A number of irate readers recently wrote to the editor of the Yorkshire Evening Post complaining about the cost of holidays outside of the school term. I wrote to the editor of the newspaper, to add fuel to the debate that accommodation prices very rarely increase because of the school holidays, and what does increase are the flight prices.

To compare I visited jet2.com and did a search on a flight from Leeds & Bradford airport to Alicante for 2 adults and child for a week commencing the 18th February and 4th March, and I was shocked to see that the prices were so wide off the mark.

The price of a return flight to Alicante from Leeds & Bradford is £382.00 for a week commencing 4 March compared to £682.00 for a week commencing 18 February. If we can get the airlines to reduce ticket prices during school holidays, it’ll considerably reduce the cost of holidays for families with children.

Taking your child out of school for the week in March would save a family £300! The accommodation providers in general go on the season, or if the holiday falls on a bank holiday, so the only way we are going to reduce the cost of a holiday, is to get the airlines to reduce the cost of a flight during the school break.

So this is YOUR opportunity to complain about the price of flights during the school holidays – please enter your full name, city, and country where you reside, and have a good old rant!! When we have a good number of names on the list, we’ll contact local MP’s and airlines to see what we can do for families!

For a Mediterranean island with good all year round weather, a friendly local English speaking population and facilities to rival that of any of her competitors, Malta is a surprisingly often the forgotten island for many people planning a holiday in the Mediterranean.

Malta missed some of her own government’s tourist targets in 2005, but a recent visit by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh resulted in four days of positive media coverage in the island’s most important market – the United Kingdom – and also in over 50 other countries attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, including Canada and Australia.

The Queen began her official visit to Malta before she opened the meeting, and was warmly greeted by friendly islanders. Malta was governed by the British for a hundred and fifty years, and became independent in 1964. But the island has retained many British characteristics, including driving on the left, and British visitors account for nearly half of the island’s tourists.

The George Cross ranks with the Victoria Cross as Britain’s highest award for bravery – and Malta was awarded the Cross in 1942 by King George VI for the island’s resistance to German attempts to occupy the island, with Malta being under almost constant attack from June 1940.

As well as the challenge of drawing tourists away from other Mediterranean islands like Mallorca and Menorca, Malta has had to face the additional challenge of new holiday destinations in the former Eastern Bloc opening up, such as Bulgaria and Croatia, which tend to be cheaper.

Brighter Future

But where the Maltese tourist board has singularly failed to market the island’s appeal to the mass holiday market with any degree of success in recent years, the Queen’s visit has come at the right time for hotels and holiday companies hoping for a good 2006.

Tribune Properties, a British based company specialising in overseas properties including Malta comment:

‘Malta is not a high priority on the list of holiday destinations for many British people compared to the Spanish Costas, Canary and Balearic Islands. The visit of the Queen showed Malta in a very positive light, and hopefully the island’s tourist officials will be able to capitalise on the trip and increase hotel and holiday bookings in the months ahead. Given Malta’s past record of promotion though if 2006 sees an increase in visitors it will be despite of the official promotions, and not because of it.’.

More good news for the Malta holiday industry came in October with the announcement that low cost airlines had been been given the right to fly to the island. ‘This will help both the hotel and property industries in Malta’ add Tribune. ‘With the cost of getting to the island coming down, Malta should see her share of the short stay European holiday market increase substantially, increasing employment locally and benefiting the economy overall’.

Further Information

For more information about Malta, including a map, weather, holidays in Malta, UK, US and German embassy contacts, car hire, Malta flights, hotels including the Palm Court and the Qawra Palace Hotel and the towns of Mellieha, Valletta, Qawra, St Julian’s, Bugibba, St Paul’s Bay and Sliema and villa holiday details visit www.yourmalta.com Malta property and real estate details can be found at www.maltaproperty.info

Recognising the upward trend in online bookings, HotelExpert, a London based company has launched their latest business to consumer (B2C) website Theatre Expert to meet the increasing online demand. This website aims to help web users save them time and money when booking London shows online.

London online ticket partner, Business Development Manager, Lawrence Biren says, “By working in key partnership with the UK’s top ticket suppliers, we are able to offer substantial discounts.” “With so many outstanding shows playing in London, there are a lot of people out there for us to help. We’re keen for them to let us take the strain when it comes to booking their London theatre tickets.”

TheatreExpert.com provides a comprehensive list of London shows, with low prices, special offers all supported by theatre seating plans, show times and information and maps showing theatre locations. Everything on the site has been carefully selected for location and quality. Prices include local tax and booking fees. A call centre facility is planned for early January 2006.

“Adding a call centre number to our website will allow our customers to choose how they want to book their theatre tickets”, says Lawrence Biren.

The Benefits of TheatreExpert.com

- Saves time: find musicals, plays, operas and shows quickly
- Saves money: two-for-one offers, meal deals
- Easy: gives you piece of mind as all tickets are booked in advance
- Secure: secure servers are used to ensure safe transmission of payment details

About TheatreExpert.com

Theatre Expert is part of HotelExpert an online hotel and travel booking agency offering real-time bookings at more than 2000 worldwide hotels and apartments, their main objective being to make it easy for people to find and book travel arrangements. This innovative company also offers flights and car hire in association with key travel industry partners.

For more information:
Contact: Lawrence Biren at Theatre Expert

Technorati tag – travel news

With just three months until the 20th Winter Olympics Games begin in Torino, the world’s attention soon will be on Italy’s Piedmont Region, where skiers, skaters, snowboarders and more than one million spectators from around the globe will gather for the quadrennial celebration of winter sport. American travelers – for whom Torino and northwestern Italy is an unknown corner of Europe, often overlooked in favor of Paris, London and Rome – are in for a pleasant surprise. The Piedmont Region offers several world-class attractions: from outstanding ski slopes to the first-rate cuisine to the many opulent castles and mansions of the Savoy royal family. Following is a brief introduction to the region.

Winter Sports

With magnificent ski resorts mixed in with traditional mountain villages, all surrounded by unspoiled woods and forests, the Piedmont Alps is set to captivate the world as the setting for the 2006 Olympic Games. The region offers winter sports enthusiasts more than 1,200 miles of ski runs, spanning from the Maritime Alps to the Monviso and the Susa Valley to Monte Rosa. The Olympic Mountain’s renowned ski resorts all are located within 60 miles of Torino, including Sestriere, Sauze d’Oulx, Claviere, Cesana Sansicario, Bardonecchia, Prali and Pragelato. Nestled in the snow-drenched area nicknamed “the Milky Way,” these resorts offer varied options including dynamic downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, snowboarding, heli-skiing, nighttime skiing, ice-skating, ice climbing and dog sledding with Siberian Huskies.

Culinary Delights

To experience the Piedmont Region is to experience culinary delights that can be found nowhere else in the world. With meals made of impeccably fresh ingredients, dug from just over the next hill, or picked from the field just outside the kitchen window, it’s no exaggeration to say the people of the Piedmont region live to eat and drink: as the saying goes, in Piedmont baby’s comforters are dipped in wine!

Piedmont is home to the Slow Food Movement, a global organization founded in the small town of Bra. Heralded as the “cure” for a distressingly fast-food world, slow food promotes the sanctity of taste, taste education and food preservation with fairs, events and educational programs and also produces food and wine guides. Piedmont also is home to tuber magnatum pico, commonly known as the white truffle, a fungus coveted by gourmands around the world. Piedmont now is in the height of white truffle season (late October through early December), and a pound of the tubers can go for more than $2,000.

The region boasts cheeses subtle and sharp, creamy and dense, crafted in equal parts by favorable natural conditions and human ingenuity. Stars include the Toma of Piedmont, among eight Castelmagno regional DOP cheeses whose quality is recognized and protected by the government. Piedmont’s divine Tonda Gentile, hazelnut, a uniquely sweet variety so special that it has been award European Union Protected Geographic Indication status – a sort of food patent that separates it from inferior imposters. It is the centerpiece of Nutella, the hazelnut and chocolate spread that has become a worldwide favorite, as well as the central ingredient in the regional hazelnut torte – not to mention ice creams and other confections. Piedmont also nurtures the grapes that make the region one of the world’s best wine producers. Of Italy’s 20 regions, Piedmont leads the pack in number of wines that meet the exacting standards to be awarded DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) status, including bold red Barolos and Barbarescos and complex, dry, Gattinaras and Ghemmes and sweet, lighthearted white Astis.

Year-Round Beauty

Piedmont’s Lake District provides breathtaking vistas and rejuvenating waters. The great Lake Maggiore, the smaller Lake Orta, both just 90 minutes from Torino, shimmer like the most exquisite precious stones. The lush loveliness of gardens, trees and scenery are fitting backdrops to the splendor of the lakes, while perfectly preserved villas, luxurious modern resorts and charming fishing villages that have changed little over the centuries. Piedmont’s stunning parks and mountains, and the region’s wide, untouched valleys, lakes and rivers, offer world-class hiking, mountain climbing, kayaking, rowing, cycling, paragliding, horseback riding and five of the top ten golf resorts in Italy. The Alpine valleys close to Torino – Lanzo, Susa, Chisone, Germanasca and Pellice – are ideal for both day hikes and lengthy treks, taking visitors as far as the Gran Paradiso, Italy’s oldest national park.

The Olympic Mountain Range is a lush paradise for sports enthusiasts and amblers, with tough rock faces for climbers. Other outdoor activities include canoeing, rafting, hiking scenic wooded trails, lush valleys and pristine lakes. Piedmont’s dramatic wilderness also stretches far beyond the greater Torino area, with parks such as Alpe Devero inviting visitors to hike through pastures and grasslands to the Devero Lake, nestled in a mountain basin shaped by glaciers in the northern part of Piedmont, near Switzerland.

Culture and History

The Piedmont Region is the intersection of many critical moments in Western civilization and offers several museums and attractions that serve as windows to the past. Following are just a few of the cultural landmarks in the region, with their web site addresses. For a complete listing of cultural and historic landmarks in the Piedmont Region.

- Egyptian Museum in Turin
- Chapel of the Holy Shroud in Torino
- The Royal Palace of Venaria
- Museum of Contemporary Art in the Castle of Rivoli, Torino
- National Cinema Museum in Turin

Getting To the Piedmont Region

The Piedmont Region is served by two airports: Torino International Airport in Caselle and Malpensa 2000 Airport in Milan. TIA is one of the most modern and functional airports in Europe located 16 miles from downtown Torino. Easily accessible and congestion free, it can handle over 3 million passengers annually. Seventeen airlines operate over 450 weekly scheduled departures linking Torino to 25 destinations, 15 of which are international. Intercontinental links are provided through Malpensa 2000, one of Europe’s largest hubs with easy connections from Paris, London and the United States. Malpensa is a popular arrival point for U.S. passengers, with direct service from most major airlines.

All of the major car rental firms have counters at both airports. If you plan to travel outside the downtown area, a rental car is highly recommended. Six different motorways connect Torino to major European cities: Milan in 60 minutes, Genoa in 90, Nice and Geneva in two and a half hours, Lyon in three hours and Zurich in four. Five railway stations, two of them international, make access easy from all of Italy and bordering countries: four pairs of high-speed trains travel between Torino and Paris in little more than five hours.

Region Piedmont Web Site

The Region Piedmont in northwest Italy today launched a comprehensive new web site, PiemonteFeel.It, which provides a wealth of timely information on what to see, what to do and where to go in the Piedmont Region. The Region of Piedmont is located in northwest Italy, sharing alpine peaks with neighboring France and Switzerland. The Po River, Italy’s largest, crosses through the region, with capital city, Torino (Turin) in the valley. Piedmont is a region rich in cuisine, culture and beautiful natural landscapes, from snow-capped peaks to vineyard-covered hills to clear mountain lakes. History is well preserved in the region: Turin, after being the capital of the Savoy reign for 300 years became in 1861 the first Italian capital, It hosts the second most important Egyptian Museum in the world, after Cairo, the Holy Shroud, the famous self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, the opulent palaces of the Savoy royal family and the National Museum of Cinema. Torino (Turin), the region’s capital, is host to the 2006 Olympic Winter Games

Contact Information:

Paul Cohen/John Riggin
Partner Concepts LLC
Phone +1 410 224-7688
john@partnerconcepts.com
http://www.partnerconcepts.com

Qantas will reduce travel agent base commissions for tickets sold in Australia from April next year. Qantas head of sales and marketing Rob Gurney said that under the new base commission structure Australian domestic, trans-Tasman and New Zealand domestic base commissions of one per cent would be discontinued.

He said international base commissions would also be reduced from seven per cent to five per cent. Investors reacted badly to the news and punished travel agency stock Flight Centre, which dropped almost 12 per cent. Mr Gurney said Qantas was operating in an “extremely challenging” environment with fierce competition domestically and internationally, as well as continuing high fuel costs.

“The reduction in commissions is in line with global trends and with Qantas stated aim to reduce distribution costs,” Mr Gurney said. “In some overseas markets, airlines have removed commissions entirely and travel agents have adjusted to new income models.

“Base commissions are only part of the income mix that travel agents receive from airlines and agents are increasingly moving to new remuneration models, including the collection of service fees where the customer pays the travel agent for the expert service they receive.”

Mr Gurney said travel agents were a key part of Qantas distribution mix and the airline would continue to consult closely with the Australian Federation of Travel Agents and to support the travel industry network. Flight Centre shares fell $1.23 or 11.95 per cent to $9.06. The new base commission structure will begin on April 1 next year.