Michael Steinberger runs Latin Tour Dimensions, a company that is known for its custom tours in Central America and South America, trips that are “complex, in-depth, and expensive.”  I interviewed him to find out what kinds of travel trends he is seeing. We talked about the changing face of tourism, what destinations are hot, and how a travel agent is like a doctor making a diagnosis. A short version of the interview is here, with the rest of it continued after the jump.

What kinds of trends are you seeing in Latin America? What has changed?
On the destination side, Argentina has been crazy–it’s off the map. Whereas every second request used to be Costa Rica, now every second request is Argentina. Plus people are staying longer and doing more. It used to just be Iguazu Falls, Buenos Aires, Bariloche, and then over to Chile. Now people are doing long custom tours of just Argentina and going to Mendoza for wine tours. They’re going beyond Bariloche to Calafate. In Chile, travelers are branching out beyond the well-worn path.

We are also getting a lot more upscale family tour requests now, with soft adventure activities and requests for a different kind of hotel style, one with a real sense of place. It’s a bonding experience.

There has also been a clear shift in what people want to experience when they travel. Before, people went to cities in Europe to see buildings, to Africa to see animals, to Asia to see monuments. But then the baby boomers really got hooked on experiential vacations. They decided they wanted to go to Tikal, Machu Picchu, and remote jungles, to see ancient civilizations. That’s what put Latin America on the map because we have it all. We saw that early on and embraced it. People who travel to Central and South America are well-versed travelers who are looking for more.

Give me some examples of some unusual requests you’ve been able to fulfill.
We do all kinds of adventure activities, but the toughest one to get together was a wine and gourmet tour across Chile and Argentina. We got the request from four couples in New York that had various wine and restaurant connections in their jobs. They knew their stuff and wanted a true gourmet experience. So we called in chefs to take them to market and cook for them, got them into the best restaurants, and had them meet with top winemakers. The challenge was that there wasn’t a structure already set up for this by anyone else. We had to find the right small local suppliers in each place to make it seamless, with the same high level of service throughout.

We also had one family from London that was very involved in polo and horses, so we needed to line up estancias around Argentina that would satisfy them, going beyond the surface level offerings to put them together with real horse people. We welcome challenges like these though. We really enjoy doing them because it shows we’re better equipped than the paint-by-number tour groups offering very similar programs.

See the rest of the interview with Latin Tour Dimension’s Michael Steinberger.

Flying on Copa Airlines feels suspiciously the same as flying on Continental Airlines. The interior looks the same, the seat pitch is the same (cramped 32-inch pitch in coach, decent with leather seats in business class), and the logos are similar. None of this is coincidental: Continental had a 51% stake in the airline at one point. They sold off shares a bit at a time until May of this year, when they sold the remainder for a tidy profit. Copa Air passengers still earn Continental OnePass miles on all flights, with the same (recently hacked down) bonus levels for elite members.

There’s a big difference in one key area though: service. The gate agents are noticeably less harried, the flight attendants are more pleasant, and you don’t have to pay for a cocktail or glass of wine in coach.

Here’s what happened to me though on my last trip to Panama though that really showed me what a great airline this is. Through my own fault, I had said “go ahead” to an agent who sent me an itinerary, not noticing that my flight back was returning to Miami, not my connecting airport of Orlando. A well-tipped concierge at the Bristol Hotel worked it all out for me with Copa on the phone so I could switch the flight with no charge.

At the gate, however, the system wasn’t letting the switch happen without a fee, despite gate agent Cecilia’s attempts to make it right. She spent ten minutes trying to work it out, another ten with her supervisor, then headed to a back room. Another ten minutes went by, but she returned with a smile, handing me my boarding pass, and said, “Please enjoy your flight.” All set, and upgraded to business class on my Y-up fare.

That Cecilia was dedicated! Somehow I can’t imagine any U.S. carrier’s gate agent working that hard to help a customer avoid an extra fee. Even more rare, there were plenty of agents on hand, so there weren’t people behind me in line ready to throw their suitcase at my head.

Don’t expect to get blown away by lie-flat beds, seatback entertainment consoles, or amazing cuisine, but considering that Copa’s fares usually deliver better service at a lower price than others competing on the same route, check them out when comparing options. Business fares and Y class fares are a downright bargain sometimes. Copa flies from five U.S. airports to destinations in Panama (their hub), as well as Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile.

Copa has been named Best Airline in Central America and the Caribbean for the five consecutive years by the aviation-industry research company Skytrax.

Oddly, this is one of the few airlines that hasn’t released its data to SeatGuru.com, so you’ll have to rely on the sites own seating chart when booking online.

Related info:

A Luxury Yacht Cruise in Panama

The best luxury hotels in Panama

I was quoted a few times in Travel Weekly last week in a long article about the impressive tourism numbers coming out of Argentina and Chile. I’ve been saying for quite a while that there is a good bit of “Europe substitution” going on—travelers deciding to head south instead of across the Atlantic. Now we have some hard numbers to back it up. The number of Americans visiting Europe this past July was down 15 percent from 2007. Meanwhile, the number of Americans going to Chile in the first half of ‘08 increased by 15.8 percent. Coincidence?

No, it just makes lots more sense from a value standpoint. When the Ritz-Carlton in Santiago costs in dollars what the Ritz-Carlton in Barcelona costs in euros, that’s a difference of 40 or 50 percent. Stroll around town for a meal and a bottle of wine in Santiago or Buenos Aires and the difference is even more dramatic, as in a tab that’s 1/4 to 1/3 a comparable meal in Europe, even at the best restaurant in town. There’s value even at the very top of the possible budget range, whether you are looking at hotels, adventure tour packages, or villa rentals.

LAN is stepping up flights as a result, says Travel Weekly. “The carrier now fields four nonstop flights per week from New York Kennedy to Santiago plus daily service from Kennedy via Lima, Peru; 10 weekly flights from Miami; and three weekly, nonstop flights from Los Angeles plus four via Lima. This month, the airline is set to launch service to Toronto.

Luxury Chile Travel page

Luxury Argentina Travel page

[Photo by Lorie Bennett, from our review of Explora Salto Chico in Patagonia.]

Running a magazine full of perfume and watch ads (surrounded by a bit of travel content) is apparently not a sure thing anymore. Town & Country Travel is folding.

Here’s the quote from Wooden Horse Publishing:

TOWN & COUNTRY TRAVEL, the quarterly spin-off, has been folded by Hearst Magazines.  Launched in 2003, the magazine became a supplement in 2006.  “Given the small number of people affected, and that the product never was a full-fledged newsstand magazine, but rather a polybagged brand extension, it made sense to fold the content into the flagship,” a spokeswoman said…

I’m not sure what it takes to be “a full-fledged newsstand magazine” since I used to see a stack of copies on the shelf at every Borders and Barnes & Noble. Perhaps they mean you couldn’t find it at Wal-mart?

The magazine was launched with plenty of fanfare in 2003 and this quote from the editor-in-chief looks kind of comical now. “I believe the moment is right for a magazine called Town & Country Travel, largely because I know there is an audience eager for it.” Hmmm, maybe not so eager after all.

The one article from this magazine that really stuck with me was perhaps emblematic of the limits of its audience. Fifteen women took so much stuff with them on an Inca Trail hike that they required 54 porters and 800 pounds of food. The New York City writer doing the story admitted that she hadn’t been away from home for more than a week since her 12-year-old daughter was born.

The publisher will still operate a travel section on their website, but for Latin America anyway, there are better places to find luxury travel features and reviews.

In the process of cleaning off my desk I came upon this article I had ripped out of Conde Nast Traveler on “green hotels,” appropriately called False Advertising. Just as half the products and herbal concoctions in Korea claimed to be “good for health” when I was there, every hotel with an ample PR budget seems to be falling all over itself to say, “We’re green!” Witness the writer’s experience in Costa Rica:

When I asked the manager of one so-called eco-hotel what makes his property green, he responded, “Well, for one thing, all of our rooms have air-conditioning, but mostly I think it’s the ocean view.” The proprietor of a similar establishment, when asked the same question, told me that her assistant manager was a volunteer firefighter in his spare time. Among the massive all-inclusive resorts and water-guzzling golf courses of the gated “Papagayo Eco-Development,” I spoke to reservationists who assured me of strong commitments to the environment on the part of their employers, but when pressed could point to nothing specific.

Unfortunately, it’s only fair for me to admit that the more luxurious a hotel is, the more wasteful it is usually going to be. A budget guesthouse isn’t going to have its own huge generators and the guests are probably not drinking eight plastic bottles of water a day from their always-on minibar. The guests there are going to use their sheets and towels more than one night—often they don’t have a choice! But a big hotel can do other things right when they’re getting $500 a night.

The article notes that Lapa Rios Ecolodge can afford to transport items 230 miles to a recycling center. Orient-Express carted decades worth of trash away from Machu Picchu when it set up operations in Peru and is at the forefront of keeping the area clean because of its Hiram Bingham train and the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge. A big new development I just visited in Honduras is the first one on its bay to recycle all waste water on site and use solar power to heat its hot water. These things cost money.

Some efforts don’t cost money though and are more a matter of attitude, of really caring what happens to the land and the people surrounding the place where tourists are sequestered.

I’ll leave it with this quote from the False Advertising article:

“I think it really boils down to one question: How does a business contribute to the conservation of the local community?” says Ronald Sanabria, of the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance. “If a business—even one in a city—can’t provide you with a concrete response, it’s not practicing ecotourism and there is no substance to any claim that it is. It’s up to the consumer to decide if that’s acceptable.”