Summer 2010 will see South Africa stage football’s greatest show: the FIFA World Cup. The games will be held in nine cities including Durban. The city has been pouring millions of rand into new infrastructure including a state-of-the-art football ground, The Durban Stadium, which will seat no fewer than 70,000 fans.
But there’s more to South Africa’s third largest city than the FIFA World Cup Finals. Local resident, Heather Reed, reveals why South Africa’s seaside playground rivals Cape Town as the Rainbow Nation’s most popular tourist destination…

Whether you’re staycation-ing or vacationing, CD Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world

As usual, when St David’s Day falls on a weekday, some of the celebrations fall on the preceding weekend. And so at Caldicot Castle in Monmouthshire, they have an open day on Sunday 28th February with free admission to the castle. For 5 hours, starting at 11am, you can enjoy a number of activities in not only the castle but the country park as well including the ever popular historic re-enactments.
So why should you consider going to Caldicot instead of one of the other St David’s Day activities?

Dover castle
This is just to let you all know that, for the 4th year in a row, Visit Kent and Kent County Council will be organising the Big Day Out on Saturday March 27th. So why, might you ask, am I telling you this so far in advance? The answer is that tickets for all [...]

Like many other eurozone countries, Greece suffered from having fewer tourists from the UK and Ireland last year. Overall money from tourism was down by 11% but that masked areas of growth. Some operators reported that some of the more expensive islands to go to like Kefalonia showed increases.
So given the state of the Greek economy and those headlines that litter the press, should anyone be worried about holidaying in Greece this year?
The simple answer is probably not.

Everyone wants to make the most of their time on earth and Rough Guides’ new compact sized book, Make the Most of Your Time on Earth, tells you how to go about it. We’ve handpicked five of Britain’s best travel experiences to whet the appetite

Never heard of them? Rivalling the winter ones in Vancouver next month come these Olympics. From Littlehampton on the Sussex coast, comes the Charity Pancake Challenge where teams compete for the honour of winning and…not much else to be honest.
This year there will be 22 teams- more than last year- competing for charity. Whether they they all be dressed like the man in the panto frock will only be known when you turn up on the day and see for yourselves.

For those of you living in the London you are about to be deluged by Taiwanese advertising as they try and persuade more of us to visit their country. Only about 45,000 of us currently visit Taiwan each year and they want more of us to go there. So, for the next 6 weeks or so, you’ll not only see posters at tube stations you’ll also see 75 taxis carrying the same message, visit Taiwan.
They are using the slogan, “Where else but Taiwan,” as they try to get across the fact that they are not very well known.

Aidan Lawes gives us the low-down on Hanoi, Halong Bay and Sa Pa – the final part of his journey around Vietnam

Aidan Lawes shares his experience of Hué and Hoi An in central Vietnam with CD Traveller

Aidan Lawes shares his experience of the Mekong Delta with CD Traveller

Aidan Lawes ventured to Vietnam and quickly fell under the country’s spell. Read about his oriental odyssey all this week exclusively on the CD Traveller website

This year sees a lot of anniversaries being celebrated in Wiltshire. Ask people what they know about the county and they might come up with Salisbury, Salisbury Plain, Longleat and Stonehenge. It suffers from being a county that the M4 goes through and many times that is as much as a tourist sees. Yet the motorway only cuts through the northern fringes so the farmland that they see from the road says little about the county.
But this year you’ll hear a lot more about it.

At this time of year a lot of destinations don’t bother to try and attract tourists. They think that people are only interested in skiing or winter sun breaks. We have the consumer travel shows like Destinations and the Holiday Shows but not a lot more than that.
But that doesn’t apply if you are New York.
They have another way to entice you to visit their city during January and February. We are one week into what is called the NYC Restaurant Week

Once a destination for the ‘newlyweds and nearly deads’, Bermuda is back on the map. Britain’s oldest colony celebrated its 400th anniversary last year and the party hasn’t stopped. CD Traveller got the low-down on the paradise island – that contrary to public opinion isn’t in the Caribbean – from local resident Victoria Clipper

Each country asks visitors from time-to-time whether they would revisit their country. Today, customer satisfaction specialists say that there are only a few questions that matter. They are whether you would revisit and would you recommend to your friends and relatives. (The reason for asking whether you would recommend to friends is that you are felt to be more likely only to recommend it to people you know if you were really happy to do so.)
So in the latest survey by Visit Wales, 70% of people said they would revisit and 86% said that they would recommend. These are high figures so, naturally, Alan Ffred Jones, the Assembly minister responsible for tourism and Visit Wales are rather pleased.

New Orleans is widely known throughout the world for its carnival, its food and its French-Creole-American mix. It attracts people from all over the world the UK included. Yet if you are British there is not one single scheduled flight to this city. Why is it that places like Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte have direct connections yet New Orleans misses out? Which would you rather go to? Which has the greater tourist potential?

Just like long forgotten pop and TV stars still attract people to visit pantomimes although they haven’t appeared in anything since the days of Margaret Thatcher so tourism destinations plug their links with nearly forgotten films and TV series. Cumbria has the links with the film of Beatrix Potter, Mama Mia is doing wonders for tourism on the Greek isle of Skopelos. Even Balamory, the children’s TV programme attracts people to Tobermory. Now there comes a different form of product placement.
According to a fascinating story in The Sunday Times yesterday, a new novel by Lionel Shriver has been funded by a resort and a tour operator.

CD Traveller visits Stoke Park Club and savours a little taste of paradise

With Holocaust Memorial Day on the horizon (January 27), CD-traveller spoke to Holocaust survivor Hermann Hirschberger – now in his 80s – about the reality of life in Nazi Germany, the persecution of the Jewish community and the desperation to escape to a new life in England

Just as Europe has capitals of culture; this year, Istanbul, Essen and Pecs so the Arab world highlights a city each year. This year it is Alexandria in Egypt, a city which is more well known than visited by British and Irish tourists. It is known as where Cleopatra had her palace, where the great lighthouse was one of the wonders of the world and home of the ancient world’s largest library. Founded and named after Alexander the Great, its glory days ended centuries ago as Cairo gradually became the capital.
Today it is where Egyptian city people go for the holiday. The days when the British and Europeans seem to take over the city have gone. Today Europeans visit Cairo and Luxor or go to the Red Sea resorts.

Back in September (CD-Traveller 30/9/09) we wrote about the Staffordshire Hoard of over 1500 finds that had been found in a field by a metal detector. When they went on display in Birmingham, the queues to see it went around the museum and tickets were rationed. (www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk.)
Such a magnificent find (for once the word isn’t an exaggeration) deserves to stay in the Midlands rather than London and so Birmingham Art Gallery & Museum is trying to raise £3.3 million in just 13 weeks to buy the hoard. They will then need another £1.7 million to display it. So far £500,000 has been raised in the first week.
If you feel you can contribute, please go to www.artfund.org/staffordshire_hoard/

Last month we gave you the low-down on what to see and do in Doha – the Qatari capital that is making claims to be the region’s next big travel hot shot. But there’s more to Qatar than its capital… Leave Doha for a day and get to grips with the former fishing town of Al Khor – only a short 45 minute drive away

Most country destinations begin a new year with a forecast or wish about how their tourism industry will do. South East Asia has been a growth area for long distance holidaymakers from the UK. The combination of climate, different cultures, currencies that haven’t been altered much against sterling, wildife and some inexpensive fares on particular routes have helped those countries tap into British holidaymakers.
One country forecasting tremendous growth is Sri Lanka…

We’ve got the low-down from Mr & Mrs Smith – one of our favourite travel teams – on two top spots to stay in South Australia. Your definitive guide starts here…

This year there are 3 capitals, Istanbul in Turkey, Essen in Germany and Pecs in Hungary. Now that there are so many countries in the EU it is getting to the point where one place each year will mean it will take 27 years to get around to the same country again. So we will have at least two per year and probably three. Yes I know Turkey isn’t in the EU but the definition they use of Europe is wider than the geographical or political definitions.
So, a little about each.

Turned off by chain hotels? Bored with ‘boutique’? Bettina Kowalewski, author of Bed in a tree – a gorgeous coffee table book published by DK Eyewitness Travel about the world’s craziest, quirkiest places to stay– suggests provides some inspiring alternatives from an actual bed in a tree in South Africa to a hanging eco-sphere in Canada, a giant suitcase in Germany and glass igloo in Finland!

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.