News from home now available on the road

New York — So you’re at a hotel in South America, or maybe you’re on a trans-Atlantic cruise. And you get a yearning for news from home, but you can’t or don’t feel like logging on to a computer.

What’s the solution? Now there’s a service that enables travelers to receive hard-copy, same-day, complete editions of 170 newspapers around the globe, including more than two dozen U.S. dailies.

The news is printed out in an 11-by-17-inch format, allowing news junkies to read their papers poolside, in the dining room or in a cab en route to their next meeting.

Newspaper Direct is available through a network of 300 hotels in 40 countries and more than a dozen cruise ships.

Prices are set by the hotel or cruise delivering the paper, with typical charges around $4 or $5 per newspaper. For details, visit www.newspaperdirect.com.

Survey names top sites for business meetings

St. Louis — Las Vegas and Orlando are the top destinations chosen by employers planning business meetings or rewarding their workers with so-called “incentive” trips, according to a new survey.

The survey is based on 1,000 meetings, group incentive trips and special-event programs organized by the Maritz Travel Co. in 2003. These trips involved some 350,000 participants.

Rounding out Maritz’s top 10 list are San Diego, New York, Chicago, Miami, Phoenix-Scottsdale, Maui and New Orleans.

Many destinations are chosen with the understanding that employees often bring spouses and children along on their company trips. These days, Las Vegas is considered a family-friendly destination, which helps account for why it beat out Orlando on the list.

Incentive trips are all-expense paid trips used by some large companies to reward employees.

Eight out of 10 business meetings and incentive trips are set up in the United States and Canada, according to Maritz’s survey. The top five most popular destinations for those scheduled abroad in 2003 were Italy, France, Switzerland, England and Spain.