Klout, that most renowned metric of social media influence, continues to inspire as much criticism as it does worship. For all that some treat it as gospel, there are ever more naysayers in the digital room. A recent blog by Travelblather on the subject, spurring a spree of comments, followed a worrying feature by Seth Stevenson on Wired. He examined [...]
Was 2009 the year the British fell in love with holidaying at home again, or was it a blip on the radar while we tightened our belts before jetting off to the sun in 2010?
After bringing us the likes of Simon Cowell, Osama Bin Laden, Jordan and Jedward, the Noughties are almost over. But what were the Destinations of the Decade – stunning new places that are now firmly on the tourism map – and what will be the holiday hotspots of the Twenty-Tens/Oh-tens/Teenies/Tenties/Tenners? We asked some of our expert clients:
Meeting in the week of the Copenhagen climate summit, the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) Council endorsed a number of sustainability measures, including a plan for the whole membership to sign up to their sustainable tourism criteria during 2010.
My friend Katy Regan and I went on our second mini-break recently. Mini-break number one was to Barcelona in the summer of last year, this time we decided to take in Tallinn. In both cities we did hours of walking but Tallinn by comparison is much, much smaller and more compact than Barcelona and easier to navigate around, although I wish I hadn’t insisted on wearing heels all the time – not the best choice of footwear for cobbled streets, stylish but silly.
The Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO, www.aito.com) slams the Government for its insistence that APD (Air Passenger Duty) is an environmental tax.
We asked Paul Bondsfield at our clients Explore, adventure specialists that run nearly 50 annual group tours to Kenya, about the alarming news that the Maasai Mara’s rapidly-decreasing lion population could disappear altogether inside 20 years: “The situation for the lion population in Kenya is very worrying, especially as the fall in numbers is so [...]
The latest WTTC research indicates that Mexico’s Travel & Tourism Economy GDP growth will average 5% per annum over the next decade, generating 2 million direct industry jobs over the course of the ten years.
We asked Steve Diederich, Managing Director of bespoke specialists Captivating Cuba, for his thoughts on the news that Cuba is facing a severe shortage of toilet paper: “Potential Cuba visitors worried about the reported shortages in toilet paper ought not to fret. Captivating Cuba uses only the best hotels, resorts and guesthouses, and these will be the ones [...]
The Foreign Office has just relaxed its warnings about travel to certain parts of Sri Lanka, including several areas ripe for tourism that have been off the map for ten years. So are these areas worth a visit, and will they soon take off? Here are the thoughts of Oliver James, part of the expert [...]