A newsletter I get called Hotel & Resort Insider has issue its list of top 5 holiday spots in Australia. I can quite believe that it is a hard job because, let’s face it, Australia has a heck of a lot going for it. Even if it does take 24 hours plus to get there. [...]

Given the weather that we are having this week (and last come to think of it) you may not be thinking of lounging in the sun but Thomas Cook is.Their German company has decided, as you may have seen, to allow German bookers to prebook for €3 a day, sun lounges if they do it [...]

This is National Parks Week. Not only that but it is 60 years since the first one was opened. Unfortunately the weather hasn’t been kind to them this week. I was going to write about this yesterday but it was raining so I thought, wait a day, things might improve. It hasn’t. It’s raining [...]

No this isn’t another moan about the quality or even quantity of customer service that Ryanair offers. Well not really. No this is a comment on what Ryanair thinks it does.You might have seen in yesterday’s media stories about how Ryanair has made €136.5 million profit (about £119 million) in the first 3 months of [...]

Supposedly, we now have transparency in the way airlines price their flights.In a pig’s eye we do.Legislation, codes of conduct, agreements, advertising standards watchdogs and a host of either consumer or regulatory watchdogs have made airline fares easier to understand. Well if that’s true, I am a Martian. What we have had is some clean [...]

In the last few days a number of countries have issued numbers on how tourism is performing. All four, Greece, Indonesia, Thailand and the United States have all shown a declineIn Greece tourism spending has dropped by nearly 18% for the first five months of the year compared to last year but in May alone [...]

About a million years ago Esso used to run advertising using a tiger and a musical background asking where the tiger was. I thought of it when the BBC ran a story saying that Panna National Park in Madhya Ptadesh in the middle of India which it called one of India’s main tiger parks, now [...]

All the schools have broken up now. My local rail carpark is only about half full and the 7.30am traffic jam no longer exists. That means that some of you have already started your holidays.So are you holidaying in this country, having a staycation or are you going abroad after all? We are going to [...]

Hotel rooms are cheaper in some places this year than they have been for a while. It’s due to the recession of course. (Nothing to do with some hotel prices being over the top anyway). So this year prices in London have been quite a bit lower whilst in Edinburgh they have stayed about the [...]

In North America they seem to have got couponing down to a fine art. Over here, it almost seems in its infancy in comparison. Nonetheless, you can find discount offers to attractions on various giveaway maps and brochures from tourist offices, in tourism magazines and, sometimes, from airlines, train companies’ magazines, newspapers and general magazines.You [...]

Tourists are fleeced at Bangkok Airport by some duty free areas who seem to be in league with uniformed people.

Until the authorities clean this up in a country where corruption seems to have become a byword, it is better that tourists avoid the duty free areas.

In the press in the last few days there has been a story about two people from Cambridge who, it was claimed by authorities, were suspected of shoplifting. After coughing up £7.500 they were able to leave the country. The BBC website has a story by Jonathan Head which summarises the background.

Someone spotted that Ryanair charged the same price in euros as it did in pounds. This idea comes courtesy of 360travelguide.com which was picked up by the online trade magazine, Travolution.Because Ryanair say that a euro equals a pound, they were making an extra 16% clear profit over and above their usual profit if [...]

Apologies to all those of you who e-mailed reminding me that I had missed the anniversary of the Yorkshire institution, Betty’s.For the person or two who isn’t aware, Betty’s is a teashop. Not just any old teashop. The main branch in St Peter’s Square in York gets over a million visitors a year which makes [...]

Why do you go on holiday?To relax, see new places, unwind, do something you’ve not done before, shop, ski, cross the Amazon by frog as Michael Palin did in Ripping Yarns twenty years ago.Well according to research from the holiday side of Jet2, a third of over 45′s bond with their adult children! Does this [...]

Following on from the research yesterday about those over 49, there is another bit of research that has got my goat. (Poor beast; really suffering this week). Hotels.com has questioned 2167 travellers and found they are difficulty in switching off from work when they are on holiday. All due to the economic crisis. I can [...]

We have some new German research that says in another 10 years time, haif of all tourists from Germny will be over 50. And, you’re not going to believe this bit either, but this same research says that people over 50 spend more money on holidays than those under 50.Of course we do, we have [...]

For years we have been warned of the dangers of going out in the sun. All those ultra violent rays will play their harsh tricks on us and we will suffer for it. Well now things might not be as bad as they had appeared. The scientific sounding, Nature Genetics, as reported in the Sunday [...]

Into Newport on South Wales on Monday came the Prinsendam, an 800 passenger cruiseship, the first one ever to dock there. It stopped as part of its tour around the UK and many locals are wondering why. The ship was only in Newport for a day but it seems as though none stayed in Newport. [...]

Rollonfriday is a law gossip website passing titbits on about what is happening in law practices around Britain. So I was not expecting to find them running a column on tips for tourists visiting our countries and, in particular, London.About 30 years ago, the “New Statesman” had a competition about the same thing and some [...]

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal in North Wales has become a UNESCO world heritage site in the latest list to be produced by the organisation. It is the only one in the UK to be designated in this, the latest addition to the world’s most exclusive list of sites that make it almost become a tourism [...]

Last night on BBC’s Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, the man himself was in Brighton, a seaside resort of course, and part of his introductory act consisted of talking about holidays.His thoughts on TripAdvisor (but it could have been any travel comparison website) were funny (as you’d expect from the author of Britain’s highest selling stand-up [...]

Walk across Westminster Bridge in London and at some stage you will be barred by a tourist taking a picture of the tall building that houses Big Ben, the bell that everyone hears at some stage in their lives. .Be it on HP sauce bottles, the opening credits of the old London Films, BBC news [...]

I travelled on Le Shuttle at the weekend to collect my daughter, her newly acquired belongings from France and to have a weekend break.. As usual it was trouble free, fast, efficient and pretty mundane. Apart from one thing. An advertising poster.This one was in English inviting me to buy a burger and chips [...]

I might have mentioned once or twice before that I am rather fond of Venice. Lounging (it is possible outside the main tourist season) in a number 1 vaporetto as it meanders down the Grand canal and the over to the Lido and then catching the 52 back up the Guidecca therefore completing a circuit [...]

This coming Saturday, Oxford Airport has its first commercial service for 20 years. This coming Saturday an Air Southwest will make the first of two months’ weekly flights to Jersey from the airport. The flight is full as are most of the flights during July.Why?Given the outcry over the expansion of many airports, how [...]

You remember the Virgin Holidays survey I mentioned a day or so ago? Apart from discussing these depressives it provided another odd result. Three quarters of those that responded (Virgin asked 4500 people and we don’t know how many responded) said they found it easy to recall holidays by seeking out smells.And surprise, surprise, [...]

The common thought is that this summer people are staying at home and, if last week’s weather was anything to go by, with reason. But another week, different weather and you bet some tabloid journalist is already dreaming up a story that says summer is over.So from Travel Navigator, the new monthly survey from Arkenford*, [...]

Yes that seems to be the case according to some research commissioned by Virgin Holidays. They say that 18% of us , almost one in five, start getting depressed even before we take the return flight home. There you are, on the last day of your holiday; the last day you can enjoy yourself by [...]