
Balance and offers running shoes for use at some of
its hotels. At Trump Hotels, you can request Under
Armour apparel, fitness gear and iPod Shuffles. TRYP
by Wyndham offers designated fitness rooms, and
Fairmont Hotels offers its Fairmont Fit program.
LUGGAGE
TRACKERS
You can track
your checked bags using
Delta’s mobile app on your
smartphone, or at Delta.
com, but if you want to
do it yourself, the FAAapproved TrakDot tracker
uses a chip embedded with
microelectronics and cell
technologies to relay your
bag’s progress. It even
enters “airplane mode”
in flight and sends you a
text when you land to let
you know your bag arrived
with you.
85
83
WRINKLE-FREE CLOTHES
The Refinery Rooftop
Bar in NYC
Dockers may have been an early pioneer in this travel godsend—especially
for business trips—but plenty of brands have followed, including J.Crew,
84
with its recently released Ludlow suit in wrinkle-resistant Italian wool.
THE CHUNNEL
The Chunnel features three parallel undersea tunnels,
which means travel between London and Paris takes just
d e l t a s k y / j u n e 2 0 1 4 95
over an hour on the high-speed Eurostar.