Last November there was a further increase in the Air Passenger Duty (APD) we UK based flyers pay. Next November it will go up yet again. In Ireland a similar tax is blamed by Ryanair for a substantial fall in the number of people visiting there and its decision to maintain quite so many planes at Dublin. It has concerned some countries that their tourism is being affected so the Netherlands has abolished the tax.
The UK is one of the most heavily taxed, if not the most heavily one for airline flights. But it doesn’t only hit people in the UK. Because of the high cost, overseas countries that rely on tourism for substantial national income are worried we won’t travel there.

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

Up until recently, if you had milk in a hotel room or on a plane they gave you a little bucket of it. The foil top had a pull-off part and either this came off as you tried to open it or you managed to get the milk sprayed over you. Or you put your finger in through the foil and splashed the milk over yourself, the tray or your neighbour.
Obviously, someone decided to come up with a new container to hold milk and the tube was born. You’ve probably seen them. They’re like the containers that hold coffee in hotel rooms. At one end is a tear off edge in order to make it easier for you get at the milk. Except that when you tear it, the pressure in the tube often results in a jet of milk going over your tray, your clothing or your foot depending on the power of the jet. It’s called a Dairystix of all things

I automatically think of 4 places in our countries when I think of Vikings; the Isle of Man, Orkney, Dublin and York. Were they a rampaging bunch of blonde warriors bent on raping and pillaging as the Horrible Histories tell us or is there more than that?
Yes that isn’t the total story. As usual it is more complicated but mixing the truth with what people think is a great way of attracting people to your event and none is better than the Jorvik Viking Centre in linking the two.

Last week Air New Zealand announced that they were introducing 22 almost flat beds for economy class passengers. BMI said that they were doing away with first and business class flights on some routes and Qantas says it is scrapping about 20% of its first class seats. Are we beginning to see the end or the decline of first class seats on flights?
Certainly over the last twelve months or so, when I’ve walked through first class cabins there have been few people in them. In business class, numbers have been light

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

On top of the push by Lord Adonis, the transport secretary, for the development of high speed rail links in the UK comes a poll of business travellers who seem to be in agreement. The Guild of Travel Management has members who are responsible for co-ordinating travel at either big companies or those where travel is a major part of their work. 70% of them feel a high speed rail network should be a priority for the next government. 60% then said they would switch to rail from their cars if the rail route was faster.

The post office has come out with its usual survey of where sterling will go the furthest. This year it shows that Turkey has had a rise of 44% in holiday costs and Spain is now cheaper. Jamaica, Egypt and Dubai are places where your pound will buy you more.
Is news of this sort of value to the holidaymaker or is it just playing with words in search of some publicity?
The post office announcement is based on how sterling has gone up or down against whatever the local currency over the last year. As such it faithfully reflected how much £1 will buy when you changed your money across.

It is hard to believe that there has been no new railway route for a century. Yes, the occasional new station has opened but a new route? Chiltern Railways operates lines out of Marylebone in London to the commuter suburbs of north west London and on into Oxfordshire and Birmingham. For the first time they are going to operate a line to Oxford from Marylebone via High Wycombe and Bicester which will take just over the hour.
But, you will say, there are trains already linking Oxford and London using First Great Western out of Paddington via Reading which also take about an hour. What’s different?

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.

Those of us brought up on Fawlty Towers might find it hard to believe that a Torquay hotel has been named as best for service in the UK and that it has also been listed in the top 25 hotels in the world. Obviously there are no Basil’s, Manuel’s or Sybil’s at the Charterhouse Hotel which has won this accolade.
This award is for service, the most important feature of what we buy after the product itself. Even then you can cope with a product that is not perfect if the service is special. I have stayed in hotels that were not the best. The service, the attention and the fact that nothing seems too much trouble has made ordinary hotels into splendid ones. In those I have stayed in again and again. And recommended

Twice I flew from Heathrow’s terminal 1 this week. Twice I had breakfast as I was on early flights. On each occasion I had breakfast, it was after I had cleared security since you’re never quite sure how long it might take. And I had breakfast in two different restaurants, neither of which would set your gastronomic juices on fire. But that rumbling is for another day.
In both restaurants, I was given stainless steel cutlery

Things disappear from art galleries and museums. Usually if something stolen it is a picture like that of The Scream by Edvard Munch which “walked” from its Oslo home. It isn’t often that it is a skull that walks particularly a skull with a very large metal stake through it. Yet that is what has happened in Hamburg.
The supposed skull (it’s not absolutely sure whose skull it is) of Klaus Stortebeker a pirate who was beheaded in 1400 disappeared from the Hamburg History Museum on January 9

The decision before Christmas by the courts to view the 12 days strike by the union Unite at BA (see CD-Traveller 15/12/09) as illegal meant that it was nearly inevitable that there would be another strike ballot. That has been announced for next week.
Last time the criticism of the length and timing of the strike almost made the public strong supporters of the BA management since the cabin crew or Unite were seen as deliberately trying to ruin people’s Christmas. This time maybe the union and the cabin crew have learnt from that PR debacle.

om the headlines in the media you would think that we are all going to holiday and travel more this year. That’s not quite the truth because this headline applies to the world as a whole. Some parts of the world will holiday more, some won’t and some will stay the same. But you can’t get a catchy headline out of “Certain countries in the world will attract more tourist in 2010 proving a new pandemic, war, or disaster doesn’t happen.” You might just as well add “or if there is an X in the month.”
I haven’t seen one downbeat forecast y

It is unusual that customer satisfaction gets mentioned by a government. It merits interest especially if it looks as though there is genuine interest rather than lip service in what passengers think.
Lord Bradshaw who worked for various parts of British Rail in his career asked whether additional measures of customer satisfaction would be added to the requirements when companies bid for new rail franchises.
Since 1999 passengers have been asked twice a year on behalf of the rail consumer watchdog, Passenger Focus, a series of questions including being asked to rate satisfaction with a number of elements of the service provided.

Flying is not felt to be very environmentally friendly. Whether you are a believer in the fact that the airline industry is being particularly singled out or you believe that it is as bad as some people say doesn’t allow for two other factors which will probably have more influence. That is the high cost of aviation fuel and the fact that supplies are finite.
The future seems to be biofuels and a few airlines have already tried flying their planes using it. But what sort of biofuels?

In 2009 more than 1.5 million of us took a cruise. This year the figure is expected to grow by about another 100,000 making it one of the few bright spots for a type of holiday that already has quite a high appeal.
What is that is appealing to holidaymakers? Can the growth keep on continuing?
According to the cruise review site, CruiseCritic.co.uk, there are two main reasons for this attraction. The first is the willingness of cruise companies to slash prices to fill berths and the second is that cut-price offers attract those people who like a bargain. They might not usually consider a cruise but the bargain price appeal is the clincher. So the size of the market might continue to grow as long as the number of bargain hunters grow.

One of the successes of 2009 has been the growth of the staycation. More of us took a domestic holiday than for many years. Was it going to be a one day wonder or was it something that would last into, at least, another year?
Depending on who you talk to you it’s either holding up well for this year or it was just a feature of the recession last year. Both Haven and Hoseasons have said that bookings are up for domestic holidays this year. On the other hand, Hotels.com and www.simonseeks.com, that the staycation is well and truly over and will be replaced by overseas holidays in 2010.
Who is right?

Unless you have been hiding for the last week or so you’ll have noticed the odd bit of snow on the ground. Virtually all over the country it has caused disruption to travel and everyday life. But a sort of community spirit has existed where neighbour has helped neighbour and complete strangers have helped unblock roads.
The tourism industry has been hit too. Country hotels have had their normally attractive drives become barriers to the arrival of guests. Attractions and heritage sites have suffered the same.

Last week The Sunday Times wrote a piece by Matt Rudd about how unfriendly airports are to children. It presupposes the question that airports are supposed to be friendly in the first place. Not just for children but for everyone.
Airports are there to enable you to catch a flight to somewhere so surely the prime aim is to get you through and out as soon as possible? If you are flying in then the same applies. It is get you off the plane and out into the real world. Then some bright spark decided to add duty free shops, then cafés, then restaurants, then shops, then lounges, then viewing areas and places where you can spend £20 on a ticket to win a car. All of a sudden they were bigger than villages. All they need is a Tesco or a Sainsbury and I can do my weekly shop there as well

As long as there have been hotels, there has been those who want to know what happens inside them. Thirty years ago, the television series “The Duchess of Duke Street chronicled the comings and goings of a hotel in Victorian London. Nearly 80 years ago the film, Grand Hotel did the same thing.

Novotel, the hotel chain has been running a survey in Australia. Fiji and New Zealand for the last 10 years into what guests leave behind in their hotels and it is intriguing to see how habits have changed over the decade. Most of us believe that the guests nick the soap and the little shampoo bottles but is this still the case?

If some of the ski holiday companies are to be believed some of us have got so enamoured of the white stuff that we are “inundating” (their word not mine) companies with enquiries about skiing holidays.
Can this be true? Haven’t they seen enough of the stuff? Have they forgotten already the need for clearing paths and roadways, waiting for non-existent trains and buses to get to work, delayed flights to take them to ski resorts and no milk in the villages because the delivery trucks can’t get through.

This has almost become a national pastime and I have contributed to quite a bit of it myself when it is deserved which is more often than not.

But when the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) criticises them (which isn’t as often as they should), you would hope they got their facts correct. Just one fact wrong and Ryanair will attack which is precisely what has just happened.

It began when John Fingleton, the chief executive of the OFT criticised the airline for only allowing one type of credit card to be used for payment that didn’t attract any sort of Ryanair fee. (This card is actually a pre-paid card so is it technically a credit card?)

Looking out of the window at the large dollop of snow that has fallen overnight, it is easy to think of warmer parts of the world and getting away from the cold and bleak view I see. Where to go is one issue but who I go with is another.
You could be forgiven for thinking, after seeing the Which? Holiday report on tour operators that you should avoid the big companies like Thomson, First Choice, Thomas Cook, Cosmos and Virgin because they haven’t done very well in the report.
You would be wrong.
This is not to say that the survey is wrong.

Sailing, boating of all sorts, canoeing, surfing and kayaking are popular pastimes. Marinas mushroomed around our coastlines. In a 2006 survey sponsored by Sunsail it was estimated that nearly 3.7 million Britons are regularly involved in watersports for recreation.
Sometimes through no fault of their own, difficulties are encountered and the first call is to the RNLI, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The RNLI is run solely on public donations; the government makes no direct contribution. It is manned by volunteers who give freely of their time.