Columbus, Ohio, is a business and shopping hub. The 15th-largest city in the United States is home to the headquarters of corporations—Big Lots, Victoria's Secret, Express, Inc. and a plethora of others—that fill shoppers' bags across the nation.
Could any small town in the world fathom receiving 1 million visitors in 40 days? It is not a dream, but a reality for Danzhai Wanda Town in China.
Since its premier in 2003, Wicked has garnered worldwide attention and accolades for its storyline, music, set and costume design.
"It's a great show. The music is fun. It's got a lot of spectacle. So many of us grew up watching The Wizard of Oz, and Wicked is very clever. People enjoy watching a take on a story they thought they knew so well," said Susan Sampliner, Company Manager of Wicked.
Millennials better make some room in that plane, train or automobile: Generation Z is beginning to enter the travel scene. Consisting of people born in the late 1990s to 2010s, they have grown up in a connected and instantaneous environment. They're adaptive and technologically savvy global citizens with aspirations to change the world.
And they want to see the world, too.
The recent hurricanes in the United States and the Caribbean, the earthquake in Mexico, and floods occurring in parts of Europe ought to serve once again to remind us that much of the tourism industry is dependent on Mother Nature. Although we tend to focus tourism security more on human actions such as terrorism or crime, these acts of nature are as or often even more deadly than acts perpetrated by humans.
