Under 30? A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested in a £1,000 travel award?
Know someone who is? We have £1,000 to award each year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan. Interested?
Then see our legacy page on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent travel trip and we’ll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!
0 out of 5 – you need to get out more!
1-3 – not bad
4 – very good! You are a Globetrotter!
5 – are you sure you didn’t sneak a look?
The Beetle likes www.bunk.com a directory of university-owned accommodation for all UK universities and colleges, available to rent outside of term time in the UK. It’s a great way of staying cheaply in a town or city. Check it out!
Ever been to Mexico and Guatemala and looked at the wonderful remains of the Mayan culture? Climbed the pyramids and wondered what went wrong? New research indicates that climate change was largely to blame for the collapse of the Mayan Civilisation over 1,000 years ago.
At the height of the Mayan era, around the middle of the 8th Century, there were up to 13 million people, but within 200 years, it was all over, cities ruined and people gone.
Archaeologists have shown that the Mayans built sophisticated systems of canals and reservoirs to collect rainwater for drinking in the hot, dry summers. Now scientists are able to prove that in the 9th and 10th Centuries, probably just before the Mayan civilisation collapsed, there was a long period of dry weather and three intense droughts caused by climate change and this contributed to the fall of the Mayans.
Some 21 million Britons take a package holiday every year, with three-quarters travelling with the “big four” – Thomson (TUI), MyTravel, Thomas Cook (JMC) and First Choice.
The Consumers’ Association surveyed 30,000 of its members and asked them to rank UK tour operators for value for money and quality of service. Most customers of the “big four” tour operators said that they would not recommend the holiday to a friend, when asked by the Consumers’ Association.
Customers of smaller independent travel firms seem to enjoy their holidays the most. More than eight out of 10 customers of travel company Laskarina said that they would recommend their holiday to a friend, for example.
At the other end of the scale, Thomas Cook (JMC), the UK’s oldest travel operator, came last in the Consumers’ Association survey for the second year running.
Only one in five Thomas Cook (JMC) customers said that they would recommend their holiday to a friend.
TUI, which owns the Thomson brand, did the best of the big four – 47% of its customers were satisfied.
However, the average for all independent travel companies surveyed was 66%. “When it comes to quality of service, the smaller independent holiday companies are topping the ratings,” Which? editor Helen Parker said.
Source: bbcnews.co.uk
A major exhibition about the ill-fated transatlantic liner ‘Titanic’ will be on view at London’s Science Museum from May 16 to September.
“Titanic: the Artefact Exhibition” will take visitors on a chronological journey, from the design and construction of the vessel to its maiden voyage in 1912; and from its sinking after collision with an iceberg to the scientific recovery efforts made by RMS Titanic Inc. in the 1990s. These expeditions recovered 6,000 artefacts from the wreck, and hundreds of them – including jewellery, crockery, clothing and personal belongings – will be in the exhibition.
Visitors will be given the name of a passenger, and explore what it was like to be a first- or third-class passenger – and then discover if they were among the 1,523 who died, or the 705 who survived. Full-size recreations of some of Titanic’s interior spaces, including a first-class cabin, also feature. The tragic story comes alive in the iceberg room, where visitors will learn what it was like to be in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Admission prices have yet to be announced – entry to the rest of the Science Museum is free. Tel: 020 7938 8000. Website: The Science Museum
Source: Britain Express
Hawaii depends on tourism for roughly a quarter of its economy, and since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the industry has suffered. Looks like a new US spending bill will help to bring jobs and more cruising opportunities to the Hawaiian Islands and will overturn a federal law that prohibits foreign-built ships from sailing exclusively among U.S. ports.
While many ships sail between the islands – including two of Norwegian ships – they are all foreign-flagged, and are therefore required by U.S. law to put into a non-U.S. port during an American itinerary. The Norwegian ships stop at Fanning Island in Kiribati, about 600 miles (960 kilometres) south of Hawaii. The only cruise ship that offered solely Hawaiian cruises, the US company American Classic Voyages, went bankrupt a few weeks after 9/11. Norwegian Cruise Line (actually Malaysian owned) plan to take up this space and sail exclusively among the islands without a foreign stop.
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Courtney Love was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport earlier this month after accusations of verbally abusing Virgin crewmembers on a flight from Los Angeles. As she left Heathrow's police station Love said: “I cussed at a lady – my daughter always said I had a potty mouth.” She was later released with a caution for “causing harassment, alarm and distress” after nine hours in custody. Love said she had complained that staff did not let her friend sit in first class with her. She later met Richard Branson, Virgin’s owner at a party, who promptly offered her two first class tickets London – LA return.
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Passengers on small US commuter planes may be asked to weigh-in before they are allowed on board after intervention from the country's Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA's new policy asks airlines to weigh both passengers and baggage on planes that seat between 10 and 19 people. The announcement came after 21 people were killed at Charlotte, North Carolina when an Air Midwest plane crashed on take-off. AT the moment, US regional carriers do not carry out weight checks on passengers and cargo but work on estimates.
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Delta Air Lines, the third largest carrier in the US has just promised the two minute airport check-in. Can this be possible? They say they aim to significantly reduce check-in wait times and lines at 81 of the airports in its system through a mixture of more self service technology and better use of its people on the ground.
Changes will include a combination of airport lobby redesign, increased self-service technology and new airport customer service roles for employees. The airline is aiming to add more than 400 self-service kiosks this year as part of the scheme. Rich Cordell, senior vice president, Airport Customer Service. “Our goal is to ensure that no e-ticketed, self-service customer stands in line longer than two minutes for any transaction, even during peak times.”
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Ah…and Delta Air Lines again ……. passengers with tickets purchased on or after February 1 who are travelling on Delta, Delta Express, Delta Shuttle, Atlantic Coast Airlines, Atlantic Southeast Airlines, Chautauqua Airlines, Comair and SkyWest Airlines will have to pay a USD$25 fee on any bag weighing more than 50 lbs. A new overweight charge applies to bags weighing up to 70 pounds and rises to USD$80 for those weighing between 71 and 100 lbs. Delta does not accept bags weighing more than 100 lbs as checked baggage. But, if you are a member of Delta's Platinum, Gold or Silver Medallion SkyMiles scheme or a passenger confirmed in the forward cabin, you will be exempt from these charges. Additionally, it does not apply to sporting equipment, musical instruments, live animals, cabin baggage, media equipment or wheelchairs and devices which assist disabled passengers, which may be covered by other baggage policies.
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America has taken the first steps to put civil aircraft on stand-by for military duties in the event of war breaking out with Iraq. Several major US airlines including American Airlines, American Trans Air, Atlas Air, Continental, Delta, FedEx, Northwest, Southwest and United are part of the nation's Civil Reserve Fleet which can be called on to supply both passenger and cargo aircraft to move troops and equipment to a conflict zone. Under the first phase only 47 aircraft are to be on stand-by. If the Pentagon activated the second stage of the plan up to 300 planes could be involved. The last time the plan was put into action was during the operation that followed Iraq's invasion of neighbouring Kuwait twelve years ago.
A recent report in Cyber Diver News says that tourists and scuba diver numbers have fallen by almost a third to between 300,000 and 100,000 a month. This is serious stuff for Malaysia as tourism is the country’s second largest earner of foreign exchange. The fall in numbers was triggered by the Bali bombing but a particularly hard line message that sunbathers should cover up (e.g. no bikinis) has not helped.