Author: Shawon Hannan
British travellers have started to favour package holidays once more, according to the results of recent research reported by the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA), a UK-based association for travel agencies. During this year, around 48 percent of travellers have opted for overseas holiday packages, compared to 42 percent in 2011, and 37 percent in 2010. Holiday packages were massively popular in the 1970s, but then slowly made way for do-it-yourself holidays, where travellers preferred to book each component of their holiday separately. The report also highlighted that the credit crunch is taking its toll on holiday habits, as…
Accor, a France based hotel company and owner of brands such as ibis, Mercure, and others, will be opening four new Mercure hotels in the UK. The company is opening four new hotels under its Mercure brand in London, Scotland, Milton Keynes and Darlington, increasing its portfolio to 75 hotels in the nation. The company has entered into franchise agreements for the new hotels, which will be adding around 394 rooms to the Mercure network. Jonathan Sheard, the managing director of operations, for MGallery and Mercure Hotels UK and Ireland, said, ‘We are delighted to welcome our new partner hotels…
British Airways, the UK based airline, is offering an online deposit payments option for its package holiday customers. Available only to the airline’s customers that book their holiday package on the BA website, the facility will allow vacations to be booked with a deposit of £150 per booking, and payment of the balance 10 weeks before departure. Claire Bentley, the managing director of British Airways Holidays, said, ‘Following customer feedback, we are delighted to be able to introduce this new function on ba.com which will really assist holidaymakers and allow them to take advantage of all the benefits that deposit…
The highland Cordillera region in the Philippines is offering various attractions for travellers to suit different tastes and preferences. The importance of the region and the various options that it has to offer were recently highlighted in the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Travel Mart 2012 event, which drew foreign travel agencies from various countries. Travel agents from different nations said that they were looking to bring more customers from their respective countries to the Cordillera region to explore the various attractions that the region had to offer. Purificacion Molintas, director of the Department of Tourism, said that agencies from…
The World Travel Awards 2012 has rated the Turkish Ministry of Culture & Tourism as Europe’s ‘Leading Tourist Board.’ The awards acknowledged the quality of various tourist facilities in the country. For example, the award for Europe’s Leading Luxury Hotel was bagged by the Mardan Palace, Antalya and the Cornelia Diamond Golf Resort & Spa in Belek was awarded with Europe’s Leading Luxury Resort award. Angel’s Peninsula, Marmaris, bagged Europe’s Leading New Luxury Hotel award. Over the years, Turkey has developed into a major tourist destination and is now ranked sixth in terms of the number of foreign arrivals. That…
The tourism department of The Gambia has signed a deal with a firm in Qatar to develop facilities for tourists in the nation. The department has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Katara Hospitality in Qatar to develop a resort in Gambia. The minimum capital investment for the project is $250m. The MoU was signed by Fatou Mass Jobe-Njie, minister of Tourism and Culture in Gambia, and Sheikh Nawaf bin Jassim bin Jabor al-Thani, chairman of Katara Hospitality. The terms of the MoU will require the Gambian government to provide Katara Hospitality with 18 hectares of land to develop…
An artwork by Damian Hirst has caused controversy while being erected on the pier of the Devon seaside town of Ilfracombe in the UK. Hirst’s bronze statue is a 65-foot high, 25-ton depiction of a pregnant woman, standing and holding a sword aloft. She is naked, and viewed from her left side she appears in standard human form. The right side view, however, has her skin peeled back to reveal her muscular and skeletal structures and the foetus. The sculpture, named Verity, was hauled into the seaside town on a flatbed trailer. It was cast in more than forty pieces…
If you’ve ever queued to check in your luggage at one end of your flight and waited, nervously, for it to reappear on the baggage carousel at the other, you’ll appreciate what a stressful experience it can be. Furthermore, if you exceed the baggage allowance of the airline in question, you’re faced with the choice of paying excess-baggage charges on the spot or leaving some of your luggage behind. In an effort to make life easier for business travellers, many companies now offer door-to-door luggage courier services, whereby they collect your luggage from anywhere in the world and deliver it…
Amazon’s Kindle range has now expanded beyond simple e-book readers and entered the territory of full tablets. The latest Kindle Fire models show that Amazon is keen to take on rivals such as Apple in this competitive area of the market. The original Kindle range became a popular choice for travellers since it allowed them to take their entire library of books with them on holiday without relying on any physical copies. Now the Kindle Fire HD has arrived, almost a year after the introduction of the first Kindle Fire, allowing UK customers to experience what the device has to…
Are you one of those people who always catch a cold when they’ve been on a long flight? It’s well documented that airplane cabins are an excellent place for the cold virus to live. But why is this and what can you do to combat the effects of germs? Many people believe that you’re more likely to catch a cold on flights because of the re-circulated cabin air. However, this isn’t actually true. Fresh air is constantly being drawn into the cabin. As this is pressurised and then cooled down before passing through filters, most of the germs are removed.…