Christmas, anywhere but here! November 14, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Adventure travel, Africa, Asia, Australia, Events, Hotels, South America, Travel, Travel tips & trends.Tags: Christmas, Travel
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Thinking through the logistics of hosting and accommodating 11 people for Christmas this year, it’s easy to understand why many others are planning an escape.
Whether it’s the lure of a white Christmas, the desire to avoid family dramas or simply a convenient time to take a holiday, growing numbers of Australians are taking off for the festive season. Hotels all over the world are offering Christmas packages with feasts and other celebrations included and in many cases families are making multi-generational bookings for get-togethers away from home.
Holiday houses in favourite spots such as Palm Beach and Byron Bay are still popular but there is also plenty of demand for unusual Christmases, which can range from shopping in Tokyo to windsurfing in Morocco.
A spokeswoman for Intrepid Travel, Meg Koffel, says two key markets for Christmas travel are young professionals and multi-generational families. Hot spots for family Christmases are Borneo, Vietnam and other parts of Asia.
Young professionals, who are often taking advantage of a quiet time at work, are heading to places such as South America, Cuba, India and Vietnam. These travellers will often fly out just before Christmas and plan to be somewhere interesting, such as Rio de Janeiro, to celebrate New Year’s Eve, Koffel says.
A spokesman for STA Travel, Reuben Acciano, says young people often… (click here to keep reading this article by Jane E. Fraser)
The new look family holiday November 1, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Australia, Travel, Travel tips & trends.Tags: family travel, Fiji, Gold Coast, Travel, travel with children, travel with kids
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Building sandcastles just doesn’t cut it for a lot of families these days.
Family holidays are getting highly organised and structured with much emphasis on education and experiences, according to experts. Plenty of families are still heading to the Gold Coast or Fiji for a beach break but growing numbers are signing up for African safaris, overseas cycling trips, cooking schools and jungle adventures.
“Families are throwing far more money at holidays,” says the managing director of Travel with Kidz, Wendy Buckley. ”Kids are now more involved and spoken to; parents almost feel accountable to their children. When they go on holiday there are big expectations; people feel they need to be doing more than the beach thing.”
The owner of BYOkids, Leah Squire, says the family travel market has split into two extremes: (click here to keep reading this article by Jane E. Fraser)
What’s hot for Schoolies October 18, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Asia, Australia, Events, Hotels, Travel, Travel tips & trends.Tags: schoolies, schoolies week, schoolies.com, Student Flights, Travel, travel trends, Unleashed Travel
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Over two weeks next month, tens of thousands of high-school leavers will descend upon a handful of locations around the country to party hard in celebration of finishing year 12.
“Schoolies” is showing no signs of going out of fashion, with an estimated 60,000 students expected to head to recognised schoolies hot spots alone. This does not take into account those who organise their own trips or choose a destination away from the madding crowds. Nor does it take into account all of those who will be heading overseas, making the most of cheap flights and the buying power of the Australian dollar.
The brand leader of Student Flights, Darren Lloyd, says there has been a huge increase in demand for overseas schoolies trips over the past two years. ”Destinations like Fiji, Bali and Vanuatu top the list,” Lloyd says. ”The cost of a schoolies package overseas is comparable in price to a week at the Gold Coast, so more parents are encouraging their school leavers to join an organised overseas trip.”
Student Flights works with Unleashed Travel, a dedicated schoolies operator that has options including “schoolies only” trips where a whole island resort is chartered and only 17- and 18-year-olds are allowed.
Lloyd says while many school leavers book organised packages through operators such as Unleashed, the total size of the market is not known. ”Some schoolies are opting to ditch the schoolies week altogether and… (click here to keep reading this article by Jane E. Fraser)
Where the hotel bargains are September 19, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Africa, Asia, Australia, Hotels, North America, Travel, Travel tips & trends, UK & Europe.Tags: hotel deals, Hotel Price Index, hotels, Hotels.com, Travel, travel deals
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The strong Aussie dollar has continued to drive down the cost of hotel rooms in overseas destinations while prices in Australia are rising significantly, according to the latest Hotels.com Hotel Price Index.
Prices have fallen in popular cities across Europe, the US and Asia, while most Australian cities have recorded solid increases in rates, according to the index, which covers the first half of 2011.
The managing director of Hotels.com, Johan Svanstrom, says prices have fallen in many popular destinations for Australians, such as New York, London and Milan. Some of the biggest bargains overseas are New Delhi (down 38 per cent to an average $100 a night), Shanghai (down 23 per cent to $114), Cape Town (down 24 per cent to $146 a night) and San Diego in the USA (down 19 per cent to $128).
In Australia, (more…)
Why lug your own gear to the beach? September 14, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Australia, Hotels, Travel, Travel tips & trends.Tags: Gold Coast, Hilton, hotel deals, hotel services, hotels, Surfers Paradise, Travel
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Australia’s first “beach valet service” will be among the offerings of the Hilton Surfers Paradise when it opens today. Hotel guests will be able to book a valet to transport their belongings to and from the beach, set up umbrellas and beach chairs and bring cold drinks, ice-creams, snacks, beach toys, fresh towels and sunscreen to patrons during the day.
The service, which is offered at some overseas beach destinations, will cost $100 an hour, with drinks and food charged on consumption.
The general manager of the hotel, David Kelly, says the service will be exclusive to hotel guests and will take the hassle out of going to the beach. Kelly believes it will be particularly popular with families, “who often have their hands full just looking after the kids”.
The Hilton Surfers Paradise is part of a $700 million development and offers a choice of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, with rates from about $250 a night.
The hotel is also promoting a two-night marriage proposal package (more…)
Australian tourism stuck in the past September 5, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Australia, Travel, Travel tips & trends.Tags: Australia, Roy Morgan, Tony Charters, tourism, Travel, travel trends
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Australians travelling at home are a “dying breed”, says the convenor of a tourism futures conference taking place in Melbourne from today. Australia’s domestic tourism clientele is literally dying out, according to Tony Charters, who believes the industry needs to urgently recalibrate to cater for different types of holidays.
“I think the Australian tourism industry is still largely operating on the model that worked in the ’80s and ’90s,” says Charters, the principal of tourism consultancy, Tony Charters and Associates. “The nature of the industry is changing quite dramatically but we’re still trying to use an old model [resorts and tourism geared towards long summer holidays and extended beach breaks] to deal with it. Australia needs to reboot itself; to reset the standards.”
Analysis undertaken by Roy Morgan Research, to be presented to the Tourism and Events Excellence conference, demonstrates strong demand for overseas travel, with almost half of those planning to holiday in the next 12 months preferring to go overseas. The director of tourism, travel and leisure for Roy Morgan Research, Jane Ianniello, says a key driver for this is travellers “seeking an exotic holiday destination with a different culture from ours”.
Of particular concern to Charters are younger travellers “looking to overseas travel almost as a default”, indicating the domestic market will continue to erode. The Morgan research also suggests Melbourne and Victoria generally are the only Australian destinations performing well and the only ones well placed to cater for future tourism.
Charters believes our taste for international travel is something only diabolical world events could change and Australia should give up trying to compete at the mass-market level. It should instead… (click here to keep reading this article by Jane E. Fraser)
Australia’s best restaurants August 24, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Australia, Travel, Travel tips & trends.Tags: Australia, best restaurants, Gourmet Traveller, restaurant guide, restaurant reviews, restaurants, Travel
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Attention foodies, Australian Gourmet Traveller‘s 2012 Australian Restaurant Guide hits the stands today. I had the pleasure of reviewing some resaturants for the annual guide, which features the best restaurants across Australia, and I can tell you the competition was tough.
The guide is the biggest selling restaurant guide in Australia and all the restaurants are visited anonymously, so it is a genuine test of the food, wine lists, service and experiences offered by restaurants.
Happy dining! And if you have any of your own recommendations or experiences to share, please let me know.
Is Tiger Airways here to stay? August 22, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Airlines, Australia, Travel, Travel tips & trends.Tags: airlines, aviation, budget travel, cheap travel, flying, Tiger Airways, Travel
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The low-cost carrier has convinced authorities its planes are safe to return to the skies but there is work to be done to repair its service reputation.
Not only will the safety question float in travellers’ minds for some time; the airline has an awful lot of work to do on its service reputation if it wants to convince us it is here to stay. I can place my trust in the Civil Aviation Safety Authority when it comes to the safety aspects but I would still take a lot of convincing to book a ticket.
I took my first flight with Tiger just before it was grounded and experienced, like so many others before me, the blunt end of the airline’s “customer service”.
I booked an overnight trip between Sydney and the Sunshine Coast and it was certainly cheap, with fares of $39.95 each way, although the total bill came to $104.90 by the time I had paid $5 each way to choose my own seat and another $15 “convenience fee” because I didn’t have an “Australian-issued MasterCard debit card” (I wonder how many people do?).
Still, at about $50 a flight, we’re definitely talking cheap. And this is, of course, Tiger’s main selling point, as it has been keen to remind consumers.
But then came the catch… (click here to keep reading this article by Jane E. Fraser)
A whale of an industry August 16, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Australia, Travel, Travel tips & trends.Tags: Hervey Bay, Queensland, Tangalooma, Travel, Warrnambool, whale watching, whales
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Jill Perry thought her husband Brian had gone mad when he first proposed operating whale-watching tours in the waters off Queensland’s Hervey Bay. Even the local paper tried to talk the fisherman out of running an advertisement, saying it would be a waste of money; that no one wanted to see whales.
The Perry family is this year celebrating its 25th season of commercial whale-watching tours in Hervey Bay, credited with starting an industry now worth more than $260 million a year to Australian tourism. The phone rang off the hook when that small advertisement appeared in the paper in 1987 and it now rings to the tune of thousands of passengers each year.
In What’s a Whale Worth?, a report by the Melbourne firm Economists at Large for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), whale watching in Australia is reported to produce more than $47 million a year in ticket sales and more than five times that amount in total tourism expenditure. The report gives an average “value per whale” of $97,000 for Hervey Bay, giving substance to the argument that the creatures are worth much more alive than they are dead.
In the Victorian town of Warrnambool, where large numbers of tourists go to see a relatively small population of southern right whales, the value of each whale is calculated at nearly $1.3 million.
An interesting study into the tourism versus hunting calculations is… (click here to keep reading this article by Jane E. Fraser)
Doggy nomads July 22, 2011
Posted by janeefraser in Australia, Travel, Travel tips & trends.Tags: Big4, caravan parks, dogs, holiday parks, Travel, travel with dogs, travel with pets
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After three decades of saying “no dogs”, BIG4 Holiday Parks is allowing hounds into many of its parks. The chain has decided to allow each park to make its own decision and about 12 per cent of its 180-plus franchised parks have so far put out the welcome mat.
The chief executive of BIG4, Ray Schleibs, says the decision was not made lightly after 32 years of having a “no dogs” policy. Schleibs says the company recognises changing attitudes towards people travelling with dogs. “More dogs are travelling and holidaying with couples and families, with many seeing dogs as substitute children or loyal companions,” he says.
Parks choosing to accept dogs have to go through a qualification process to ensure they have the appropriate facilities and travellers with dogs are asked to book ahead by calling the reservations centre. Only well-behaved dogs that are “small to medium in size” are welcome and dog owners are required to sign an agreement on arrival at the park.
NSW parks now welcoming dogs include (more…)
