Travel News: Most Instagrammed Movie Locations, Vancouver’s Bird Parade, and More U.S. Travelers Are Buying Trip Insurance
From the posh shopping of Beverly Hills to the mountains of Austria, from an unusually colorful and playful parade in Vancouver, B.C., to new findings about the value of travel insurance, this week’s top travel news is all about empowering you to make your last-minute summer or fall vacation plans right now.
MOST INSTAGRAMMED MOVIE LOCATIONS
It’s no coincidence that some of the most beautiful and intriguing movie locations also make some of the best vacation destinations. After all, film location scouts spend much of their time on the road discovering and evaluating potential shoot locations for unique beauty and atmosphere. When the folks at On The Go Tours decided to crunch the numbers on how often popular movie locations were tagged on Instagram, we had to know their findings. Here, some of the most Instagrammed movie locations in the world:
- Beverly Hills, CA. In the heart of Tinseltown, this little city-within-a-city boasts iconic Rodeo Drive, perhaps best known as the site of Julia Roberts’s shopping spree in Pretty Woman. Maybe that’s why Beverly Hills tops the list, with 3.9 million Instagram hashtags.
- Salzburg, Austria. You know it as the home to the Von Trapp family in The Sound of Music (it’s also Mozart’s birthplace), and this gorgeous mountain city has logged 1.7 million hashtags.
- Dubrovnik, Croatia. This ancient city has become better known in recent years thanks to its supporting role in TV’s Game of Thrones, earning it 1.5 million hashtags to date.
- Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. This eye-popping casino attained movie-icon status when Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise rode the escalator in Rain Man, and the site’s 1.3 million hashtags suggest many of us have never forgotten that scene.
- Notting Hill, London. We'll give you one guess which 90s rom-com made this neighborhood an Instagram sensation, with 950,000 hashtags to date. Hint: The film starred Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, suggesting that Roberts, thanks to Pretty Woman and Notting Hill, has attained the (admittedly niche) distinction of being the world’s most Instagram-hashtag-inspiring actor.
VANCOUVER’S BIRD PARADE
Psst! Are you busy on August 20? Well, clear your calendar and fly to Vancouver, B.C., where bird lovers will, um, flock for Birds on Parade, celebrating the 2018 International Ornithological Congress and the Vancouver International Bird Festival, which runs from August 19 through 26. The parade will include costumed bird stilt dancers, bird choruses, and handmade bird puppets, with an emphasis on the birds that live in or migrate through British Columbia.
MORE U.S. TRAVELERS ARE BUYING TRIP INSURANCE
AAA reports that nearly four in 10 Americans are likely to purchase travel insurance for international trips, with 88 percent saying that trip-cancellation protection is their top priority when considering insurance. “More than 30 million family travelers will visit an international destination this year, 9 percent more than just two years ago,” said Bill Sutherland, senior vice president of AAA Travel and Publishing. “There are just too many unknowns, like family emergencies and natural disasters, which can throw an unexpected wrench into a planned vacation. Travelers are increasingly not taking chances and they’re choosing to invest in the value and peace of mind that travel insurance can provide, for international as well as domestic and cruise vacations.”