A day in… Belfast

Adrian explores Belfast in a year when the city majors on its links with the ill-fated Titanic.

Top 10 Valentine’s breaks

Boutique hotel experts Mr & Mrs Smith have sifted through the schmaltz to find Valentine’s packages that will really set hearts aflutter (and won’t involve soggy petals clogging the plughole). Here are 10 hot properties that offer something a little bit different…

Community Legal Service Direct

From the website:

“Community Legal Advice is a free and confidential advice service paid for by legal aid.”

Ke Nako

In London yesterday, just a few days before the first match was the South African Minister for Tourism, Marthinus Van Schalkwyk. You would have thought he would be at home and welcoming visitors heading to the most high profile sporting piece of tourism that South Africa has held. But no, he was here addressing about 70 journalists and members of the travel community.
Why?
One reason was to emphasise that tourism was so important to the developing world and that after the World Cup was over, a marketing campaign would begin over here to encourage us to visit South Africa. They want to make it clear that South Africa wants visitors at any time of the year and the World Cup lasts for just a month.

Tatton Park Wins

Last week, Visit Chester & Cheshire held their annual tourism awards. There were 15 categories and Tatton Park won the award for best visitor attraction of the year. It isn’t the first time it has been successful, this being the third time this century. Receiving over 750,000 visitors each year, some of the reasons for its likely success are that it combines 50 acres of gardens, (out of 1,000 in all) a mansion, a park and it is easy to get to from two motorways. They also have a large number of events operating throughout the year and you can see those by looking at CD-Traveller’s event pages.
Of course, they weren’t the only winners. The award for the best tourism experience went to the shark dive at the Blue Planet Aquarium near Ellesmere Port. Sharks have never been one of my favourite things so I am one of the exceptions since the Aquarium even gets large numbers voting in its favourite shark category. (Bella the Black Tip Reef Shark won last years with 3,000 plus votes!)

Golfing Ireland

It seems that Irish golfers – and in particular Northern Irish golfers – have given the province the amount of publicity that tourism officials dream about. Having three players who have won majors has made commentators wonder what is in the water. Which vitamins are they on? Are Northern Irish courses the best breeding grounds for new champions?
Whatever it is Tourism Ireland has launched a £1.8 million campaign to persuade us to visit Ireland, not just the north, and to sample their courses.

10 things we love about… Singapore

Ahead of Singapore’s national day on August 9, CD Traveller lets you in, in no particular order, on ten things we love about the Lion city