You might wonder what I was going to write about. The beaches, the Opera House, the harbour, the scenery – all of which are magnificent are nothing compared to the memory I have of one day in the centre of Sydney. No this is a moan about a common sight that puts tourists – at least the ones I have spoken to – off. Grafitti.

Even if you have ever seen the TV series penned by Connie Booth and John Cleese, you have probably come across it. It is the series about a hotel at which you would never want to be a guest. Except that one hotel, Hadley Park in Shropshire, believes you would

New Zealand has been in the news for many wrong reasons this year. The earthquakes in Christchurch not only caused disruption to the number of tourists visiting but they had grounded flights to the ash from the Chilean earthquake. But there is good news too.

The next football world cup is in Brazil in 2014. This winter Brazil will begin a three year campaign to encourage us to visit their country. Using the world cup as bait, they hope to build on the 167,000 of us that visited their country last year.

No-frills airlines have opened up opportunities for us to visit countries we might not have otherwise thought about. Take Estonia for example. Before the no-frills airlines went there, not that many people travelled from Ireland or the UK to the country. Now they have just announced that there has been a 90% increase in visitors going there.

Depending on whom you talk to, between 1-8 million and two million of us are airport bound this weekend as we use the last bank holiday of summer to take a break. The AA says that 16 million of us will take to the roads to explore parts of the UK and Ireland. Yet again, the media suggests it will be a record number of us travelling. When did they ever say it wasn’t?

The St Regis Bali Resort’s marketing and communication manager talks travel

Last Saturday the key tourist attraction was the Henley-on-Todd Regatta. This Sunday the focus of the entire world – plus green Martians and orbiting spacecraft will be on the Welsh village of Llanwrytd Wells where the World Bog Snorkelling Championships will be taking place.
Attracting visitors from around the world, this important event attracts almost as many media. Rumours that the BBC wanted exclusive rights for the broadcast are wide of the mark since they couldn’t find the 50p required

For the final part of his visit to Georgia, Adrian goes to the Black sea resort of Batumi and wonders whether this might be the new Turkey for British and Irish holidaymakers in the future.

The two may not have much in common you might think but not this weekend. Rutland Water is hosting an event known the world over, the British Birdwatching Fair which attracts both visitors and exhibitors from around the world. It’s easy to think of bird watching as a minority interest but its big business. And this is why Sabah has come all the way from Malaysia to publicise its destination.

Richard Branson is well known for courting publicity. Between Michael O’Leary at Ryanair and he it would be a tussle to see who generates more press coverage. And in his latest little approach, Branson has definitely taken the lead. On Virgin Atlantic flights, there will to be “emotional health warnings” before they show films on board!

In the second of his reports about Georgia, Adrian travels to the mountainous area in the north west of the country called Svaneti.

Jordan is one of the few countries that has produced a five year tourism plan this year. Many countries haven’t really updated their older versions. They have also started a major competition lasting 100 days to draw our attention to the Dead Sea.
As CD-Traveller have written before, Jordan is often seen as a heritage destination but increasingly they are promoting other features of the country, the mountains for example.

To tempt us to fly again with any airline, what would you think airlines would do? Some sort of loyalty scheme might be your thought as would be mine. But it looks as though having a Twitter account is more important.