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TW Towers has just taken delivery of what is probably the scariest piece of promotional material we have ever seen.
The music box is promoting Halloween theme nights at Universal Studios Florida.
Martin Couzins, managing editor
Surely not...
Jaunted reports that a baby has been successfully delivered on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Adelaide.
Luckily, there were four doctors on board to help with the delivery.
Aaaaaw.
Right: back to emergency landings and carriers going out of business.
New figures suggest that non-traditional holiday durations (i.e. not seven or 14 nights) are on the rise - something columnist Chris Photi predicted in TW a few weeks ago.
Our current homepage poll attempts to find out whether this reflects agents' bookings, so TW Blog is going to mirror it with a consumer poll on Ask500People...
The Association of Independent Tour Operators has published this advice for consumers in light of Zoom going to the wall.
1 Pay by credit (not debit) card and your credit card company will refund you.
You may still, however, have to buy replacement tickets that are considerably more expensive than the original tickets you purchased. If you have booked accommodation separately, too, then you have a separate contract with your accommodation supplier.
Even if no flights are available when you attempt to book new travel arrangements, i.e. you cannot reach your holiday destination - you will still be liable to pay for the accommodation despite the fact that it could remain empty during your holiday dates.
2 Book flights and accommodation via a fully-bonded tour operator.
If an airline goes out of business, it is the tour operator's responsibility to find you new flights - and, even better, the tour operator will pay any or all additional costs.
3 Take out scheduled airline failure insurance.
This is specialised cover and is unlikely to be included in a standard insurance policy. It does not cost much and is considerably cheaper than the cost of buying a new ticket, etc., as described above. Ensure that your insurance will cover the cost of a more expensive flight if necessary.
Martin Couzins, managing editor
Live-blogging a flight ('flogging', if you must) is now a possibility, and Jaunted points to an early example of the genre on B-Side Blog.
It's better as an experiment than it is as content - flights aren't terribly interesting things, and unless you're a friend of the author's (or the author is a phenomenally good comic writer) a blow-by-blow account of one won't deliver much.
What if the flight is interesting, though?
What if it's the inaugural flight of Boeing's Dreamliner?
What if there's an incident mid-flight - loss of cabin pressure or air rage, for instance?
There's a key question here about airline policy.
On an inaugural, the airline might want passengers to blog the flight (if it had any sense).
After a mid-flight incident, it might want to cut off wi-fi to prevent passengers publishing their thoughts as soon as the aircraft had stablised.
Ryanair wasn't at all happy with Pen Hadow's post-flight account of a recent loss of cabin pressure. Imagine multiplying his accusations, and publishing them in real time on under-the-radar media.
Not a situation a carrier would be too happy with, I imagine...
UPDATE: Good comments on posts from Travolution and Alex Bainbridge.
Following the news that Ryanair has accused hundreds of businesses of screenscraping its site, Alex Bainbridge has written an interesting post on the ethics of screenscraping.
Here's Ryanair's latest correspondence with European Commission on the issue.
Martin Couzins, online editor
A glitch at a Federal Aviation Administration facility in Atlanta is causing delays at some 40 airports in the US.
At this stage there is little on the severity or expected duration of the problem, but snarl-ups in the US can have knock-on effects elsewhere, so it's worth keeping an eye on.
This comes from reporter Edward Robertson - watch the video on Travel Weekly.
"On Friday morning I armed myself with a video camera and headed down to Gatwick to interview some of the 2 million Brits fleeing the UK for the August Bank Holiday weekend.
Arriving at the airport at lunchtime I quickly abandoned plans to hold the interviews in the south terminal due to a general lack of travellers. Instead the north terminal had queues at its easyJet, Clickair and First Choice check-ins although by far the shortest queue was with First Choice.
Even better from my point of view was the number of people prepared to talk to the press. On a job such as this most people will tell the press where to go - it's never a terribly nice destination - but in this case almost half of those stopped had a quick chinwag.
And the results? Malaga was the destination of choice for the eight groups interviewed although two were off to Bulgaria while a pair of embarassed teenagers were flying the flag for Britain with a trip to Newquay.
All but one of the groups interviewed had been planning the trip for some time, although disappointingly only two had booked with a high street travel agent - everyone else had booked online.
Interestingly, those who had booked online had very little idea as to whether their booking was with an operator, agent or someone else entirely meaning should there be any problems, they will have to work hard to find out where that leaves them.
The airport remained pretty quiet for the hour and 20 minutes I was there, meaning if 2 million UK holiday makers were going away for the Bank Holiday, they were steering clear of Gatwick at Friday lunchtime."
The Telegraph has come up with some passenger testimony on the Ryanair flight that lost cabin pressure last night - and it comes from arctic explorer Pen Hadow.
Hadow claims that oxygen masks weren't working properly because bags 'failed to inflate', and complains that staff didn't make a PA announcement when the incident took place.
Both Michael O'Leary and Telegraph commenters give all this pretty short shrift, pointing out that
Not everyone is so level headed, however. Elsewhere, there is anecdotal evidence that after a few air incidents this summer people are scratching around for a macro-level scapegoat.
Enter, with grim inevitability, the credit crunch. See this on Yahoo Answers and Darren's post on the Spanair crash on Travel Rants.
That's right folks, Lego have produced a 5,900 piece of the iconic Indian mausoleum.
Martin Couzins, managing editor
Cruise.co.uk recently started a thread about users' favourite shore excursions.
Pretty standard discussion-starting stuff, eh?
No! IT'S A CONSPIRACY!
The comments are 'going to the cruise lines', says Matt, accusing cruise.co.uk of starting the discussion in order to pass on already public, and almost entirely useless, data.
The words 'tilting' and 'windmills' spring to mind.
Nice spot by our cruise blogger Jane Archer.
Pictured is a sauna gondola* that takes riders up to a 718-metre high ski station where there is... a major sauna.
Can you guess the country?
(Look out for the pics in this week's print Travel Weekly - answers there. And I'll post them here after a couple of days.)
* Gondola = a small cable car.
NASA has released this satellite image of Tropical Storm Fay passing over Florida. The storm hit the west coast before travelling north up the east coast. It did not reach hurricane strength.
Image: NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the University of Wisconsin's Space Science and Engineering Center MODIS Direct Broadcast system.
Flight details
Crash details
There's video of the crash scene on the BBC.
Spanair helpline number: +34 800 400 200
The Post Office recently predicted that 135 million postcards will be sent and received this summer. And according to The Guardian, that's an increase of 30 million over the last five years.
This is an interesting trend considering the rise in texting, blogging (and micro blogging) and especially social networking and the ability to share your whereabouts so easily.
I like postcards for a number of reasons:
Pictured are some postcards I found whilst on a recent trip to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.
Martin Couzins, managing editor
...production, enews, meetings...
I'm not sure that Olympic successes will boost domestic tourism gains in 2012. Are you?
...more production, meetings, lunch, meetings...
Let's be realistic: it probably won't affect anyone's holiday plans in four years' time.
...invititation to a conference, more meetings...
I bet the BBC are looking forward to big viewing figures though.
...meeting about the conference I'm now attending...
Oh. Six o'clock already?
The US National Hurricane Center's latest advisory puts Tropical Storm Fay moving north along the east coast of Florida..
Fay made landfall around Naples on the west coast, but didn't turn into a hurricane as feared - average wind speeds are down to 50mph. Hurricane strength is 74mph and above.
The southwest coast took a beating, and thousands were left without power, but no serious injuries or deaths have been reported.
So far we haven't seen anything as ferocious as Dean and Felix, the two category five storms that made landfall in the 2007 hurricane season.
Image: National Hurricane Center
The following warnings are in place in Florida, and up into Georgia as the storm travels north:
Twitter user RobBotham recently @'ed me asking about destination marketing organisations and Twitter feeds:
I've answered, but want to open it up to you lot.
For more on Twitter and travel companies, have a read of the recent Travolution debate on Lastminute.com's feed.
File under 'so crazy it might just work'. CNN's lifestyle channel has an article on how improv techniques can improve your performance in meetings and negotiations.
Clearly travel agnecy counter staff aren't going to run out and join improv circles, but there are some interesting techniques here that could be worked into roleplaying exercises (which are common in sales training programmes anyway).
It's broken down into three key tips:
Respectively they focus on sustaining and directing a conversation; avoiding awkward silences; and keeping energy and ideas moving.
If you don't fancy jumping in with both feet, CNN suggests watching a few episodes of largely improvised sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm - very much the kind of training TW Blog would sign up for.
Then has artist Mina Karimi got a proposition for you. She plans to recreate the parade scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off at the Deitch Art Parade in Soho.
Here's how that might look.
If travel is all about memorable experiences, I reckon taking part in a Ferris Bueller flashmob fits the bill.
I check through TW's various blogs each morning to see what my colleagues have been posting.
Imagine my delight to find that our reporter Ian Taylor had a new post called (wait for it) 'Ryanair ate my hamster'.
Rest assured that this isn't one of those literal headlines beloved of SEO gurus. He doesn't even own a hamster, and is just riffing on the classic Freddie Star headline.
It's all about the screen-scraping kerfuffle, obviously; elsewhere, Alex Bainbridge has a good post about the implications for non-supplier websites.
The Travel Weekly forum has had a question (not anymore see below) on the best places to visit in the world for adventure.
So, where would you go and what would you do?
Not being particularly adventurous, I have to admit that me being daring was going on the Tower of Terror at Disneyland Resort Paris.
Martin Couzins, managing editor
UPDATE: Thanks to Alex Bainbridge for pointing out our diuscussion thread was not as it seems. Clearly something people need to be aware of. This is what Alex has mailed . . .
What is this post about adventure? Have you twigged that the original comment was automatically generated by a forum bot?
The purpose of the bot is to get people to send an email - i.e. this is a means to undertake email address harvesting.Search for hobokelly2007 on google - and nearly every phpBB forum that has a travel theme has been hit.Most start with a question...... a generic question about travel (but with a country name themed to the website being targetted).Read these threads(that is a good one - explains the joke 2/3 or the way down)
A new US site is putting sociable airbed owners in touch with budget-conscious travellers.
This is rather similar to the Couchsurfing trend, but seems to be more heavily monetised. Oh, and you get an airbed.
According to TechCrunch, "prices range from $20 a night for an airbed to $3,000 for an entire house," and "50 to 100 new listings appear every day".
This isn't going to take any business from the travel or hospitality trades - the 'forget hotels' strapline is frankly a bit optimistic - but as TC points out it could be very useful for last-minute, budget-conscious travel to big festivals and conventions.
Could be interesting to scan its pages in the run-up to e.g. South by Southwest or Sundance, where hotel space always ends up severely limited.
It's still very much at-your-own-risk travel, though, as the terms and conditions make clear:
Our Site is merely a venue for users to learn about one another and, if they wish, arrange stays with one another. Compensation for the stays may be involved, but AB&B is a stranger to any such transaction.
We are not involved in the actual contact between users. As a result, we have no control over the conduct of our users or the truth or accuracy of the information that users post on the Site.
Me? I'd do it for SXSW, but then I'm the type that doesn't mind camping on grotty music festival sites. I certainly wouldn't be rushing to AB&B for a proper holiday though.
Reuters reports that a 30-metre long inflatable church is being used by priests and nuns in Italy to provide music and confession to beachgoers.
Martin Couzins, managing editor
Interesting piece
Seems the island does not want any more visitors during the peak summer period. The issue is the bridge, the construction of which will be paid off in 2012, making it free for all - there currently exists a toll of €16.50 in July and August.
Picture credit: http2007
Martin Couzins, managing editor
Just listening to former London mayor Ken Livingstone talking about the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on BBC Radio 4's Today.
Evan Davies: How does London compete with that?
Ken Livingstone: We have to be honest: we can't.
Yikes. For more scepticism on 2012 see TW columnist Danny Rogers, who this week points out that better transport infrastructure should be a priority. Travel Rants said something similar the other day in a post about British tourist boards.
If hotels.com figures reported by Kev at Travolution are to be believed, the benefits might not even be that great - the Olympics seems to have brought a relatively small 30,000 extra visitors to China.
The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games began barely an hour ago, and there are a number of big screens showing the events around the UK.
There are 16 BBC screens in towns cities, plus three in Central London locations. Scroll past the map for a list.
More on the Beijing Olympics
Check out Travel Rants' Beijing Olympics carnival for some good blog posts on the 2008 Games.
Jaunted has a series of posts on the venues for the Beijing Olympics.
Here's one of the ads from British Airways' new 'Heathrow Terminal 5 is working' campaign (click to enlarge).
As Travolution has pointed out, it must be a nightmare to produce
The copy freely admits its 'daily' punctuality figure is based on 6am to 2pm - leave it any later and the ad wouldn't be out for the next day.
I'll keep this simple, though: what do you think? Reassured, or not?
Here's the official line from the BA press office.
Update: I found a post about the ads