March/April 2023


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...continued from Page 1 The Electronic Travel Authorisation


Page 16: Kirsty Johnston plans a return trip to Disneyland Paris


Page 32-33: Head to picture perfect Palm Springs with Andrea McVeigh


Page 34-41: Once Upon a Time in Orlando... top insder tips and tricks for fun and adventure on a budget in Orlando


Page 50: Nigel Heath heads off on a UK minibreak to the city of Wells


(ETA) system will apply to people without British or Irish nationality crossing the border into Northern Ireland, including those with legal residency on the island of Ireland. This means travellers flying into Dublin Airport who are not British or Irish citizens would require pre-entry clearance to visit Northern Ireland. The same applies to those flying into one of Northern Ireland’s three airports who wish to visit the Republic of Ireland. The Northern Ireland Tourism Alliance


(NITA) estimates 70% of its overseas tourists arrive in Northern Ireland


“There’s been no communication globally with regards to the introduction of the ETA, so everybody just needs that clarity.” Ireland will not be the only country to recognise the danger with the spilt from the EU for the UK through visas, as Spain has also expressed concern for its largest tourist market. Answering a question by the Independent, Juan Molas President of Mesa del Turismo, said: “We are especially concerned about the impact of this tax on British tourism, our main issuing market with 18 million arrivals in 2019. “It must also be taken into account that the measure – if it goes ahead – will be added to the rest of local taxes that the tourist is already paying to visit certain European cities.”. Julia Lo Bue-Said, CEO of The Advantage


via the Republic, accounting for about 25% of total tourism spend here. This has caused some concern in the tourism industry here. Speaking on the proposed ETA system,


Dr Joanne Stuart, Chief Executive of NITA said: “We don’t want anything that would create a barrier or make people think twice about coming up to Northern Ireland. The ETA was initially meant to be rolled out as a pilot at the beginning of this year, but we see that’s been delayed and we are urging a response as quickly as possible. “We are in a situation where you have already


got operators looking out to


2024/2025 for bookings, so we need to have clarity on the situation. What we do know is it would be multi-year, probably three years but other than that we don’t know anything. We don’t know the cost and we don’t know the process other than it will be digital.


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UNDER FIRE: TOP OFFICALS LEAKED MESSAGES REVEALED


More than 100,000 WhatsApp messages sent and received by ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock were handed over to The Telegraph newspaper. During one exchange in early February 2021, published on Thursday (2 March) by The Telegraph, Hancock messaged cabinet secretary Simon Case – the country’s most senior civil servant – to say: “We are giving big families all the suites and putting pop stars in the box rooms.” Case replied: “I just want to see some of the faces of people coming out of first class and into a Premier Inn shoe box.”


Travel Partnership, said: “Travel as we once knew it has changed forever and the ability to travel freely in a post Brexit era is no longer available to British passport holders. The delayed implementation of the new biometric ETIAS until later this year is just another example of one more hurdle and cost holiday makers will have to consider for travel into the EU in future. What we do know is that three years later our ability to travel frictionlessly has been taken away. Covid masked much of the Brexit impact for travellers and no more visa-free travel for Brits across the European Union highlights yet another hurdle to navigate.” But it’s not all doom and gloom in


the Brexit reality of travel; despite the possibility of travel becoming slightly more expensive, travel is becoming more and more accessible. And travelling with ease is about to get a whole to simpler. Face-scanning recognition is set to replace passports for travellers passing through Frankfurt Airport later this year. The biometric technology will be available for


HAYS TRAVEL CELEBRATES DOWNPATRICK STORE OPENING


HAYS Travel have officially opened their Downpatrick store. The store opened to the public on Friday 14th February but celebrations took place on 7th March in the Downpatrick location with an official ribbon cutting ceremony.


CONTENTS | 3


any airlines operating out of Frankfurt that wish to use it, and passengers can opt in by enrolling at a counter and then going through automated security and boarding gates. Passengers who would rather not use the facial recognition system can proceed through the airport as normal using their passport. Star Alliance, comprising of 26 airlines, has already revealed plans to launch biometric passenger processing across its entire global network. Although this may not be rolled out the world


over, digital means of travel are closer to Brits than many may believe.British passport holders will also soon be subjected to fingerprinting and face checks in order to travel to the European Union as part of a new digitised checkpoint system. The new system means that non-European citizens, including Britons, will have to get their fingerprints and a facial biometric analysed every time they enter and leave the bloc. Up until this point, UK tourists have


only needed stamps at each entry and exit point within the free-travel Schengen Zone to show that they have not overstayed the limits of their visa. The UK requested to be included in the new system as part of the Brexit deal after contributing to its development while a member of the EU. Irish citizens and other residents of the European Union are not affected. In a statement, the European Commission’s Department for Migration and Home Affairs said: “EES will replace the current system of manual stamping of passports, which is time-consuming, does not provide reliable data on border crossings and does not allow a systematic detection of overstayers.”. The digtal age is truly upon us.


NIGEL HEATH PUBLISHES ALBANY HOUSE, A FAMILY SAGA


CONGRATULATIONS to travel writer, Nigel Heath, whose features appear regularly in Northern Ireland Travel News,


has just published Albany


House, a five-book light read family saga.


It follows the lifetime fortunes of the enterprising Jameson family and friends who live in the fictitious village of Little Oreford, set in the rolling North Devon countryside, some miles from the coast at Lynmouth. While the Jamesons are all firmly


rooted in the village, their story flies on first to Toronto in Canada, then to colourful Costa Rica, one of Nigel’s favourite counries, and also to Zurich in Switzerland.


Oasis Travel Impress Dragon’s Den style Judging Panel at


Competition


Alison Hamilton & Scott McCabe of Oasis recently took part in the ‘Dragons Den’ style agent pitching competition with Royal Caribbean International to secure funding for an innovative and highly impactful idea to boost sales with Royal Caribbean. Te panel of judges was made up of


entrepreneur and founder of Reggae Reggae Sauce Ltd, Levi Roots, Royal Caribbeans Vice- President EMEA Ben Bouldin and Director of Sales for UK, Ireland and Spain, Stuart Byron. Te pair from Oasis Travel impressed the


judges with their pitch for an immersive digital window display to be located in the store window at of one of our busiest locations in Belfast. A huge congratulations to Alison and Scott.


But while there are love interests, there are also darker sides to the story involving an illegal cannabis growing operation, a double murder, an abduction, and a shady criminal organisation whose web reaches out across the whole of Central and South America and the Caribbean. “I wrote the first book called Albany


House, sub titled The Home of Her Dreams, six years ago, but became so attached to my characters that I did not want to let them go,” Nigel explained. “So, a sequel, The Homecoming, was followed by What Happened in Costa Rica, Affairs in Zurich and finally by Looking for Anna,” he said. “I spent the first twenty years of my career working as district reporter on the Bristol Evening Post, writing to meet daily deadlines with short and to the point stories and that style is embedded within my being,” he admitted. “So, Albany House is not for the serious and thoughtful reader preferring plots with an inner depth, but for those in search of a little light read escapism in these troubling times,” said Nigel, Albany House, The Home of Her Dreams, and all the other titles can now be purchased direct from Amazon and Amazon Kindle.


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