It seems like just a few days ago we welcomed in the New Year, yet already we’re gearing up for Valentine’s Day hotel deals. 2012 will be over in a blink, so if you want to create fond memories to last the entire year, consider one of these five romantic getaways.

Milliken Creek Inn & Spa

Heart of Napa Authentic Trio at the Milliken Creek Inn & Spa, Napa Valley

Wine, chocolates, spa treatment—the holiday package from this 12-room luxury boutique property in Napa Valley has it all. Even better: it’s good weekends from Feb. 1 through July 31, 2012. The Milliken Creek package starts at $640 per night for two guests and includes a two-night stay, a five-hour luxury vehicle wine tour provided by Peralta Luxury Tours, gourmet boxed lunch and wine tasting at Crocker & Starr winery, cave tour and tasting at Keever Vineyards, barrel tasting at Fontanella Family Winery, 90-minute chocolate decadence couples spa treatment, and romantic turndown including rose petals, chocolate-covered strawberries and Champagne. Visit www.MillikenCreekInn.com or call 800-822-8418.

14 Days of Valentine’s at the Eventi Hotel, New York City

Can’t afford to splash “I love you” to your sweetheart on the monitor during a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden? Then this Valentine’s Day deal from Kimpton’s Eventi Hotel in New York City is just for you. In addition to a welcome bouquet of flowers and Champagne upon arrival, you’ll get a box of chocolate-dipped strawberries, dinner for two at Bar Basque or breakfast in bed, 14 percent off hotel spa treatments (trust me, they’re worth it—I stayed here the night before my wedding and had a fantastic facial and massage) and, here’s what you’ve been waiting for, a special Valentine’s Day message displayed on the HD-format LED screen located in the Big Screen Plaza next to the hotel. The package is available from Feb. 1 to 14, 2012, and rates start at $329 per night, depending on date and room type selected. Send monitor messages, up to 20 words, to info@bigscreenplaza.com by Feb. 1. Book online or call 866-996-8396 and mention the rate code LOVE.

Kimpton Hotels also is offering a Robe-mance special at participating hotels starting at $269 per night and includes two zebra- or leopard-print bathrobes (a $180 value) and a $25 food and beverage credit. Mention or enter ROBES in the rate-code box.

Pink Goes Green at the Shore Hotel, Santa Monica, California

Practical romantics will appreciate this beachside break from the eco-friendly Shore Hotel in Santa Monica, a newly built Silver LEED-registered property that uses local, sustainable, and recycled materials and products as much as possible. The Pink Goes Green package includes overnight accommodations, two bicycle rentals for use during your stay—ideal for morning or sunset rides along the beach, a bottle of organic Champagne or wine, a 60-minute couples massage at Tikkun Spa and a $50 credit to The Lobster Restaurant. Rates start at $469 per night. Call 310-458-1515 or visit www.shorehotel.com.

Hacienda San Angel

Sweetheart Serenade at the Hacienda San Angel, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Add the warmth of Mexico to your relationship with a trip to Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific Coast and a stay at the luxury boutique hotel Hacienda San Angel. Its Sweetheart Serenade Valentine’s Day package includes a three-night stay in a junior suite, private terrace dinner for two, private mariachi serenade on the terrace or from the cobblestone streets below, one in-suite massage per person and daily breakfast. The package is priced at $1,620 and is available for stays throughout the month of February. Call 877-815-6594 or visit www.haciendasanangel.com.

Valentine’s Day Package at the Rome Cavalieri in Rome, Italy

What could be more romantic than spending Valentine’s Day in one of the most romantic cities in the world—Rome? The overnight holiday package at the Rome Cavalieri, a Waldorf Astoria hotel, includes a padlock, and the hotel encourages couples to lock it to the lamppost at the Ponte Milvio bridge and throw the key into the Tiber River as a sign of their love. Even if you don’t go for romantic rituals, the hotel’s Valentine’s Day package also includes a bottle of Champagne and in-room chocolates, breakfast buffet and a three-course dinner for two at L’Uliveto restaurant, one Caribbean Moments spa package which includes use of the hydro-massage, saunas, Turkish bath, two St. Barth Harmony massages, two scrubs, two papaya facial masks and two cocktails at the Grand Spa Café. Rates start at 680 euros. Visit www.romecavalieri.com for more details.

Photos: Milliken Creek Inn & Spa, Hacienda San Angel

Where would you like to travel in 2012? For people in the travel industry, it’s often easier to come up with a list of where they wouldn’t like to travel. So many destinations, so little time.

This time of year, travel lists abound, with each, naturally, subjective in its own way. Looking for top luxury spots? Budget destinations? Off-the-beaten-path spots? How about top ethical places in the developing world? There’s a list for you.

Mayan ruins at Tulum, Mexico.

Without reading a single one, a destination gambler’s best odds for this year would be to include London and its surroundings, home of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Not far behind should be locales in Mexico and Central America that were part of the Mayan world. That culture, after all, predicts that the world as we know it will transition into its next phase on December 21, 2012.

Many of the current 2012 travel lists do indeed mention one or both of these destinations/regions, namely CNN’s World’s Top Destinations for 2012 (the first four of which also include Chicago and Myanmar and happen to align with my personal list of where I’m likely heading this year) and Frommer’s Best Destinations for 2012.

The Frommer’s list is particularly interesting as it’s geared toward the hard-to-define traveler who simply loves to explore the world and runs the gamut from budget to luxury. Destination choices are all over the map, literally and figuratively, from Canada’s Bay of Fundy to Japan’s Fukuoka, Ghana to Girona, Spain, with Beirut, Curacao, Kansas City and Chongqing, China, rounding out the list.

Uptake’s own Yen Lee harnessed the social media power of Facebook’s friend graph to capture the most buzzed about places, based on more than 200 million comments, status updates, photo descriptions and check-ins. The list published on Huffington Post includes some classic Southeast Asian gems, including Hoi An, Vietnam, and Luang Prabang, Laos, along with Copacabana, Bolivia, and Portland, Oregon, stateside.

Lonely Planet has expanded its audience significantly beyond intrepid backpackers during the past decade, so its annual lists now seem to include more places that make one wonder “why there” as opposed to “where is there.” There remain, however, some great picks. For top U.S. destinations, LP editors recommend the always-enjoyable Chicago, the Four Corners region of the Southwest, California’s Gold Country and, perhaps more surprisingly than the other spots, Cincinnati. Ever hear of Culebra? No? It’s an island 17 miles off the coast of Puerto Rico. The Caribbean tropics can be yours, no passport required.

Luxury lovers who turn first to picks from Travel & Leisure‘s Hottest Destinations of 2012 will find a variety of remote resort destinations from which to choose, including Sri Lanka, Xishuangbanna in China’s Yunnan Province, and Mozambique’s Northern Coast, along with Bentonville, Arkansas. That’s right—Arkansas, which made the list thanks to the Moshe Safdie-designed Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, opened in November.

Budget Travel magazine has a terrific list of value destinations, including Egypt—surely a bargain these days and desperately trying to rebuild its tourism industry; Atlantic Canada, which also appears on a variety of lists; and Taipei, a personal favorite, for its culinary scene and diverse topography. Stateside San Diego and San Antonio are the places to stretch your dollars.

Conscientious and green travelers can thank Ethical Traveler for its newly released list of the Developing Worlds 10 Best Ethical Destinations (press release), based on their accomplishments in the areas of environmental protection, social welfare, and human rights. The winners, in alphabetical order, are: Argentina, The Bahamas, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominica, Latvia, Mauritius, Palau, Serbia and Uruguay.

The editors at The New York Times haven’t yet published their list for 2012, but they recommended 41 places to go in 2011. That probably was inclusive enough to last most people a good few years, or even a decade.

Photo: D.M. Airoldi

The weekend fishing-boat accident off the east coast of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula on Sunday is the latest in a string of unfortunate incidents that has Mexico tourism in the news, but for all the wrong reasons.

A tourist boat carrying more than 40 passengers and crew capsized and sank on Sunday, leaving those stranded to swim to safety. Most did. The lone confirmed casualty is an American man from Northern California. Seven others remain missing; six are U.S. citizens. The search continues today.

View of the bay from the hills of Zihuatanejo.

This news comes two weeks after Princess Cruises canceled its calls to Puerto Vallarta for the rest of the year, which had Mexico Tourism officials in shock, according to USA Today. A few months earlier, Princess and other cruise lines also cut their stops in Mazatlan, Mexico, over safety concerns.

Continued drug-trafficking violence in parts of the country contributed to the cruise lines’ decisions, and the latest U.S. Department of State warning regarding travel to Mexico, didn’t help. Issued April 22, 2011, the DOS update mainly targeted the U.S.-Mexico border area, particularly roads and highways. It included a few other states with an uptick in violence, however, including Sinaloa, Jalisco, Nayarit and Guerrero, which cover the Pacific Coast destinations of Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Ixtapa, Zihuatanejo and Acapulco.

The warning also explicitly states that “[t]here is no evidence that U.S. tourists have been targeted by criminal elements due to their citizenship.”

It’s important to remember that fact, because for lovers of Mexico, the situation is heartbreaking. Many people travel to Mexico and remain safe and have an enjoyable vacation. I’ve visited Mexico three times in the past year—to the Club Med in Ixtapa and twice, alone, to the Yucatan Peninsula region (Tulum and interior towns)—and have always felt completely safe, and I plan to spend a month in the country later this year.

While travelers should indeed pay attention to travel warnings, do their research and carefully make their destination decisions, that doesn’t mean the entire country should be off limits. Certain areas are dangerous. Mexico is a big country, just like the United States. If there were, say, a significant increase in violence in a city on the U.S. East Coast, would that warrant canceling a trip planned for Los Angeles or San Francisco? Of course not.

Mexico Tourism is banking on others feeling the same way. Rodolfo Lopez-Negrete, in the currently challenging position of the board’s chief operating officer, has been tasked with the ambitious job of tripling foreign tourism revenues to $40 billion by 2018 to make Mexico the fifth most-visited country in the world. The focus is on the country’s cultural destinations.

To aid in this effort, last week Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon announced the launch of “Mundo Maya 2012″ (Mayan World 2012), a program to increase tourism and promote Mayan culture in Mexico. Between now and Dec. 21, 2012, when the Mayan calendar officially ends, the Mexican government will promote a variety of events in southeastern Mexico’s “Mayan World,” made up of the states Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco, Quintana Roo and Yucatan. This region is home to six of Mexico’s 27 UNESCO World Heritage sites, the most found in any one country.

This is smart tourism marketing, targeting a region that includes one of the safest areas in Mexico—the Yucatan Peninsula, home to Cancun, the Riviera Maya, Chichen Itza, the colonial city of Merida, and several other ruins, historic towns and worthwhile attractions. Still, it’s going to be hard to change peoples’ perspectives, especially when it comes to crime and foreign geography.

To help put the Mexican safety situation into perspective, Travel Weekly has created a sort of “heat map” for Mexico, showing the hot spots for violence or where caution is advised versus those areas that are deemed safe. There are plenty of green “safe” dots on the map.

It’ll be interesting to see how successful Mexico Tourism is in turning the tide over the next 18 months. In the meantime, here’s hoping the search-and-rescue team is successful in the Baja waters today.

Photo: D.M.Airoldi

Related posts:
Mexico Tourism and Violence Expected to Rise in 2011
Falcon Lake Shooting Threatens Mexico Tourism
U.S. State Department Flip-Flops on Travel Alerts

In yet another sign that New York City is arguably more family friendly than ever before, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Monday that Disney’s reach in the city will soon expand from Times Square over to the Hudson River, from where Disney Cruise Line will begin sailing in May 2012.

The popular family cruise line is also expanding its presence to the West Coast and the Gulf of Mexico with sailings set from Seattle and Galveston, Texas, making it easier for more families to experience the magic of Disney on the high seas.

Speaking of magic, Disney’s newest ship, the Disney Magic, launched on Jan. 26, 2011, will service sailings from New York with 20 cruises from the Big Apple’s Manhattan Cruise Terminal to the Bahamas, with stops at Nassau, Port Canaveral and Disney’s private island Castaway Key. The Canadian cruises will stop at at Halifax, Nova Scotia and Saint John, New Brunswick.

Rates start at $370 per person for a two-night at-sea sail, $715 for a five-night Canada cruise and $1,240 for an eight-night Bahamas itinerary. The ship calls potentially will bring 45,000 additional embarking passengers into New York City, resulting in an estimated $11 million in direct spending.

The Disney Magic also will service Galveston’s 12 seven-night cruises to the western Caribbean and Mexico, with stops at Grand Cayman, Costa Maya and Cozumel; rates start at $840 per person. The Disney Wonder will sail 14 seven-night cruises from Seattle to British Columbia and Alaska, with stops at Tracy Arm, Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan and Victoria. Rates start from $917 per person.

The Disney Magic can accommodate 2,700 passengers with 10 decks. More than 950 cast and crew will be on board the ship. The Disney Cruise Line fleet will expand again in April 2012 with the addition of the Disney Fantasy, a sister-ship to the Disney Magic.

Photo credit: Disney Cruise Line

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