Travel rumblings

Too often the promotion by destinations is centred on one place. What about the rest of us?

The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and the council decided not to allow the Christmas market on the Champs-Élysées this year claiming that it was tacky and overpriced.

Brexit means we leave the EU in 2019. So why did five UK cities think that they could enter the European Capital of Culture 2023 competition?

If the role of a tourism minister is to promote tourism and to be seen to promote it, it is time that they left their offices one in a while and started some PR offensives like Mr Balala did.

In the words of the ETC, “a weakened pound failed to deter British holidaymakers to travel internationally.”

In all, over half of all of us drink more than a pint before we fly and not far short of a quarter of us drink over three pints and then fly.

This morning the Sunday Mirror carried a story of the discovery by an unemployed man of a USB stick containing documents about Heathrow’s security may be alarming for passengers.

Just about Travel has commented about the problems with hotel comparison website, welcomes the CMA investigation and urges readers to submot comments to the CMA.

My problem is that having known about the potential problems with lithium batteries before why haven’t aerospace safety agencies carried out this testing before?

Airbnb has signed a deal with a property developer for Airbnb branded sites. Is it now becomein a property developer? Or a quasi-hotelier?

Tourism figures for the first 6 months of 2017 grew by 6% compared to the same period last year.

It appears that visitors don’t bother to clean up after their dogs but take the attitude that because they are away from home they can treat the countryside and beaches as though it was someone else’s responsibility.

In the light of the Which Holiday? report, is it time for the CAA to do spot checks on those who are ATOL bonded to compile its own statistics on how companies train their staff?

Next year as the World Travel Awards reach their silver anniversary maybe the organisers could remember the missing feature and the person on whom the travel industry relies for its very existence – the passenger, traveller and holidaymaker!

A country perceived as being dangerous may not be as dangerous as we think.

Mishandling the whole problem, as O’Leary sees it, seems to put question marks over Ryanair’s “Always Getting Better” programme. Is it for passengers or spin doctors?

It’s been a long, long week for Ryanair…

I suspect that there is more behind this story than meets the eye and maybe the days ahead will clarify the thinking at TfL.

The Pacific Highway in Australia is one of the most mis-named roads in the world. Its “highway” status is probably limited to no more than a couple of hundred kilometres yet the road runs for thousands of kilometres along the coast of eastern Australia.

The Australian state of NSW has been trying to promote the rural parts of the state to holidaymakers for a year or two.

As price-conscious hotels compete for our business, I am beginning to wonder if they have forgotten to consider the guest.

The dividing line between tourism related services and most other governmental expenditure is very hard to find.

According to research commissioned by the home rental business UnderTheDoormat nearly half of British adults think hotels offer poor value for money.

Surely the first thing is to establish which flights, which time of day, which airlines and which airports are involved and then apply appropriate measures.

I make no bones about it. I prefer proper books to electronic ones.

Technically it is feasible. From a practical standpoint, I don’t think the world is ready for this.

If new Ryanair planes will all sport a 32inch seat pitch, then that will be – says seatguru – three inches shorter than some of the planes they currently operate!

Passengers will accept additional security measures as necessary. What they won’t accept are delays when the authorities should have known about the likelihood of delays and planned accordingly.