INSIDE THIS
WEEK Contents
NEWS Hot Stories
All Leisure sells Hebridean and cancels sailings of other brands; trade reports strong peaks sales for summer; Tui gets set for Sousse inquests; Princess Cruises to be first to feature ‘Ocean Medallions’; Monarch’s Swaffield calls for hard Brexit
Round-up WIN! Women in Business; Molly Bales dies
One of eight places on a fam trip to South Africa in June page 46
Special Reports Turn-of-year TV travel ad campaigns
10
Tui’s Nick Longman on Thomson rebrand 17 Illunion Hotels is accessibility trailblazer 20
Talk Back EasyJet, Cook, Mark Warner, Harlequin
NEWS YOU CAN USE Operator Titan, Haven, Hoseasons,
23 08 04 24
Gold Medal, Funway Holidays Cruise Travel 2, APT, Celebrity, Voyages 27
FRONTLINE Comment Andy Freeth: creating demand 30
Spotlight Intrepid’s Urban Adventures 32
Cover Star Jennifer Stephenson, Co-op 36 Christmas Crackers Roadshow photos Mystery Shopper Durham set India test 50
38 DESTINATIONS
Croatia & Eastern Europe Sunny Beach: Guide to Bulgaria resort Split: 48 hours in Croatia’s second city 59
52
COVER STAR The Co-operative Travel’s Jennifer Stephenson at daily cattle drive at Fort Worth Stockyards
page 36
Australasia Victoria: Wine, penguins, koalas and more 62
BUSINESS NEWS Travel Weekly Business Breakfast
Industry leaders assess Brexit and more WHAT
LUCY DID THIS WEEK
JAN 5 72 1
2 3
Lucy Huxley Editor-in-chief @Lucy_Huxley
Had a fascinating call with the head of innovation at Carnival Corporation about the cruise company’s exciting new technology.
Finally (!) bought my dress for the Travel Weekly Globe Travel Awards, taking place next Thursday at London’s Grosvenor House.
Celebrated my son’s 11th birthday by giving him a new bike and taking him, his sister and cousins to the local panto. Oh no we didn’t . . .
5 January 2017
travelweekly.co.uk 3
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Cruise techs it to the max I
f your family is anything like mine, Christmas will have been a period in which you welcomed a host of shiny new
technological gadgets and gizmos into your home. Whether it’s a virtual reality headset or smart speakers
like Amazon’s Echo that listens to you and answers your questions, technology is fast becoming all-pervasive in our lives. Even my seven-year-old got a kids’ smartwatch and used it to ring me at work as I wrote this column! Such is the speed of change, there’s almost no point trying
to predict whether this will be the year when innovations like wearables or ‘smart speakers’ become truly mainstream. What’s certain is that these things will become
commonplace very soon, so it’s vital that travel isn’t left behind – and whether you’re a corporate giant or a sole trader, you must ensure you’re ready for what’s coming. That’s why the announcement this week from Carnival
Corporation and Princess Cruises about its new ‘Ocean Medallion’ technology is so significant (page 6). Travel is often accused of not being innovative enough,
so it’s a real coup that a top industry exec has been asked to give the first-ever keynote by a holiday firm at the prestigious CES consumer tech show in Las Vegas this week. Before Christmas, in the same US city, Expedia bosses
predicted at its annual partners conference that emerging voice search technology is poised to have as big an impact on the world as the iPhone. There was a time when predictions of this
sort would strike fear into the hearts of Travel Weekly readers. But I think technology is now seen not as a threat but as an opportunity. The trick is to understand how it can improve your business and how your customers will use it.
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