The largest statue in the world, removing travel restrictions on Virgin Trains on Friday afternoons, changing Turkish visa restrictions and a new fare structure at Thomas Cook are just some of the stories that Adrian looks at this week.
No longer could destinations just attract tourists. They now needed to “manage” where tourists went in cities so that locals could exist in harmony with visitors.
It just goes to show that travellers should not take these figures at face value or necessarily be influenced on whether to travel to them or not.
The UNWTO Panel of Tourism Experts outlook for the May-August period is one the most optimistic in a decade.
Tourism figures for the first 6 months of 2017 grew by 6% compared to the same period last year.
The wet weather has caused a last minute rush for holidays abroad and we say goodbye to Klaus Lohmann as he returns to Germany and Dennis Cleveland-Peck who sadly died recently.
You’ve heard of the G20? Well there is also a T20, a group of twenty tourism ministers and yesterday they met in Paris to discuss you and me. Or eighteen of them did including our minister, John Penrose.
Why?
No I am not taking the Michael, but how many people would link the exotic allure of Samarkand and Macclesfield? Yet there is a strong link between the two which has been reinforced by the admission of the town into the UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organisation) Silk Road Programme. For all of you outside the north west who don’t know, Macclesfield was the centre of the silk industry in the UK (even the local football team is known as the silkmen) and is home to the Silk Heritage Foundation. With 4 museums and linked shops, this heritage is important to the growth of the town. Just as it was to Samarkand, today in modern day Uzbekistan.
om the headlines in the media you would think that we are all going to holiday and travel more this year. That’s not quite the truth because this headline applies to the world as a whole. Some parts of the world will holiday more, some won’t and some will stay the same. But you can’t get a catchy headline out of “Certain countries in the world will attract more tourist in 2010 proving a new pandemic, war, or disaster doesn’t happen.” You might just as well add “or if there is an X in the month.”
I haven’t seen one downbeat forecast y
