[ November 30, 1999; 12:00 am; 12:00 am; November 30, 1999 12:00 am to March 13, 2010 12:10 pm. May 14, 2010 9:30 am to May 16, 2010 5:00 pm. ] http://www.aztecevents.co.uk/proddetail.asp?prod=EGS
Brentwood Centre, Brentwood, Essex
Adults in advance £4; on the door £5.50
Children in advance free; on the door £1

New Year’s Eve and the first day of the New Year have become tourist attractions in their own right. Television has magnified it by capturing the moment when the New Year begins in a number of places. Around lunchtime on New Years Eve, the new year is heralded in Sydney in Australia with a huge firework display and winds down about 24 hours later with the display from Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. In between, there is the traditional gathering in London at Trafalgar Square, in Princes Street in Edinburgh, the swinging of fireballs in Stonehaven near Aberdeen (quite a sight if you’ve never seen it) and the counting in of the new year in Times Square in New York. As well as that a large number of towns and cities such as Nottingham and Carlisle will have firework displays.

Over the last decade, anyone travelling by plane will have had almost a different life compared to the decade before that. And not for the better either.
Terrorism is at the heart of the changes that have occurred. Governments around the world have responded by tightening security and, by and large, the public has gone along with whatever has been suggested on the basis that they will welcome almost anything if it makes them feel safer. It has made flying more of a chore than the enjoyment it once was.

Although George Orwell was born in India, he lived there only a year before he was brought back to England by his mother. The house where he was born in 1903 in Motihari in Bihar state has fallen into a sorry state but yesterday the Bihar government announced that it would restore the house as a tourist attraction. The project would be completed in just 3 months.

Why mention this when there are so many other things happening in tourism?

For one thing it surprised me that there is no Orwell Museum in the UK. (unless you know differently)

Traditionally, summer holiday bookings begin in earnest just after Christmas. Tour operators, airlines and destinations watch closely to see how many of us go into travel agents or look at online travel sites. And if there is bad weather around then the number of enquirers and bookings rise.
So there are a number of optimistic people around at the moment. The post Christmas sales seem to be going well and some retailers claim this is the best sales period since 1998. Some say sales are up over 18% over last year. The weather is cold and more snow is forecast over large swathes of the country.
So according to all the runes, this should be a good year for the travel industry.

Tasmania, an island off the southern coast of mainland Australia, is not served by any international flights from the UK. To get there you need to fly from some other Australian major city. The state capital , Hobart, is served by just a small airport so getting in and out of it is quick and easy.

But at this time of the year Hobart can be known the world over because this is the winning line for one of the most famous ocean races in the world, the Sydney Hobart. This can be a gruelling race that begins on Boxing Day on the spacious Sydney Harbour in New South Wales and ends about 2 days later in a much smaller Sullivans Cove in Hobart.

Following the attempted attack on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit it will come as no surprise to any of you that’s security at airports and on planes has been increased.
You can expect to take longer going through security as more hand searches are carried out. Don’t be surprised when you gate to the actual gate to find that a hand pat security check may also take place. Instead of it happening on just a few flights, as is done at the present, you can expect it to occur more often particularly on flights going to the US.

These are the names of the winners of the Tourism 2010 grants which are sponsored by Travel XRay (jointly owned by Arkenford and Consumerdata) and CD-Traveller.

The awards are for those destinations that feel they could encourage more visitors to come to them but are constrained by any number of reasons be it financial, staffing or whatever. In practical terms, each destination will receive marketing support over the next year and you will be able to read stories about them in CD-Traveller. Each will have their own pages in the “Partners” section.

So who are the winners?

The last week has brought enough disruption to travellers that makes some people wonder whether the effort is worthwhile. Holidaymakers planning to get away for Christmas have been hit by the troubles at Eurostar as well as by the impact of the snow. This time the snow has been widespread with airports like Gatwick, Luton, Manchester and Aberdeen being closed for a time as well as overseas airports such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf. Snow has been recorded in Corsica and Venice, Madrid and the beach at San Sebastian. You have probably seen pictures of how bad it was in the north east of the United States.
So with so much disruption can you make a claim?

CD-traveller spoke to several long distance lovers to find out whether travel can make or break a relationship…