In Copenhagen this week is a three day conference (Passenger Terminal Expo) where airport and airline suppliers sell their wares. Theoretically what makes it easier for them should make it easier for the passenger to get through what has become, for many of us, the bane of travel. It used to be check-in queues. Now it is security and having to walk or be bussed, miles to where the aircraft is parked. So is there anything at this conference that offers hope for us?

Just after the news comes out that the proposed 22 day strike that would affect anyone flying to Spain or over Spanish airspace has been called off, up pops British Airways (BA) to remind us that life isn’t plain sailing. Or even plain flying! Once again there has been a strike ballot. Once again, the vote has overwhelmingly been for strike action.

I was travelling by train from our office in Leatherhead to Leamington Spa. Simple you might have thought. Not a bit of it. It turned into a long drawn out affair that has demonstrated the complexity of ticket buying, the confusion in the minds of railway staff and why people often end up with the wrong ticket.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Leamington Spa is an ideal place for a day out as readers will find out when I’ve finished writing the story.

There are lots of websites that will give snapshots of what happens based on a few thousand examples. When it comes to assessing how punctual airlines were last year we have the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) figures as analysed by www.flightontime.info. In this instance we are talking of thousands if not tens of thousands or in the case of BA, nearly a quarter of a million flights.

In the light of the horrific earthquake and tsunami that has hit the eastern part of the island of Honshu, you might have received e-mails requesting donations to a fund to help the inhabitants. Whilst a number of charities are actively engaged in helping, be wary of any e-mails you get. If you know the source and trust it, fine. If it comes from someone or some organisation that uses a hotmail or gmail address, be suspicious. If an organisation is named, google them and go to the official website. Donate via that method instead.

Because it had been British Tourism Week last week, I had visited a few parts of the country to see how different regions were going to attract us. And how they were coping with cuts but more about that later. This meant that I had to stay in hotel for a night. Regular readers will know that as long as the bed is reasonable and the shower functions well, I can put up with a lot. I have had rooms the size of dog kennels and some only slightly more hygienic. I can put up with no TV, no chairs or desk to work at and I don’t really mind a cobweb in the corner of the room but last week I came across something I’d not encountered before.

Travel Destinations, Travel Rumblings
Have we lost our appetite for travelling to the USA? Figures released by the US government this week show that 1% fewer of us visited the country last year compared to 2009. What’s 1% you might say. That’s neither here nor there and can easily be made up. But the government also produced figures to show that over the last decade, the number of us travelling had dropped by 18% compared to the 1990’s. Only one other country, Japan had a higher drop over the decade.

Why might this be so?

On sale today go tickets for the 2012 London Olympics. And you have only 499 days to wait for the events. Or you could opt for the true Olympics, those held in the Shropshire village of Much Wenlock. It is 160 years this year since the first games were held there so beating those other ones to be held in London next year by at least 40 years. So important are these games that London Olympics has called one of their mascots ‘Wenlock’ in honour of the village.

Visit Britain have announced the results of a survey on where overseas visitors go when they visit us. There are some interesting results. Overseas visitors spend £2 billion on trips to our coastlines. Not only do we like going there but so do the Germans, French and Americans. Even the Swiss are the 10th most likely group to visit the coast. And why do the Chinese and Russians visit it in larger numbers than our big neighbours and largest group of overall visitors, the French?

With the budget less than a fortnight away the travel trade is boosting its attack on how high APD is and how damaging it could be for jobs and the economy if it stays at its high level. They have been boosted in that one of the few countries in Western Europe to retain such a tax has got rid of it. Ireland has removed it because it was seeing reduced tourism coming into Ireland and fewer air passengers both of which meant the tax was not raising net money but costing the economy instead. Will George Osborne, the Chancellor, take heed?

For the past 40 years, it has been the Air Transport Users Council (AUC) that has been the body that has supposedly championed the rights of consumers. That has just been brought to an end. If you want to complain about an airline or an airport there is a new body to represent us.
Actually that’s not quite true. There are two new bodies but both still attached to the CAA, Civil Aviation Authority.

This isn’t the name of a new campaign encouraging us to visit the country. This is just a small part of what Tunisia was doing at a trade show in Berlin this week. ITB in Berlin is one of the biggest travel trade shows in the world and Tunisia is one of two North African countries (Egypt being the other) trying to encourage the travel trade to advocate the country to you and I.

Third culture kids is the name for those who have grown up abroad. CD Traveller looks at the joys and difficulties of raising children outside of their passport countries

It’s not even St Patrick’s Day yet but the Irish will be all over out TV screens, radio stations and websites as they try and persuade us that we should have our holidays and short breaks with them this year. Depending on and ports have links. And it all starts today.

This morning the Dept for Culture & Oddities issued its 52 page document on its plans for tourism. These will affect all of us that holiday, take day trips or visit friends because tourism is so involved in what we do. Go to shops outside your local community? That contributes to tourism. Use the roads or trains? That affects tourism. Eat cornflakes? Well no, that doesn’t affect tourism but they are mentioned in the report.
So how will this affect you?

Both the UK and Ireland have identified the importance of the USA as a source of visitors. New York has more flights to the UK and Ireland than any other destination in the country. Both Visit Britain and Tourism Ireland have offices in New York. Why, then, was there so little representation from either country at the New York Times Travel Show?

Yesterday I went to the Five Lakes Hotel, Country Club and Spa – to give it its full title – for the tourism and leisure show that was mentioned a couple of days ago. Why? To see what people thought of their local show and how the exhibitors reacted to it.

This morning BAA announced its financial results for 2010. It made a loss but the chief executive calls this “robust” and confidently expects to present a “strong increase in profits” this year.
Now let’s get down to the important stuff. How is BAA going to treat its passengers in the future?

Back last autumn you would probably expect that Egypt and maybe Tunisia would have been hot spots for tourist bookings this year. After the removal of the Tunisian president in January, it was to be expected that there would be a downturn in bookings at least until things had stabilised. The same could be said about Egypt. But as the disruption continues in North Africa and the Middle East, will, tourists be deterred from going to the whole area?

Yet another survey.
Its theme is that we only use travel agents sparingly to research holidays for us. Well what a surprise. Half the fun of choosing a holiday or a trip is sitting down and dreaming of some of the places. Only those with no time, no gumption and no sense hand it over entirely to a travel agent.

Our China correspondent on the pros and cons of using a guidebook in Beijing

Dimitrios Buhalis, mentioned before in CD-Traveller as one of the modern thinkers about tourism, has just edited a book – “Accessible Tourism” – (he writes books like we have hot dinners!) in conjunction with Simon Darcy about the holidaymaker and traveller who is disabled. Were you aware that there are 650 million disabled people in the world? And over 80 Million in the EU?

By now, as you consider where to holiday, have a day trip or a short break in the UK next you probably have picked up a bundle of brochures. Some are almost airport novel size in the number of pages they have. Is this necessary? Do we want to wade through a brochure, three quarters of which consists of adverts? Even worse are the ones we collect that seem to be about tourism but are really accommodation listings in disguise

Hoteliers and just about everyone else in tourism thinks that the Department of Culture & Oddities will withdraw funding from the star scheme, the way that hotels have been independently judged for decades in England.. the rest of the UK is unaffected. The consensus seems to be that review and, to an extent comparison sites, have taken on that task. Why should the government continue to put money in it when private industry is doing the task goes the story.

The CD-Traveller office gets quite a lot of press releases. Zealous PR officers working hard for their clients will send out information on almost anything. I’m not saying that knowing that four rooms have been added to a 40 room hotel is not important. At least to the hotel owner but for the visitor, the fact that there is a 10% increase in the number of rooms available at the Hotel Delightful doesn’t really cause much excitement.

Many British readers might not have come across Rick Steves. An American travel guide writer, he specialises in Europe and spends many months over here each year searching out the new and the interesting for his readers and TV viewers. As an outsider, he sees and reports things that we may not pay as much attention to. In the last fortnight , writing in a syndicated column that appears in many newspapers in America he has highlighted what he recommends for the UK this year.

Has it ever happened to you? You had a reserved seat. You have baggage that you’ve had to walk with across umpteen concourses. You find your seat on the train and there is someone sitting in it. You mention politely that they are in your seat and then you find they won’t move. What do you do? Complain to the guard (or whatever a guard is called on a train these days) or meekly accept it?

I’m in a train, listening to the passenger sitting in the seat in front of me. She is talking about holidays and is trying to decide on where to go this year. I’ve done Ireland, I’ve done France and I’ve toured England.
What do we mean when we say we’ve “done” a country? How can you ever see everything? Does it mean we have seen enough? Or that we have seen what we wanted to see and nothing interests us any more?