Time. A Tourism Strategy...

With such wonderful "Tourism Offerings" coming up, such as the Olympics and the latest Royal Wedding, its good to see that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is not sitting on its laurels with its latest "Brain Busting" strategy...

Change the time...

No, really, that is it. The answer to all of the UK's economic problems. The answer of how to make more people visit Britain...

BBC news report today that "Longer evenings could move a step closer with a government plan to move UK clocks forward an extra hour...

A "tourism strategy" will include a plan to move the clocks in line with most of Europe, bringing lighter evenings but darker mornings...

Tourism chiefs and safety campaigners support the move, but there are fears in Scotland about road accidents...

Ministers want to be satisfied the country backs the plan, before giving the go-ahead, the government said...

Last year, Prime Minister David Cameron indicated he was willing to consider a switch...

"The argument will be won when people across the country feel comfortable with the change," he said in August...

"It's up to those who want to make the change to make the argument to try to convince people right across the country that it's a good thing...

"People who like taking part in sporting activity and would like longer days are already quite easy to sway. That's the key to winning this argument..."

The proposals will be published by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in the coming week, the BBC has been told...

Tourism bosses say the number of overseas visitors would increase if summer evenings were lighter and they estimate the benefits to the economy could total billions of pounds...

But there have been fears expressed in Scotland that putting the clocks forward would increase road accidents in the darker mornings..."

Well thats all ok then, unless you live in Scotland of course...

For more on this please follow BBC News at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12517762

Barticus.

Official, the French are crazy...

Hey, the Guardian said it, so don't blame me...

News of some of the new "Boutique" hotel offerings from those that gave the world the idea of "Chic..."

The Guardian reports that "Pretty gîtes are a bit old hat now, but France has plenty of wacky alternatives, from tents hanging in trees to a house that turns with the sun. Click through our gallery to see the best billets with la différence...

Spend the night on a bed of straw in a hayloft, or in a treehouse, yurt or tipi on this farm in the Vosges. For something even more original, try the glass pyramid or a real Caravelle aeroplane transformed into a “loft”, with a living room and bedrooms set amid a large lawn...

For those who dream of sleeping under the stars, but in the warm, the glass pyramid offers a unique experience...

There are no curtains, but it is far enough away from other buildings to ensure privacy..."

For more on these magnificently strange offerings, please go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/gallery/2011/feb/19/hotels-france#/?picture=371788700&index=0

Barticus.

It's not all bad...

Good to see that the Virgin brand is going from strength to strength during the uncertain economic times, with the news of their continued growth and expansion...

Andrew Compart reports that "Virgin America, which has aspired to begin service to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport since 2008, finally will do so with two daily flights from Los Angeles and three from San Francisco, starting May 25...

The San Francisco-based, low-cost carrier also says travelers from O’Hare to the West Coast airports also will be able to connect to San Diego, Seattle and Las Vegas...

Virgin America, which launched in August 2007, notes that it first announced its intent to serve O’Hare in 2008. But the airline’s ambitions were thwarted by its inability to secure gate access at a cost it considered reasonable...

The breakthrough came in an agreement the city of Chicago reached with Delta Air Lines to acquire the leasehold interest in 11 gates that Delta vacated in Concourse L, freeing up at least some of them for use by new-entrant carriers and new routes (Aviation Daily, Feb. 14). Chicago Mayor Richard Daley presented the proposed agreement Feb. 9 to the Chicago City Council, which next meets on March 9...

Six of the gates will be leased to American Airlines, which is currently subleasing five of them from Delta. The mayor’s office says the remaining five gates will be available for various airlines on a common use basis, and Virgin America will be using one of those gates...

“We’ve talked about [Chicago] for several years,” Virgin America CEO David Cush said at a news conference Feb. 17 in Chicago. “We’re just happy that it’s finally happened...”

Good news for aviation, and Sir Richard...

See more on this at http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=aviationdaily&id=news/avd/2011/02/18/06.xml&headline=Virgin%20America%20Finally%20Gets%20Gate%20To%20Begin%20Service%20To%20Chicago

Barticus.

The power of e.people....

With the quick gathering of huge amounts of people to join in protests around the world tourism hotspots, we are in a unique position to consider the effects of social mediums (such as this)...

Love 'em or hate 'em, the effects are huge, and when looking at the effects of social media on the uprising in Egypt, Nick Varner said "though social media had an integral role, it was not an all-new use of Facebook...

“Egypt wasn’t the first to use social media in this way,” he said. “Tunisia, a few weeks before, had used Facebook and Twitter to depose their old regime.”
Jim Melton, assistant professor of business information systems, related the movie “The Social Network” to parts of the world with more government control and how the image of Mark Zuckerberg is received in comparison with his image in the U.S.
“Zuckerberg has somewhat of a negative image in the U.S., especially after the movie was released,” Melton said...

”People are concerned about privacy. But when the government has control, people want things like Facebook. In Tunisia, there were people holding up posters of Zuckerberg saying he was great...”

Melton informed students of the relevance of the topic to the events in Egypt in his new class, BIS 280: Social Media and Emerging Technology in Business...

Though the protests in Egypt were not business-related, they have the same idea of viral information, Melton said. One main protestor got the word out through Facebook and created a group, just like a business, he said...

“Social media really empowered the protests,” Melton said. “It’s harder to control news through these social networks...”

East Grand Rapids sophomore Alyson Cole said Facebook made people more willing to get involved...

“If I were an Egyptian youth, I would be more inclined to get involved if I were to find out about a protest via Facebook, seeing as how it is a huge part of young adult communication these days,” Cole said."

So surely the next step is to create some form of "response unit" that can read into what is going on through the use of social media, and to try to predict areas of uncertainty before they become a problem so that tourists and tourism are not affected.

For more on this, please look at http://www.cm-life.com/2011/02/16/social-medias-influence-on-protests-in-egypt/

Barticus.

Sailing in unsafe waters...

Terrifying news once again of the reports of Somalian pirates hijacking a yacht off the coast of Oman.

This time it is the American owned "Quest" with 4 Americans on board whose relaxing voyage has been disrupted in the most tragic of ways.

The Telegraph reports "Pirates have hijacked a yacht with four Americans on board off the coast of Oman, the US embassy in Nairobi has said...

"Preliminary reports indicate that a US-flagged vessel tentatively named as the Quest has been hijacked in the Arabian Sea. There were four US citizens on board," the spokesman for the embassy said...

East African maritime expert Andrew Mwangura said the yacht was sailing from India to Salalah in Oman when the sea-bandits struck on Friday afternoon.
Salalah is 750 miles from the coast of Somalia...

Advocacy group Ecoterra, monitoring piracy in the Indian Ocean, said that the Americans were being held hostage...

"The S/V Quest was attacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean and the four Americans on board are being held hostage," they said in a statement...

Ecoterra said the 58-foot yacht was owned by Jean and Scott Adam. It was not immediately clear if the couple were sailing the yacht at the time of the attack...

Pirate gangs in the Indian Ocean are making tens of millions of dollars in ransoms, and despite successful efforts to quell attacks in the Gulf of Aden, international navies have struggled to contain the piracy owing to the vast distances involved..."

For more on this worrying news, please go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/piracy/8335296/Pirates-hijack-yacht-with-four-Americans-on-board.html

Barticus.

The battle of Trafalgar...

Once again one of the UK's top tourist attractions is the focus of negativity, with the news of running knife battles in front of terrified tourists leaving 3 people in hospital.

Sarah Morrison reports for the Independent that "Police are holding 19 teenagers after three young men were stabbed in Trafalgar Square in the middle of the afternoon.

Violence broke out when rival groups of Albanian-Kosovans, armed with knives and hockey sticks, began to fight in one of London's most popular tourist destinations.

Officers arrived at the scene on Thursday to discover running brawls between what is thought to have been Albanian-Kosovan gangs, gathered to "celebrate" the third anniversary of Kosovo's independence. The youngest of those arrested is a 13-year-old boy.

Emergency services took a 19-year-old man suffering four stab wounds to his head, arm and back, and an 18-year-old with two stab wounds to his chest, to different hospitals. A third victim, aged 19, took himself to hospital after being stabbed in his neck, back and leg. The first victim has been discharged but the other two men are in a stable but serious condition.

Groups of Albanian-Kosovan teenagers have met on Kosovo National Day as a "show of force" for the last couple of years. "It usually results only in fist fights rather than stabbings but it is hard to concede that this event was spontaneous because it seems that people came armed with necessary tools to commit a serious assault," said a source.

Scotland Yard insisted there had been no reason to expect such serious trouble. Superintendent Simon Ovens said: "We hadn't been notified of any planned events in Trafalgar Square so there was no expectation from the public. Our officers were on the scene extremely quickly. However, it is going to take some time for us to speak to them all and establish a clear picture of exactly what happened.

"Trafalgar Square is an incredibly busy place and I would urge anyone who was in the vicinity and may have seen something to come forward and talk to us. Their information could be vitally important in helping us to piece this incident together."

Luljetta Nuzi, project director for Shpresa, a group for Albanian speakers in the UK, said that the violence was a reminder of the work that needs to be done in addressing divisions within the expatriate community...."

For more on this, please go to http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/19-held-after-youths-knifed-in-trafalgar-square-2219292.html

Barticus.

No one knows. No one cares....

Really worrying news for the producers of the 2012 cultural Olympiad is that no one seems to know anything about it...

In Beijing three years ago we were greeted by an immense sense of "pride" and "togetherness" from the Chinese people. Something that, as yet, seems to not be happening with the Brits...

BBC News report that "Public awareness of Britain's Cultural Olympiad, planned to mark the London Games of 2012, is low and could be better, its organisers have conceded.

Ruth Mackenzie, its cultural director, said recent research showed awareness of the four-year "cultural celebration" is at 9%, its highest level to date.

But she told the London Assembly she expected interest to rise in October when tickets for events go on sale.

"We have not yet adequately told the story," a committee heard on Tuesday.

It was also told that some people may have taken part in an event without realising it was part of the Olympiad.

These include the Big Dance event of July 2010, which featured nine days of dance events in unusual places throughout London.

Organisers will now focus on the Olympiad's key event, a 12-week nationwide arts festival running from 21 June to 9 September 2012.

Actress Cate Blanchett, Blur's Damon Albarn and artist David Hockney are among the big names who are already lined up to participate...."

So lets hope that some form of cultural "pride" can be developed in time for the opening ceremony next year...

More on this at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12471128

Barticus

Where to go......

At this time of year many travelers seek respite from the winter weather by venturing on a sun chasing vacation.

But where to go?

So many of the traditional winter hot-spots are in turmoil. Egypt. Tunisia. And now even within the Arab states with Barhain joining the list of scary places to be.

So your "Global Tourism Issues" team has looked at the safest, best bargains for your winter get away and has come up with "The Gambia....."

With current "rave" reviews on "Tripadvisor," The "Gambia Experience" say that "Although when lying on the beach or relaxing by the pool you could be in any tropical destination, it is also easy to experience the local culture and feel as though you’ve truly arrived in Africa.

Travel to rural villages to watch palm-wine tappers, drive through the African bush to hear the monkeys chattering and watch flocks of colourful birds fly overhead; even from the comfort of your hotel you can listen to the drums of local entertainers and watch incredible energetic dancing. For first time visitors to Africa The Gambia is a good introduction as it is English-speaking, flights are less than six hours and the hotels are all fairly close to the airport so transfers are also short."

Have a peek at http://www.gambia.co.uk/

Barticus.

A call to tighten management plans.....

Famed for its use by the craziness that is "Top Gear," the Unesco World Heritage Site in Quang Ninh province, Halong bay has the reputation of being one of the most beautiful of all of Unesco's World Heritage Sites.

But maybe the strict management plans enforced by Unesco need to be re evaluated after this latest tragedy.

Travelmole report that "At least 12 people have drowned after a tour boat sank in Halong Bay, a top Vietnam tourist attraction.

The victims were holidaymakers from Britain, the US, Australia, Japan, Russia, France, Sweden and Switzerland, along with a Vietnamese tour guide.

They were on a tour of the Unesco World Heritage Site in the Quang Ninh province.

According to the latest Reuters report, 15 people, including nine foreigners, were rescued from the boat, which is believed to have broken without warning just before dawn.

Many tourists stay overnight on boats at the tourist hotspot, so were likely to have been asleep when the accident happened."

Follow more on these sad events at http://www.travelmole.com/stories/1146451.php

Barticus.

Pride: A regeneration factor.

Ok, so normally I dont use this blog for personal points of view, but for once I'm going to show where my research is leading me.

In this age where even David Cameron is going on (and on) about a "failed society," I am left to consider the failings of the British Domestic Tourism market. Surely, at a time where economics prevent many from their normal far-flung, sun drenched holiday, it would be a prime time for the traditional British seaside holiday to strive for regeneration as the vacation of choice for the mass domestic tourism market. But no, really, people would rather go without a holiday than be forced to go to the likes of Margate or Skegness for a week with the kids. So where is the real problem?

Like so many areas of this small island, the traditional seaside resorts of a bygone age are left without a sense of purpose, tradition or pride, and if they don't have it for themselves how can it be conceived that they might have the ability to promote these ideas for any potential customers. And, of equal importance, peoples from urban areas with similar issues cannot find any of these things in their own society to believe that they might find it somewhere else.

Britain is broken.

No community. No tradition. No pride.

The only way to fix this is to re-introduce pride at a community level. Regenerate, yes. But dont ignore the views of the man on the street. Brighton has pride and community (gay, but community), and on a sunny day you cant get on the beach it is so busy. Geordies (people from Newcastle) look at the "Angel of the North" with pride. So there is proof it can be done.

This economic situation is going to last a long time, so now is the time to re-invent community pride, to lift people, to regenerate, rebuild and renew.

Britain is broken. Lets fix it. Together.

Barticus