Tomorrow is St David's Day

Disregarding the little event in Paris last night, Welshman will be out to enjoy themselves tomorrow as a variety of events and processions occur. Or will they?
St David’s Day has never been a public holiday and has never had the appeal that the Irish allot to St Patrick who may well have been a Welshman. Nonetheless, over the last few years a number of events have sprung up to celebrate the patron saint of Wales and because this year the day falls at the weekend. More people than ever might be out at events that will be held up and down the country..
Biggest will be the sixth annual parade through the streets of Cardiff and that, of course, will be free. In North Wales, the celebrations last longer and Colwyn Bay holds a week of festivities, which oddly enough is also the sixth time they have done it as well. Their event actually begins today with the emphasis on music and even includes a 30 foot tall St David!
If you have never been to the little city of St Davids in Pembrokeshire, you have missed one of the prettiest and tranquil places in Wales. There, tomorrow, will be told traditional stories by David Ambrose, one of the great storytellers and, in fact, storytellers pop up in a number of places from Beaumaris to Tintern.
Further afield in Chicago, the Wrigly building will be decorated in red, white and green lights in the evening
So, enjoy the weekend and forget the tragedy of Paris.

Essex and Local Tourism

Yesterday I spent part of the day in the Brentwood Centre.
Why?
Because each year on one day, there is held the Tourism & Leisure Show (www.TourismandLeisureShow.co.uk) which is organised by Essex Tourism Association even to the extent that they lay on a free bus to collect you from Shenfield station and ferry you on a Clintona mini coach to the Centre.
Unlike the big consumer shows held in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and London, (see our list of consumer travel events) this show showcases local tourism;- places which aren’t that far to travel to- and it’s free to get in. Even then, there were 52exhibitors offering a range of attractions and destinations. They weren’t where you would necessarily go for two weeks but where you’d go out for a day or a weekend.
Perhaps the problem with big consumer shows is that they try to be all things to all people;- to cater for the world globetrotter, the bowls group as well as the person who wants somewhere to wander off to for an afternoon. It is believed that most people, for a short break or a day out will rarely travel more than about two hours. So for the people of Brentwood and the rest of Essex, the exhibitors were just about right. All were within reach although the reach stretched from Norfolk Tourism to the Isle of Wight
By midday, the Centre was pretty busy and the exhibitors that I talked to seemed pretty happy with it. But then so did the visitors. But why on a Thursday? Lots of potential visitors were working. A day at the weekend might attract even more people.
And days like this throughout the country attracting people to local attractions might give a welcome shot in the arm to local economies this year.

What Makes the Worst UK Tourist Destinations

A week or so ago, AOL ran a little feature listing the 10 worst destinations for tourists in the UK. Apart from 1 in Wales (Holyhead) and 1 in Scotland (Cumbernauld) all were in England. (Well done Northern Ireland for not making the list.)
Some of them seem a little unfair. Wolverhampton has a lot going for it and Hackney has a very vibrant feel to it with some good restaurants that beckon.
How did AOL choose?
Was there one of those online polls so beloved of the media where only those who feel so motivated to do so vote. Is it by those who live there and loathe it or is it voted for by those who just see the publicity but have never been there. I could vote for Worcester where I went to school and hated the place. But the hate was for the school, not the place. (the school doesn’t exist any more, it’s long been torn down) The Tything has a Tudor character second to none. There is good shopping and if I had not explained, Worcester would have been maligned for ever in this blog
Remember last year when we asked you to vote in the British Travel Awards? Some of the awards can only be voted for if the service had been used and maybe that should apply to polls like these.

Hercule Poirot, The Queen Mum & A Tsunami

There can't be many people who have been able to link a tsunami, the Queen Mother and a fictional detective all together in one sentence. The link is that this week, all three have had, what people hope will become tourist attractions, opened about them.
Which makes you wonder what is a tourist attraction. The glib answer is that it is anything which attracts people to come and see it. So the loss of thousands of tons of wood off a ship in the English cheannel and which swept up onto south coast beaches a month or so ago was a tourist attraction,- for a few days at least. But surely an attraction should be more permanent? And celebrating something?
These three do. The most tragic and perhaps the least likely to be visited by us is the newly opened museum in Aceh in Indonesia which commemorates the victims of the devastating 2004 tsunami that killed so many hundreds of thousands of people. Ship like in design and standing four stories high when the project is finished (it is open but there are few exhibits as yet) it will be also a monument to nature, how tough it is and how small man is.
The opening of Agatha Christie's house, Greenway, near Dartmouth in Devon celebrates an author, who 33 years after her death, is still a mainstay of reading, the theatre, (The Mousetrap still runs in London 50 odd years later) and television adaptations. (Miss Marple & Hercule Poirot.) Linking her writing with that famed disappearance in the the 1920's means that the house should attract many devotees. The gardens have been open for some years, now the house joins them.
The Queen Mother lived for so long (born when Victoria was Queen and died in this century)that there were so many people who were aware of her. The unveiling of a statue to her in the Mall in London will be widely viewed. Public statues and sculpture are something everyone can see for nothing. In vogue during Victorian times, there has been a bit of a revival with the new white horse planned for the Medway, various statues of Nelson Mandela and of course the Angel of the North.
So in the space of a week, we have new attractions celebrating so many diverse things, a tragedy, a literary figure of tremendous achievement and a much loved royal figure.
And that sums up what tourist attractions are.
Anything that celebrates or commemorates our past be they achievements, failures or what has affected us. And the hard nosed would say... and which also brings the punters in!

Open for Tourism?

Yesterday the National Museum in Baghdad re-opened after six years of closure. After the invasion in 2003, there were exaggerated reports of the museum being ransacked whilst US troops were nearby. It appears 15,000 artifacts out of hundreds of thousands were removed, some, it is thought, as a result of organised crime. Items turned up in the Philippines, Syria, Jordan, Peru and even on e-bay.
Now with a lot of Italian and US assistance, 8 out of the 26 halls have been reopened. But there are ceiling cracks and much still needs to be done so why was it re-opened?
It appears that the ministry of tourism wanted to reopen the museum whilst the ministry of culture wanted to wait claiming that there was insufficient security for the exhibits. The culture ministry, it was quoted in one report, was the senior ministry and therefore if they said it would not reopen then the tourism ministry could whistle.
I think yesterday reveals two things.
By pushing to reopen the museum, the tourism ministry was trying to show the world that normalty was coming back to Iraq and that normality meant that Iraq was open for tourism. Most of the world might disagree but is little things like this that can help to restore confidence. And probably the culture ministry was right to be concerned fearing that items might go walkabout again. But tourism is so important to a national economy that economics and the need to attract the money that tourists bring in to a country overide other considerations.

Attracting Visitors Gets too Successful;- but not in the South East.

Last December the state government of NSW in Australia decided to launch Family Funday Sunday. The idea was to bring more people onto ferries and into the city. To do this it cut the price a family ticket to just $2.50 (about £1.20). The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Sunday was already the most crowded day of the week for ferry rides so guess what happened. The ferries, already busy, couldn’t cope whilst trains and buses had loads of capacity but no discounted offers.
It got so bad that the last RiverCat to Parramatta (about an hour’s journey) couldn’t carry the last 100 passengers so they were left to their own devices.
The obvious change seems to give discounts on trains and buses and forget discounting the ferries. (although getting on the best harbour in the world on a gorgeous day is very enticing)
Now in London, we have a pretty expensive underground at £4 the minimum fare, a pretty expensive bus service (compared to Cardiff, Edinburgh, Birmingham, New York, Boston, Paris and almost another hundred or so places you could name). Last week Passenger Focus pointed out that train fares in Britain could be up to three times more expensive than places in Europe. In Los Angeles, last weekend I paid the equivalent of about 90p to travel on their underground service and the Metro in Paris is only €1.30
In the south east, we have almost the opposite of Sydney. We need to stem a falling tide of traffic on our trains and make it easier for tourists to get around but do we entice visitors with discounts at slack times. No we just have the equivalent of a cheap day return. And if you commute into London for a visit that gets expensive. From Guildford it is £15.90. Last week I got a single to Leeds from Kings Cross for £11.50
No chance of getting too successful in the south east with our prices is there?

Airline Meals & Alexei Sayle

Over the years I've made of of comments about the food served on planes. But in The Times on Saturday, the comedian, Alexei Sayle, is quoted as saying that he is "fond" of airline meals.
In the Food & Drink section of the paper, in a column called My Comfort Food, he calls airline food "reassuring" with its "indeterminate meat with vegetables of a colour not seen in nature...". Because the airline meal is on its way out he says, he gets nostalgic when he gets a meal.
Me, I get nostalgic for stories told to me of flying in the nineteen fifties when I am told food tasted like food. And for the early days of the airline Go, when they used to serve (you had to buy them but at reasonable prices compared to airport shops) Danish pastries and almond croissants that tasted fresh and were of a decent size. That lasted all of a few months before the pre-packeged stodge arrived. And for breakfasts on the BA early morning shuttles which I quite enjoyed apart from the gritty scrambled egg. Maybe that's gone as well now.
Some airlines are better than others I am told but until I fly on every airline, I reseve my thoughts on that. Until then, I will continue to take my own food with me. And share it with cabin crew as I have done a couple of times. Imagine what suffering they go through if they have to eat airline food all the time.
And Mr Sayle? Taking the michael? It hadn't dawned on me.

Mobile Phones at 26,000 Feet

Well I suppose it had to come.
After saying it would happen in 2006 and frequently in 2008, Ryanair introduced to passengers the chance to use their mobile phones on some flights yesterday.
So if you feel like paying between £2 and £3 a call you can indulge yourself by saying unecessary things like "I'll be landing in ten minutes" and "Can you put the kettle on in about half an hour" and other earth shattering items like that as you sit hunched up in the garishly blue and canary yellow decor of their planes.
Air France and bmi have trialled it, Emirates allows it and, in the ever increasing search for revenue, other airlines will probably jump on the bandwagon.
I said in this newsletter a good while ago that I would be the person who would book with an airline that promised not to introduce mobile phone usage. Now I am concerned that, in a few years time,there may not be an airline that will do that. Am I a fossil rooted in a bygone age?
Yes probably but it doesn't mean to say I like it and although I go to Dublin regularly,(at the moment it is only on Dublin based planes) other airlines will see me rather than Ryanair but how long will my wallet hold out? That's what Michael O'Leary, the Chief Exec of Ryanair relies on. He is quoted in Friday's Daily Telegraph as saying that passengers shouldn't object because they don't fly with Ryanair for peace. (Too right you don't. From the moment you enter their cabins the hard sell jingle begins.) Again to quote the Telegrpah, "Anyone who likes to sleep, we will wake them up and sell them a sandwich or coffee." So far his cabin crew have been politer than him because they haven't tried that with me.
Maybe that will be the limit?
Or not, depending on my wallet!

Airport Signs are Scary

Unless you have been holidaying on the moon, you have probably noticed that there has been a bit of a general downturn in the economy. Doom mongers have almost been prophesising the end of life as we know it. (Although, to cheer you up slightly, houses are beginning to sell again in our village and some companies I know in marketing have noticed an upturn in the last two weeks)
Imagine then walking from the gate through the walkway to get onto a plane at Heathrow and seeing signs for HSBC. The bank is a heavy advertiser at airports in the south and even as you taxi to a stand you see their familiar logos. The current advertising has a rather fearful figure with the word underneath “scary.” Never has that word and banking seen more appropriate than at the moment. And they probably don’t even realise it.
Just like RBS. At Edinburgh airport, you walk down similar walkways to get onto your plane and the message next to their logo is “Make it happen” Well in many ways they did.
But I don’t want be reminded by advertising of what messes the banks have contributed. What’s the betting the next advertising from them is “We got it wrong; we’re sorry?”

The Mary Rose to get a New Home

Portsmouth City Council has given planning permission for a museum to be built to house the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship which sank in 1545.
There is a design already, one created by the architects, Wilkinson Eyre, (who designed the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea). It is to be in shape of a jewellery box and should be ready in 2011. As with all these things, money is an issue for the Mary Rose Trust .(www.maryrose.org.) The bill for the new museum will be 335 million. £28 million has been pledged so only £7 million needs to be found. To put it in language that we are getting accustomed to, about half days worth of money that HBOS seems to have lost in the last three months. So not a lot then.
When the Mary Rose emerged from the water in 1982, I like many others was watching it live on television. It was an extraordinary event to see a yellow cocooned structure holding the timbers of half a ship. Seeing it later when it was being doused in liquid to preserve the timbers and shivering as I watched it was hard sometimes to see it as Henry VIII must have done.
When all is done it would be nice to think that it will be as well presented as the Vasa is in Stockholm. Housed in its own museum, (www.vasamuseet.se) the Vasa was salvaged in 1961 and now sits resplendent, the only intact seventeenth century warship.

Some airports get smaller and others...

There are plans for a new runway at Heathrow. Some people think there will be another one at Gatwick when the planning rules expire in about eight years time. In the meantime the crunch is hitting airports now. The extent was brought closer to everyday life with the decision of Prestwick airport to shed about 120 of its 452 workforce. To have to dismiss 25% of all your staff says something about either the downturn in air travel or the way the airport is managed.
Prestwick is a slightly odd airport. Nestling on the Ayrshire cost it is about a 45 minute train journey from Glasgow. As an airport with lots of potential passengers living nearby it is a bit like Manston in Kent. The sea rules out having a complete surround of people. So it has relied on cargo and no-frills airlines. But cargo has been more affected by the downturn than travellers. Cargo traffic at Prestwick is down by 21% and aircraft movements by 8%. Glasgow travel is down by 12%, Edinburgh by 8.6% and Aberdeen by 5.8% say its owners, BAA
So whilst it looks odd that some airports are planning to expand, the reality is that expansion takes years, at least 5 and often 10 or more so planners forecast when the upturn comes and start applying to build accordingly.
And forecasting at the moment may be an art in reading tea leaves rather than a science.

What has the British Empire Ever Done for Us?

This year is the 800th anniversary of Cambridge University. One college, Emmanuel, is 525 years old this year. Founded in 1584 in the time of Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare and with a history longer than some countries, it has seen the Spanish Armada, the Civil War, the union with Scotland, the invitation to the Hanovarians to become monarchs and the Victorian era. It has nurtured the founder of Harvard University in the USA, Thomas King who developed the wave theory of light and who deciphered hieroglyphs using the Rosetta Stone and the man who discovered vitamins, F.G. Hopkins. Amongst many, many more.
The students of Emmanuel decided that the theme of the May Ball this year would be the British Empire, the empire of the nineteenth century. Now it may not be.
Why?
Because some people objected saying that the British Empire was linked with colonialism, repression and racism. The students capitulated saying they did not wish to offend. (Isn’t that what students are supposed to do?).
Why should they?
The British Empire brought good things as well as bad and the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum in Bristol easily gives a truer picture of the empire than those ill- informed objectors seem to appreciate. The museum doesn’t glory in the empire but portrays it warts and all. Their slavery exhibition last year was a fine example of showing how appalling it was but how Britons like Wilberforce fought to have it banned long before many countries considered that.
The Empire brought the expansion of trade, the development of transport such as railways, the growth of industry which slowly removed people from the poverty of the agricultural age and the spread of representative government to many parts of the world administered by those colonials. That alone, is worthy of celebration.
In just 3 days the students, who had been up-front about the good and the bad of empire, altered their tune and the May Ball will now be a celebration of things late-Victorian.
Surprising how omitting a few words can quieten the ill-informed.

The White Horse Angel of the South

Just in time for the Olympics, (so its still 3 years away then) organisers have announced that Mark Wallinger, a former Turner prize winner, has been selected to build a giant statue of a white horse in north Kent. Given the success in attracting tourists to the Angel of the North near Gateshead, this is an attempt to replicate that success.
But will it?
Probably. Anything that will stand 50 metres tall (say 150 foot) can't help but get noticed. But being so tall and being on comparativly flat land means that people won't have to travel that close to see it.
And there will be jokes. A white horse may be the symbol of Kent but it is also a brand of Scotch and a well known pub name. Jokes about where the wagon is, is the horse waiting there because its owner is in the pub and the jockey must be enormous and obvious and clean ones. I make no other comment about other likely jokes but there will be many!
It has still to get planning permission so there is a chnace it may not be created.
Whatever happens, public sculpture does draw tourists so even if a 50 metre pile of rubbish was put up it would attract people. Now where do the obligatory cafe and the public conveniences go?

Another way for Airlines to get your Money

In this blog and in many newspapers, ways that airlines make money have been listed. Charges for leg room, drinks, snacks, getting on the plane first, sitting next to a window or the aisle, baggage and the overall weight of your luggage have all been used as ways to empty your wallet.
Now US Airways, yes that same airline that won plaudits last month for the superb landing by Sully on the Hudson River in New York, has decided to charge $7 if its' economy class passengers want to get a blanket/eye shades/pillow and ear plugs. You have just six days left to get it free before this latest money scheme is introduced.
The ear plugs at least would stop you hearing of all the ways they try to get your money!

Our Government Monitors where We Go

In today's copy of The Sunday Times, there is a story that shows, like the USA, our government is keeping a pretty close idea on where we travel.
They already know where we go to becuase our passports are electronically swiped as we fly, even on domestic flights.
Now the paper reveals that there is an office in Wythenshawe in Manchester that houses part of the UK Border Agency which, as part of a pilot, has information on 70 million travel journeys and expects this to reach 100 million by April. They will keep details for up to 10 years on where I have flown, the seat reservations, the credit card I used. my address and telephone numbers. Because when I fly to the US I have to add an e-mail address and where I am staying they will presumabely get that as well. And if I use a ferry, Eurostar or Eurotunnel then they will know as well. For all I know, the next thing it will be my bus and train ticket! And all of this is being collected in the name of security and to help protect me from terrorism in years to come. I have not given my permission under the Data Protection Acts for this to be held and I guess I have no rights because this will be outside the Act.
Why do I object?
On one ground really. The authorities have not given me any confidence that the information I give them will be held securely. Their track record on losing computers, laptops, memory sticks and data is lamentable. Why should this be any more secure than other big scale informatio projects they have been involved in?

TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Awards

TripAdvisor claims to be the largest travel community as is quoted quite widely on travel websites and carrys credence because of the sheer volume of people, millions, who provide those reviews across the range of travel services.
Recently, they have announced the results of their travellers’ choice awards (the seventh year of this award) and, as I have mentioned before in this blog, you do wonder how the decision is arrived at to make awards TripAdvisor claims to be the largest travel community. Their reviews of what people think are published so, below, are the words of TripAdvisor themselves, taken from their website.

"The TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice award winners for 2009 were determined by a combination of TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index and traveller ratings of specific property attributes. TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index is a proprietary algorithm that determines traveller satisfaction based on a variety of sources, including TripAdvisor hotel reviews and travel articles and opinions from across the web. The hotel review process on TripAdvisor also allows travellers to “grade” hotels based on a variety of attributes, including cleanliness, value and suitability for specific types of travellers"

It looks as though this is wider than their own reviews so I looked at the reviews for a hotel in Llandudno, the Cae-y-Bae which won UK Best Bargain and was 6th in the Best Service in Europe category 8th in the Hidden Gems in Europe category. There were 72 reviews on TripAdvisor, all complementary and the majority were from 2008 so the reviews are as recent as you could expect. Even if TripAdvisor relied on this, Cae-y-Bae does well, and even better in not having one disgruntled guest.
Some would say that 72 reviews is a small number and it is but is there anything better? And the answer is no so, at least in this case, and unlike some of the awards that are around, the advice from previous guests is worth listening to.

British Holidays & the Snow

This morning it has been announced that Pontins will be hiring about 2000 staff for their six sites in the UK as they refurbish/rebuild them due to increased sales.
Most of the domestic tour operators such as Hoseasons, Center Parcs, Butlins & John Fowler have been saying that this year should be a good year for those taking breaks in the UK and this announcement seems to reveal confidence in the UK holiday market for this year.
For many people "holidays" may have started. The snowfall in the south east (my garden has had a foot or 31 cms lying on it) has encouraged people to have day outs by tobogganing in the parks and the hills round here. With the schools closed for the second day in a row, some kids have been out getting healthy exercise. Maybe closing schools in this weather is a good thing since people seem to have been friendlier as we have all been in the same situation and they having been having fun and thus, felt better overall.
I'm not sure that isn't a good thing given the doom and gloom in the media