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.

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…

In a view that surprised nearly everyone, probably including BAA themselves, there has been a ruling that BAA may not have to sell of one of their Scottish airports (Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow) nor dispose of Stansted. BAA appealed against the decision of the Competition Commission and the Competition Appeal Tribunal has agreed with BAA.

Why?

Because of a technicality.

Now that the children have broken up from school, they can still get bored quite easily. Combining shopping and visiting Father Christmas has been a solution, going back decades, to keep them occupied. At Christmas and Hogmanay, Princes Street in Edinburgh is turned into a mini entertainment arena.
Up at the Haymarket end is the German market with gluhwein strongly in evidence at about £3 a mugfull. This year it celebrates it’s tenth year so there are some extra special offers. The stallholders make their way from Frankfurt for the month long stay. Apart from German food and beer you will find crafts such as turned woods, candles and toys. It gets busy as the day wears into evening so, for the remaining few days, why not visit it in mid morning. Given the weather at the moment the gluhwein is especially welcoming!
For those who prefer it there is the Traditional Highland Village Christmas Market Christmas just up from the German market. Unlike the German market, this one lasts until January 4th so there is food throughout Hogmanay.

This is the time of year when forecasters gaze into the tealeaves and predict what might happen in the coming year. Some may even get it right but by the time we can prove it one way or the other, it will become time for the next bunch of forecasts.

Mintel, a research company that forecasts across many different industries, says that there will be seven trends in our behaviour during 2010 as we begin to fell more confident than we did this year.

Firstly they think we will be more resilient in that we will be able to recover

Some people were trapped on Eurostar trains for 12 hours and claim they were told nothing. It has been said that one driver even locked himself in his engine cab. Allbury Travel went into liquidation yesterday (they own Libra and Argos Holidays) and passengers claim they were kept in the dark. On Thursday when flyGlobespan went into liquidation I was at Glasgow Airport and there was no information at their desk in the airport. When there was the terminal 5 debacle earlier this year, one major complaint was the delay of both British Airways and BAA to come and talk to passengers.
What is clear in that each of these cases information was not given to the passengers quickly enough for them to feel that that they were kept up to date.

We’ve had lots of different reasons given over the years for transport breakdowns; leaves on the railway lines, a swan on the line at Peterborough, wrong sort of snow but now, from Eurostar, we seem to have the wrong sort of air.
Four trains yesterday evening broke down in the tunnel. One of the possible reasons, (or excuses depending on your cynicism,) is that when the engines of the trains met the warm air in the tunnel after the cold air in France something had to give and so the engines packed up.

Around here the schools have just broken up and kids are everywhere. But so are cars heavily laden with luggage so it is obvious that some people are leaving tonight for the Christmas break. Maybe they are all trying to travel before even more snow comes over the weekend.

ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) claims that today and next Wednesday will be two busiest days on the roads or at railway stations, airports and ferry terminals as people make the way off for the break. They estimate that 3 million us will be heading away of the Christmas period. This number is about the same as last year so our appetite for a break seems as strong as ever

Regular readers can stop reading right now if they don’t want to hear me talk again about providing an adequate safety net for passengers outside the ATOL bonding scheme.

As you probably all know by now, those passengers who bought a package holiday under the Globespan name are probably protected under the ATOL system. Those of you who bought just a flight with a credit card (not a debit card)and paid more than £100 may be able to claim a refund from the credit card providers. The rest of you, I’m afraid, will probably be out of pocket. And for those of you who are covered then you still have the hassle and probable expense of rebooking with another carrier if there is availability. To check your position, see www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=1985&pagetype=90.

The collapse of the Globespan group will hit Scotland particularly badly.

As you might gather, I have been back on the road as we look at the entrants for our 2010 Tourism Awards, (More about that in a few days time,) so I have been staying in hotels again.
The current hotel is a fairly old fashioned 3 star hotel, conveniently located right in the centre. You [...]

Regardless of whether you’ve run out of riyals or have oodles of cash to splash, there’s plenty to do in Doha. Ahead of National Day which falls on December 18, Cd-traveller tells you how to make the most of your time in the Qatari capital

UPDATE 17 December: the courts have ruled the strike illegal because the balloting of union members had not been correctly carried out. This means that the 12 day strike cannot now take place.

The carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas, takes on a new meaning this year since it coincides with the number of days of strike action at British Airways. And I won’t be the last to wonder whether the number was particularly chosen by the strikers in order to ram home the iniquity of goodwill to all men excepting for British Airways passengers.
I’m not concerned in taking sides in this argument. For one thing I don’t know enough since all I see and hear is the propaganda from either side. My interest is in the passengers. Over 12 days, some 7000 flights might be axed. That could easily involve over a million passengers

Tourism South East, the body responsible for tourism in the south east of England that covers not only the south east but Oxfordshire as well, has been investigating whether the staycation really happened and how big it was. Figures from a number of other sources have shown that overseas holidays were down on 2008 but information on people who holidayed at home (the staycation as it has become known) has been largely hearsay.

This is the time of the year when the National Customer Service Awards are announced. In any industry service is important. Good service leads to satisfaction. Satisfaction can lead to loyalty and repeat business. No customer likes being ill treated, ignored, patronised or fobbed off with meaningless official waffle so awards that support good service are welcome. But travel and tourism doesn’t seem to have done to well in this year’s awards. Is that because they didn’t enter or they did but weren’t shortlisted for the final?

CD -traveller ventured off the beaten track to find a cross section of individuals who call the Omani capital ‘home’. The goal was to find out who they are, what they do and what Muscat means to them…

This is the time of the year when the new holiday brochures are being prepared to be sent out to shops so, that come the days after Christmas, we can pick and choose where we want to go. In truth that has changed quite a bit and some destinations and tour operators were taken aback by how late some of us booked this year. In some cases panic was almost about to set in at some places because they thought they would never be able to sell these holidays. Next year, they are assuming that a lot of us will book as late as we did this year.

I must have reached a point in my life where clearly there was an urgent need for some adrenalin rush because last week I bought a V8 engine’d gas guzzling MG that has your eyeballs pinned to the back of your skull when your right foot inadvertently applies too much pressure to the go-faster peddle and this week I find myself in a country that I have never been to before and that speaks a language that just as well be Martian!

Flying can be fun make no mistake. Unless that is, your sat next to the world’s worst flying companion in which case it’s agony. CD Traveller presents the top ten ‘flight neighbours from hell.’

Is it just me or are other people fed up with the road graffiti that seems to be mushrooming all over the place? Here I am, out for a day, being a day tripper and going somewhere new and I am bombarded by flashing signs telling me to slow down or pointing out what the speed limit is. Or a smiley face or an angry face or numbers flashing away showing me my speed.

May be I would be a little more tolerant towards these flashing signs if they were true. In a couple of cases I know the road signs are blatantly wrong.

A few years ago the EU introduced new right for airline passengers concerned lost or damaged baggage and delayed flights. Those travelling by sea, rail or coach had limited protection but that is changing,. First on the list for change is the rail passenger. A new regulation that came into being this week has given wider protection to the 8 billion passengers who use railways throughout Europe in any year. Of course, the problem with European legislation is that each country has the right to request that some of the rules may be deferred because of local conditions. The bad news is that if any country goes down this track, (sorry about the pun) it could delay things for up to 15 years. (Why such a long time?)

Located on Lake Ontario, Toronto is Canada’s largest and most cosmopolitan city owing to its beautiful, if busy, waterfront and mix of cultures, concert halls and clubs. But what really defines this edgy, artistic city is its residents.
Its skyscraper may form a Skelton, its streets the sinew but the people that populate this city are its lifeblood. Every year, 55,000 people leave their native lands to make Toronto home and that steady stream of fresh, new faces makes this city an exciting, ever-changing place to be. CD Traveller caught up with native, Alison Cross, to find out what makes Toronto tick