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Tracee Ellis Ross’ Travel Essentials

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For some, solo travel can be a daunting venture. For Golden Globe Award-winning actress and haircare mogul Tracee Ellis Ross, it’s one of life’s greatest pleasures. And now she has a show about it. Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross just debuted on the Roku Channel, and over three episodes the Girlfriends and Black-ish star takes viewers on her journeys through Marrakesh, Morocco; Marbella, Spain, and Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Thanks to a mix of documentary-style footage and up-close-and-personal video diaries, her show feels more intimate than most travel productions. “Solo vacation, but kinda you’re with me,” she tells viewers with a laugh at the start of the second episode. And she’s right. We’re there as she (over)packs, gets food poisoning, calls home to Mom (“Mom” here being Diana Ross, of course), and connects with locals every place she goes. Ross shows us how she likes to “follow her heart, go to beautiful places, wear pretty clothes, and enjoy [her] own company.”

Ross spoke with Thrillist associate editor Annie Harrigan about the joys of traveling alone, her best tips for taking that first solo vacation, and what she always packs for a trip.

Thrillist: What’s your favorite solo travel memory?

Tracee Ellis Ross: I have so many. I took my first solo trip at 24 or 25 and I’ve been doing it ever since. I think there’s all different kinds of solo travel people: solo travel for adventure people, solo travel to meet people, or people like me who solo travel to find a sense of relaxation. I just really love the experience of it and so I don’t know that I could pick a favorite. It was a really joyful experience to be able to figure out how to share that very intimate experience of solo travel in a show environment and how to create a kind of video diary of sorts. I really enjoyed going to these three cities. So those would be my favorite memories: Marrakesh, Marbella, and Maya Coba.

How did you get into solo travel?

I was doing a show on Lifetime called The Dish, and I was making the most money I’d ever made, and I was like, “I want to go on a trip.” I had seen in Conde Nast Traveler the Pink Sands resort in The Bahamas and I was like, “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life and I want to go.” I don’t remember flying there. I don’t remember all of that part of it, but I remember the room I stayed in. It was like a little casita on its own. I think it was the first place I ever tried a cocktail. There was some sort of umbrella in it. I remember the sand was pink. It was the most beautiful place I’de ever been, and I had such a good experience. I didn’t feel lonely. I remember packing my beautiful things and it just worked, and so I’ve done it ever since.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to solo travel but is nervous about it?

I’ve got some real good tips for you. OK, so the first thing I would say is if you’ve never solo traveled and you want to, but you’re nervous about it, try going to dinner by yourself on a Wednesday night when the restaurant opens. If you can accomplish that with no problem, go on a Friday or a Saturday night when the restaurant is full of couples and groups of people. Go by yourself and see how you feel. Make a reservation, but go up to that hostess table and say party of one. If you feel good about that, but you’re still nervous about planning a trip, go on a trip to someplace that you’ve already been with people so you know what it’s like. Same hotel, wherever it is you went, go by yourself, but you’ll know where you’re going and see how that feels. You also could tack a couple of days onto a trip that you already have planned with people.

Any tips for choosing a trip?

Ask yourself what kind of solo trip you want. Do you want adventure? Do you want to meet other people? Do you want to be in a resort? Do you want to go on a museum tour? Do you want to go on a food tour? Do you want to go shopping? Decide what you want. Perhaps it’s the kind of trip I take, which is really about the luxury of being by yourself—following your heart around, slowing your pace down, and enjoying your own company. And then once you know what kind of trip you want, you can plan it from there. And then I always say to people, particularly because solo travel can leave you more vulnerable than other travel, ask yourself what parts of your identity are joyful, beautiful, empowered parts of you that might be perceived as a vulnerability out in a foreign place. If you are LGBTQ, a woman, Black, whatever it may be, that might be perceived as a vulnerability. Do your due diligence to the best of your ability to make sure it’s a place that will receive you with open arms so that you can enjoy your experience to the fullest.

What is the first thing you do when you arrive at a new destination?

I like to bring Sono Wipes and the first thing I do when I get somewhere is I like to wipe it down. I wipe down the bathtub, the floor, the shower, the sink, the toilet, the bedside table. I also always bring my own pillow and I like to unpack when I get where I’m going. I travel with a lot of luggage. My philosophy on packing is B.I.A. Bring it all. So that being said, that’s part of the ritual of when I get somewhere.

One of the other things I love to do is get a lymphatic drainage massage. It helps the transition into the place. I love to take a bath. It gets you off that airplane and in water and your body can settle. But other than that, it kind of depends on where I’m going and what I’m doing.

 



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The Best Apps for Managing Your Travel Expenses and Receipts

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Work trips can be exhausting and full of small expenses that quickly add up. Between the Ubers to and from the airport, the snacks to keep up the energy, and the long dinners with clients, spending can quickly sprawl out of control. The last thing you want upon returning is to search through a voluminous pile of crumpled receipts only to find they’re not all there.

WIRED and Condé Nast Traveler are here to help. Bringing together our expertise on software and travel, we picked a few of our favorite apps for tracking expenses on work trips. These could be worth trying out during your next big conference or even adopting as a wider organization. Do you have a reliable option that you trust and it’s not included on this list? Make your voice heard in the comments.

Expensify

Expensify is probably the best app for the widest number of people, from freelancers to bigger staffs. It includes all of the must-haves like receipt scanning, distance tracking, and easy categorization as well as a way to manage how you submit the reports and who is involved with the approval process. It’s not too flashy overall, but integrations with other apps commonly used on work trips, like Uber, Delta, and Workday, are nice to have.

Expensify for iOS, Android, and macOS

SAP Concur

Concur is popular with larger enterprises for handling travel; we’ve used it a few times for work trips ourselves. While the SAP Concur app has some rough edges, it’s worth having on your smartphone if that’s the expense protocol used where you work. Like all of these picks, you can take photos of your receipts in the app to streamline the process. Are you driving? Automatic distance capture can help you file those mileage reports as well.

SAP Concur for iOS and Android

This story is part of The New Era of Work Travel, a collaboration between the editors of Condé Nast Traveler and WIRED to help you navigate the perks and pitfalls of the modern business trip.

Zoho Expense

Like many other expense apps, Zoho Expense lets you save your corporate credit card on the platform and scan receipts as you go. The app then helps you categorize and itemize expenses and extract important details. Hitting the road? No need for guesswork; you can track car mileage with the click of a button to get accurate reimbursements for driving time. You can also calculate your petty cash spend, and businesses can regulate employees’ daily allowances with customizable rules made just for them. It’s also one of the most budget-friendly expense apps, with free plans available for small businesses (three users or fewer) and a premium plan available at just $7 per month.



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The Internet’s Biggest Travel Nerd Shares Pointers on Points

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Another time, I was looking for flights within French Polynesia for my honeymoon. I knew that domestic flights were running around $330 round-trip, but Travelocity priced it instead at $33 due to a currency conversion issue. It’s just a matter of paying attention, looking at the fine print, and meeting other people and sharing opportunities with them.

Is that how the blog started—a passion for sharing the fine print?

When I lived in Washington, DC, in 2002, a bunch of people I knew were starting political blogs, but I didn’t feel like I had something unique to say that nobody was saying in that space. I thought, what is it that people ask me about? So I just started writing up travel tips. One weekend in May I set up a free account at Blogspot.com and started writing for, you know, 30 people reading it, and then 500, and then 1,000. Last month, June, blog traffic dipped a bit to 5.5 million visitors, but in March it was up to 7.5 million.

All right then, let’s talk numbers. Every point system feels a little different than the last. It’s hard to know what, say, 100,000 miles is really worth when it comes to any given loyalty program. What’s your method?

So, I have a close idea of the value of each currency. I value a Marriott point at 65 basis points, for example, and a Hilton point at around 40 or 45, which is about where I value an IHG point, whereas I value a Hyatt point at 1.4 cents, which is around what I’m valuing an American and a United mile at. I’m valuing a Delta mile at about a penny, a Virgin mile at about nine-tenths of a cent.

Using those metrics as a rule of thumb, how do you make the most of your miles?

You want to think about the value of miles as a private currency. There’s no central bank, and it’s going to be subject to a given price level. The simplest model for this is the same sort of analysis you would do with inflation for a government-issued currency. Take the simple monetarist formula, MV equals PQ. The amount of money in the economy times velocity, or the speed at which it’s spent, is going to be equivalent to the amount of Q, quantity, the amount of goods in the economy, and P, the price level, right?

Yes, right. I knew that.

Price is affected by the quantity of seats on planes. Airlines have gotten quite good at what they call capacity discipline and not flying flights that aren’t selling. They’re printing a lot more miles than are being redeemed in a given year, and there are a lot more ways to earn the miles.

How can a newbie get started?

Don’t leave miles on the table. Sign up for programs. Track your points. I use AwardWallet, but keep track of your accounts however you want to do it. Grab your account number when you’re buying something online and go through a shopping portal. Maximize it by comparing portals, whether it’s something like Savewise or Cashback Monitor.

You sound like someone who, like any good points hacker, knows their way around Microsoft Excel.

I don’t really use spreadsheets. I have a really good memory, and I’ve been paying attention to this stuff for almost 30 years.

A version of this story originally appeared on WIRED.



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Why everyone's travelling to hit a ball

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From padel to pickleball, here’s why the court is the new destination



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