Travel Weekly Blog

The travel industry needs to work harder at lobbying, according to a story that we recently carried on travelweekly.co.uk.

The Travel Weekly Blog can't help with that (at least not right now...) but here's a natty way of keeping up with travel-related speeches and debates in the Houses of Parliament.

Head to Theyworkforyou.com, a site which is designed to keep us in touch with what our MPs are up to. A noble enough goal in itself, but the site also features - here's the good bit - a keyword-driven email alert service.

That means you can sign up, register for keywords like 'travel' or 'tourism', and read what the Commons and the Lords are saying about the industry from the comfort of your inbox. It's free, and all you need to disclose is your email address.

We're going to sign up here and see how useful the service is, so look out for updates. If you try it too we'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Nathan Midgley, travelweekly.co.uk

Introducing another of our industry bloggers, Diane Coleman of Tickets Travel

I've not long returned from an educational in Spain. Well, I think it was Spain – all I saw was inside of hotel rooms. All very nice but I could have been anywhere in the world!

Anyway, the scene was set – the bar, where else – for some funny story swapping...

At work one sunny Saturday. It’s a village, so these afternoons are spent catching up on paperwork, serving the odd person (these are not odd people as such where I'm from, I mean odd as in one or two).

I’m watching people in their wedding attire, attending weddings being held in the beautiful churches at each end of the High Street.

In walk two men in top hat and tails. They're lost, I thought. Surely not - drunk perhaps?.

"I want to book a honeymoon" says one of the men. Ok, I thought, its candid camera (or a modern version), I'll play along.

“When for?" I ask. "Tomorrow or Monday" comes the reply.

It’s no joke – the groom stood before me, wanting to arrange the honeymoon, he explained.

They'd just left the reception to book it and could I call back on the best man's mobile (I wasn't allowed to call the groom!).

I was very unsure, but apparently they had a great time in Madrid. I never did get to ask if the bride thought it was booked all along. Indeed, I wonder if they are still married…

Diane Coleman, Tickets Travel

Long queues. Interrogation. Endless forms. Visas.

Having recently returned from Orlando I had expected to come home ranting about the above. However for the first time I can say that I was pleasantly surprised by my experience of US customs.

Following the 400 plus passengers off the plane after a nine hour flight alone (I had been due to travel with friends but I was given the wrong flight number when I booked, but that is another story), the last thing I wanted was to stand in line for hours before a stone-faced customs official who would decide whether he would let me into the country.

Surprisingly as I stood in the relatively short line, even the families with over-tired children were all smiles and moving swiftly along.

As I approached the desk, the officer was polite, maybe even friendly, asking me about my trip and about my visit earlier in the year for work, as I had a visa in my passport.

Ok, you do have to go through the finger printing and photo taking but after that was done I was given a fond farewell and of course told “to have a nice day” in true American style and was able to collect my bags with ease out into the arrivals within thirty minutes (to wait for my friends who were on a later flight).

Like many people, I had been put off the security procedures but now I would definitely recommend a trip to America. The perception of the ‘nightmare’ arrival has gone – well until my next trip that is…

Kelly Ranson, reporter

We thought you might enjoy these shots of the Travel Weekly production desk preparing this week's front cover - in which alphabetti spaghetti spelt out travel's biggest trade bodies against a backdrop of toast from the TW Towers canteen. (Read the story: ABTA calls for consolidation of industry bodies.)

Thanks are due to photographer Matt Sprake, who as luck (ours, not his) would have it was in the area when the idea struck.

Pictured are sub editor Louise Scott gamely fishing out the pasta letters to form ABTA, ABTOF, AITO, FTO and PSA (top), and art editor Flora Ioannou arranging them (bottom).

The design of the front cover of the new Virgin Holidays cruise brochure prompted a debate at a recent function about what images people choose to promote holidays on ships.

Although Virgin and the main cruiseline featured, Carnival, are very happy with a brochure that is a major step forward for a sector striving for mainstream status, the choice of a porthole on the front cover is interesting to say the least.

Anyone who knows modern cruise ships know the chances of being allocated a room with a porthole these days is about as unlikely as the chances that you will be spending your time playing Quoits or ballroom dancing, but for some reason this remains an enduring image for cruising.

And it’s not just portholes; guard rails and, even worse, life buoys are also all-too-prevalent meaning cruise must be about the only travel product that habitually promotes its potential, if unlikely, dangerous side and/or an outdated depiction of its hardware.

You don’t see airlines using life jackets or those exciting looking inflatable chutes that we’re promised will automatically appear in the event of an emergency landing but might be puncutured if you keep your high heels on.

Cars these days do promote their safety features like air bags and side impact protection systems but you’ll never see a picture of an inflated air bag or pranged Three Series on any BMW brochures.

I can’t see Virgin Trains ever advertising the virtues of travel by rail by highlighting the improved quality of the engineering work in recent years on the tracks its Pendolino tilting trains thunder along at well over 150mph on the West Coast Line.

So, this got us wondering, what is an appropriate icon cruising can adopt to demonstrate it has entered the 21st century and you are highly unlikely to end up in the drink?

Increasingly cruiselines like Royal Caribbean and others tend to go for all the non-obviously cruise activities you can do like rock climbing, diving, horse riding and ice skating.

But what about features of the ships themselves, any thoughts?

Lee Hayhurst, deputy news editor

There was a time when consumers, especially around Christmas and the New Year, couldn’t escape from the ads on television extolling the virtues of a trip to the local travel agent.

A quick trawl of the wonderful video-sharing website YouTube has thrown up this little gem from 1984, courtesy of Thomas Cook.

Look at all those beaming faces - although the hair belonging to the agent is clearly something to behold/be terrified of/breathe a sigh of relief of that we all live in enlightened times in terms of fashion (delete as appropriate).

Anybody know who the “agent” is?

When I was asked by Travel Weekly and the Israel Government Tourist Office to go to Israel to research this year’s supplement, it was with some trepidation that I agreed. After all, we were just a few weeks into the ceasefire following the recent conflict in southern Lebanon.

From the moment I checked in at Heathrow with El Al to the time when I left Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv to return to the UK, I was treated with kindness, civility and openness and at no time did I feel in any danger whatsoever.

Sadly, in the travel business, perception is the name of the game and many potential visitors from the UK perceive Israel to be a dangerous country to visit. This is despite the fact that tourists have never been targeted in Israel, unlike say Turkey, Egypt or Indonesia.

Some of the blame lies with the news media. TV images from Israel consistently portray conflict. We are seldom shown or read positive stories of Jew and Arabs living peacefully side by side.

The Holiday of Holidays Festival takes place in Haifa, Israel’s most racially harmonious city, at the end of this month.

Jews, Muslims and Christians come together and celebrate their diverse cultures and beliefs, and common humanity. Will this receive coverage on our TV screens or in our newspapers? I doubt it.

My very special thanks go to my guide, Yuval Russ, who brought Israel to life in so many ways. My thanks also to David Stern of B & H Cameras in New York who persuaded me to invest in a camera (Canon 30D) that flatters my photographic abilities, as I hope the pictures in the supplement show.

Chris Coplans, freelance journalist

Read the supplement

It was during the recent World Travel Market that I realised there’s something severely lacking at the event – etiquette.

The industry’s biggest annual show, it attracts thousands of visitors from all over the world who come to promote their respective countries for tourism.

But when faced with an opportunity to do so, they seem to get it wrong time after time.

This became clear when a tourism minister from the sub-continent failed to turn up for an appointment I’d been begged to attend.

It goes on: during an interview with the minister of a Latin American country, who had clearly never heard of Travel Weekly, he insisted on talking about the American market.

It was while trying to steer the conversation away from the country’s many golf courses - that were being pointed out to me on a map - and onto possible UK fam trips that he sighed, looked at his watch, shook my hand and left.

If this is indicative of how the locals behave, I don’t blame visitors for bypassing the country in favour of their neighbours – where I hear a friendly welcome awaits.

Come on ministers (and PR representatives), if you want our help, please work with us.

Jo Gardner, reporter

Congratulations are in order on the Travel Weekly news desk this week: our own Kelly Ranson has won newcomer of the year at Carlson Wagonlit's Business Travel Journalism Awards 2006.

Kelly, a former travel agent herself, has made a huge contribution to Travel Weekly's business travel coverage and naturally we're delighted to see her work recognised.

Among those joining Kelly in the winners' enclosure were Martin Cowen, editor at e-tid.com (best business travel news journalist); Buying Business Travel editor Mike Toynbee (Special Achievement Award); freelancer Bob Papworth (best freelancer); and the team at Business Travel World magazine (business travel publication of the year).

A year on from George Best’s death and Northern Irish eyes are still maudlin.

As if renaming Belfast City Airport wasn’t enough, the Ulster Bank is issuing a limited edition George Best fiver.

It’s quite appropriate really. The blue beer token is surely the note desperate alcoholics are most likely to get their hands on. It’ll just about buy you a pint and a whiskey chaser at a Wetherspoon’s.

Best had talent and adoration in spades, but most of it went up the wall. So the man who famously spent most of his fortune on booze and women (“the rest I just squandered,” boom boom), now joins a pantheon of greats that includes Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, George Stephenson and, of couse, our own dear Queen.

What’s the message here? Don’t squander your money like Best squandered his talent?

Truly, footballers are the new royalty.

Matthew Hampton, features editor

Introducing another new industry blogger, Karen Bowerman, a reporter for BBC FastTrack

Is it just me, or do you get wound up by things that seem trivial and meaningless? Like jigsaws. I mean, what’s the point of cutting something up, only to spend hours putting it back together again?

And hotel guest questionnaires. What a waste of time they are – and what’s the point? All those boxes, trying to predetermine your response. All those fair, goods and excellents vastly outnumbering any negative alternatives.

I was thinking this the other weekend when, as a treat I took my Mum to a country house hotel which boasted a lovely leisure complex. With winter drawing in, I thought a swim, jacuzzi and steam would be just the way to keep cosy and warm.

Alas, the “heated” pool was cold and the jacuzzi more like a bubbling plunge pool. I got excited by a gush of steam in the steam room – but that was the sum of it. Our weekend of leisure saw the pair of us shrivelling up in the sauna.

So, when I was handed a guest questionnaire I decided that instead of being sceptical, I would offer comment. I mean, if you don’t tell them (although I had been pretty clear – “Hello reception? Yes it’s me again, I’ve emerged from the freezing pool and the hairdryer’s now broken”) then how can they put things right?

So, I put a few crosses in the less favourable boxes in the leisure section, and left the rest of the form blank.

Why did I bother? I’ve just received a letter from the manager. He’s apologised for the pool but said how pleased he is that I enjoyed my stay and found the staff friendly and helpful etc.

You know, when I flicked through the form, I thought about crossing through the sections I didn’t bother filling in, and then chided myself for being so petty.

I had put my prejudices to one side, just to have them confirmed by hotel staff. They filled in the rest of the form on my behalf, deciding to mislead their manager and misrepresent a customer.

A joke? Maybe. But it just shows, as I’ve always feared, that these guest questionnaires are a joke too.

Karen Bowerman, reporter, BBC FastTrack

Some interesting issues, which 18 months ago would never have existed here in the UK, have emerged in recent weeks, most notably at the recent European Tour Operators Association annual conference

UK tourism chiefs were unwittingly ambushed in their attempts to convince skeptical inbound operators and London hoteliers the 2012 Olympics isn’t going to harm their businesses.

VisitBritain chief executive Tom Wright started his speech by conceding they had concerns the Olympics would disrupt their operations by doubling hotel rates and scaring away tourist from the capital.

He ended by stating “the weeks of the Games will not be as detrimental as you all think”.

However, Wright was unaware all delegates were given data revealing that during the 2006 Football World Cup, German hotel occupancy levels fall by 3% with governing body FIFA returning more than one million blocked booked rooms for hoteliers to sell at the last minute.

Meanwhile, VisitLondon chief executive James Bidwell waxed lyrical about the need to tap into the emerging Chinese market, urging delegates to use Beijing’s handing over of the Olympic Torch at the end of the 2008 Games to entice visitors to London.

He even boasted London would hold Chinese Festivals to stimulate demand for the capital from China.

Had Bidwell stayed for the following presentation he would have heard Mintel researcher Macy Marvel dismiss the Chinese outbound tourism market as “overblown”.

The report – European Inbound Market Outlook - labels Chinese tourists as bargain basement travellers who are uninterested in Europe and its culture – 90% of them stay in Asia while those that do go to Europe look for room rates of 20 Euros per person per night.

Needless to say the delegates still needed convincing…

Paul Nelson, reporter

If you've visited the Travel Weekly website in the last 24 hours you'll have seen that voting has opened for that most auspicious of events, the Travel Weekly Globe Awards.

That means you have until 28th November to nominate the standout suppliers in travel and tourism - if there's someone you think consistently goes beyond the call of duty, this is your chance to make sure they're recognised. Here's another chance to see who won last year.

As usual, voting also puts you in the running for some great prizes. Up for grabs, courtesy of Seligo, are a weekend in London for two; a weekend in Dublin for two; and four tickets to Alton Towers, Thorpe Park or Chessington World of Adventures.

Lastly, if you've forgotten what the awards ceremony is all about you'll find some visual reminders - some of which are perhaps best forgotten - at the Travel Weekly Globes 2006 Caught on Camera gallery. Enjoy, and get voting...

Someone in the industry remarked to me recently that talk of the environmental impact of air travel and tourism was just a fad.

Never mind the Stern Review, let’s hope to God they are right. It would be wonderful to find the threat of climate change had been exaggerated.

Tony Blair says the science is not in doubt, but after the Iraq war who can believe him? Unfortunately, the 2,000 leading climate scientists in the world, convened in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say the same thing.

A handful of lobbyists, politicians and PR executives, many of them funded by oil giant ExxonMobil, oppose the idea and seek equal media air time. Don’t be misled next time you see the likes of former chancellor Nigel Lawson on TV arguing against the science of climate change. Your children and grandchildren will live with the consequences.

I recommend those not convinced read The Last Generation, the latest book by New Scientist writer Fred Pearce. If you can get find a copy of his 1989 book Turning up the Heat, so much the better. Its prediction of how climate change would unfold through the past decade has proved frighteningly accurate.

Either Pearce is a regular Nostradamus or the science was pretty well understood in the late 1980s. Since then, scientists have developed their understanding and fleshed out the detail, and the predictions of how far and fast temperatures will rise have pushed higher.

Those who deny climate change would have you believe the phenomenon is still the subject of dispute. It is not. The debate is about the rate of temperature rise, and the consequences, during the lifetimes of those now living.

But like those in the tobacco industry who spent five decades denying the link between cigarettes and cancer, these people will not go away – they even employ some of the same tobacco lobbyists. The rest of us just have to get past them.

Where does that leave travel? God knows we all need our world to be sustainable. But tourism needs sustainability too. No one in the industry would suggest it despoil a destination and then move on, like strip mining.

There is a circle to be squared in reconciling constant growth with sustainability, but sooner or later the costs of maintaining what we have – or dealing with the consequences – will have to be factored into profit and loss figures, as former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern has concluded.

No company is going to commit commercial hara-kiri by cutting back a money-making business, so the industry will require regulation to ensure necessary adjustments impact equally on all.

But that would fly in the face of the deregulation that now dominates and require a global political U-turn of the kind that followed the Wall Street Crash or accompanied the build up and outbreak of World War Two.

Maybe deregulation will turn out to be the fad in the long term. What do you think?

Ian Taylor, aviation reporter

Introducing the first of our winners to become a regular blogger for Travel Weekly, Brian Horden of Silversea Cruises.

The perennial job argument has never changed - "they always want people with experience, but if I cannot get a job in the travel industry how will I get the experience?"

A feature in the 27 October edition of Travel Weekly made reference to the need for a minimum standard of training, and this is without doubt some to be applauded; but let's hope that the standard includes a level of selling skills alongside the academic skills which are invariably well integrated into the curriculum.

The travel and tourism industry is an exciting, vibrant, satisfying business to be employed in, just look at many of the industry leaders who came literally right through the ranks to attain “high office", and with many years of outstanding service; this is a true testimonial to the industry.

And the diversity of job opportunities within travel and tourism is also often overlooked; holiday travel, corporate travel, inbound tourism, domestic tourism, hotels, cruising, car hire and more...just look at the recruitment pages in TW for a real introduction to the industry.

Meanwhile a comment piece in Travel Weekly recently by the Travolution editor makes reference to the "easiest way to wind up a travel agent is to predict the passing of human interaction as consumers emigrate to the Internet".

Believe me, a knowledgeable, well trained, enthusiastic and sales-driven travel person can easily become the "living internet" with the customer, who will soon recognise the many benefits of booking through a true travel professional

Yes, the price will continue to be a problem for some time, but with value products, real professional travel agents will continue to make an impact, and this represents the aspirational target for the student population.

Also, congratulations to the University of Wolverhampton who see "the vast majority of their students going into the travel industry this year" - surely a success story to share with others.

And as I complete this current missive, out of the national newspapers jumps the new Fashion Retail Academy, with heavy funding from the fiercely competitive high street retailers within the industry, and targeted at moulding a new generation of retail superstars.

Can this happen in the travel and tourism industry? Over to you…

Brian Horden, director of training development, Silversea Cruises

There are a number of things you can say about the Sunday Times's expose of hospitality industry review websites, which revealed that proprietors are able, and in some cases willing, to ramp their own product on Tripadvisor, eGullet, Fodors.com and so on.

You could observe, first of all, that this is rather obvious; that it applies to all rate/review sites, not just hospitality verticals; and that proprietors who inflate their establishment's ratings will very soon have their bubble burst by disappointed consumers.

Perhaps the most astute observation, though, came from Kevin at Travolution, who points out that the ST has been focusing heavily on its own travel site, complete with lastminute-powered booking service. Observers will also note that Times Online will shortly be encouraging users to add their own content about travel experiences.

Kevin has more on the story, including a comment from the Sunday Times, at the Travolution Blog.

Nathan Midgley, travelweekly.co.uk

An interesting bit of reading pops up on geek news site slashdot.org (no, honestly). According to Associated Press there is a small but growing number of web start-ups devoted to 'couchsurfing' - travelling the world relying on the kindness of strangers, and the occasional acquaintance, for accommodation.

Minipreneurs, eh? At bottom these sites present precisely no threat to the travel industry, mainly because nobody who can afford to pay for a holiday will ever use them. But they are still evidence of how the Internet allows consumers to decide how, when and where they consume, which underpins the whole online retail revolution.

When it comes to travel, though, maximum freedom still means minimum security...

"We are not responsible for the outcome of host/surfer negotiations," couchsurfing.com's Fenton said. "We can't guarantee what will happen. We'll do as much as we can to provide data (about the person), but beyond that, that's all we can do..."

Nathan Midgley, travelweekly.co.uk

Phew! It’s all over...hurrah! World Travel Market is over for another year.

It’s time to dance round your chair. Throw your pens in the air. Act like you really don’t care...

WTM is, of course, a hugely important week in our calender at Travel Weekly, just as it for tourist boards and travel companies worldwide.

But it is also manic, fraught, and stressful. And just in case you hadn’t guessed, that also goes for the journalists who put together Travel Weekly’s WTM daily magazine.

So there were weeks of preparation and, as all travel PRs will know, conversations about what we could and couldn’t cover as stories in the publication.

Yes, there were those who tried to sneak stories in about a new hotel opening and make out it was the biggest thing that had ever happened anywhere in the world.

There were those who tried the usual bribery of beer, chocolates and doughnuts brought to our WTM newsroom - you know who you are!

And then there were those who simply failed to show up at the interview (usually Government ministers) or acted as if they didn’t even know we were due to interview them and got in a flap when asked a simple question by one of our team.

But as usual the best stories were the ones which were unscheduled.

Like when the United Nations announced plans for a website to help the industry cope with global crises in front of a handful of listeners, which one of our reporters happened to hear while passing the world stage. Or when Derek Moore from Explore happened to mention he was mooring his boat up by ExCel to avoid the commute.

And even better, when unlucky Kimberley Ross from the Sonaisali Island Resort told one of our reporters how she was carted off to hospital with a swollen leg from WTM after being bitten by a spider. “It’s not really what you’d expect to happen in London,” she said.

But the incident which sticks in mind is the lovely lady from Ghana, who dropped by our newsroom desperately wanting a picture taken at her country’s stand. After much pleading and begging we gave way -- okay we would consider publishing the photo of Ghana getting ready to celebrate 50 years of independence next year.

She jumped (literally) for joy in the newsroom -- it’s easy to forget how much these little things mean to people when you are busy putting stories on pages of the next issue.

And so it was that the lady from Ghana returned to the newsroom the following day, laden with goodies.

First was the lemon-tasting chocolate (I’m not joking), then there were the 2007 Ghana desk calenders (all 15 of them), and then, the piece de resistance - liquors in tomato ketchup-sized sachets (how do you drink those without having a major spillage on your chin?).

They’ve been added to my WTM home collection of Madeira wine and Cobra beer. If I freeze them perhaps we could drink them next year when the going gets tough on deadline...

Juliet Dennis, news editor

Wicked whisper: word reaches TW Towers that one of the cover stars from the re-launch edition of Travel Weekly has come in for a fair bit of stick from colleagues.

Mischief at the person in question's travel company has been so rife, we hear, that the front cover was actually altered earlier this week by so-called friends and colleagues.

The message on the T-shirt now reads something very, very different.

Who on earth can it be?

The steak at the British Guild of Travel Writers awards at the Savoy the other night may have been succulent and plentiful, but why did the organisers expect us to celebrate the fact that it had been flown in all the way from Kansas?

Along with Oklahoma, the US state was sponsoring the event, complete with cowboys and big brass buckles.

But was it just me or did other sensitive souls leave feeling burdened by consumer guilt – especially after watching images of starving children during the charity spot moments before?

The travel industry has a hard enough time justifying long distance air travel without one of its most prestigious events notching up food miles for 400 people – and actually congratulating itself for the deed.

Tropical beaches, jungles, plains and savannahs we might not be able to find on these shores. But there’s one thing we don’t have to crank up the air miles for - good British beef!

Emily Bamber, supplements editor

It’s a beautiful crisp day and I am at my first World Travel Market. Last week we re-launched Travel Weekly and this week I meet the world.

Well, today I popped up for the Captains of Industry lunch, which was held on a ship called the Silver Sturgeon, moored alongside the Excel centre in East London.

On route I visited the Travel Weekly press room.

Half the team have moved to Excel to publish a daily edition for each day of the four-day exhibition.

At 64 pages they are quite something. To get to the press room I had to first find the Poland stand. “Where's Poland?” I asked someone. “Over the main concourse and to your right.” Only at WTM could I ask such a question and receive such an answer.

There, in the middle of a clutch of country stands from the former Eastern Blog, was the grand offering from the TW Group, featuring Travel Weekly, Travolution and Gazetteers.

I eventually found the newsroom and walked in expecting a lot of noise. It was more like a library. Half the team were in the exhibition hall and the others were hard at it, including our dailies’ editor, Juliet Dennis.

Outside the press room, I caught glimpse of a sea plane. Maybe someone could tell us who arrived in it…

And on to the lunch. It was a select affair with lots of senior industry figures.

Before we sat down, I managed to get a snap of the after lunch speaker, futurologist Dr Marvin Cetron [pictured], from a US organisation called Forecasting International.

I asked if he would pose for the shot with a crystal ball but he said no. “We predict the future using technology not crystal balls,” he said.

I had good food in good company - John Harding, sales and marketing director at Hotels4u and Steve Endacott, chief executive at On Holiday Group.

Particularly enjoyed the charity auction in aid of charity Just a Drop. Travel Weekly’s managing director Trevor Harding looked very at home doing the charity auction. Steve Endacott got himself a holiday for a song. John Harding later wondered if we would see it on offer on Ebay.

Left with Dr Marvin Cetron telling the audience how much worse the terrorist threat will get, especially for travel and hospitality. Oh joy.

Had to dash back to our office in Sutton - well skip around delegates in an attempt to get out of Excel and once outside, skip around the roasted chestnut vendor. How come VisitBritain didn’t sponsor them?

Martin Couzins, acting editor

There’s a finite resource of adjectives in the English language, so they must be handled with care - over-use can render them meaningless.

Luxury, for instance, is a possibly the most misused, abused and confused word in travel, admittedly in part because travel firms’ marketing departments tend to have aspirations for their products way beyond their station.

But nowhere is the term more corrupted than in relation to cruise, a problem the industry itself recognises as it struggles to convince a cynical public that a holiday on a ship can be within the reach of just about anybody, regardless of how deep their pockets are.

Find a report in the national press involving a cruise ship, however, and inevitably, it seems, you’ll find the word luxury.

No doubt this is because your average newspaper reader, for whom a cruise ship is seen as a rich man’s ghetto, has, despite what some people would have you believe, an insatiable appetite for stories about miserable people, and newspaper editors know if they’re also ‘rich’ they’ve hit the jackpot.

The Thomson cruise ship Destiny was the latest to fall foul of this journalistic shorthand when a hack who happened to be onboard sold a story to the Daily Mirror about a problem with its plumbing that caused some of its loos to stop working.

“Nearly 1,500 passengers on board a luxury cruise ship have been stranded for three days without toilets,” began the report in what the Thomson press office insisted was a gross over-statement.

Exaggeration about the incident aside, if this 3 star-plus ship - as rated by the esteemed Douglas Ward, author of the Berlitz Complete Guide to Cruising and Cruise Ships - is luxury what does that make ships operated by the likes of Crystal Cruises, Silversea and Regent Seven Seas?

No wonder cruise lines like this, with their fully all-inclusive packages, cordon bleu cooking and almost one to one passenger to crew ratio, have taken to describing themselves as deluxe or ultra luxury and in the mythical and not officially recognised by anyone six star bracket.

A seemingly indelible fascination with all things nautical stemming from the UK’s seafaring heritage and cruising’s status as still being something out of the ordinary are always going to make tales of over flowing toilets, mass vomiting brought on by a norovirus outbreak and the odd man overboard great headline grabbers.

Cruiselines do get frustrated about sensationalisation but the press knows the one thing they’re unlikely to complain about is being lauded, however inappropriately, as luxury.

Just like the ‘victim’ of a kiss-and-tell is unlikely to complain about his sexual prowess being akin to a cross between a pneumatic drill and a stud farm stallion when his, or her, personal life is plastered all over the papers.

Maybe salvation from this nonsense can only come in the form of EasyCruise, run by the prince of all that is orange-coloured and budget, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, which some might suggest would stretch journalistic licence to breaking point if it was ever to be described as luxury.

Lee Hayhurst, deputy news editor

As Travel Weekly celebrates its relaunch in the UK, web content editor Nicki Rose and I are with colleagues from the Netherlands, being introduced to their Travelecademy training system.

Our first contact with it has been hugely impressive - from our point of view it's a flexible, intuitive system, and for users it delivers news, image galleries and a number of other features alongside some very slick e-learning courses.

That more rounded approach to training has massive potential. Knowing about a destination or a supplier demands more than answering a static set of questions. It's also about following the latest product developments, sharing tips and ideas with other specialists, generally engaging with a community to whom keeping on top of this knowledge matters.

The view from over here is that Travelecademy.nl seems to be fulfilling those needs extremely well. Pictured are myself, Travelecademy web editor Patty Sjerps and Nicki.

Busy couple of days here.

Last night we hosted a party in Central London to unveil the re-launched Travel Weekly magazine. Reaction has been overwhelmingly positive so far! [Lawrence Assock of Destination Care pictured]

Earlier today, Travel Weekly managing director Trevor Harding handed out copies of the new magazine here at Reed Business Information in Sutton.

All the frenetic activity of the past few months will continue next week at World Travel Market, where we will be out in force with a special stand at ExCel with our new TW Group colleagues, Travolution and Gazetteers Plus.

We will also have our famous WTM dailies, which will be circulated every single day of WTM.

Make sure you drop by to say hello during the course of the event, stand # 1700 in the South Hall.

Its 5pm and we have nearly finished working on our new look Travel Weekly.

I would say this, but I think it is looking really good and I hope readers like it as much as I do.

I certainly hope the cover stars like it. Good on Vic Darvey at Lastminute.com, Sue Biggs at Kuoni, Maria Whiteman at Travel 2 Travel 4 and Giles Hawke at Complete Cruise Solution.

I’ve got to hand it to them – they get a call from me, Mr I-have-only-just-started-working-at-Travel-Weekly-and-don’t-know-anyone, asking if they would don a “I Love Travel T-shirt”, which will appear on the cover of our new look and they said "Yes".

So far I have talked to some very friendly and helpful people in the industry which tells me that our survey findings are correct – travel professionals are a hard working bunch who love working in the profession – and this in spite of all the downsides.

And what about the Travel Weekly team?

A remarkable bunch. It’s our busiest time of the year with World Travel Market dailies to produce and loads of WTM events to attend – oh, and a whopper of a re-launch issue to produce, plus three supplements.

And we got nine news stories on the web site today - two of which we have broken.

Weekend working, late nights and lots of biscuits and chocolate. It really has been a magnificent team performance.

Champers tonight methinks, and then we all start work on the next issue…

Martin Couzins, acting editor

Pic: First deadline for the new magazine. Clockwise from top-left: Martin Couzins (acting editor), Kuchar Swara (Esterson Associates), Simon Esterson (Esterson Associates), Lee Hayhurst (deputy news editor), Neil Baldwin (freelance), Stephanie Krahn (sub-editor), Megan Turner (deputy chief sub-editor), Juliet Dennis (news editor), Flora Ioannou (production editor).

Probably the one phrase almost certain to send holidaymakers into a panic.

But is Virgin Trains perhaps setting a precedent for the rest of the Branson empire following news today that passengers on a London to Manchester express were asked if they could help the train crew fix a dodgy windscreen wiper on one of its Pendolinos.

Apparently staff were eager to find a passenger with a spare cable tie [standard luggage item for your average rail user these days, of course!] so issued the request.

Remarkably one passenger did actually have a one tucked away in a briefcase but, alas, it was too short to repair the offending wiper, Virgin Trains told the BBC. The train was eventually taken out of service.