Martin Anslow
What do you like to do on holiday?
Diving and trekking
Where did you last travel?
Burma
Do you know where you’re going next?
Maldives
Of all the places you’ve been to, what was your favourite and why?
Vietnam in 1990 – as it was so untouched by mainstream tourism
Which destination do you wish to travel to but haven’t been there [...]

British Airways has announced its list of 10 destinations that it thinks will influence you to decide where to go on your holidays next year. In any list like this you have to bear a couple of things in mind, the first being that BA flies to all the destinations it suggests and therefore that may have influenced the list. Secondly it is subjective. We don’t know how these places got on the list. Probably some “expert” decided or it coincided with a new or improved service to that destination by BA. I could be completely wrong there but, as I said, who knows. Still it is interesting to se whether our ideas match those of BA.

The list is Cape Town, Istanbul, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Punta Cana (Dominican Republic), Dubrovnik, New York, Stockholm, the Maldives and Delhi.

The Maldives has been in the news quite a lot recently. Their cabinet, you might remember, held a cabinet meeting under water to highlight the effects of climate change. When you think of the Maldives the first thought is of a luxury holiday location. Now the tourism authority is trying to encourage 3 and 4 star hotels so that there is more on offer to suit every pocket. Independent travellers like backpackers are also welcome and will find it easier to get around as new infrastructure projects are completed.

We hear a lot about the effects of travel on the amount of carbon emissions created. Being sceptical along the lines of Tom Fuller who writes a really interesting environmental column in the Los Angeles Examiner (freely available via the net), I am not an ardent proponent but neither do I believe that life stays the same. There is another climate change meeting coming up in Copenhagen shortly and Fiji has rather stolen some of the thunder by declaring that, as an entire nation, they will become a low carbon destination.

Tourists mean money. Tourists mean economic growth so in the straightened times we find ourselves in, some countries are doing their utmost to get us to visit them.In the Middle East, neighbours are trying to clone Dubai’s success. Oman aims to quadruple the number of tourists visiting there to 12 million by 2020 and has [...]

The Guardian ran a story yesterday that was widely picked up by press around the world.Although there seems no confirmation on the website of the new president, Mohammed Nasheen, The Guardian says that because of climate change, the islanders will start looking for land elsewhere that they can move to if climate change causes their [...]