Interview with Peter Greenberg

Peter Greenberg is the Travel Editor for NBC's Today show, CNBC, and MSNBC and he is often a featured guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show and The View. He hosts his own radio show, Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio. In addition to his television and radio accolades, Greenberg is an Emmy Award-winning writer and celebrated author – having written several books including TheNew York Times best-selling book series, The Travel Detective®, which uncovers secrets the airline, hotel, cruise, and rental car industries don't want consumers to know. His newest book, Don't Go There: Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World, is available in bookstores and online.

How did you become a travel expert?
I started my professional journalism career as the West Coast correspondent for Newsweek magazine straight out of college at the University of Wisconsin. I covered nine states in the U.S. and Mexico during the time of Vietnam, Watergate, Howard Hughes, Gary Gilmore, Patty Hearst and numerous other major cover stories. I was always the person with the suitcase in the trunk of my car, always racing to be the first at the scene of something. And that meant I traveled a lot.

It soon dawned on me that no one was covering travel as news. And yet people were desperate for information. Consequently, I started the first investigative travel column. It premiered in the Chicago Tribune, and then was syndicated to about 60 major newspapers across the U.S. It gave people the kind of information they needed so they could ask the questions that allowed them to avoid being travel victims.

Why do you consider yourself a travel "detective?"
Much of travel writing is unabashed boosterism, cheerleading, and every third word ends with "st"- best, greatest, most, loveliest. And therein lies the problem; more often than not it is misleading. So I'd like to think I started the investigative travel reporting era that continues today.

How do you get your travel news?
On any given day, I'm reading 16 newspapers and 35 magazines and that's before I go through any number of websites. I work the phones, talk to my sources and constantly e-mail my staff - and those sources - for updates.

How often do you travel?
I travel around 410,000 miles a year, which puts me on a plane nearly 200 days a year somewhere in the world.

How many countries have you been to?
At last count, about 151, which is about 150 more than most Americans, considering how few Americans still have passports.

How do you go about planning your trips?
I do not delegate my travel planning to anyone. I book everything myself with the philosophy that plan A will never work. As a result, I am at any given time carrying between 20 and 40 separate, fully-paid refundable airline tickets, so that if Plan A doesn't work, Plan B is hopeless, and Plan C is dead on arrival, I still have D, E, F and G at my disposal.

Do you have a favorite website or source of information?
I like www.joesentme.com, and also Chris Elliott's blog. Airfarewatchdog.com is helpful, and Tripadvisor is entertaining.

What do you always take with you?
Two laptops (just in case), three separate cell phones (with different services), a flashlight, extra batteries, those airline tickets I told you about, a small first aid kit, my passport, and my BlackBerry. I don't check bags domestically and haven't for more than eight years. I FedEx my bags ahead of me.

What are some of the trends you see in travel?
Too much dependence on websites that aren't properly vetted for accuracy. Just because it's on the web doesn't mean it's true. And despite a tough economy and one getting worse, travel will still triumph because it is essentially part of our cultural DNA. We cannot help ourselves. We must travel.

Could you share some of your travel tips?
Be a contrarian. Disobey all airport signs and you'll not only get to where you need to go, you'll get there faster. Never ever take a no from someone not empowered to give you a yes in the first place. There are two kinds of airline bags: carry-on and lost.

If you could recommend someone see three places in their lifetime, which would they be?

The place they were born.

The place they'd like to be buried.

And the place where they first fell in love.

Is there a place you haven't been to that you'd like to visit?
Based on my country count, I still have about 45 more countries to visit. So the answer, of course is at the very minimum…45, because there are so many places where I'd also like to return. 

Where do you go to get away from it all?
Six months a year, I'm actually on duty as an active volunteer fireman in New York and so I spend as much time as I can at my beach house on Fire Island, off the coast of Long Island. It is my very special place, where I go to revisit my youth, freedom and innocence. Thirty-two miles long, never more than a half mile wide. No cars (other than fire trucks). Just bicycles, wagons and boats. I've never been happier anywhere else.