About 150,000 people in the last year have visited escape tunnels in Berlin. The tunnels were dug during the time that the Berlin wall was in existence. During those cold war years there were frequent attempts to escape. No-one knows how many made it (one thought is about 300) but well over a hundred died in the attempt.

I write this rumble kneeling on the floor with my laptop on top of a small chest of drawers pushed up against the television. Why? No chairs in this hotel room so you sit on the bed or the floor. A small problem set against all the benefits. This hotel is small, old and completely untainted by modern hotel management thinking. No massive deference to me, the guest, just ordinary civility.

Breakfast this morning was just that. “Do you want breakfast,” I was asked. No choice just bacon, sausage, mushroom, baked beans, fried egg and toast. Whether I should have some fruit and satisfy those health soothsayers who are warning of my imminent demise didn’t come into it. No choice between white, wholemeal or brown bread. But there was orange juice!

According to the Ski Club of Great Britain, some 76,000 fewer of us went on snowsports holidays last winter compared to the previous year. The number dropped to about 1.27 million holidaymakers.

Is this a downward trend? Are fewer of us interested?

Every August, some 20,000 tourists flock to the town of Bunol (in the Valencia region of Spain) to hurl large, red squishy tomatoes at one another. La Tomatina – the world’s largest vegetable fight – is a full blown fiesta and in the week building up to the battle, Bunol is filled with fireworks, food, street parades and parties. However the undisputed highlight of the festival is the tomato fight which takes place between 11am and 1pm on the last Wednesday in August.

I was in Cardiff yesterday for a meeting about tourism. Cardiff has transformed itself over the years. It has had the castle, the National Museum and the shops for years to attract tourists. Then along came the regeneration of Tiger Bay. Now there is a new shopping area that has just opened so on the way to the meeting I thought I would have a quick look. Judging from the number of people there it has attracted initial support and, when the rest of the shops open, it will probably have good Xmas sales.

That’s the conclusion from a company called Collinson Latitude. This company specialises in finding other ways for airlines to make money out of you other than just from ticket sales. It can be travel insurance or entry into airport lounges or a host of other things. The important thing is that they are successful in developing these services for travel companies.

So when they say that two thirds of airlines around the world have systems to increase revenue but that they still don’t focus on the customer you are inclined to believe them. If we take one airline, the one that says it is the favourite airline of Europe, Britain, Ireland and probably countless other places earns a lot of extra money from passengers. It would say that helps keep fares low. It would say that is what it has done for the passenger.

The hotel chain Travelodge has asked 2500 8-15 year olds what they rate as Britain’s most iconic landmarks and it threw up some answers I didn’t expect. The winner was Stonehenge and maybe that’s not surprising since just about everyone can imagine what it looks like. Second choice was Hadrian’s Wall and then came the London Eye.

Oxford and Cambridge are renowned as two of the world’s most famous university towns and consequently crowded tourist hotspots in the summer ‘high’ season. With autumn and the start of the new semester upon us, now is the time to visit if you want to soak up the history and heritage of either without jostling with throngs of other tourists. The question is Oxford or Cambridge? You decide…

See the subtle difference?

According to the Daily Telegraph, the National Trust has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds rebranding itself by dropping the word “The” in front of its name. It is also switching to lower case letters and, according to the article, “jazzing up its brand with bright colours.” The oak leaf symbol will be bigger and instead of just the green, other colours will be introduced.

“I don’t believe people fly because they like the idea of flying.”

That came out of the mouth of Willie Walsh, the head of British Airways in an interview with BBC’s “Costing the Earth” on Radio 4. I listened to it twice because the first time I wasn’t sure that I really heard it but it was still on the repeat so why these intriguing words?