INSIDE THIS
WEEK Contents
NEWS Hot Stories
Paris bookings plummet; interest in Spain soars; Hays plans 40 new stores in Yorkshire; Ryanair ‘to feed BA flights’
Round-up
TTNG, Monarch, Freedom and CoPTA Special Report
WIN!
A 15-day river sailing through Vietnam and Cambodia with APT page 38
Mark Warner in black after difficult year Talk Back
Sharm switch; Cook uniform; UK visas
Conference Reports Travel Counsellors Annual, Manchester Thomas Cook Retail, Antalya
Hays Independence Group, Portugal
16 18
20 Clia River Cruise Convention, Amsterdam 22
NEWS YOU CAN USE Product Tenerife, Tripashore, Crystal
08 12 15 04 27
Operator Travel One, AAT Kings, Butlins 31 Cruise HAL, Seabourn, Celebrity, MSC 32
FRONTLINE Comment Steve Dunne: lifetime clients 36
Readers’ Lives Lyndsey Hale, Brynmawr 40 Mystery Shopper Southampton
44 DESTINATIONS
Caribbean 10 of the Best: holidays for families Grenada: your guide to island’s hotels
Turkey
WHO’S GOT IT LICKED? Your guide to the Caribbean’s best hotels for families
page 46
Izmir: beaches, village life, ancient ruins 56 Pause & Play: spa breaks, golf and more 62
BUSINESS NEWS
Investors Pebble Travel sets out strategy 71 Wyndham Chief talks tech and timeshare 72
46 52
WHAT
LUCY DID THISWEEK
26 Nov 1
2 3
Lucy Huxley Editor-in-chief @Lucy_Huxley
Had a look around several vessels at the Clia River Cruise Convention in Amsterdam – and stayed onboard two. They are all so different!
Had great meetings with the chief executives of Saga Travel and Abta, and with Mark Warner, P&O Cruises and G Adventures. A busy week!
Finally started my Christmas shopping, between arriving back from Amsterdam and dashing out to a parents’ evening.
26 November 2015
travelweekly.co.uk 3
t last week’s Phocuswright conference in Florida, the world’s dominant online travel firms talked about how putting the customer at the centre of everything they do is the driving force of their technological development. TripAdvisor,
Booking.com and Expedia are battling to solve
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Agents are here to stay A
the problem of how they can inspire would-be bookers to curtail the often lengthy buying process in travel, especially as online traffic shifts to more-limited mobile screens. And Google itself showcased a powerful new destination- based service, prompting Teletext Holidays’ Steve Endacott to warn about the world’s most dominant search engine becoming an online agent in all but name. But the growing consensus that travel will require a human element behind even the most cutting-edge technology should provide some solace to Travel Weekly readers. At the Hays Travel IG conference at the weekend (page 20),
Travelport boss Simon Ferguson said it was impossible for any retailer to be purely online and that the human element was becoming more critical again, especially with the growth in online travel bookings slowing for the first time in years. He urged agents to make more of a “marriage of digital and physical”, warning that those working on a single platform would fail. Meanwhile, at our Travolution Summit this week, the head of Deloitte’s digital thinktank said that computerisation was not going to replace people, but would merely enhance and augment the capability of human beings. Giving someone the tools to be a travel agent is one thing; teaching them how to use them is quite another, which explains why there are so many of you still around.
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