By Katie Doten, on December 21, 2020

Travel Podcast S2 Ep #9: Movie Magic And The Holidays

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It’s that time of year again – where we settle down on the couch with a plate of snacks and a favorite beverage, and watch ALL.THE.HOLIDAY.MOVIES!

On this episode of Out Travel the System, we’re living vicariously through picture-perfect scenes and solvable plot problems, and doing some advance research for future destinations to fully get into the Christmas spirit.

Along for the (sleigh) ride with host Nisreene Atassi are Tracy Lanza, Senior VP of Integrated Marketing for Brand USA, and Ron Oliver, a long-time T.V. and movie director, screenwriter, and producer. You may have already watched thisthis, or this from him.

We talk about small town vs big city for splashy holiday celebrations, and ways to get that holiday movie look and feel in your life this year. Listen in to gather up some inspiration to mark the occasion.

There are some specific hotels mentioned in the episode as well, and you can find out more about them here:
The Plaza in New York
The Drake in Chicago
The Fairmont in San Francisco
The Boulderado in Colorado

 


Expedia Travel Podcast



Movie Magic And The Holidays

Nisreene Atassi: Nothing signals the start of the holiday season quite like the announcement of the year’s latest holiday movie lineup. Whether you like to dig into the made-for-TV variety, old school favorites, or perhaps the latest blockbuster hits, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that they’ve become a big part of the holiday season for many people, myself included. Today, we’re hopping on the Christmas train to explore why these holiday staples aren’t just for easy viewing, but also a fantastic source of some serious winter travel inspiration. I’m Nisreene Atassi, and this is Out Travel the System.

I’m not going to lie, my love for holiday movies is a bit of a guilty pleasure. Come November, you can find me curled up on the couch, watching back-to-back movies on the Hallmark channel while I search for a cozy cabin to book for the weekend in a very big, desperate attempt to recreate some of that holiday movie magic. I’ve got a couple of guests with me today who are no strangers to finding that picture perfect vacation town, and are ready to impart their wisdom and share some of their insider tips to help me on this quest. Today, I’ve got Ron Oliver. He’s a director, writer, and producer with more than 80 credits to his name, a dozen made-for-TV holiday movies like Christmas at the Plaza and The Christmas Train. Welcome to Out Travel the System, Ron.

Ron Oliver: Thank you. I am delighted to be here.

Nisreene Atassi: I’ve also got with me Tracy Lanza. Tracy is the Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing for Brand USA, which is focused on helping travelers explore all that the U.S. has to offer. Hi Tracy. So glad to have you here with us.

Tracy Lanza: Hi there. Thank you so much for having me.

Nisreene Atassi: Okay, so let’s dig in. Ron. I’m going to start with you. There’s a very specific look and feel to these types of holiday movies. Tell us a little bit about the creative process you go through when you’re starting a new holiday project.

Ron Oliver: Well, first of all, you try to come up with a great concept. It usually involves Christmas and a boy meets girl or boy loses girl, or this year a boy meets boy. So we’ve got that central idea, and then as that develops, you try to find a setting. Sometimes as you mentioned, we do it on a train, The Christmas Train. Sometimes we do it in a small town. We start with that. You start with a place and an idea and a feeling, and then you go from there. You write the script and develop the story, and then you start looking for the place to make the movie.

Nisreene Atassi: Where does a lot of your inspiration come from when you’re starting to dream of this place or the setting?

Ron Oliver: Oh, it’s nostalgia. When I grew up, I grew up in a very, very small town in central Ontario, Canada. It was a population of 900 people, but it was the exact kind of Christmas town that you imagined when you think of a small town Christmas. It had a main street and it was a tree line with snow and Christmas lights and all the store windows would do up the decorations. So I’m six years old looking out the window and seeing this vision of what Christmas is. I’ve never forgotten that feeling I get just thinking of that place. That’s what I keep in my back pocket when I’m coming up with these movies, is that you want to give the audience that same feeling that I had when I was six, looking out at the Christmas window and seeing this town spread out in front of me, knowing full well that in a matter of days, possibly hours, the tree would be laden with goodies and I’d be getting all sorts of great things.

So there’s a little bit of that, but that’s a feeling that I have that works really well when you’re coming up with these films. I keep that vision in my head when I’m running it.

Nisreene Atassi: Well, what’s the name of the town?

Ron Oliver: It was a town called Dundalk.

Nisreene Atassi: Dundalk?

Ron Oliver: Dundalk. Ontario, Canada. I would like to think that they still have that feeling. I’m going to suspect, given the way of the world, that maybe they don’t, maybe the town has like so many towns has lost some of its charm, but in my mind, it’s still there.

Nisreene Atassi: You know, I think this year more than ever, people are really craving some of the more traditional holiday scenes and that nostalgia that you’re talking about, especially given that they may not be able to travel very far or they may not be able to even see their family, which I a real change for so many of us. What tips can you give them, Ron, for finding the right destination that you might give to, let’s say your location scout, who was searching for that picture perfect holiday movie town?

Ron Oliver: You know, it’s funny, because the towns that we create in the movies are often cobbled together pieces of different towns. One town will have a marvelous main street, and another town will have a beautiful park. In another town, we’ll have a row of houses. So these towns are essentially, the ones we do in the films, are essentially fantasies that we’re creating. There are a few great towns that I’ve used as inspiration that I look at.

There’s this very small town in Michigan called Marshall, Michigan, and I know that town because it’s got the American Museum of Magic and I was a magician. Well, I still am, really. But I went there years and years ago, and I was there a couple of times. Once in the summer, once at Christmas time. It’s the exact town you’re looking for. It’s got the gazebo in the middle of town where you just know in the summertime there’s a band, and you have the beautiful park in the center of town. You’ve got trees lining either side. Hopefully you’ve got, and I tell this to my locations guys and girls, that hopefully you’ve got storefronts that haven’t been turned into glass and steel mixed stores. Places that still have the nostalgic sense of the buildings that were built in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s and so on.

Nisreene Atassi: As you’re describing it, I feel like I’m seeing these pictures from the movies and things like that. So I definitely get that feeling. Tracy, nobody knows America quite like you and your team. What small towns have you all come across that maybe scream holiday movie magic?

Tracy Lanza: One of them is a bit on the nose, but in Cleveland, Ohio, they have restored the set of A Christmas Story with the Red Ryder BB gun and Ralphie’s family and his bedroom and all this kind of stuff. It’s really interesting because it’s a visit to a set, but it feels very much like the 1940s, 1950s America. I would encourage anybody who’s interested in a great small town feel and a great Christmas story feel to go there. I’m also right now in Hudson, New York. Hudson, New York is about two hours away from New York City on the train. It’s on the Hudson river. It is one of the most picturesque small cities in America, right on the Hudson river. It has shops up and down its main street. The buildings are all architecturally beautiful, and you can just imagine a scene from a movie where people meet cute in front of one of the wonderful pubs or shops or on their beautiful green. So I would really recommend that.

They have a very special winter event that happens once a year. They’ve been doing it for almost 25 years, called winter walk, and they have jugglers and performers and live music and ice sculptures and little kids with rosy cheeks. They even have a Sax O Claus, which is a saxophone playing Santa Claus walking down the street. So that’s one. And then another that I have been to recently is in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where even though it’s snowing and it’s beautiful and you’re in the mountains and you can go on a sleigh ride for dinner, you can also spend Christmas in the Strawberry Park Hot Springs. So you get that whole feel of it’s snowy out, but you’re in super hot water in your bathing suit, and it’s really very magical.

Nisreene Atassi: All of the places that you guys have mentioned are clearly cold weather destinations. I’m curious, Ron, have you ever thought about doing a movie that was set in a warm weather destination, or do you feel like it can’t quite capture that nostalgic feeling that you’re always striving for?

Ron Oliver: We’ve had these conversations for a long time, and they’ve done a couple of them. Hallmark hasn’t, I don’t believe, but I know other networks have done, well, they did a Christmas in Palm Springs a few years ago. The mindset for the Hallmark network certainly is the Christmas represents something that is snowy and cold and wintry and all that that goes with it, and it’s difficult to create that same feeling when you’re underneath palm trees. Christmas is certainly as valid an experience in a warm climate, but there’s just something about the tropes of Christmastime that are difficult to translate visually and have the audience invest visually in something like that, unless you’ve got a snowbank and snowman. It’s doing a country song without having a pickup truck or your dog running away. It just misses the beat, you know?

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah, totally. When I was younger, my family always used Christmas as a time to get away to a warm weather destination. I grew up in northwest Indiana just outside of Chicago, so it was always very, very chilly, and this idea of a cold snowy day was not something that I ever desired. It was something that I had whether I wanted it or not. So we always would fly out on either Christmas Eve or Christmas day. So this idea of fake snowmen with a Tommy Bahama shirt on and sunglasses is actually what I remember a lot of times of Christmas and things like that. Even now, my parents are snowbirds and they live in Florida in the winter time, so we’ll go there. So I do have these memories, honestly, of tropical weather and Christmas, but it’s really interesting that you can have those. Even now, if I had to depict the quintessential Christmas or holiday atmosphere, I would still go to that cozy cabin, hot chocolate, winter, snowcapped mountains.

Ron Oliver: Absolutely true. We have right now, here in Palm Springs, we decorated our house of course for Christmas, and I swear to you, we’ve got a big snowman and we’ve got Christmas trees that look like they’re flocked with snow. It’s Palm Springs, for heaven’s sake.

Nisreene Atassi: Is your snowman wearing a Tommy Bahama shirt? That’s the question.

Ron Oliver: That’s a good question. He’s not, but we have a Tommy Bahama kind of shirt hanging on one of the Christmas tree branches. So there’s that.

Nisreene Atassi: Excellent. Okay, good. I feel like we’ve got a very good picture in our minds of how to incorporate the holiday movie look and feel into our lives. When we come back, we’re going to get into how holiday movie inspiration can strike anywhere. So stay with us.

 

 

You’re listening to Out Travel the System, and I’m your host, Nisreene Atassi. This season on the podcast, we’re tapping industry insiders and avid travelers to learn all the ways we can continue to feed our wanderlust even during the pandemic. From learning how food memories can bring the taste of travel into your own kitchen, to thinking about what getting out of your travel comfort zone can actually look like. Maybe this is the year that you start planning for your bucket list trip. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so that you don’t miss an episode. We’re back with Tracy Lanza, Brand USA, and Ron Oliver, a long time movie director, screenplay writer, and producer. So we’ve talked a lot about the destination itself, but I want to switch and talk about the homes and how that really plays a role in creating these amazing scenes.

Ron Oliver: What I look for is classic American architecture. You look for craftsman kind of homes, and you look for something that feels handmade. The last movie I shot, A Timeless Christmas, we looked at a few houses and every single person on my production team knew when we found the right house. We all said at the same moment, “That’s the house.” Post and beam ceiling, and it had a warmer tile, and it had a feeling to it that when you walked in the door, you’re being embraced. There’s a sensibility that we all know and understand. Again, a lot of it goes back to nostalgia, because I think people’s memory of their childhood is such a powerful motivator when it comes to the style of a film like this. You want people to feel like, even though it wasn’t their childhood home, you want them to feel like maybe it was. Most of us remember, depending on one’s vintage, shall we say, most of us can tell you exactly what the I Love Lucy living room looks like, but very few of us can tell you what our childhood living room looks like.

Nisreene Atassi: Interesting. That’s fascinating. Tracy, you mentioned that you were in the Hudson Valley right now. Are you on vacation? Are you staying in a vacation rental?

Tracy Lanza: I’m in a short-term rental, a house. We rented it with Vrbo. We’re up here for about five or six days, and then we’re back to D. C., which is where we live. So Hudson is fascinating to me for a lot of different reasons. Is it Dutch? Is it English? Is it George III? What happened up here? And Warren Street, which is the main thoroughfare in Hudson, has been, for the last bit of time, really benefited from a lot of its proximity to New York City because there’s amazing stores and shops. Etsy is based here. It’s a maker’s paradise. I want to, if I may add, something to what Ron said, which I think is so interesting. These cultural clues that he mentioned as he’s looking for locations to shoot in, and the homes, and the nostalgia, is really interesting from where I sit, because we are dealing with international audiences.

Our culture, the American culture, is so pervasive, whether it’s a Hollywood movie or a TV show, music, and people internationally think that they know the United States so well because of the reach of our culture. I have a funny little story about a friend of mine who lives in Switzerland and she speaks five languages. She’s very sophisticated. She told me that one of the places on her bucket list for the United States is Milwaukee.

Nisreene Atassi: Stop.

Tracy Lanza: I’m so surprised, right? Milwaukee. Which is a great town, but not something you’d think perhaps someone from Switzerland would be interested in, but it was because I don’t know if they filmed Happy Days there, but it was set there, and she wanted to go and experience that. I thought that’s so fascinating.

Ron Oliver: I love the fact that Milwaukee is somebody’s bucket list. That’s incredible. It’s a great town. But the idea that, that also, I think Happy Days is also set in the mid century when you think about it. So much of that stuff is a time destination, and I often worry that people will come to visit, and what they really want to do is time travel. They don’t really just want to just go someplace. They want to go someplace that exists, and maybe it didn’t even ever actually exist. So when we make these movies, it’s a fantasy. You’re making it, you’re selling a fantasy. You’re selling a dream, and you want to make that dream as accessible as it can be to the world marketplace.

I’m always surprised. I’ll get emails and messages from around the world of people who have seen one of these movies, send me a note from Germany and from Japan. I got one the other day from New Zealand. People watch these films around the world to get not just a feeling of America, but a feeling of what America was, what it meant to them. Sometimes they’ve traveled here once before and they haven’t been back, or sometimes their parents had been, or whatever, but there’s a sense that there’s this marvelous old shining light on the hill. There’s this beautiful place somewhere, and it’s like a dream. So making the Christmas movies is kind of like us recreating that dream and offering it to the world as a possibility.

Tracy Lanza: There’s a term that, as a marketer, it gives me pause, but it’s very much, I think Ron, what you’re talking about, which is this idea of Americana. To me, that is always about nostalgia. It’s always about that memory of something that maybe you never experienced, but you got from your parents or you got from something you watched or a movie you saw. I struggle with that a little bit because we live in the now. People travel now. You cannot literally do time travel, but you can come to America now, and I always have to make sure that there’s a balance between the image that you may have picked up from the movies and what you’re actually experiencing. So it’s really interesting, this idea of mid- century.

Ron Oliver: That’s a fascinating conundrum. I agree, and I can see that being a challenge. I know that when I was a kid, I dreamt of going to New York City and having lunch at 21. That was my goal my whole life, and about 15, 20 years ago, I finally got a chance to go. I went to New York and we’re there and I proposed and so on, and we ended up going to lunch at 21. I walked through those doors and I wanted it to be exactly the way it had been in the movies I’d seen. To my absolute delight, it was. That was what shocked me more than anything else, because I expected change. But if you can find places like that, and then our New York experience, which is essentially the Plaza and 21 and the Carlisle and a few places like that, that are those time travel moments.

But what that has done for us is it also buffers the non time travel stuff. So if there’s a couple of little touchstones that maybe take people back to a comfortable memory, or a nostalgia as you say, or a touch of Americana, then I think that helps make the whole experience better. Because there’ll be fresh new ideas and fresh new things and stuff that’s very much, as you say, living in the now, absolutely because that’s where we are. But as long as there were a couple of touchstones on the way, I think that’s an entry point into it. Mostly what we do with the Christmas movies, as long as we have our hot chocolate and our gingerbread and our Santa and our candy canes, we can do almost anything with the story.

Nisreene Atassi: Ron, most of the plot lines in made-for-TV holiday movies tend to revolve around small towns. We’ve talked a lot about those amazing destinations so far, but Christmas at the Plaza, and by this, we mean the famous hotel in New York, obviously was set in a much different location. How do you make a pivot like that while delivering on the holiday charm that so many have come to know and love from these movies?

Ron Oliver: The Christmas at the Plaza project came about because I was standing at the bar of the Plaza hotel having a glass of champagne, and the bartender took a photograph of me. I put it on my Facebook page and I said, ” Hey, here I am doing research for my next movie, Christmas at the Plaza,” thinking I can just at least write it off as research. On the Monday, the following Monday, I got a call from my executive at Hallmark saying, “If you’re serious, we’ll make that movie.” So then I had to get the permission from the hotel and convince them that I wanted to make it, and then I’d write the script, and then we made the movie. So knowing that it was not a classic Hallmark setup, the small town lady in the big city who goes back to a small town and so on, this was just all going to take place in the city at a hotel.

So I explained, I said, “Well, look, the Plaza is like a small town. We’ve been going there for a long, long time. You know everybody, you know the people who work there, you know the folks at the food halls downstairs, you know every inch of the place if you’ve been there a few times. It’s like a small town.” So I pitched it as, “This is basically a small town. It just happens to be in the corner of 50th and 5th. So let’s approach it that way.” And they were on board. So when we shot at the Plaza in New York, making it there, it was fascinating to me to see how many people were invested in the Christmas spirit. We’re doing it in July, but they’re really invested in what we’re doing, and everybody kind of got it.

There’s a sequence in the film that we did of the hero’s family home, so we still managed to get that let’s all go to somebody’s house for the Christmas party and the Christmas sweaters and the Christmas tree and everything. We still managed to get a little taste of that in the movie, but for the most part, shooting it at the Plaza was just essentially it became a character in the movie. We had people actually told us while they were there, they were guests of the hotel, they extended their stays so they could watch the filming of the movie because they’re having such a great time. There really was a sense of it just being all of us together in this little town, making a movie, even though it was in a big hotel.

Nisreene Atassi: Are there other hotels that you’ve been to that you feel like really deliver on that Christmas magic?

Ron Oliver: No, absolutely. I’ve spent most of my adult life living in hotels. The Drake in Chicago, I was there one year. I’ve made a movie called Love at the Thanksgiving Parade, and we shot it in Chicago. I was staying at the Drake. The Thanksgiving there is when things really kick off, and they were putting up all the decorations overnight. One morning I came down in the lobby and suddenly the place was just Christmas. It was amazing, and they did a beautiful job there. That hotel had the experience for sure.

The Fairmont, Nob Hill in San Francisco, is an amazing place for Christmas. We’ve gone up there a few times over the years, and they do a gingerbread house in the lobby of that hotel. When I say gingerbread house, I don’t mean, ” Oh look, a little gingerbread house.” This is a 25 foot tall gingerbread house. It basically takes up the entire entryway into the restaurant is this huge gingerbread house, made entirely of gingerbread and candy canes and lifesavers and all those things. You can actually eat this place. It’s a real live gingerbread house, and they decorate beautifully there as well.

Nisreene Atassi: Ron, you mentioned the Drake in Chicago. I lived in Chicago for two decades and I have never been inside of the Drake during Christmastime.

Ron Oliver: What?

Nisreene Atassi: I know, isn’t that insane. Had I, if I were living there now, I think I would absolutely go and just have a two night stay at the Drake just so I can be surrounded by that warmth and Christmas holiday spirit. So I think these are really great hotels, and maybe we’ll link to some of them in our show notes so that listeners can consider maybe going and doing that sort of stay-cation and trying to get a little bit of that experience.

Ron Oliver: If I may interject, yes. Again, at the Plaza, they have a package there called Hallmark Christmas experience or something.

Nisreene Atassi: Stop. Oh boy. That’s amazing.

Ron Oliver: And they have a suite set up with Christmas. You walk in and it’s all decked with Christmas, Christmas tree, the whole deal, and all these Hallmark Christmas movies, obviously featuring Christmas at the Plaza that you can watch and have hot cocoa and have a full Christmas experience at the Plaza hotel in this one suite. I suspect you have to book early. It’s probably like the Eloise suite, you’ve got to book it early. But I was surprised by that, because this little movie that I came up with suddenly had this whole life of its own. They have a big display in the gift shop for it, and the plot of the movie revolves around a tree topper, and they sell the tree topper there. It’s crazy that you can go there and actually have the full experience of Christmastime. So if you happen to live somewhere in the greater New York area and you feel like going to the Plaza for a Christmas treat, then there you go.

Nisreene Atassi: Tracy, what about you? Are there any quintessential holiday hotels that you always think about?

Tracy Lanza: The one that comes to mind immediately is the Boulderado in Boulder, Colorado, which is an amazing place with moose heads, and it’s not quite the frontier, but it’s got that Western feel, which is so amazing.

Nisreene Atassi: It’s actually really interesting that all of the movies are based in these small towns, but the reality is that Christmas in New York is absolutely amazing. If we’re talking about Rockefeller Center, that tree there, the ice skating. In Chicago, they have this Michigan Avenue parade. So cities actually do such a fantastic job of bringing this over the top holiday spirit to life.

Tracy Lanza: I grew up in New England, so I feel like I own Christmas from the New England perspective, because I feel like I was privileged to grow up with snow and quaint towns and all that kind of stuff. But because I was on the train line, I always went to New York City, and there’s nothing better than Grand Central Terminal during Christmas. The hustle and the bustle and the energy. I think it’s a really interesting balance. I think you actually need the city in order to appreciate the less busy destinations, and you also need the suburbs and the smaller cities in order to really appreciate the big cities.

Nisreene Atassi: Ron, when you’re creating some of your films or specifically these holiday movies, do you have a favorite part of the film that you’re always focused on or that you think is really what brings it all together?

Ron Oliver: That’s a really good question. Well, the whole movie tends to revolve around the final kiss. That’s what you’re trying to get to, the Christmas kiss.

Nisreene Atassi: Yes. Or the proposal, I guess. There’s always a kiss or a proposal.

Ron Oliver: Yeah, very often actually. Well, I proposed in New York when we were there, actually. Many years ago of course. And that whole Christmas experience, we got married on Christmas. So it’s actually all part of our package, this whole Christmas thing.

Nisreene Atassi: It really is. Wow. I love that about you. Okay.

Ron Oliver: You know, my favorite part is really coming up with the meet cute. I love, especially with Christmas stuff because you don’t want to always go back to the well and have them figure skating together, and then whoops, somebody falls in and get caught. ” Oh, we’re close.” We’ve done that a few hundred times, so you’re trying to always find the meet cute, and that’s the biggest challenge in a romantic Christmas picture, for sure. We were saying before about going to a small town or going to the city and the Christmas experience in both. My philosophy when I make these movies is it doesn’t really matter where you live as long as Christmas lives in you. That’s the most important part of the story.

Nisreene Atassi: Oh my gosh, Ron. That’s very poetic.

Ron Oliver: Yeah, writer, as you know. But that’s kind of how the whole philosophy of making these movies is for me. Every family has their own Christmas traditions, which is I think the thing that bonds all the families at Christmas. It’s not that we had the same tradition, it’s that we all have a tradition. One of my favorite Christmas traditions that we have here is Christmas morning, very early, my husband and I and a dear friend of ours, we’ll put on our Santa Claus onesies and get on our bicycles. We ride downtown to a dive bar downtown, and we’ll go and have our Christmas bloody Mary, and then we ride our bicycles back. So that’s our tradition. It’s been that way for a long, long time, and there’s a lot to be said for three grown men wearing Santa Claus suits riding around on bicycles after a couple of bloody marys.

Nisreene Atassi: There we go.

Ron Oliver: Yeah, it’s a tradition. You know.

Nisreene Atassi: Lovely. Tracy, what about you? What are your plans to create some sort of special holiday memories, or what traditions do you have?

Tracy Lanza: You know, it’s funny. I did a little research on social media, and it was so funny, because something that I thought was so unique to our family is apparently not unique at all, and that is to make sure everybody has matching pajamas. Every year under the tree, my kids all get a gift from our dog, and it’s a pair of pajamas, and they all put them on. My kids are big now. They all put them on, and then we sit around and eat food and make jokes. It’s just such a funny thing, this idea of tradition and repetition. And then the other funny thing is that we don’t have traditional Christmas fair, we have crab cakes, and that was something that we started a long time ago. And key lime cheesecake. That’s what we have. Every time I say, “Okay, I’m going to switch it up. This year we’re going to have a turkey or we’re going to have some kind of cake.” My kids were like, “No. There’s no change possible. Change is not allowed at Christmas time.”

Nisreene Atassi: Thank you both for being on the show. It has been an absolutely fantastic conversation. Tracy Lanza is a Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing for Brand USA, an organization that is focused on boosting tourism for the U. S. Thank you for sharing some of your holiday spirit with us today, Tracy.

Tracy Lanza: Thank you so much. It was great.

Nisreene Atassi: Ron Oliver is a director, writer, and producer who has helped to create a lot of holiday movie magic over the years. So we have him to thank for all of those special moments. Ron, thank you so much for spending some time with us today on Out Travel the System.

Ron Oliver: An absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Nisreene Atassi: Okay. Well, I’m adding a few more Ron Oliver classics to my list of must watch holiday movies, and you better believe I’m going to take notes whenever I see an especially picture perfect idea from those films. Join us for our next episode, where we are talking about how to plan a winter staycation. Until then, happy travels.

 

 

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