Travel Weekly Blog

Ryanair, ever on the lookout for ways to fund those knockdown prices, has come up with a new wheeze. According to Marketing, Michael O'Leary's low-cost is to sell advertising space on the overhead lockers of its aircraft.

The news is not quite a surprise, since Ryanair has already gone in for fuselage and seatback advertising; nor is it particularly shocking, since the public has already swallowed far stronger meat. Mammon is in residence on the exterior of London's St Martin-in-the-Fields church, and branding space has famously been sold on a pregnant woman's bump.

The move can, though, be read as another example of how aviation is feeling the pinch as APD and fuel costs rise. Whatever your opinion of Ryanair, it seems determined to stick to its guns - come hell, high water or no water left it won't have you denied the right to get airborne for 99p.

And for the less business-minded there remains the hope that Ryanair will follow London Underground's lead and use its overhead advertising space to launch a public poetry series. "I caught this morning morning's minion, departing Stansted, arriving Riga..."

Nathan Midgley, Travelweekly.co.uk

Readers of Travel Weekly's Luxury Africa supplement, due in May, were to be treated to a profile of Mozambique as a beach add-on to a safari.

But no sooner had I finalised the arrangements for the research trip than Cyclone Favio ripped along the country's southern coast, causing huge damage to the Bazaruto archipelago and Vilunculos, entry point to the islands.

Within a few of hours this email arrived from Benguerra Lodge: "Due to the effects of Tropical Cyclone Favio, which hit the Bazaruto Archipelago on Thursday 22nd February at 11am, we are closing the Lodge for the month of March.

"We are very grateful that nobody has been hurt - and we will be assisting the community in the re-building effort."

Neighbouring Indigo Bay (Rani Resorts, pictured right) had just completed a huge and costly refurbishment - and they have been forced to close for three months.

"At least the hotel has insurance," a spokesperson told me. "What about the poor people who live in the islands?"

Mozambique was already recovering from last month's floods and those eight years before them.

Tour operators I have spoken to rave about Mozambique, and many were expanding their presence in the country. South African Airways sister airline SA Airlink launches a direct flight from Johannesburg to Pemba next month. Editorial about the country's stunning luxury tourism product could only have helped its recovery.

So sadly you won't be reading about Mozambique in May's Luxury Africa supplement. But watch this space.

Emily Bamber, supplements editor

Hotel porn, alcohol, neutering a cat and a pregnancy kit have are just some of the expense claims made by workers in the UK, according to hotel group Travelodge.

According to a report on the survey by the BBC about £1 billion is paid out each year in claims and almost one in four claimants regularly fiddle their claims.

No such luck at Travel Weekly, where a massage and a haircut are just two of the expenses some cheeky members of staff have tried and failed to get away with.

What's the most outrageous expense claim you know of?

Emily Ashwell, deputy features editor

Interesting piece in Saturday's Times on the privatisation of Israel's oldest kibbutz.

Degania was founded in 1910 when ten men and two women set up camp at Umm Juni on land purchased by the Jewish National Fund. The members of the commune paid their salaries into a communal account and received an allowance based on need.

A year ago a new system was trialled which paid according to ability and allowed to keep their earnings. In return they paid for services and tax to support the elderly and less well off. The trial was a success and has now become permanent.

I've not visited a kibbutz, but it seems that those have had a good time:

Actor Bob Hoskins stayed on one in 1967. "I was very good at ploughing. I loved it and the birds were amazing."

Duran Duran front man Simon le Bon stayed at Kibbutz Gvulot for three months in 1979. The bed he slept in was later turned in to a shrine.

Martin Couzins - acting editor

Today is Work Your Proper Hours Day, which is organised by the Trades Union Congress.

According to the TUC, more than five million people at work in the UK regularly do unpaid overtime, giving their employers £23 billion of free work every year.

So, no excuses today. Try and take a lunch break, a coffee break and a tea break and leave on time. And show us how you get on. Send us pictures of you observing Work Your Proper Hours Day - especially if you're spending your break immersed in a copy of the Weekly - and we'll put them on our Flickr galleries.

And if you do work well beyond your contracted hours, the TUC has provided an overtime calculator so you can find out exactly how much your overtime is worth.

Update: Never let it be said that the Weekly is all talk. Here's the team asserting its right to a tea break on Work Your Proper Hours day...

Martin Couzins, acting editor

If you’re an agent, operator, or journalist for that matter, how you sell a hotel or what you write about a hotel is often based on a short site inspection. But is it fair to be negative about a hotel on the basis of a flying visit? Here’s my dilemma:

I recently went on a trip with a group of tour operators to an exotic destination to see some new hotels, all of which knew we were coming. The group was impressive – some were from upmarket operators who could bring in wealthy clientele, others from bigger operators who could give hotels good distribution.

Most hotels really impressed, except for one very luxurious and expensive property. On this particular visit we were told the hotel would only admit a maximum of six people, so some of the tour operators couldn’t see it and had to wait on the bus.

After a short wait, four members of staff came to show us around. Surely another tour operator could have joined us, as a group of six doesn’t need that much chaperoning?

We were split into two groups and I was in the second. My group was taken in a buggy to see one of the rooms, but the staff member found he had the wrong key and couldn’t get in. He said he couldn’t get in touch with the manager to get the right key and told us we couldn’t see a room.

This wasn’t the right impression. In a very expensive hotel you expect to find the kind of staff who make things happen. There’s not much point flying thousands of miles to see hotels only to get there and find you can’t even see inside a room.

It was only when we passed a manager on the way out that we got the chance to complain. We were then told there was another room we could see. By that time we were running late and could only take a quick look.

The rooms themselves were stunning and the resort was built to the highest quality. But overall the visit left me unimpressed – with the calibre of tour operators on the trip, I would have thought they would pull out the stops to show what they can do, not what they can’t.

Is it acceptable for a staff member at a resort where the price tag runs into thousands of pounds to have an off day, or should we expect them to get it right every time? Shall I give them the benefit of the doubt?

Emily Ashwell, deputy features editor

Almost the weekend, and time for our inaugural caption competition - a semi-regular feature on the Travolution Blog.

The honour goes to First Choice boss Dermot Blastland, for whom this week can presumably not end soon enough (Special report: Thomas Cook and MyTravel, Travelweekly.co.uk).

Leave your ideas in the comments and remember to enter your email address. We'll try to dig out a prize for the best. And remember that the Thomas Cook / MyTravel nickname competition is still open. Travel needs its 'GooTube'...

You are directly threatening the loss of your most valuable customers by imposing costs already included in the price of our tickets and hampering technology that is critical to the efficient functioning of our modern corporate travel programmes.

We urge you to move promptly to conclude your GDS negotiations with your best customers’ concerns top of mind.

...or so says a group of leading corporate travel types, upset at British Airways over its widely rumoured tough negotiating stance with the GDSs.

Full story here, courtesy of Travolution.

Originally uploaded on Flickr.com as part of the Travel Weekly Gallery.

It’s not every day you walk out of your hotel to discover a sight like this but then New York is not your everyday city.

Feeling a little worse for wear following one Wild Turkey too many the night before, I had just wandered out first thing in the morning looking for a spot of breakfast when the plumes of smoke barrelling down the road alerted my journalistic senses that something might be up.

Sure enough, just 20 yards away on 57th street by Lexington Avenue was this cab, utterly engulfed in flames.

While the sight was impressive enough, what amazed me even more was the local reaction to the event.

A line of traffic sat behind the cab beeping away while drivers who made it past the inferno actually slowed down to shout and wave their fists at the offending vehicle.

Needless to say my actions weren’t any more commendable – running over to snap some shots for the Weekly, I then beetled off before the coppers arrived (they’re a little tasty with their batons) and enjoyed a breakfast worthy of a true Manhattanite while regaling fellow diners of my morning’s adventures.

Ed Robertson, reporter

Brian Horden, one of our industry bloggers, has returned from a holiday to Australia. He writes:

A wonderful poster on the door of Jetset Travel in Ballina, New South Wales:

"Without a Travel Agent, you're on your own"

A powerful message or not? What a debate this could create...

Press day today, so I'll limit it to a couple of good links:

Travel Weekly mentioned in Guardian: an article about Farmers Weekly's online offering mentions our Globe Awards picture galleries on Flickr. (Travel Weekly and Farmers Weekly are both published by RBI.)

Onebag.com: Beat those British Airways second-bag charges with the long-standing expert on travelling light.

Corporate travel - green or not? At the Business Travel Show both TheTrainline and CarsonWagonlit have unveiled new carbon calculators for corporate clients. But as we report today a new survey suggests business travellers set very little store by environmental issues. So have suppliers misread the market?

Love in an elevator: The BBC asks whether sex on a plane is legal. Well, it is Valentine's Day.

Our sister title Travolution is out at the Travel Technology Show and is running a special TTS Blog on which delegates can post their opinions.

Except that so far delegates have proved reluctant to do so. What gives? It's free, it's interesting and you get to meet the nice people at Travo. So if you're going to Earl's Court 2 tomorrow, walk the Web 2.0 walk and write a post for them. The stand is roughly in the middle of the show.

You can't help wondering, can you, whether British Airways might be kicking itself for not introducing its second bag charge a day earlier.

Last week the airline took a bit of a shoeing from the commentariat over the new charges - see Darren at Travelrants and the Times's Janice Turner ('Why does BA hate us?') for a taster - and it would have been good fortune indeed had the travel media been diverted from the introduction of the fees by yesterday's announcement.

No such luck. The changes came in today - albeit 'sympathetically' - and thus far commentary has been no less complimentary than it was last week.

A vote on the BBC website currently shows 70% of readers think BA is wrong to charge extra. On the Guardian's Travelog Andy Wright asks whether BA has thought about less mobile travellers, while the same paper's news coverage has an anonymous analyst observing, "It's like BA has got a digit wrong somewhere".

To make matters worse, today's Telegraph has a report that BA faces more strike action come Easter.

But to return to yesterday's merger: any ideas for a media nickname? Google + YouTube = GooTube; MyTravel + Thomas Cook = [your idea here].

Leave a suggestion in the comments (don't forget to enter an email address) and we'll try and find a prize for the best.

Nathan Midgley, Travelweekly.co.uk

When a big story like the Thomas Cook - MyTravel merger breaks, it's common for the mainstream media to contact the likes of Travel Weekly for some specialist insight.

And so it was that Hugh Pym from the BBC came to TW Towers to interview reporter Paul Nelson for the Six O'Clock News.

Here's Paul and the BBC team gamely staging an interview for us to snap. (Flash photography tends to rather disrupt the real thing.)

You can watch the report on the BBC website - hit the 'How the internet has changed the travel market' link to the right of the story.

We've been trawling the web for some more reaction to today's news. At the Times Ginny McGrath reckons consumers will barely notice the difference...

Such a merger back in the mid-1990s might have produced an increase in package holiday prices, owing to reduced competition. Now it is more about survival of the traditional operators.

...while in the same paper's business section Steve Hawkes reckons the merger will silence doubts about MyTravel boss Peter McHugh.

The Guardian has a brief comment from Evolution Securities' Nigel Parson to the effect that KarstadtQuelle's recently announced purchase of the 50% of Thomas Cook still owned by Lufthansa paved the way for today's announcement.

Forbes has a story that suggests there will be no Thomas Cook job losses in Germany.

If you've been following the story on Travel Weekly you'll also have seen that First Choice has, naturally, confirmed that it is terminating talks about the sale of its mainstream holiday division.

And finally - if you missed the live feed of KarstadtQuelle's press conference this morning, it's now available on demand. Load the page and hit the 'Speeches' link.

Our reporters have put together some analysis of the Thomas Cook / MyTravel merger over at Travelweekly.co.uk. These are some of the key points:

• The merged company will be known as Thomas Cook Group
• It will have 1,100 high street travel agencies in the UK
• The merger brings together 50 brands, 97 aircraft and around 33,000 staff
• Large scale job cuts are expected
• The deal is shares-only, leaving funds available for further investment or acquisitions
• First Choice shares have dropped by 20%, with MyTravel’s jumping by 30%

On the Travolution blog Kevin has some thoughts on how the Big Three will operate:

First Choice is increasingly moving into the long haul market; Thomson will be pushing its new strategy of uber-dynamic packaging, using a combination of its own aircraft, accommodation and third parties suppliers.

As for the Thomas Cook Group, expect the company to not drop its focus on its pre-packaged holidays and make a major push on its short-haul business.

Thomas Cook and MyTravel have announced plans to merge this morning.

The plans are still pending approval from anti-trust authorities and shareholders, but this looks like the start of the process of consolidation the industry has long been expecting. Anyone else surprised the words 'First' and 'Choice' are nowhere to be seen?

Thomas Cook's owner KarstadtQuelle AG is due to hold a press conference at 10 o'clock this morning, which will be broadcast live on the web.

Read the story on Travelweekly.co.uk - we'll have more throughout the day.

Update: the KarstadtQuelle press conference has finished, but you can still access various bits of media, including charts and a press release, on the site.

Earlier this week the BBC’s Tim Levell wrote on its editors’ blog about his efforts to ban the remix of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall from stories about education. He then invited readers to nominate other songs that have become the lazy stock soundtrack to particular subjects.

Yes, you know where this is going: as the BBC's own Holiday comes to an end, which tracks do you think are criminally overused on travel shows/reports?

Some suggestions from around TW Towers:

• Holiday by Madonna (Lee, acting news ed)
• Born To Be Wild by Steppenwolf on anything involving motorbike hire (Nicki, web content ed)
• Summer Holiday by Cliff Richard (also Nicki)

Nathan Midgley, Travelweekly.co.uk

With yesterday’s weather-related chaos hitting the headlines again you will probably be relieved to hear that Travel Weekly’s staff are not immune from the problems that befall your customers.

I was returning from New York on a Silverjet flight and having expected to be in Luton by 7.30am, was somewhat surprised to be awakened by the pilot announcing, thanks to four inches of snow, we were being diverted to Manchester Airport where conditions were somewhat better.

A near six-hour wait on the runway led to the end of any chance of flying the final leg so we endured Manchester Airport’s arrivals hall which was close to melt-down thanks to the amount of rerouted flights.

Finally luxury buses were laid on by the airline to take us to either Luton Airport or the centre of London and at 6pm I finally got out at Victoria Station, around nine hours later than I could have hoped.

While Silverjet can’t be blamed for the problems (and indeed their staff acted impeccably under the conditions) I do think Luton Airport needs to consider how it dealt with a forecasted event which is an everyday winter occurrence in many other countries.

Perhaps instead of another cry of “Something Must Be Done” it’s time the industry as whole took the action needed to ensure this seemingly annual ritual is no longer so.

Ed Robertson, reporter

Travel Weekly's acting editor Martin Couzins approached me a few weeks ago with the idea of guest editing a technology special edition to coincide with next week’s Travel Technology Show.

The issue is out today, and while there is a focus on what you all might call ‘technology issues’, what you will read about in its pages is actually something broader.

This week’s Mystery Shopper, for example, puts the leading online travel agency websites to the test; while the lead feature looks at the changing role of agents and operators in the ‘brave new world’ of the Internet.

The Big Interview features arguably one of online travel’s most important men – Google head of travel in Europe Esteban Walther.

But why is it so important to suddenly home in on these issues?

Travolution has spent the last 15 months focusing on the profound changes sweeping the industry, triggered primarily by the power the Internet now has over the lives of consumers.

Take-up rates of broadband are now so high that the Internet is almost a constant presence in the home and workplace, meaning consumers are just seconds away from researching and ultimately booking a holiday.

It’s a controversial statement to make, but there are large parts of the industry that are still dismissive of this fundamental shift in the way people now interact with each other and travel companies.

To ignore these changes, or fail to recognise how to meet the challenges ahead, could be a truly fatal mistake.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The Association of British Travel Agents has long been known by its acronymn ABTA, but this is soon to become official according to reports of changes apparently being proposed by the association’s board.

If the changes are given the go-ahead the association will become known simply as Abta, and, just as BAA lost any reference to airports when it ditched the longhand version of its name, will cease to refer directly to travel agents.

But this is just one of many changes the association is proposing, the most fundamental of which will see agent representation at board level significantly reduced as ABTA strives to transform itself into the association that represents the entire travel industry.

Other changes include opening up membership to airlines, ferry operators and accommodation-only suppliers.

Obviously, we're interested to hear what you think of all this:

• By trying to widen its remit does ABTA risk losing its identity, particularly the strong consumer recognition that many feel is its most valuable asset?
• Is it time for independent agents to find or create a representative body that will concentrate on their issues?
• Is ABTA risking alienating independent agents and undermining their reasons for paying subscription fees and bonding costs?

Leave a comment on this post, or email us if you'd like your comments to appear on next week's letters page.

Lee Hayhurst, acting news editor

There's a fairly funny, if not what you'd call balanced, spoof video from fictional pro-aviation growth organisation 'Spurt' doing the rounds...

Note the similarity between Spurt's slogan and that of a leading budget airline.

Apparently the people behind the vid (Airportwatch, Enough's Enough and Greenpeace) also took out full-page ads in the press earlier in the week, possibly in response to Ryanair's Greedy Gordon ones two weeks back.

So, a gutsy piece of satire or a vapid publicity stunt?

Nathan Midgley, Travelweekly.co.uk

Over at the Travolution blog Kevin has noticed certain similarities between the newly-launched Guardian and Times travel sites.

While some commenters simply damned him for a cynic ("That's not very kind!" cried an aghast John Franks) others opted for bare-faced cheek...

A bit like the new Travel Weekly and the New Statesman, perchance?
Erica Settle

Why, Madam! Naturally, Kev and Travel Weekly's acting ed Martin were duty-bound to respond...

Readers blessed with a digibox, freeview thingy or other telly gewgaw may have seen the trailers for BBC4's series The Great British Holiday, which feature a Blackpool native observing that the town will be in serious trouble should the supercasino go elsewhere.

In the wake of the supercasino doing just that, Travelweekly.co.uk visitors seem to agree with his diagnosis: according to our current poll 65% of you reckon the Casino Advisory Panel's decision is 'the nail in the coffin' for the erstwhile mecca of domestic seaside breaks.

Is the bout of pessimism justified? Not necessarily - the CAP may only have had one regional casino license to award, but there is little reason to believe the government will stop at that if the experiment in Manchester proves a success. Blackpool, widely regarded as a favourite for the first license, would be overwhelmingly likely to get the nod if there were a second wave of supercasinos.

What will make a second wave more likely? Big revenues from the first, and in terms of generating revenue Manchester - more central, more international, more affluent - will surely do better than Blackpool would have. So perhaps the long term picture, providing Blackpool can hold on a little longer, is not so bleak.

The Great British Holiday starts tonight - with a film on Turkey, neatly assuring that the Blackpool film, when it runs, will no longer be particularly topical. This is BBC4, remember. Ratings are for the vulgar.

Nathan Midgley, Travelweekly.co.uk

If you've been following the negotiations between British Airways and the GDSs - which could, as we reported yesterday, leave agents lumbered with a £4 charge per sector - head over to the Travolution blog, where Kevin has been chatting to an insider. Apparently walking away isn't on the airline's agenda at all...

Instead, our mole suggests, BA is demanding “unfeasibly large cuts” in their GDS booking fees and, if they don’t get these, threatening simply to add the full GDS booking fee to any bookings made through this channel – which would make GDSs the most expensive way to book BA. And – in fairly short order, you can bet – any other airline.

"Either way," Travo's source eloquently concludes, "it sucks for everyone except BA."

Being a professional kind of place, TW Towers is not prone to general rejoicing. But we were delighted to hear our features reporter Jo Gardner had been honoured at the Portugal / Association of Tour Operators to Portugal 2007 Media Awards.

Jo deservedly picked up the prize for best travel trade article for 'An untouched hideaway'. You can - and should - read over on the website, where, to keep Google happy, it's called 'Get away from it all in Alentejo'.

Pic: Jo receiving the award from ATOP president Mary Anne Popoff.