The figures for what we visited last year have been released by ALVA, the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions. Between their 42 members, they are responsible for nearly 1,600 different attractions. But not every attraction is a member and not every member provides figures so there could be more popular places around.
Last year more of us visited their attractions than ever before. The figures were up by nearly 11% over 2009 which may not be that surprising given that 2009 was a year when more of us holidayed at home.
Rather obviously, those that didn’t make an entry charge filled the top 5 positions with the British Museum being the leading attraction in the country with over 5.5 million visits.

Firstly, the good news. the Lufthansa strike was called off last night as pilots and management agreed to talk to each other again. It may mean that some aircraft are out of place this morning so check with Lufthansa to see if there are any problems.
The first bit of bad news is that British Airways’ cabin crew members of Unite have voted overwhelmingly for strike action. You might remember that they voted for action before Christmas but BA management won a court action which said the ballot hadn’t been operated properly. (see CD-Traveller 21 January and 15 December). No dates have been announced for the strike and it may be significant that Unite have said that they want to talk to BA management first. (For a view from the inside see Ian’s comments at the end of the piece on 21st January.)
The second piece of bad news is that, from today, French air traffic controllers start a 4 day strike which will affect flights throughout French air space. About 50% of flights in and out of Paris Orly are expected to be cancelled and a quarter through Paris Charles de Gaulle. The strike coincides with French school holidays.

The phrase above is the slogan that Visit Britain us using as part of its advertising campaign to encourage Americans to come and see us. The slogan thought up by Californian, Jay Masunaga, in a competition designed to publicise Britain as a holiday destination for the gay community.
To complement the promotion, Visit Britain has also come up with categories of people to whom Britain would appeal. These are Foodies, Night Owls, Event-Goers, Culturati, Chillers and Fashionistas. You can guess what most of these are but how about Chillers

For any of you flying on Lufthansa this week you should check with the airline about your flight. The pilots union is striking for 4 days and something like 1,200 flights out of 1,800 will be cancelled each day so not every flight is affected. A number of flights from Birmingham, Dublin, London City, Heathrow, Manchester and Newcastle to German destinations will be flying but you need to check the Lufthansa website, www.lufthansa.com, to see if they are still scheduled to fly. This also affects their Germanwings subsidiary,
Lufthansa has issued a special flight schedule during this week and you will find a link to this on the home page on their website. As we all know with strikes, things can change at the last minute so check as well just before you leave for the airport.
If your flight is cancelled, Lufthansa will refund your money or rebook you, free of charge, to another date.

Visit England has announced the results of the business that its members did over the Christmas period and for the whole of 2009. And, it looks like pretty good news for them as many recorded an increase in business over 2008.
44% said that they had more business than previously and 42% said that they had the same level of business meaning that only 14% recorded a drop in business. A drop could mean that it wasn’t due to the overall level of business around but because of new entrants, better marketing or weather or other unforeseen factors (like a long period of roadworks for example) and those hit sales.

Kevin Smith is an American film director. He burst on the the scene with the rather excellent “Clerks”. A film featuring a host of unknowns and funded by credit cards, which went down a storm at the Sundance Festival. Since then he has gone from strength to strength, directing such stars as Alan Rickman, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in “Dogma”, a film that solidly laid the boot in to the catholic church.

One of the reasons that we visit some places is because of the shops. Shops, shopping centres, town centres and out of town outlet stores are tourist draws in their own right. The success of Merry Hill in Dudley, Bluewater and Lakeside in the south east and Meadowhall in Sheffield and just some examples of successful retail outlets which pull people- and coach parties- from miles around.
So too does Hamleys.
It is one of the few stores that has an international appeal. You are just as likely to find people from the US, the Netherlands and France in there as you are to find Londoners or Merseysiders.

You might remember that I mentioned some while ago (CD-Traveller, 14 December 2008) that there would be an international competition, the first of its kind, for tourism cartoons. Just under 600 works were submitted from 50 countries. 269 cartoonists took part in the Turkish organised competition.
The winner was Cemalettin Guzeloglu from Turkey with his cartoon of a cruiseship moored in some big city. Exiting the boat is a ramp with rows of unloaded supermarket trolleys on the quayside. The assumption is that all cruiseship passengers do is to shop.
Six of the cartoons can be found at www.tabrizcartoons.com.

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.

For the second year in a row, readers polled by Wanderlust magazine have named the West Highland Railway the world’s best railway journey which runs from Glasgow to Mallaig. This is how the BBC ran the results of the Wanderlust annual survey into what its readers preferred. They omitted to mention the other awards. It was, unfortunately, the only category in which a UK destination or attraction won a top award. (I don’t include best UK Airport which, obviously, had to be won by a UK entrant! Incidentally, the winner was London City)
The readers of Wanderlust are an adventurous bunch so don’t expect your average destination to featur