Author: Shawon Hannan

TripAdvisor, a company offering an online travel community for collating user-generated travel information, has announced its 2013 Travellers’ Choice awards for hotels. The awards have acknowledged the most outstanding properties globally in the categories of Top Hotels, Luxury, Bargain, Service, Small Hotels, and B&Bs and Inns. The lists name around 6,000 hospitality properties across the world in 82 countries and nine regions. Barbara Messing, the chief marketing officer for TripAdvisor, said, ‘Once again, TripAdvisor is thrilled to recognise the finest accommodations based on the feedback from those who really matter: their guests. It’s the insights from millions of travellers that…

Four Seasons Hotel London at Canary Wharf, Located in London and with views of the River Thames, is offering a number of experiences for couples that are seeking a romantic Valentine’s Day venue for 2013. Quadrato, the northern Italian restaurant and bar, overlooks the hotel’s private garden and the River Thames, and it is offering a special Valentine’s Taster Menu for guests. The candlelit dinner includes a special Valentine’s cocktail with a three or five-course dinner, which will be accompanied by fine Italian wines. The three and five-course menus for February 14, are priced at £60.00 and £100.00 per person,…

London Heathrow Airport is partnering with the London Philharmonic Orchestra to offer a musical experience to travellers using the airport. The orchestra will be playing in the departure areas of the airport terminals, with a range of unique performances throughout the coming year. Recent research conducted by the airport has shown that around 25 percent of passengers feel tense before a flight, and around 48 percent of passengers listen to music to help them unwind in their daily lives. The new initiative is intended to provide relaxing music to nervous passengers before a flight. Carol Stokes, the head of passenger…

An increasing number of British travellers prefer to visit the same destination for their holidays, rather than experimenting with new ones. In a recent survey conducted by Cheapflights Media, a UK-based online travel company, around 39 percent of British travellers questioned reported visiting the same resort year after year, while 20 percent reported eating the same meals, and 14.2 percent even reported being served by the same waiter. Around 80 percent of those surveyed said that they are likely to visit the same holiday destination more than once, according to the survey. So why do British travellers return to the…

Glasgow Airport, in Scotland, has reported its busiest year in the last four years, with around 7.2 million passengers travelling through the facility in 2012. The 2012 passenger traffic figures represent an increase of around 4.2 percent over the passenger traffic recorded for 2011. The airport’s growth is mostly due to the introduction of a number of new routes, including Amsterdam, Barcelona and Rome, which contributed to the 6.4 percent increase in international traffic, compared to a 2.1 percent increase in domestic traffic for the year. In December 2012, Glasgow Airport served around 440,000 passengers, an increase of 4.3 percent…

Rail projects in Wales are set to gain from investment, with Network Rail, a company that operates the UK’s railway network, having committed one of the largest rail investments for development of the Welsh railway infrastructure. The new investment is intended to help the Welsh railway system to carry more passengers and to improve the network’s reliability and time keeping. Mark Langman, the Network Rail route managing director for Wales, said, ‘This is an exciting time for the railway. We are now carrying a record number of people on record numbers of trains at record levels of reliability. We are…

The Shard, previously known as Shard London Bridge, or the London Bridge Tower, is a skyscraper located in the Southwark area of London, and it will be opening its observation deck, The View from The Shard, to the public on February 1, 2013. The Shard is the tallest building in Western Europe, at 1,016ft, and The View from The Shard observation area is housed on the skyscraper’s 68th to 72nd floors. Tickets to the official opening of the viewing platform are currently being sold at £25 for adults and £18.95 for children. The viewing platforms are accessible by lifts, which…

Despite the threat from the Taliban, adventurous tourists are still enticed by Afghanistan and the scores of attractions that it has to offer. Even though the Taliban has banned tourism in the nation, especially for those tourists from the NATO nations, some tourists feel it is worth risking the danger to visit the intriguing country. Even though the number of tourists that gain access to the country are few, and dwindling each year, there are a small number who are willing to take the inherent risks. Those that visit the nation for its beauty and experiences, but do not want…

Hotel prices in London are set to hit a low this year, after the record high prices seen in 2012 due to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. A recent report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) says that although the hotel industry has been very resilient in 2012, only four cities in Europe have reached a high RevPAR growth, St Petersburg (14.1 percent), Dublin (13.9 percent), Prague (13.1 percent) and Moscow (12.9 percent), with growth in Berlin (9.6 percent) and Paris (9.0 percent). The report also suggesting that London’s hotel prices will fall by an estimated 2.7 percent in average daily rates…

There’s nothing we like to do more in our free time than wander around galleries and museums, which is why New York is one of our favourite holiday destinations in the world. By coming to the Big Apple, you’ll get to check out dozens of great cultural landmarks, though we think the best are to be found along Manhattan’s Museum Mile. This is the name given to a stretch of the world-famous Fifth Avenue in the city’s Upper East Side district that incorporates ten world-class museums and galleries. As it’s thought to contain one of the densest displays of art…