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.

Expensive fuel is good news for some, horrifying for most

If you’re the Eurostar executives, that is.

The cross-channel ( or should that be ‘under-channel’? ) train operator is reporting a surge in customers between January and June this year with numbers reaching 4.63 million, up 18.3% on the same time period last year. Well, I guess that means I’m one in 4.63 million.

Richard Brown, chief exec at Eurostar says: “The impact or rising oil prices on air fares, combined with growing awareness of the much greater environmental impact of flying, are causing more and more travellers to switch from plane to train.”

Eurostar also attribute the jump in sales to the improved rail connections from areas north of London too with Derby, for example, seeing a rise of 190% in terms of traffic from the service. Though, from first hand experience, I will warn that the French rail service, SNCF, aren’t shy with prices and they, as with Eurostar, are best booked as far in advance as possible.

Though the strain of the economy is looking to set the travel industry back thousands of jobs over the next year or so. Travel Industry analysts Plimsoll Publishing’s report reckons almost 7,000 travel agents could be facing unemployment over the next year with as many as 8,389 jobs going in the tour operator sector too. The report also identifies 181 companies in extreme danger that need to consolidate asap if they want to see another summer. One of their senior analysts, David Patterson states:

“While job losses are undoubtedly bad news for any company, such decisive action may be called for to guarantee the ultimate survival of the business – even if this means the business is 30 or 50% smaller than it was.”

50% is a scary figure. While it’s easy for analysts to look at the big picture it becomes of less interest to those agents seeking unemployment benefits or operators calling in the receivers. While it is important for the travel industry to survive – though, come on, it’s never going to fall away is it, let’s be sensible – it’s just as important to ensure that job losses are minimal, not in their tens of thousands.

Despite the lumbering “R Word,” bmi will continue to fly from its Heathrow slots this winter in the face of what is expected to be the hardest one yet, on financial terms. The service, currently under the greedy eyes of Richard Branson, is keen to hang on to its slots at the airport so will fly aircraft even if they’re almost-empty.

Right now, the big picture is bloody scary. So now the UN is looking into it too. Oh good. More meetings. The second annual UN Word Tourism Organisation Ministers’ Summit will kick off on November 11 2008.

So, after the recession has hit the summer trading of tourism operators and agencies. Nicely timed.

However, I have my Eurostar tickets and I’m still counting down for the holiday. Still not being smug,

Cloud with some sunny spells

As much as you’d be forgiven for thinking reading this blog, it’s not all doom and gloom in the travel industry lately, with airlines in specific. There have been some sunny spells in the news.

EasyJet, for example, are one of the smaller airlines adding routes rather than canceling them. The airline is looking to tap into the juicy ski market in winter by launching services from Manchester airport to Geneva and Sofia in December. The services will bring the airline up to 7 from Manchester and will provide access to resorts in the French and Swiss Alps.

Having not long announced the commencement of flights from Vigo to Gatwick, Clickair have finalised talk to merge with another Spanish carrier, Vueling. With further competition and the ever-upwards spiral of fuel costs it only makes sense. While it’s still subject to approval from competition commission, the merger will see Clickair absorbed by Vueling while Clickairs owner, Iberia, will emerge as a majority shareholder.

I’ve lumped this announcement after that of Easyjet as the two are, believe it or not, related. The new company will have 50 aircraft in and better able to take on companies like Easyjet who have been building up a pretty beefy presence in the Spanish airline market. Hugely important if my prediction continues to be born out and more people head to Spain on holiday as they stick to closer destinations.

That being said, news reaches me today that Turkey has proved more popular a destination than Spain. Well, according to The Cooperative Travel. A report by the group has sales to Turkey up by 30% on last year with Majorca bookings down to 13%. The report does blame the high cost of the Euro which lead me to find out that Turkey still uses its own currency – the New Turkish Lira – and good on ‘em I say.

Well, there’s your sunny spots. Time for a little cloud – in keeping with the erratic weather around the company offices today. The Telegraph (highbrow eh?) has reported that the average family “faces the threat of nearly £45 being added to the cost of a holiday if the European parliament rubber stamps a plan for green curbs on airlines this week.”

What? Green curbs? Unfortunately this isn’t a new traffic management scheme with more lines on the road. No, it’s a scheme that means airlines will be charged for greenhouse gases they emit thanks to an oh so complex licensing scheme with each airline allocated a ceiling. The article in The Telegraph (credit where it’s due) suggests that it’ll cost the aviation industry £2.8 billion a year – that’s about £11.10 per return flight.

The scheme is likely to go before the European Parliament this week (I’ll let you know) and be ratified with the costs passed on to the lucky passengers. Just wallop that on to the ever growing increasing fares caused by fuel prices.

Speaking of which… it’s spreading. To the cruise market now. Fred. Olsen (love the punctuation in that name) have had to increase their fuel surcharges on all new cruise bookings until April 16 2009. When, judging by the economic picture, it’ll go up again. Well, that and the fact that it’s the fifth time it’s gone up since December.

Well, there’s the gloom out of the way for today. Let’s hope these “difficult times” (Gordon Brown, politicians can’t use the R word) show a glimmer of sunshine soon and holidays become less of a fear expense wise.

Though maybe we won’t go to Beijing – the seat of the next Olympics is still failing to meet International air quality standards.

Holiday prices to soar?

Well, the first bit of news to arrive in my inbox this morning wasn’t, I’m afraid, good news. According to travel agent Advantage, holiday prices are set to rise by 10% in 2009.

Pointing at the worsening economy (are we recession bound?) and the increase in fuel costs, Advantage estimate an increase of £50 per person on a £500 holiday. It’s also suggested that travel agents are going to need to work even harder to attract bookings from a general public having to shell out money on the rising costs of food, fuel and (gulp) mortgages.

While it’s true that the economy here in the UK is currently pointing at the toilet, I was always lead to believe that there’s two businesses that are relatively recession proof – undertaking and holiday making as the more stressful life gets the greater the need to get away. Right? I know I’m desperate to take a holiday right now.

Put 2009 aside for a moment though as the rising cost of oil has also meant increased costs in 2008. British Airways have already had to up their fuel surcharges for the premium seats having increased the charge on all seats earlier in the month. And that black sticky stuff still shows no signs of getting cheaper of leveling out.

At a time when I’m paying £1.19 for a litre of unleaded (and every time I think about it I shudder) I know I’m not planning on a large holiday spend and counting every penny for it. My next holiday is going to be pretty close – I’m swinging over to France – and not incur such a cost as, say, a family of four heading off to Florida.

I think if the holiday market truly does suffer it will be a sign of how bad the price of oil has become. Even a holiday in the UK is facing a hike in cost thanks to the jump in prices at the pumps. So what’s the answer? If you ask me it’s to pre-book. I’m not about to go out and buy Euros now in case next year I’ll get 20 cents less for my pound but I will pre-book my tickets and parking as soon as possible.

I wouldn’t panic yet though. Like so many estimates, this isn’t a fact and has a lot of variables. I know petrol at my local garage dropped to £1.16.9 on Sunday and while it’s not a massive drop it is a good sign. While a recession is highly tipped it’s not guaranteed and this whole thing could very soon look like so much Millennium Bug anti-virus software. Fingers crossed.