Figures recently released show that the slowdown in us visiting both Spain and the United States have ended. During July, the numbers of Britons visiting Spain rose by 4.5% and to the Us by up to 9%. This would seem to show two things; that the weakening euro has encouraged us to go back to visiting countries we found expensive last year and that the rise in Air Passenger Duty last November is not affecting our desire to travel long-haul

A while ago I wrote complaining about the food at Heathrow. (see CD-Traveller December 2nd 2008) You could go to an Irish pub, have Italian food but where was British food? Even in the pub, there were things that only Americans might revere as being British food. As the first sight of something British when visitors come and see us, you would hope that the food at least could be something more than the standard meals that you can find almost wherever you are in the world.
Well, that is about to change for starting August 26th

Last year there was a lot of anecdotal evidence that more of us were visiting castles and heritage. You might remember Sir Thomas Ingleby from Ripley Castle in North Yorkshire saying that his visitor figures were up and Dover Castle has announced a 35% increase in visitors. Now there is more widespread evidence from Visit Britain that it our heritage that draws visitors.

At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, there are apparently 880-900 comedy shows. The number of jokes in all material must be difficult to count especially since there are some of the fastest tellers of joke who pack hundreds into each performance.
The winner of this year’s award for the funniest joke has gone to Tim Vine. And it’s a holiday joke so I thought I’d reproduce it here.

You don’t need us to tell you about Cornwall. At some stage in your life you will have heard about the lanes, the beaches, the cliffs, the food and the people.
It’s one of the great British holiday destinations and it crops up quite often in the travel pages of the newspapers and magazines. But not often in the main part of the paper.
Yet that is what happened yesterday in The Times.

Lonely Planet, the BBC owned magazine and tourist guidebook publisher, has surveyed its readers and announced their first ever awards. The idea behind these new awards is to discover what the top experiences of its readers were. But Lonely Planet widened the questions so that its readers were able to offer wider opinions outside the normal sort of awards.

After the collapse of Blue Skies Destinations, (yesterday) Goldtrail, Flight Options (the owners of Kiss) and Sun4You in almost as many weeks and following on XL, Globespan and Libra, one of the common questions is can I trust my tour operator to still be around when I go on holiday? Who should I book with? Does anyone offer full protection?
As with most things in this world nothing is certain but here are some thoughts.

It’s official. Today, staycation has been accepted into the Oxford English Dictionary so they must think that the word, if not the holiday idea is here to stay. Unlike some tour operators who have blamed reduced profits this year on weather, volcanic ash, strikes and the economy for the fact that Britons and Irish are not going abroad. So is the staycation just a passing fad?
The head of Wyndham’s In Europe, thinks not.