Trip to Limassol

I have just booked a holiday to go and visit my parents in Limassol Cyprus. I will be going from the 12th April – 22nd April and will have access to a car. I was wondering if any travel fanatics, or Cyprus fanatics can give me any advice on what to see and do over there?? What is the weather like? I hear it is sunny in the day but a little cold at night, does this sound right? Has anyone else been out there at this time of year and did you brave the swimming pool? Any information i can get will be fabulous. Thanks.

Apologies for Delay. Normal services to resume shortly

This last week or so, which was really too long to leave the blogsphere, has been pretty hectic.

On a professional note: here at Holiday Extras we’ve been continuing with the updates and changing products over to their new looks.

On a personal note: I took a slightly interrupted service Eurostar over to Paris for a weekend of French cuisine, culture and other Parisian pursuits.

On a travel news note: LOTS happened.

Let’s start from the almost-personal issue of the Eurostar service issues. This is something regular readers will know I’ve been keeping up with due to my oft-use of the speedy link to the continent. After a fire in the tunnel back at the start of September the service was halted for a weekend and then gradually began operating at a slower pace.

Through September the services were reduced in frequency and lengthened in journey time. What it meant for travellers was a bit of a wait to get into the tunnel and a bit more time while you’re down there. Once the train gets out of the hole though it’s usual speediness is resumed. To be honest it wasn’t that annoying and was still preferable to the ferry+train=loooooong journey that could serves as alternative.

While I was speculating that, come the end of September, normal services would resume it appears otherwise. Eurostar will be offering 93% of services, about one less a day with variations on usual stops, and the altered time table is expected to go into 2009.

More bad news for the service today though as strikes in Belgium mean that Eurostar will not be operating any trains to Brussels on Monday. Nor will there be a service from the UK to Lille on Monday 6th October either.

Ryanair have also been affected by strikes this week, shame, though of a different nature. They’ve had to cancel 25 return flights to and from Birmingham due to strike action at Boeing which have delayed the delivery of new aircraft. No flights on 21 routes in and out of the hub from October 24th to October 28th. If you were unlucky enough to have journeys booked for these dates give ‘em a tinkle and you’ll get a full refund.

Enough of the gloom, eh? There’s some good news in the travel world too. There’s expansion news for Premier Travel who have opened seven new Travel Centre branches.

Also hoping for expansion is Hilton. They have hotels not just trashy waste-of-press blondes named after my favourite European city and now they’re hoping to knock up 150 new properties in the next five years in locations including the Caribbean, Latin America and South America.

With an eye on adding 1,000 hotels to their international chain in the next 10 years it’s got to mean a bit of work for a lot of construction companies and Leisure and Tourism graduates in need of a reception desk to stand behind. Right? Too harsh a joke?

Airlines…. Well, lately that word and all that it suggests has usually been followed by news of a collapse. However, I have some positive news. Jet2.com – who, if you remember, recently announced flights to one of my desired destinations – have announced they’ll be dropping their Barcelona route. BUT, they have started two new routes with services to both Dubrovnik in Croatia and Cornwall in, well, England.

Keeping the expansion news rolling just a paragraph longer, work has begun on a £45 million expansion project at Bournemouth Airport. The work on redeveloping the terminal is underway and is expected to be completed within a few more weeks. I’ll be honest: I didn’t know there was a Bournemouth Airport but, then, there’s a lot of things I don’t know.

When I know more things of note you can bet your London to Brussels Monday 6th October Eurostar tickets on my placing them here.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with one of my sights from the weekend. I’ll admit I didn’t take this as I failed to take a camera with any battery charge.

Where is it? What’s the film? Answers on a postcard.

Come on now, keep travelling

It really isn’t a good time to be a tour operator. Or a bank. Or an American mortgage provider. Or a concerned citizen really.

Amongst all the hubub of big names going under a smaller, though still significant of the financial climate, tour operator has folded. Lidana has ceased trading leaving something like 200 holiday makers abroad and 1,000 travellers with forward bookings.

A specialist operator, the company traded as Respect Holidays and Wildwind Hilidas. The CAA is making the usual arrangements but I’m afraid to say that those with forward bookings are going to need to make a claim for a refund as they won’t be able to travel.

This brings the tally of collapsed operators up to 5 in only 2 weeks with Seguro, K&S, Throb Holidays and, of course, XL. It really is a worrying time for some. Still holding on bravely though are Alitalia. The loss-making airline is “facing the abyss” according to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (now that is a great name for a PM, forget Gordon). The airline is continuing to take bookings and even running a promo targeted at us Brits. Let’s all hope they can pull through.

In continuing thought on the Eurostar vs Ferry and Train to Paris issue I touched on yesterday I would like to mention the other option: flight. It’s actually cheaper to fly, for me at least, from Heathrow to Paris than it is to get the train from Ashford to Paris.

A quick search on one of the many cheap flight websites – I won’t give them advertising space by mentioning names unless they want to help me fly for even less – found me return flights for under £100. Unless you book pretty far in advance its hard to get that with Eurostar so while it may not be convenient for those in Kent the many thousands put out by train losses from London – that glamorous Ebbsfleet – a flight may be a great option.

If you’re travelling this weekend then bon voyage. If you’re sat at home toying with the idea of booking but scared by all the news – BOOK. The more we as travellers book the quicker the operators, airlines and, eventually, the industry and economy will recover.

It never rains… it just comes pouring down

Thousands upon thousands of us have found ourselves suddenly without a holiday or short break this weekend.

I say ‘us’ as I was one of those with a booking to get over to Paris this weekend (today infact) with the currently service-suspended Eurostar. Thousands of passengers yesterday (Thursday), today and, probably, tomorrow have had to look for exchange or refund situations for our tickets after a fire blazed through one of the vehicle trains yesterday afternoon.

The current word from Eurostar.com:

Meanwhile thousands more lost their holidays today to destinations further flung than Brussels or Paris as XL added to the list of airlines. Not only are thousands left without holidays but at least 85,000 passengers are left stranded abroad across Europe, the Caribbean and the US amongst their 50 worldwide destinations.

Stepping in to help, the Civil Aviation Authority is chartering planes from airlines, lease companies and tour companies to get people home. There’s also a lot of people needing to cancel their car parking and airport hotels as a result – our contact centre has been a hive of activity and ringing phones since the early hours.

It’s a sad state of affairs and truly a worrying in these times when businesses, banks and consumers alike are hiding and taking shelter from the dreaded “R Word.” XL Airways are now the largest UK carrier to declare bankruptcy and all their flights were grounded at 1am this morning. Gives the idea that there were talks going on until the precious last minute to try and save the carrier, doesn’t it?

While I’m off to make sure I get my tickets on the Eurostar amended and sorted pronto I suggest that all those who had a booking with XL Airlines do the same. If you’re one of the other unlucky thousands upon thousands remember what the good book says: Don’t Panic. You’ll be covered by insurance from the Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing and you can claim compensaton by calling 0800 068 8992 from here in the UK or +44 20 8242 4783 from abroad. You can also try their website but it is likely to be suffering from high traffic.

Good luck and endeavour to salvage fun from the weekend. Remember; a horse called morbid never won a race

Interesting Times…

There is a curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

These are, indeed, interesting times for both the travel industry and the global economy. As we, in the UK at least, find supermarkets now battling for the lowest fuel prices as Asda proved themselves heros, the effects of the most recent fuel jumps have had a pretty heft toll on the airlines.

According to BA’s Willie Walsh, the current climate is the “worst trading environment ever” as profits for BA plummeted by 88% . Last year’s second quarter profit of £298m has become a pre-tax profit of £37m this year. Mr Walsh states that “fuel prices have doubled in the past year.. fuel costs at £706m were up £233 in the first quarter. We expect our fuel bill to top £3bn this year – the equivalent of more than £8m every day.”

Also taking a plunge in profits is the ever-popular (if not ethical) Ryaniar. The budget airline is reckoning on a loss this year with profits in the first quarter dropping by 85% and a 93% rise in fuel costs. Michael O’Leary is determined, though, that the airline will stick to its no fuel surcharge policy.

Both airlines cite a decline in consumer confidence. With a lack of faith in money grabbing airlines, many are going for the cheaper options for holidays this year. Benefiting from such a trend, Eurostar have added an 11th daily service between London and Brussels from December. That’ll mean that there’s a total 7.500 seats available to Brussels each week. The high speed service has lead to an increase of 30% in passenger numbers, so time to brush up on your Flemmish.

Dust off the red coats this summer too as Butlins are also benefiting from the “R word.” The holiday camp company has seen a 15% rise in bookings and is expecting 150,000 through the doors at Skegness, Bognor Regis and Minehead.

As it’s Friday I thought I’d give you something new, a new word for your mental dictionary. The trend toward taking holidays within the UK, as mentioned before, has been dubbed the “staycation.” Superbreak are pushing for agents to embrace the trend. Could be a log to grab for safety in the flood if you ask me, with agents putting over £1.2 million on leisure breaks in the UK through Superbreak last week.

A closing thought, too…

Not so long ago, maybe as long as six months, I was asked what I’d do if I were in power – presidency or prime minister..ship – and I said that one of the first things I’d do was to take oil off the table. Completely. Force the change that we need to renewable and cost effective energy sources. Some companies would suffer (those who have far too much money and greed anyway) but mankind and the planet would benefit a thousand times over. It seems that with their continued greed in the face of an economic slow down the oil companies may just manage to do it for me.

With that, I’m off. For two weeks, infact. For, after spending all this time writing about travel and holidays it’s time for me to take my own. I’m going to try not to read any travel news and, as I’m out of the country, glancing at petrol prices, so I’m sure I’ll be in for a shock when I get back.

Bon vacance

July 25th: Dia da Patria Galega

Today is National Day in Galicia, an autonomous community of Spain nestled in the North West and bordering Portugal.

With their own language and government, the Galician Statute of Autonomy was ratified on April 28th 1981 though the region’s history goes back to 1063. After the country was re-annexed Galician regionalist and federalist movements sprung up and through the 1920s a full nationalist movement began and, following the Spanish Republic was declared in 1931, Galicia became autonomous only to have the status annulled during General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.

Santiago de Compostela

The capital city, Santiago de Compostela – named for St James’ passage of the Iberian peninsula – is a favourite spot for tourists with it’s rich heritage, shrines, the cathedral and the University of Santiago de Compostela.

As many more Britons head to Spain this picturesque region is sure to see more tourists, as for now a Happy Galician Day to all it’s residents.