Travel Extra November 2016

ROYAL AFTER THE SHIP LAUNCHES MSC BIGGER SHIPS ON THE WAY CMV DIRECT PICK UPS FROM DUBLIN NCL euro pricing

Irish airports record year

Newark with Aer LIngus

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NOVEMBER 2016

VOLUME 21 NUMBER10

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NEWS

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Passport power

Two surveys confirm Irish passport is in world top 20

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wo separate surveys have confirmed the status of the Irish passport among the most welcome in the world.

A survey by Arton Capital estimated Ireland has the joint 19th most acceptable passport in the world.

Germany and Sweden can visit 158 countries visa free, Britain, Finland, France, Spain and Switzerland can visit 157, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and South Korea can visit 156, Austria, Luxembourg, Portugal, Singapore and USA can visit 155 and Greece, Ireland and Japan can visit 155. Afghanistan has the least welcome passport in the world.

The result differ slightly from of visa restrictions by Henley & partners which ranks Ireland joint 15th from a higher sample of countries and territories. Germans have the most valuable passports as they can who can access 177 of the 219 destinations countries without visas. They are followed by Sweden and 16 of the most valuable 21 passports in the world are from European countries.

Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan and

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up 2pc in the period January to April, defying a decline in bigger markets such as Britain and Germany. Increased access in the autumn likely to drive figures further.

LISBON The €20m Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology opened in Lisbon on a site next to the former Central Tejo power station in Belém.

AUSTRALIA

is reducing the proposed backpacker tax from 32.5pc to 19pc and allow working holiday visa holders to stay with one employer for up to 12 months rather than the previous six month period, as long as the second six months is worked in a different location.

THE BROAD in Los Angeles was overall winner of the 2016 Leading Culture Destinations Awards. Museum shop of the year was Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen, restaurant of the year was in LouLou, Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, digital museum of the year was Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Irish passport holders can enter 172 countries visa free Afghanistan occupied the bottom places in the list. E-visas are treated in the same way as visas on arrival.

Where the conditions for obtaining an e-visa are straightforward (fee, return ticket, hotel reservation), a point was assigned.

Separately the Department of Foreign Affairs expects their issued

passport rate to rise to 1m a year by 2019, up from 700,000 in 2015, and issue 6.2m Irish passports between 2017 and 2023. The department expects to receive just under 63,000 passport applications from the six counties, and 52,336 from Britain.

so. The Authority advised visitors to Thailand to continue with their travel plans as normal after the death of their king and the declaration of a year of mourning. If possible visitors should wear somb re and respectful clothing when in public. Tourist attractions will be open as usual with the exception of Wat Phra Kaeo (Temple of the Emerald Buddha) and the Grand Palace,

as they will be the venue of the Royal Funeral Rites.The Government has asked for the cooperation from the entertainment venues; such as, bars and nightclubs to consider the opening of their business operations during this time.

The decision will be made by the individual owners.

Last year 64,716 Irish visited Thiland.

THAILAND: BUSINESS AS USUAL

hris Lee of the Tourism Authority of Thailand stressed that that there is NO ban on alcohol or music or any form of entertainment in the ftermathn of the death of the King of Thailand.

Some bar and restaurant owners may choose to close earlier and/ or tone down any music played as a sign of respect but there is no instruction from the government to do

USA Irish visitor numbers to the USA are

SEAWORLD Entertainment Inc, the theme park and entertainment company, has announced their 2017 attractions, including the Kraken virtual reality roller coaster. The existing Kraken roller coaster is getting a virtual reality update, with integrated headsets and a plot centered around sea creatures.

TOURIST

arrivals worldwide have seen a growth of 4pc for the first six months of the year, according to new UNWTO statistics.

CANADA

postponed its Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme for the second time to November 10 due to IT issues.

TRIPADVISOR ranked Oslo as the world’s most expensive city with one night at a four-star hotel, a short taxi ride and cocktails and dinner for two costing €444.49.

VISIT FLORIDA launched a 60-75 minute programme designed to inform British and Irish travel agents on Florida. There are five modules, with each followed by a test on the subject matter: geography and Florida overview, attractions, sports and activities,

MEXICO AND JAMAICA Now on sale for Summer 2017

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 4

THE KNOWLEDGE Travel Extra Advertising & Subscriptions 59 Rathfarnham Road Terenure Dublin D6WAK70 +3531 2957418 Editorial Office Clownings Straffan Co Kildare W23 C6X9 Managing Editor: Gerry O’Hare gerry@travelextra.ie Editor: Eoghan Corry eoghan.corry@ travelextra.ie Publisher: Edmund Hourican edmund@bizex.ie Sales Director: Maureen Ledwith maureen@bizex.ie

t: +3531 291 3700 Sales Manager Paulette Moran paulette@bizex.ie t: +353 (0)1 291 3702 Accounts and Advertising: Maria Sinnot maria@bizex.ie T: +3531 291 3707 Distribution Manager Shane Hourican shane@bizex.ie t: +3531 291 3706 Pictures: pix@travelextra.ie Sunday Supplement & Online: Conor McMahon conor@travelextra.ie Chief Features Writer: Anne Cadwallader anne@travelextra.ie Contributors : Eanna Brophy eanna@travelextra.ie Marie Carberry marie@travelextra.ie Carmel Higgins carmel@travelextra.ie Cauvery Madhavan cauvery@travelextra.ie Sean Mannion sean@grafacai.ie Catherine Murphy cathmurph@yahoo.com

Travel Extra takes no responsibility for errors and omissions.

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CONTENTS

3 News Where to go,h ow much to pay 6 Hotels: The regionality debate 8 Postcards: News from the trade 18 Cruise: Chasing Northern Lights

www.travelextra.ie 12 Cruise special: Winter 2016-76 22 Destination: Sweden 23 Destination: Philadelphia 24 Destination: Germany 26 Afloat: ferry and cruise news

28-32 Flying: Airline and airport news 34 Global Village Inside the travel industry 36 Window seat: Our columnists 37 Pictures: Out and about

Sellingacruisebreak

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minded people, it is ideal for teenagers.

ruise companies have gone into overdrive to educate travel organisers about the merits of their various cruise brands and what they can offer to suit each individual.

So how do you translate that into sales?

BUDGET It is all about budget. This needs to be established at the very beginning of the conversation along with finding out their expectations of the trip. Spend time on expectations before you offer advice.

If in doubt, sell from the top down. Customers will soon tell you if that is not in their budget.

DETERMINE

the client’s requirements. if the destination the most important criteria a larger ship may not be able to navigate the likes of the fjords in Norway, missing the best parts of the itinerary and destination. Some ocean going vessels are small enough to navigate rivers like the Fred Olsen Braemar (which has a selection of river cruises in 2015, offering the best of both worlds).

EMPHASISE.

value and price. Show just how much prices of traditional cruises are dropping, the perday cost all inclusive works out at u50 on some Caribbean cruises.

Check the price of a land based all inclusive or full board week holiday and then price a cruise.

CHANGE their perceptions that cruising is for older travellers, that you spend all your time on the ship, that

TIPPING most cruise companies now allow you to pre book gratuities or include them in prices. Be sure to tell clients about these so no surprises at end of week if they haven’t pre paid.

DUTY FREE Zip lining in Labadee sea-sickness is an issue, and most of all that cruising is expensive.

When people often say that cruising wouldn’t interest them as they don’t spend long in a port, a good selling tip is that it’s a great way to find out where you want to go back to,

LUXURY Sell

the dream. Point out all the luxury options for special occasions such as anniversaries. On all of the newer ships in the past 10-15 years, there is no such thing as steerage. All staterooms are well above water, and have all the mod cons of 4 and 5 star hotels. The proportion of rooms with balconies is rising.

DRINKS packages are all the rage. The top end ships include drinks in their all inclusive prices but most lines do pre-paid packages.

Fred Olsen offer drinks package at €14 per day which includes beers, house wines and spirits and 50pc discount on a la carte wines and premium brands, including some brands the Irish would consider top brand are included. .

MSC’s Allegrissimo is cheapest of the big ship

brands at €26pp per day (5pc commissionable to the agent) allowing unlimited beer, wine, cocktails, spirits, ice cream, tea coffees etc.

REPEAT Keep customers up to date with new facilities, new ships, new routes, and direct pick ups from Ireland. Establish an ongoing relationship.

Encourage your customers to discuss their next cruise with the ‘future cruise consultant’ on board there are lots of extras and you can come back to your travel professional to discuss adding on flights /hotels and tours afterwards.

Loyalty cards entitle the client to 5pc off the next cruise booked with Travel Agent. With most lines, commission goes back to the agent if the next cruise is booked on board.

LINK consecutive

cruises: tag one cruise onto another to see more especially in Asia.

FOOD Culinary

standards on board continue to exceed expectations. While cruises are know for their food, some clients can be very fussy eaters

with unusual dietary requirements, cruising can remove all the hassle of finding somewhere to dine every day, while still offering great food.

Healthy food options are becoming more and more apart of the cruise lines fare. There are speciality restaurants on the bigger ships and some cruise lines are seeking Michelin stars for the chefs..

ONBOARD accommodation is all mod cons with lots of options up to the suites with hot tubs, pianos etc CHILDREN

Point out how child friendly many cruiselines are with kids clubs, facilities, babysitting, menus, dedicated pool areas, and Dreamworks characters. Some cruise lines offer allow 18 year olds cruise for free.

FEARS about sea

sickness can be assuaged by telling them modern ships are well stabilised but if you are concerned choose a big ship and a cabin on a lower deck in the centre of the ship.

You can reassure them that safety onboard is of the highest standard, you are surrounded by like

Point out the duty free shopping available onboard many ships.

SHORE Cruises try to allow passengers as much time ashore as possible, sailing at night and waking up in a new port. Many cruise lines are offering more overnights in destinations which is a great way to see many beautiful cities at night with the cruise ship acting as your hotel.

Warn that the cruise company’s own shore excursions can be expensive (although many cruise lines are offering these as commissionable extras) and that they can explore on their own.

SUGGEST un-

usual destinations. The big cruise lines are going to Asia, Africa and Australia. Try Hurtigruten for Antarctica and Star Cruises for Asia.

SWITCH SELL: Agents don’t get many clients walking through the door with a cruise brochure so they have to try to switch-sell.

SINGLES

Cruises are ideal for single travellers with some cruise companies newer ships offering dedicated single cabins and lounge areas so single passengers can mingle.

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UL Arena, Limerick SATURDAY 18th & SUNDAY 19th FEBRUARY 2017 EXHIBITOR PROFILE • Adventure Travel

• Hotels

• Airlines

• National and Regional Tourist Organisations

• Airports • Caravans & Motorhomes

• Overseas Property

• International Camping Sites

• Weddings & Honeymoons

• Car Rental Companies

• Over 55’s Holidays

• Coach Tours

• Rail Holidays

• Cruise Companies

• Theme & Leisure Parks

• Ferries

• Travel Agents / Tour Operators

• Golf • Escorted Tours

• Travel Related Services

• Health Tourism

• Tourist Attractions

• Home Holidays

• Travel Accessories

BOOK YOUR STAND NOW! VENUE

2017 DATE AND TIMES

ORGANISERS

CONTACTS

UL Arena University of Limerick Limerick Ireland t: +353 (0)61 213 582 www.ulsport.ie

Saturday February 18th 12.00pm - 5.30pm

Business Exhibitions Limited 59 Rathfarnham Road Dublin, D6W AK70 Ireland t: +353 (0)1 295 7418 f: +353 (0)1 295 7417

Maureen Ledwith - Sales Director t: +353 (0)1 291 3700 f: +353 (0)1 295 7417 e: maureen@bizex.ie

Sunday February 19th 12.00pm - 5.30pm

Paulette Moran - Sales Manager t: +353 (0)1 291 3702 f: +353 (0)1 295 7417 e: paulette@bizex.ie

www.holidayshow.ie  

NOVEMBER 2017 PAGE 6

HOTELS

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DALATA

Hotel Group are to run the former Burlington Hotel on lease from German investment fund, Deka, which purchased the hotel from Blackstone for a reported €180m.

John Malone acquired the Spencer, Morgan and Beacon hotels in Dublin for €150m from the Fitzpatrick Lifestyle Hotels Group and Patron Capital Partners.

RECRUITMENT Minister of State for Tourism Patrick O’Donovan launched a national tourism careers programme highlighting employment opportunities in Irish tourism to enable second-level students aged 15-18 to explore career paths and options. Tourism and hospitality businesses need to recruit over 6,000 entry-level employees each year. Targeting 800 post-primary schools and youth reach centres, the initiative is being run by the IHF and the Irish Hospitality Institute in partnership with Fáilte Ireland.

CLONTARF The Bram Stoker Hotel, formerly the Clontarf Court, sold for €1.5m.

MOUNT JULIET Estate was overall winner at the 2016 Keelings Gold Medal Awards IHG is to develop 20 new hotels in Europe.

IHF Hotel Barometer Survey reported that

87pc of hoteliers saw an increase in business, and debt was estimated at €5.3bn.

Siege of regions

IHF President turns attention on seasons & regions

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he Irish Hotels Federation President Joe Dolan says he will make tackling the problem of regionality and seasonality a central plank of his presidency.

“In the way Stephen McNally concentrated on value for money and Michael Vaughan on training, “reasonality” as I call it, will be my issue” “There is a very inequitable distribution of visitor numbers in Ireland.

Of tourism revenue, 80pc is generated in just five counties, Dublin, Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Galway.

Areas with a high domestic dependence are doing as much as 80pc of their business in 20pc of the year.

“A lot of people who suffer from regionality and seasonality suffer from both ailments. The more rural you are as a tourism provider the more you suffer.

“There is a very big compelling

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Joe Dolan of the Bush Hotel in Carrick on Shannon business case why we should address that. The infrastructure is there, the capacity is there, the people are there as well. They are part time as a result of the seasonality. If we can improve that we improve employment. I am not just talking about summer against winter, I am talking about weekend against midweek.

“There will not be any iconic

man made attractions developed in rural areas, like Titanic Quarter or the Storehouse. We have innovative product, like Lough Rynn, developed into a world class rowing product for relatively little investment.

“Tourism hospitality is a perishable product . You cannot sell last night’s rooms today.”.

DUBLIN GETS A NET GAIN OF JUST 16 ROOMS

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ublin’s hotel bed bank is set to increase by just 16 beds this year.

The Holiday Inn Express that is opening at Findlater House on O’Connell Street has 198 rooms but the 182-bedroom Clyde Court Hotel (perhaps more familiar as the Berkeley Court) in Dublin 4 was closed and demolished earlier this year.

Dublin was Europe’s third best performing hotel market by RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room) growth in 2015.

The latest STR data shows that in Dublin, RevPAR grew by 11pc in the month of August and is now up 19.4pc in the year to date.

Property developer Paddy McKillen Jr says he is optimistic that he can agree a plan with

Dublin City Council to allow his company, Chirita Ltd, to proceed with plans to develop a 93-bedroom hotel on North Wall Quay in Dublin’s docklands.

McKillen Jr developed the Dean Hotel on Harcourt Street under Press Up Entertainment, the company he runs in partnership with Matt Ryan.

37 HOTELS SOLD SO FAR IN 2016 FOR €238m

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BRE reports that hotel sales hit €238m so far in 2016 with 37 hotel properties sold.

The former Burlington Hotel was sold by Blackstone Group for €180m to Germany’s DekaBank.

It is to be managed by the Dalata group.

Luis and Carmen Riu bought the Gresham for €92m last month. Xavier McAuliffe’s Lyrath Hotel in Co Kilkenny was sold earlier in the year for €20m.

Lisa Keogh, of CBRE Ireland’s hotel division, said the total spend on Irish hotels will match

the record €710m in 2015, including the €150m sale of the Spencer, Morgan and Beacon hotels in Dublin to an investment group including John Malone, Paul Higgins and John Lally to be completed in Q3

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NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 7

POSTCARDS FROM THE TRAVEL SCENE

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ugo Nascimento, (“there is more to the Algarve than a beach”), brought 10 travel writers and travel agents, to sample the activities within an hour of Faro, one of the best served holiday gateways from Ireland.

They included including Amy Murphy of Rosetta Travel, and the willing victims were treated a cookery lesson with chef Margarida Varques at Ter-

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he newly formed Travel Partners group held a held a series of roadshows in Ballinasloe, Kilkenny and Dundalk.

A new initiative taken on behalf of the suppliers themselves, the seven strong group consists of Amadeus Ireland, ASM, Blue Insurance Group, Classic Collection Holidays, MSC Cruises, Bookabed and Cruisescapes.

They have combined for promotional

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ourism NI, currently anticipating that visitor numbers from Britain may recede in the recession precipitated by Britain’s (England’s?) departure from the EU, launched its Ireland campaign this month with a TV ad and event for Irish travel media.

A new chair and CEO arrived at TourismNI in the early part of last year.

“We have been taking huge steps to reposition Northern Ireland in the eyes

tulia Algarvia, a helicopter ride, a drive on the Algarve racetrack, a swim with dolphins experience at Zoomarine. Picture shows back row Hugo Nascimento, Laia Curto Igual, Herve Giraud, Fergal Hallahan. Middle row: Rosalind Cummings-Yeates, Isabel Garcia, Deborah Pham, Peta-Gal Innerarity and Kerry Skarratt. Front row: Jessice Flitter, Stephanie Van-Anh Triph, Pauline Weber, chef Margarida Vargues.

roadshows and will limit the group to seven members, The group is now complete, Niall McDonnell of Classic Resorts says, and are keeping the group to seven based on the feedback from agents after the three shows that took place earlier in the year.”

Picture shows Des Manning, Alan Lynch, Alan Sparling, and Jason Whelan of Blue Insurances at the Travel Partners Event in Kilkenny.

of the world. Ox and Eipic have attained Michelin Star status” Terence Brannigan told the invited guests.

He name checked Rory McIlroy and Royal Co Down golf courses and mentioned that the British Open, one of the six biggest golf tournaments in the world, will be coming to Portrush in 2019. Picture shows Terence Brannigan chair of TourismNi speaking at the event.

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irgin Atlantic and Bedsonline joined forces to host 120 travel agents at the Adelphi Bar in Dublin in one of the biggest promotions of the year.

Since September 14, all Virgin Atlantic and Delta flights from London Heathrow will arrive and depart from Terminal 3. From 25 January 2017, all Virgin Atlantic departures and arrivals will move from the South Terminal to

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eychelles tourism and Turkish airlines hosted 60 agents at an event in Dublin.

Visitors to the Seychelles from Ireland are up 16pc in the early part of the year. Julia Havelka of Trailfinders, who is getting married this year, was the very excited prize winner of a trip.

Tinaz Wadia said that Seychelles tourism was concentrating on nature and family product, as well as their core

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nternational brand names in literature do not come any bigger than Seamus Heaney.

So it was that Bellaghy was planted on the tourism map with the opening of Seamus Heaney centre, confusingly called the Homeplace (the real Heaney home place is a working farm a few miles outside the village).

The centre cost £5m, £4m of it from the local council in £1m from Stormont,

the North Terminal at London Gatwick.

This move is part of Gatwick’s redevelopment plans. Virgin promises passengers a new Clubhouse and V-room are on their way at Gatwick.

Picture shows Holly Best, Liam Donaghy and Joy McLoughlin of Virgin Atlantic with Thomas McNally and Tom Bell of Bedsonline at the Virgin Atlantic and Bedsonline event at Adelphi Bar.

honeymoon market. She said that the family-owned properties listed in Seychelles Secrets serve as an antidote to the islands’ reputation as an expensive destination.

Picture shows Onur Gul and Julienne Marie Curran of Turkish Airlines, prize winner Julia Havelka of Trailfinders, Hasan Mutlu of Turkish Airlines, Ash Behari of Coca de Met and Lauren Mills of Savoy Resorts.

and anticipates 35,000 visitors a year.

Literary centres are a hit and miss affair internationally.

While every tourist board of the world proclaims the importance of cultural tourism, the sector rarely delivers the numbers are the revenue to justify the expectations of those who get excited about. But there are exceptions and maybe one of them.

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 8

POSTCARDS FROM THE TRAVEL SCENE

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icture shows the supplier and media who attended the Tour America 21st birthday event in the Morrison Hotel the night before the agency’s sales day.

Mary McKenna started the business in her sitting room. “It was an awful office with second hand furniture.”

She used the 21st birthday event to announce they are to open a luxury cruise department, complete with its

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ruise hire operators are back in expansion mode after years of decline. Carrick Craft, who have 115 boats on the water, will be adding five Linssens 35 foot 4 + 2 berthers in 2017.

Emerald Star are bringing in three new boats to their fleet of 70 and Silver Line are bringing four new boats. Stephen Conlon paid tribute to long serving secretary Derek Dann , who could

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ennifer Plahm from Park City tourism in Utah hosted Irish travel trade and media in Dublin on Monday.

The Winter sports favourite, venue for the 2002 Olympics, has just undergone a $0m upgrade, and has some of the best terrain in the Rockies and in Deer Park, that treasure, a resort which is for skiers only, safe from the menacing hissing sound of the terror of an approaching snowboarder.

own site-themed first class lounge.

For five months after 9/11 the company did no business,, and had to let ten staff go. They moved into cruises and became the biggest seller of cruises in Ireland. Mary McKenna launched her first dedicated Aer Lingus brochure on the day of the event. She said sales for summer 2017 were 32pc ahead of last year. Picture shows guests at the celebratory event in the Morrison Hotel.

not attend. They mood of optimism was helped by the prospect of Failte Ireland’s fourth brand, the Lakelands, Ireland’s Ancient East and Dublin’s breath of fresh air. We await the new brand. Like the 40th anniversary dinner that was held three years late, it has an unhurried semblance about it. Picture shows Stephen Conlon of IBRA, Colin Bullock chair of IBRA and Paul Gallagher chair of ITIC.

The resort will see new restaurants (and world-class chefs), off-mountain recreation offerings, season pass holder privileges, and all-new private accommodations at both Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain.

The resort also offers the world’s first ski in, ski out distillery. Travel Extra feels a thirst coming on. Picture shows Jennifer Plahm, Graeme Spatley and Brenda Lytle of Park City.

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aving celebrated their 50th at a memorable event on board Celebrity Solstice, it was the turn of suppliers to join the Sunway celebrations at Mulberry Garden in Donnybrook. Suppliers flew in from several parts of S Spain and the Canary Islands, from Turkey, and Mikael Rissanen from Lapland. Tanya Airey thanked the suppliers in a small and short speech while Jim

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o Something Different brought a group of six travel agents to Florida to experience the theme

parks.

The group sampled Tiffins, the new signature restaurant in Animal Kingdom to do the safari again by night. Fast Pass+ which automatically is included in all Do Something Different and ThemeParkBeds. com tickets.

Picture shows some of the group lis-

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ary McKenna’s 16th annual trade sale drew 12,000 to Moran’s Red Cow Hotel.

A bank of 30 sales staff were set up in the centre of the main room taking bookings as customers queued five and six deep to reach them.

She also had 33 suppliers there to give information to customers and provide the deals for Tour America to drive €1m worth of bookings.

Furlong kept a grandfatherly eye over proceedings, reflecting what a tough business travel is, having seen the transition from supplier funding to clients supplying the revenue Sunway moved from a travel agency model the tour operator model in the early 90s. Picture shows Sunway team, Philip Airey, Mary Denton, Jeanette Taylor, Deirdre Sweeny, Jim Furlong, Tanya Airey and Brian McGovern

tening to some quality Aerosmith on RocknRoller Coaster in Disney Magic Kingdom: Graham Hennessy Country Manager Do Something Different, Front Seat Elaine Harding of Garda Holiday Club, and Pamela Brownlee of Flyaway Travel. The group visited Disney Dreams cruise ship docked in Port Canaveral , spent a morning looking around and celebrating Kathy Core of Cassidy Travel’s birthday on board.

Mary says the show has been tweaked over the years to suit the customer. “It’s a bit tacky, but it does what it is supposed to do.”

“My younger sister came up with the idea. November is a relatively quiet time, and she said why not have a sale.

We were in the Westbury for two years and then moved to the Red Cow.” “It takes a couple of months to get it right, but we do get it right.”

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 9

POSTCARDS FROM THE TRAVEL SCENE

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o celebrate the second birthday of Club Royal, Ben Bouldin hosted 17 agents in the Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore at a morning presentation.

Activities including archery and cliff walking and entertainment. Ben Bouldin said that 1,000 Irish agents are now among the 5,500 members of Club Royal, including eight gold members.

Ben Bouldin says what we have done

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ityjet won the European Regional Airlines Association silver airline of the year behind Spain’s Binter and ahead of Flybe.

Andrew Kelly of ASL Airlines Ireland was elected to the board of the European Regional Airlines at their AGM in Madrid. The conference heard that 55pc of the EU airline industry is dominated by the big five, the Lufthansa group, Ryanair, AF-KLM, IAG and

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ichael Caslin and Barry Caslin of 747 travel brought 40 of his loyal soccer supporters, including Travel Extra, to a country which does not exist.

In a breakout from the soccer trip to Moldova the group crossed the border into the unrecognised country of Transnistra, a breathtaking throwback to the Soviet Union, complete with giant statues of Lenin and pictures armed of cit-

is made golf membership easier to attain and introduced platinum membership.

Three winners of the Countdown to South Africa competition were from Ireland. Royal’s makes share of the cruise business in Ireland is currently between 50pc and 55pc.

Picture shows prize winner of a trip to South Africa Claire Mulligan with Delia Aston of Club World and Michaela Banks of Royal Caribbean

Easyjet, with the remaining 45pc made up of 120 other airlines.

Pat Byrne told the conference that London City Airport expansion would have an impact on raised fees. “It is a great airport, but the most expensive in Europe.” Boet Kreiken of KLM Cityhopper told the conference that consolidation of airlines in Europe does not make it easy for regional players to emerge.

izen-heroes on the town hall.

Like Moldova, Transnistra has its own excellent beer and wine.

An English translation of the Soviet national anthem was sung on the bus journey home. Guess who? Only Ireland’s most loyal supporters made the long trip and were to be found clustered around the character laden little bars of Chişinău. We all dream of a team of James McLeans.

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ngela Taylor from Oasis Travel became the sixth winner in the competition for a Polo Magnifico run by Blue Insurances.

She follows previous winners Helena Kilduff from Skytours, Rose Kane from Kanes Travel in Longford, Claire Mulligan from Clubworld Travel, Mandy Walsh of Travel Counsellors and Rita Gaughan from Limerick Travel.

The competition started in April and

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o Something Different hosted ten agents for five nights on a famil to Barcelona.

The itinerary included the Formula 1 race track, where the winner of the Formula 1 Race was Jayne O’Shea Limerick Travel, the Noucamp stadium, sightseeing bus tour Sagrada Familia cathedral and screamed their way over the roller coasters at PortAventura where they were preparing for Hallowe’en.

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opflight were hosted by the Ski Club of Ireland in Kilternan on Monday evening for an evening of skiing, fun and socialising.

Designed to get their ski legs back in advance of the season and see the wonderful newly opened clubhouse.

Topflight are resuming or starting four French resorts, Tignes, Aimes 200, Arc 1800, and Arc 1950.

The Irish owned operator has 13 re-

runs until March 2017. Monthly winners enter a draw for a new Volkswagen Polo in a competition organised by Ian Dack of Ireland’s Largest Volkswagen Dealership, Frank Keane Volkswagen and Ciaran Mulligan of Blue Insurances Every five Blue Insurances policies sold each month automatically generates an entry in the monthly draw.

Blue Insurances reminds agents to have their own unique login.

Picture shows Sophie Phelan of Strand Travel, Tania Brown of Downe Travel, Jayne O’Shea of Limerick Travel, John O’ Brien of Just Split, Nicole Cullen of Fahy Travel Picture shows Annabel Cove of Do Something Different, Carlos of Guide, Jayne O’Shea of Limerick Travel, Tania Brown of Downe Travel, John o Brien of Just Split, Sophie Phelan of Strand Travel, Nicole Cullen of Fahy Travel.

sorts in Austria for sale this winter, 13 in France, Livigno in Italy, and three in Andorra. The tour operator also has a programme of chalets related to its British Skibeat brand which is expanding massively in France.

Both of the major ski operators out of Ireland, Topflight and Crystal, had increased capacity by 20pc for the season ahead.

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WINTER CRUISE 2016-7

ruise ships change. They get bigger, they get more comfortable, they get better bells and whistles.

But still nobody has quite figured out the riddle of the cruise holiday, is it really about the ship at all?

“The ship is only as good as the ports it calls to” is an old-fashioned surprisingly durable assessment of how the cruise industry works.

Of course it is more complex and multi dimensional than that. The most interesting ports are in the Mediterranean.

The Baltic follows close behind. The least interesting are in the Caribbean.

It has reached the stage that the difference ships berthed in Miami and Fort Lauderdale are offering itineraries that are so similar it would take a hard pressed cruise expert to work out which was which.

The same could be true of Europe in a few years time. Cruise companies are offering fewer embarkation ports, instead of more as you might expect as the number of cruise ships in the world increases.

There are many reasons for this. The big ships need big berths.

But cruise companies are also prey to something more mundane, the homogenisation of holidays everywhere.

“If the itinerary is secondary and the on board experience is primary, bigger ships fit this bill,” Lorraine Quinn of Celebrity says.

The converse of what she is saying is that if you want a better on

What your clients should know

Seas & desist Winter cruisers have more options than ever

Kusadasi fisherman board experience, the smaller luxury ships are a bit pricier but worth the extra.

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he cruise companies have been investing in upgrades faster than their best-funded land based colleagues.

It means that the ships people will sail in this winter are newer, have better dining options and more gadgets than their predecessors.

Irish people are more aware of cruising as a holiday option with lots of friends, friends of friends, aunties and neighbours telling us which ship they were in previous years.

The new itineraries include new destinations (with our traveller mindset) that would be difficult to explore on land such Norwegian Fjords, Baltics, South America, Asia and Black Sea cit-

ies.

And while the ships get bigger (Oasis, Allure) and the technology gets better (Quantum, Anthem) the last generation of ships are still on offer under a rebranded cruise line like Pulmantours and at better prices.

The European season has begun to extend again after shortening sharply during the re-cession. Cruise ships which once wintered long in the Mediterranean waters, into October and November, started departing earlier.

F

or most winter cruisers the Caribbean is where the action is.

It can be cheaper to cruise in the Caribbean than in Europe. Welcome to the strange pricing structures and economies of scale employed by the cruise companies.

Cruising is the easy

way to see the Caribbean in one holiday, visiting 10 islands in two weeks for instance. Last winer, 239 ships with 378,256 beds sailed t the Caribbean, up from 235 ships and 367,000 beds in 2014-5.

That is good news for cruisers as it gives them better prices on the ships sailing out of Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Port Canaveral Dubai a classically late booking market is throwing up some good prices in February.

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he average price paid for a cruise is now over a fifth less than it was five years ago. Comparison engine MarketWatch says that the cheapest cruise prices available today are down 43pc from the cheapest price in 2009.

The Irish market continues to grow, through recession as the custom-

CRUISE NUMBERS FROM IRELAND: WHERE THEY WENT Mediterranean Caribbean/Bermuda Scandinavia/Baltic Atlantic Island Red Sea/Persian Gulf UK/West Europe Alaska Far East/Australia

Page 012 cruise.indd 1

2011 27,766 7,673 1,773 909 595 357 600 155

2012 28,047 5,889 2,374 1,213 1,101 33 594 231

2013 20,331 7,041 2,711 1,259 1,186 1,037 580 259

2014 16,800 7,800 2,698 1,482 4 215 619 620

2015 21,475 8,022 2,389 1,278 0 441 535 464

increase 28 3 -11 -14 -100 105 -14 -25

proportion 60 22 7 4 0 1 1 1

ers took all of this in and to the all inclusive offerings onboard and capitalised on the increased appetite for the cruise lines to compete with land based standards in cuisine.

Cruise agents are seeing an increase in three generational families travelling for the big birthdays and an easy way for families to travel with something for everyone both onboard and ashore.

Some of the best value cruise options are repositioning cruises as the bigger ships move from the Caribbean to Europe in spring, including, for the first time since her launch. This means lots of trans-Atlantic crossings which are also being polished up for agency sales teams.

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espite all of the investment and the noise emanating from high profile launches such as Harmony of the Seas this year, there are still Irish people who have either never considered a holiday at sea or have thought about it and dismissed the idea.

How do agents tackle this? Suggest a cruise

when a customer asks about a destination.

Choosing the right cruise is down to identifying needs.

Tell them cruising is as relaxing as you like or as active as you want. The scenery changes and you only unpack once.

The practicals are important, that towels are supplied by the cruise lines. There are fantastic gyms and classes available onboard, many cultural and lifestyle lectures and seminars along with fun elements, dance classes and a bit of Karaoke.

Cruising is ideal for single travellers. Some of the newer ships offer dedicated single cabins and lounge areas so single passengers can mingle.

Cruising never stops moving forward from a navigational, fuel efficiency and environmental perspective.

Choices of accommodation continue to evolve faster than demands of new customers. New builds are offering a lot more varied sized staterooms to cater for the different family and group mixes travelling together.

There is no such thing as steerage anymore.

All staterooms are well appointed, well above water, and have all the mod cons of 4 and 5 star hotels.

Cruise lines are investing to bring the latest gadgetry onboard.

Accommodation onboard is all mod cons with lots of options up to the suites with hot tubs, pianos etc.

There are increasing numbers of speciality restaurants on the bigger ships and some cruise lines are seeking Michelin stars for the chefs.

A key feedback, according to cruise companies, is the staff onboard - how friendly, professional. You just don’t get the same level of consistency from a land based holiday.

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’m not complaining but the walk to my stateroom took forever. It couldn’t be helped. I was on the Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas, and at 1188 feet long and 18 decks high, it is the world’s biggest cruise ship. Along with my accommodation there are another whopping 2,746 staterooms to carry up to 6,780 passengers all attended to by 2,100 staff.

Eighteen decks means there is more than ample room for a two deck theatre, aqua-theatre, full ice rink, casino, sports court, youth zone, the Flowrider surf simulator, waterslides for all ages, gaming arcade, mini golf, zip wire and rock wall. There is more, much more but more of that anon.

My stateroom was a pleasant surprise. When designing Harmony of the Seas, Royal Caribbean formed a committee of five women and also invited some of its customers to give their input as to what could be improved upon in their onboard accommodation.

The result is a roomy cabin with lots of storage, an ensuite that takes into account that some of us use our elbows when showering, a balcony with a sea view and one of the most comfortable beds I have ever slept in. Inside berths with no window are equipped with a virtual window that replicates in real time

What your clients should know

Ship shape

Marie Carberry on board Harmony of the Seas Hamrony of the Seas, largest cruise ship in the world the sounds and views outside. Its surprisingly effective at tricking the brain into thinking you really do have a window.

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y first port of call had to be the ominously sounding Ultimate Abyss. Designed by Thrill Engineer (yes, there is such a thing) Professor Brendan Walker, the Abyss is a dry slide that drops you ten storeys in eleven seconds. My heart roared in my ears as I gingerly stepped into the bag that would be all between me and certain death. As I waited for the ‘go’ I could hear the screams of the previous victim as he plunged straight down. The upshot was I lived and went straight back up again.

Ultimate Abyss is the ultimate adrenaline rush. I was addicted, so addicted that I even contemplated for one mad second strapping myself into the zip line and zooming across a nine decks height but quickly decided that I couldn’t cope with the inevitable loosening of my bowels.

If you dare to try the zip line it will afford you a wonderful if rather quick, birds eye view of the Boardwalk, one of the seven ‘neighborhood’s on the ship. Based on Coney Island the Boardwalk also boasts a carousel, Starbucks, a hot dog bar and an American Diner. If you have kids they will love you forever.

Harmony of the Seas has a funky overtone that is particularly reflected

in the Bionic Bar on the Royal Promenade. Here, two well behaved robotic arms are programmed to take your drinks order via an iPad and then proceed to shake and stir before serving. It is great fun.

If you prefer something a little more sedate a small bar enclosed by glass barriers will, on the push of a button, raise you gently up and down between decks. I could have sat there all night but there is no rest of the wicked. It was time for some entertainment.

I have to admit that I view cruise entertainment with trepidation. On a previous trip (not Royal Caribbean I hasten to add) the highlight of the fun was a South American harpist with a sombrero the size of a small trampoline on his head,

as he murdered Blue Moon. I needn’t have worried. Royal Caribbean, in their wisdom, are staging the Broadway version of Grease. It is a pacy production with fine voices from the cast coupled with an electrifying song track. If you aren’t into musicals try a comedy club, a front row seat at an ice spectacular or for some wind down schmoozy music at the jazz club.

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n my way back to my stateroom I took a detour through Central Park with its 1200 trees and the dulcet tones of birdsong. Okay, so the birdsong is a recording but as a light breeze rustled through the trees, there was a moment when I

completely forgot I was on a ship and, unlike the real Central Park at night, I had zero chance of being mugged.

The biggest decision you will have to make on Harmony of the Seas is where to eat next. Luckily, there are a myriad of options (twenty in all) from grab and go at the pool area to the Windjammer buffet where you can pile your plate as high as you want and no one will look sideways at you. If you fancy something a little more formal then the Main Dining room will sort you out. With its plush chairs, white linen and the plumpest prawns I’ve seen this side of Castletownbere, it is a foodie’s delight although I found the service a little too fast. My starter was removed with one hand and main served with the other. My esophagus doth protest at that.

Harmony also boasts ‘specialty’ restaurants such a Jamie’s Italian and 150 Central Park. These are priced separately and need to be booked.

The atmosphere on board during the day is informal while night times are designated smart casual. As a result Royal Caribbean have pulled off the feat of making Harmony of the Seas perfect for families and couples alike.

This is a monster of a ship. I spent two days exploring it. I reckon I didn’t see the half of it.

Clockwise: Irish agents on baord Harmony, jennifer Callister of Royal caribbean, Paul Hackett tries out Abyss, and one fo the roomy staterooms

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ean Lemass and John F Kennedy were right. A rising tide DOES lift all boats.

Especially in the cruise business, where time and tide are more than a phrase.

The cruise industry has been adept at creating excitement in recent years, with bigger and more technologically smart ships arriving down the slipways of the big yards in Papenburg, St Nazaire,Trieste and Turku with increasingly loud splashes.

This year’s big arrival was Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the seas.

And as each of these arrives, they provide a boost for sales across the industry.

How big was the Harmony bounce? Ben Bouldin, London based sales manager for Royal Caribbean quantifies it in the yield.

“We started with the hashtag, Getmeonharmony. Everyone laughs about it now.

No one has forgotten it.

There have been lots of ships launched this year but everyone remembers Harmony. Ask any agent what was the new ship this year, they will say Harmony. It goes for consumers too.

“Was there a bounce?

Absolutely. We sold Allure too quickly which means we basically left money on the table. We have the same thing on Harmony, but we have got a significantly higher yield on Harmony than we did on Allure.”

Oasis 4 is due in April 2018, I am confident that we did enough with harmony that we can fight our corner to get Oasis 4 based in Barcelona for a season.

If I am not getting them and they are passing me, it means I have not done as good a job as I did the year before.”

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ricing a cruise holiday is complicated. It involves navigating a matrix of

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inside and outside cabins of different sizes, fore, middle and aft. When you get to deliver a price to the client, you cannot be secure that someone else will better it or, even worse, the client themselves can find a cheaper price with the help Dr Google and the inconsistent pricing policies of the cruise lines themselves.

One thing that has changed is the level of awareness of the customer.

Where ten years ago it was sufficient to mention the word cruise and say “different types of customers are seeking different types of cruises,” that is no longer the case. The very high media profile of cruising, which coincided with a shift offshore by many travel agents have found that their airline and tour operator commissions were being slashed to unreasonable levels, has meant that the public are now more savvy about their cruises.

They know their ports and they know their destinations and, often they know their pricing as well, complicated as it is.

So how does the travel agent stay ahead in the knowledge game when all of this is happening around them? ne of the bigger obstacles facing the industry, and one that nobody admits is that cruise passengers are ultraconservative.

It is not just the average age, which is not creeping up not down. It is a question of revenue.

The older passengers pay more and buy more on board.

Ships look the same.

They are constructed in a similar way. Corridors and staircases wheel in the same direction. There are little quirks to help you tell which is fore and which is aft. On Oceania there is a telephone on even left hand side. On NCL the fish swim forwards.

O

What your clients should know

Accommodation on Allure of the Seas o what is the pasBut, in reality, one senger to do they cruise ship not all that want to escape the different from the 800 others around the world’s endless and unimaginative rounds of knobbly oceans.

Cruise passengers, no knees competitions, belly matter what the cruise flop competitions and lines tell you about how queues for frozen food the activities on board that has been shipped are attracting the adven- from America in conturous and the growth tainers and loaded in of the family cruising the last port, to pretend is the big story of this that onboard cuisine is year (and last, and next), comparable when French are getting older. While fresh-vegetable restaueach individual cruise rants on the mainland?

There is only one anline will claim otherwise, according to CLIA the swer, until someone average age has actually thinks of a better one. increased to 55.2 years Expedition cruising.

Antarctica was one of from 53.5 years since the most glamorous ex2005 Even Disney, which pedition destinations. It has the largest propor- became popular by action of first-time cruis- cident, if call there defers and, unsurprisingly, inition of a world wide the largest proportion of calendar an accident.

Lots of people wanted children, is careful not to do anything to run the, to know note to bring in the millennium between ahem, boat.

Getting rid of the 1999 and 2000. A cruise omnipresent casino is to Antarctica would probabout as far from the ably fit the bill. Thankslipstream that Disney fully, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, there will go.

Everyone else has one, were lots of existing exeven if it is, in the case of pedition ships with ice some of the smaller ships reinforced hulls on the like Oceania’s fleet, a market quite cheaply.

The Canadians decouple of slot machines dressed up to look like cided, as Canadians do, something more glam- there was an opportunity orous, something Vegas to shake down the Americans for a few dollars. like.

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The caught on to the idea and for the millennium New Year, the Antarctic summer, more than 40 expedition ships carried 35,000 passengers to the world’s only uninhabited continent.

Tourism to Antarctica is not mass volume.

County Leitrim attracts more tourists than the Antarctic continents.

Few of the tourists actually see much when they get there stop taking a cruise down Ushuaia to the peninsular, getting off at a few islands and photographing penguins, is the equivalent of tourists going to Cape Cod, having a look and a stroll on a few sandy beaches, and going home to tell the world that they had seen the United States of America.

Antarctica is that and large and hopefully the average cruise customer business is not subjected to three-day trip treks in blinding snow with even the Huskies pondering the wisdom of the journey.

Instead, they travel to Antarctica between November and March and rejoice in the 24 hour daylight, the thunder of the melting ice with waterfalls roaring as they

spill off the sides of an iceberg, is and the sound of the ship, late in the evening as you’re in your cabin, rising on a bed of ice and then hearing the crack as it swings down and goes back into the water again maybe the one most pleasant sound in the entire world of international travel.

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he expedition fleet is growing even faster than the big boat club. Margins are higher, and the costs of everything is increased by the fact that you cannot compete with the economies of scale that the 5000 and 4000 passenger cruise ships can deliver.

But the market grew solidly through the Lehmann recession and is likely to grow again.

The Galapagos, forbidden to large cruise ships, is the other expedition destination of choice.

Nowadays expeditionary cruise ships also sail the Amazon like a scene from Werner Herzog’s FitzCarraldo. One of the ultimate expeditions was achieved recently

by Crystal Cruises when they cruised the Northwest passage. Don’t tell Lord Franklin.

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t took a long while for anyone to conceive building a ship is big as Allure and Oasis of the seas but the decision on how big a ship can be seems to have been made and the jury returned to the dockside.

In years to come the 5,200 passenger ship will be a staple of the industry, and more ports are making the investment to unload the torrent of passengers they bring.

MSC has joined the club with the Meraviglia Class and Carnival too has put three 5,200 passenger ships on order.

What happens next is anyone’s guess.

Royal Caribbean has long been very proud of their biggest ship in the world’s status, even if group CEO Richard Fain played it down before Michael Bayley decided it was as good a slogan as anyone else’s.

Even in Fain’s time as

What your clients should know

Hurtigruten Northern Lights cruise from Tromso has a direct flight from Dublin of February 25 brand CEO, nobody com- that got Irish agents sell- back between 50pc and be at the inexpensive end 55pc. of the market. plained when the media ing cruises.

Lorraine persuaded The Irish now flock Ireland loves Celebrity wrote about the “biggest ship” story without re- agents it would not be Barcelona as their port Cruises and when Royal difficult to sell their first of choice. A surpris- cast it adrift as a its own straint. cruise and once they’ve ingly large proportion of brand a large amount of oyal’s attempts done to sell others.

Royal’s business was in the Irish market went to make a splash Royal achieved a dom- the premium Celebrity with it. Celebrity will with their big inance of the Irish market brand. Celebrity has been even overnight one of ships had major implica- which has continued to very Europe focussed, their ships in Dublin next tions for the Irish market. this day, despite a serious with the Baltic in their July.

The Italian line MSC The appointment of glitch in 2012 when it sights from the start as won considerable marLorraine Quinn as sales dropped Palma and Mal- well as the Med. manager for Ireland, al- aga as departure ports.

The success of Celeb- ket share through their though the title was never According to London rity’s market share be- pricing and are in force of given proper status until based sales director Ben lies the notion that most Rebecca Kelly’s personrecently, was the catalyst Bouldin, market share is entry-level cruisers will ality. When the Irish mar-

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ket got excited by drinks packages, MSC’s proved one of the most attractive. It is currently €180 weeks. Royal charge $55 a day. Fred Olsen is the cheapest of all at €14.

Royal’s market share was invaded to a lesser extent than MSC by NCL and the English lines P&O and Cunard and, with their smaller ships, Fred Olsen and CMV. Princess made heroic efforts to capture the Irish markets and a large number of bucket and spade holiday makers combined land holidays with TUI cruise vessels.

Another starter option, Island Cruises, managed to maintain heroic stories in the market. But in the end it became the choice between three brands and the great triumvirate dominate the Irish market.

Cooking demonstrations and classes, Digital workshops and regional culture have always been part of the Holland America Line experience now alongside exciting new partnerships designed to for our guests’ enjoyment.

EXPLORE OUR EnRichmEnt

• Our 14 mid-sized ships cruise to all five continents, offering in depth discoveries of some of the world’s most beautiful places. Wherever your clients wish to go, the chances are they can see it better with Holland America Line • Online Destination Guides, in partnership with AFAR Magazine, offer immersive knowledge of more than 400 destinations, with personalised recommendations for the most authentic attractions, restaurants and shopping experiences • Through BBC Earth’s* innovative programming, guests will be taken nearer to the natural world through groundbreaking concerts, films and kids activities, plus themed cruises • A partnership with the Rijksmuseum features reproductions of some of the museum’s most famous art, plus cultural activities led by Rijksmuseum personnel • Entertainment ranges from high tech shows to BB Kings Legendary Blues band, 50 years of chart-topping hits at Billboard Onboard and the classical arrangements of the Lincoln Centre Stage.

EXPLORE OUR Dining • The elegant main Dining Room for breakfast, lunch and magnificent five-course dinners featuring “As You Wish®” dining with flexible times and seating

thE hOLLanD amERica LinE DiffEREncE Spacious staterooms and suites, many with private balcony Nearly one crew member for every two guests Fine dining with casual to formal options Culinary Arts Centre, immersive destination experiences and more Sumptuous Greenhouse Spa & Salon Long days and overnight stays in gorgeous cities Mid-sized, elegant ships The experts in Worldwide cruises

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• The Intimate Pinnacle Grill featuring Pacific North West cuisine, Classic Italian fare at Canaletto, the Pan-Asian Tamarind ms Eurodam, ms Nieuw Amsterdam & ms Koningsdam, plus new onboard ms Koningsdam “Sel de Mer” and “Dine at the Culinary Arts Centre”

ContaCt the sales team

Email: salessupport@hollandamerica.co.uk Call +44 844 338 8604 Order 2017 brochures through BP Trade-gate at: www.trade-gate.co.uk or call +44 870 727 0490

Visit Partnerships at www.hollandamerica.co.uk for agent sales & marketing collateral

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he first cruises organised out of Ireland, like the first holiday had a religious tone to them. The big shipping lines of 1920s and 1930s were organising one-way passages from Cobh. There were always the seekers of luxury who would travel to Southampton and in some cases be picked up at the airports by private transfer and sail on the transatlantic cruises that feature so prominently in popular culture as the most excessive of excess.

Moving cruise’s image in popular imagination beyond the expensive and pretentious caricature of the Peter Hames/Christy Moore song and Roy Clarke’s sitcom character Hyacinth Bucket, fell to the pioneers of a small offshore division of Ireland’s travel industry, led

by Tom Maher, known to his friends as Tom Cruise.

The cruise industry in Ireland started, as many maritime stories do, with the Augustinian monastery in Thomas Street.

They ran the cruise to make money for the missions. They ran a cruise with the Carmelites out of Ireland on the P&O ship, SS Nevasa.

Tom Maher few to London with the ABC shipping guide under his arm, sent by frank Mulligan and went to visits Eric Pippin of Celebrity Cruises to learn that bringing a ship up from the Mediterranean would be too expensive.

His next call to British India discovery cruises to make a discovery. The 20-year-old SS Uganda, which sailed at a reduced speed of 14 knots for fuel economy was available with 1,215 dormitory beds (sold at £199) and 315 cabins (sold at £329).

“I went in at half past one to meet these guys and came out at 4 o’clock with a ship,” Tom says.

He began filling allocations out of Ireland, ensuring that he included a religious stop on all of the cruises, Lisbon to

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What your clients should know

Winters of content

Harmony of the Seas created a bounce for the entire cruise industry Fatima, the Basilica of Candelaria in Tenerife, Rome, and shrines in the Baltic.

Even religious cruising proved bumpy for the others who followed into the business, culminating in the disastrous chartering of the Calypso which sat in Dublin for two weeks, empty, in 1980.

When the Uganda was seized by the British military to serve as a hospital ship for the Falklands, Tom Maher was compensated for loss of earnings.

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he huge growth in inbound cruise tourism has played its part. The number of cruise ships calling to Dublin port has increased exponentially in recent years. This has given Ireland’s travel agents an opportunity to see the ships at first hand, do cabin inspections and find out the potential for what’s hot and what’s not about individual ships or

cruise lines.

Irish port facilities are crucial to this development. Dublin Port did not received a single large ship until three years ago when a simulator was brought to Cobh and tried out by the captain of MSC Splendida.

The following year Splendida came to Dublin and reversed into the port. Reversing into the port is a challenge that captains love but when pressed they would prefer to be able to come forward and turn their ship and that is what will be possible when the redevelopment of Dublin port is complete.

Cobh is another story.

The largest ships in the world can come into Cobh and the approach to the city is highly regarded by passengers, to the extent that it came second after Amsterdam in the 2016 Cruise Critic readers’ ports of choice for north west Europe.

The other ports are also

performing, Waterford, Dun Laoghaire, Belfast and Derry have an impressive array of cruise calls while deepwater ports Foynes and Killybegs have also shown their potential as gateways, especially with Tourism Ireland’s successful marketing of the wild Atlantic Way in mainland European markets.

Anyone for the Star-War crossed Skelligs? Or Inis Mór?

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ne of the unknowables is about Britain’s exit from the European Union is the effect on the cruise market and the viability of basing sheds in English ports such as Southampton, Dover and Harwich.

The prospect of a cruise ship sailing from Cobh or Dublin south to the Canaries or the Med would change the dynamic of the direct pickup completely.

Dublin as to build new

cruise terminal a few years after the proposed demolition of the Alexandra Basin to enable larger ships to come in and turn.

They are hopeful that ships will begin to use Dublin as a home port, largely because the airport is just 20 minutes from the cruise terminal.

Ireland is also an attractive destination for tourists who wanted to do pre and post nights as part of their cruise. Nowadays Ireland get this roughly 60pc of the number of American tourists that go to the neighbouring island.

That may change in changing political circumstances to an even more proportionate us number. Cruising from Ireland’s ports with large numbers of international passengers flying into Dublin airport and boarding here is a realistic possibility for the first time.

In the meantime, it is the smaller and older

ships that will allow Irish passengers to board.

CMV is a series of pick-ups in 2017 as does Fred Olsen. Cruise Maritime Voyages and James McGinley Travel from Gortahork are selling cabins on CMV Magellan on five direct departures from Dublin in 2017, the fjords on June 5, Iceland on June 14, Spain, Portugal and France on June 26, the Seine on July 7 and Scotland and the Faroes on July 14.

Lead-in prices start from €719 for an inside cabin on the Seine trip.

Fred Olsen have two departures form Belfast, April 30 to Norway’s Fjords, May 8 to Scotland and one from Killybegs to Canada on July 30.

Royal Caribbean did allow a group chartered

by Lee Travel in Cobh to board three years ago.

The venture was partially successful but Royal Caribbean’s own pricing policy did not help the initiative.

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LIA reports that the Irish ocean cruise market rebounded at a higher rate than the English market up 14pc to 35,972 in 2015 (all cruise lines). The Mediterranean accounted for 60pc of the Irish market in 2015, 21,475 passengers (up 28pc) ahead of the Caribbean 8,022 (up 3pc), Baltic/Scandinavia 2,389 (down 11pc), Greenland/Iceland 1,278 (down 14 pc), Middle East 1,186 down 6pc, Alaska 535 down 14pc, Far East/Australia 464 down 25pc, Britain 441 and Panama 262.

Ireland and Britain achieves highest growth rate of all major European markets and its largest annual rise for seven years One in nine package holidays booked is a cruise, up from one in 10 in 2014 Huge rise in the popularity of Atlantic Islands cruises but the Mediterranean remains the No.1 choice for cruises from UK Cruising from a UK port increased sharply in 2015 and although fly-cruise also grew, ex-UK cruises are back on course to account for 50% of passengers within a few years Nearly two-thirds of cruise consumers took more than one cruise in 2015 – the most multiple cruisers for a decade

What your clients should know

Purely functional until now, the new genration of cruise ships feature heavy artworks on their deck space

About a third of cruises were taken by first-timers The average age of passengers dropped by three years, the largest annual drop for more than a decade Last-minute bookings are at the lowest level for five years River cruising’s growth reflects that of ocean cruising as passengers top 150,000.

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he big unfulfilled demand for the Irish cruise market is the direct pick up.

Direct pick ups have been tried with varying degrees of success over

the years.

A venture by a tour operator dealing with Fred Olsen some years ago made the mistake of offering free car parking in Dublin port, great for the cruise passenger, bad for the margin.

While individual travel agents have successfully chartered single cruises, the number of Cruise lines which allow passengers to depart and end in Ireland’s ports are limited.

Royal Caribbean cruises that come to Cobh do not board passengers and Ben Boldin has said because caller-ship itin-

eraries tend to be North Western Europe the demand in the Irish markers is unlikely to reach the level that would enable them to authorise direct pick-ups with all the implications that has for cabin sales.

This may change.

B

enBouldin says, while Royal will not be base a ship in Ireland anytime soon, putting Ireland on a repositioning cruise itinerary is a real possibility. My heart would love to put a ship in Ireland. My head says, at the moment, no. The reason is that I

do not believe the Irish want to spend three days sailing south in the rain.

The booking patterns of the Irish. They want to fly to Barcelona. Do they want to sail for three days when most of them take a week’s vacation? I don’t think they do.

What you would need is a massive commitment from our US guests to send more people to Ireland. The challenge is that US guests are not travelling in Europe because of tall the uncertainty that is going on.

They are a bit more nervous than we are.

I would love to. I am

not sure the business case exists. Do we have the capability? Yes. I met the harbour master in Galway, a fantastic port of call, and by 2020 they have plans to be able to house ships of our size.

What I would like to do is to stop on in Ireland on some of our repositioning cruises. That is a real possibility. The time frame we are discussing is 2018 and 2019.

I would love to do that. I think it would be nice and it would be a great opportunity to show off some of our hardware to the Irish market.”

SUMMER 2017 CRUISES ON SALE NOW From Dublin, Cork and Shannon

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What your clients should know

Ship off the old block

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en new vessels are poised to be delivered next year, according to BRL Consultants.

The orders include groundbreaking prototypes such as MSC’s eagerly awaited MSC Seaside and MSC Meraviglia, to Silversea Cruises’ new ultra-luxury flagship Silver Muse.

Star Cruises’ World Dream is the second ship being built under Genting Hong Kong’s premium cruise line brand, while AIDAmia is to join sister

AIDAprima in being the first cruise ships to run on LNG dual-fuel.

Viking Sky and Viking Sun are Viking Ocean Cruises’ third and fourth ocean-going vessels. Majestic Princess will join sisters Regal Princess and Royal Princess..

All cruise ships come froIf you think you have seen most of them before, you have. m the same template, more or less decided by the previous generation of Americans for Americans, but now some afterthought is

2017

n Viking Sky 944 pax Feb n Norwegian Joy 4,200 pax Spring n Majestic Princess, 3,560 pax summer n MSC Meraviglia 4,500 pax May n MSC Seaside 5,300 pax November n TUI Mein Schiff six 2500 pax n Silverseas Silver Muse 596 pax April n Star World Dream 4,200pax n Viking Sky 944pax n Viking Sun 944pax n AidaMia 3,250pax n American Line 174pax n Ventus Australis 210pax n Star Clippers Flying Clipper 300pax

2018

n Seabourn Ovation 604 pax spring n Blue Star Titanic II, 2,345 pax n Unnamed Royal Caribbean Oasis class 5,400 pax April n Carnival Horizon, 3,954 pax summer n Norwegian Bliss 4,260 pax summer ,

Page 014-019 cruise guide.indd 5

being shown to the rest of the world.

The essentials are: n a big crimson-upholstered theatre at the front over two floors, n a big crimson-upholstered dining room at the back over two floors, n a long casino in between on one level (Disney is the only cruise ship not to have a casino) n a shopping precinct between them on another level, usually the deck above the casino.

The deck, where ship

meets fresh air after 11 storeys in midsized ships and 16 decks in some of the bigger beasts, will have: n a spa and an indoor pool at the front, n an open air pool and poolside bars in midship deck with an upper deck area for beach beds, n a big informal buffet restaurant at the back.

Once you have been on one, you will know your way around them all.

On top of that is an activity area (perhaps a rock climbing wall, a

pitch and putt, and a soccer court) on the roof/ deck.

The decks in between shopping/casino and the pools have corridors of cabins that go on for ever. Big ships offer fewer inside cabins and more balconies. The premium brands now offer balconies with 90pc of their cabins.

Cabins, no matter what the view, tend to be small and confined.

There is no escaping this fact although most lines now call them state-

rooms for image reasons.

They are standard design as well, but Norwegian Epic had a neat departure when they built their cabins/ staterooms with a curve, in the form of a wave.

Each ship has a well kept secret cabin or two, one on a turn that can be bought for the same price as the one next door but it offers a little extra space.

Knowing these secrets is the key to success as a travel agent. .

CRUISE LINE UPCOMING BUILDS n Unnamed Crystal Exclusive class ship 1,000 2020 n Celebrity Project Edge class ship 2,900 n TUI Mein Schiff 7 2500 pax n Unnamed Holland America 2,660 pax March n MSC Seaview 5,300 pax May n Unnamed Hurtigruten 600 pax May n Ponant Le LapŽrouse 180pax n Ponant Le Champlain 180pax

2019

n Unnamed Royal Caribbean Quantum class 4,100 pax spring n Unnamed Aida 6,600 pax n MSC Bellasima 4,500 pax n Unnamed Norwegian, 4,260 pax summer n Unnamed Costa 4,200 pax n Unnamed Crystal Exclusive class ship 1,000 n TUI Mein Schiff 8 2500 pax n Unnamed Saga 540 pax n Unnamed Hurtigruten 600 pax May n Ponant Le Bougainville 180pax n Ponant Le Kerguelen 180pax n Royal Princess class vessel 3,560pax

n Unnamed Celebrity Cruises Project Edge class ship 2,900 pax n Unnamed Royal Caribbean Quantum class 4,100 pax autumn n Unnamed Carnival 6,600 pax n Unnamed MSC 4,888 pax, September n Unnamed Costa, 4,200 pax n Unnamed China Xiamen, 2,000 pax n Unnamed Virgin Xiamen, 2,800 pax

2021

n Unnamed Royal Caribbean Oasis class 5,400 pax, spring n Unnamed ~Aida 6,600 pax n Unnamed Disney, 2,500 pax

2022

n Unnamed Carnival 6,600 pax

2023

n Unnamed Disney, 2,500 pax

13/10/2016 08:37

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 19

SPECIAL FEATURE

Y

ou won’t even have to make a trek to the Airport for a cruise this year, in fact you will be picked up close to your door. Donegal based Travel Company JMG Travel and Cruise & Maritime Voyages have joined forces to offer a range of No-Fly cruising options for next summer. Family-owned JMG Travel is the tour operating division of well known Donegal Coach holiday operator McGinley Coach Travel and started to offer cruise holidays in 2011. All Dublin departures will be onboard Cruise & Maritime Voyages’ 1250 guest medium-sized cruise liner Magellan, which features a wide range of comfortable lounge areas, well- appointed facilities and expansive panoramic viewing

ideally suited to these scenic cruise programmes Starting in June 2017 and continuing into July there will be five departures from Dublin port and each of these can be booked in the knowledge that you don’t need to go near an airport. Complimentary coach transfers are included from most major towns so nothing could be more convenient. There is a varied selection of exciting cruise itineraries with fares from €719pp.

Norwegian Fjords 5 June for 9 Nights Known throughout the world for its awe-inspiring beauty, Norway’s fjordland is simply spectacular.

During this amazing voyage Magellan cruises Hardangerfjord and Sognefjord, con-

nating sidered ports to be of call the king as you and cirqueen cumof the navfjords, igate and visthe its Flam, ‘Land famous of Fire for its James McGinley and Tom and Ice’. specMaher Lerwick tacular in Scotland’s Shetland railway, and Eidfjord Islands and the drawith a chance to visit matic Faroes are stepthe impressive Vøringping-stones on what fossen waterfall. Visits promises to be an to Orkney and Dublin exciting voyage. complete this fantastic Spain, Portugal, cruise.

France & Gibraltar 26 Iceland’s Land of June for 11 nights Ice & Fire 14 June for Mouth-watering 12 nights variety is the key word Geysers, glaciers, for this southbound lava flows and volcacruise as you discover nic craters, bubbling each destination’s mud pools, stunning unique scenery, charm waterfalls and geoand ambience. Grand thermal hot springs, architecture gives way Iceland has one of the to charming old quarworld’s most dynamic ters and contrasting landscapes. You’ll step cities reveal a wealth ashore in four fasci-

of fascinating history.

You’ll be tempted with shopping bargains, or choose to simply relax, enjoy the local cuisine, and let the world go by.

Summertime Gardens & River Seine 7 July for 7 nights Visit some world-renowned gardens on this delightful cruise full of colour. Opt to see Tresco’s Abbey Gardens in the Isles of Scilly, Monet’s Garden in Normandy. Cruise the beautiful River Seine for an overnight stay in Rouen to follow in the footsteps of Joan of Arc and Richard the Lion heart, and discover the beautiful coast and countryside of Guernsey.

Scottish Highlights & Faroes 14 July for 8 nights Taking you north to the remote and beautiful Faroese archipelago

and delightful Scottish Highlands and Islands, this leisurely cruise promises to be the perfect get away from it all summer break.

You’ll be amazed by the wealth of breathtaking scenery, bountiful wildlife and dramatic nature. Each time you step ashore discover fascinating traditions and cultures, explore historic cities and learn of the mysteries surrounding ancient sites.

Prices start from €719pps and includes en-suite accommodation, all meals on board, entertainment, port taxes and coach transfers to and from Dublin. For more information check www.jmgcruise.com, call 074-9135201 or speak to your local Travel Agent

In association with

05 June 17 9 nights Fjordland Splendour

NO FLY CRUISING Holidays from Dublin

14 June 17 12 nights Iceland’s Land of Ice & Fire 26 June 17 11 nights Spain, Portugal & France 07 July 17 7 nights Summer Gardens & River Seine 14 July 17 7 nights Scottish Highlights & Faroes

From

€719 pps

For a brochure call 074-9135960 or contact your Local Travel Agent

For a brochure call 074-9135960 or contact Local Travel Agent JMG Travel, your Gortahork, Co. Donegal Tel: 074 91 35201 • Email: jmgtravel@eircom.net JMG Travel, Gortahork, Co. Donegal Tel: 074 91 35201 • Email: jmgtravel@eircom.net

Licensed & Bonded

www.jmgcruise.com Tour Operators No. 214

Page 019 JMG CMV ad feature.indd 1

13/10/2016 08:39

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Dublin Airport Dublinia Dublin’s City Hall - The Story of the Capital e-travel.ie Embassy of Argentina Embassy of Brazil Embassy of Chile Embassy of Slovakia Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania Exodus Travel Explore St. Louis Fitzpatrick Group of Hotels Flightrights.ie Florida’s Beaches Follow The Camino Fuerteventura Garryvoe Hotel Shanagarry Georgia Department of Economic Development Gites De France Morbihan and Marne Glasnevin Cemetery Museum Gohop.ie Gran Canaria Grand American Adventures Greater Boston CVB Great National Hotels & Resorts Greater Fort Lauderdale Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau Guinness Stor House Heritage Island - Ireland’s Premier Attractions

Hidden in Spain Hotel Beacon NYC Hotel Westport House of Waterford Crystal Hurtigruten Ibiza Tourist Board India Tourism Intrepid Travel Insight Vacations Irish Golf Review Jamaica Tourist Board Japan Airlines Japan National Tourist Organisation JMG Travel Kansas/Oklahoma Travel & Tourism Kilkenny Tourism Killarney Tourism King John’s Castle Kissimmee St Cloud Convention & Visitors Bureau Kusadasi Municipality Kylemore Abbey & Victorian Walled Gardens Lanzarote Tourist Promotion Board Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority Leitrim Tourism Louisiana Office of Tourism Louth Tourism Lyrath Estate Hotel Maine Office of Tourism Malahide Castle & Gardens

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EXHIBIT

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DUBLIN - Holiday World 2017 Show dates

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NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 22

DESTINATION SWEDEN

A

regular question for cruise ship captains is what is their favourite port. They sometimes say Santorini. Some say Venice for its seascapes.

But the majority will talk about Stockholm with that glaze in their eyes.

The vista coming into Stockholm from the sea would make Neptune’s trident open and shut.

A huge array of islands lies before you with that great curiosity the single island that the birds flock on. And when you get there you find a city that celebretes its maritime culture with abandon.

eyes and ears and nose, rushing through all the senses with just the sight of it like a spray gun.

Long after you have walked the trails across the rocks and pools and rrivulets and jumped from bank to bank and taken photographs of the little mirror pools, you can still hear that sound.

Thor would struggle to outmuscle it.

Bright nights

A

bandoned. The most interesting museum in the whole of Europe, if not the world, that is a verdict that we apply rarely but that’s what we found at the Vasa.

The story of the ship is an delicious and as tragic as the richness of the experience of visiting it.

It is a slautory lesson for all of us who have had to cope with an accountancy department. The Vasa should have been an amazing partnership conveying Gustav’s soldiers off to the 30 years war to animate his status as a regional player, fighting the cause of Protestantism against Catholicism, a religious war which was really a proxy for the great power struggle between north and south, and the royal families of Europe.

Eoghan Corry in Swedish Lapland

Storfossen, Europe’s biggest waterfall by volume

I

nstead the bean counters decided it was ten feet too wide.

They didn’t want to cut back on the beautiful artworks that adorn the ship, thankfully for those of us who get to visit it nowadays.

But, in its de-widened state, the first guest of wind blew the Vasa over, and it sank in the saline marsh and sat there for more than 300 years.

The ship is now housed in one of the Museum Islands on Stockholm’s coast and that is where every visitor to Stockholm, whether they are interested in ships and history ore not, should spend a few happy hours.

Many of Stockholm’s great attractions, as befits a city where winters get cold, are indoor.

But to celebrate the city it is important to take a stroll along the waterfront. Which waterfront?

The watery choice is bewildering.

Sweden can be an expensive country. There are ways and means to reduce the bill. Oddly enough HB ice cream turned out to be cheaper than it did at home.

T

he road system works but the regulations are intense and it is virtually impossible to visit the Swedish town, figure

out the convoluted party parking regulations and even when you think you have paid, to escape without a fine from the zealous local traffic department.

When summer comes the days don’t stop, and everyone goes around on a sugar high, You find people wandering the streets in party mood at 3-4 AM in the morning.

Fast-food outlets are jammed at 2 AM as if it was early afternoon anywhere else in the world.

The light is omnipresent and intervention.

One wonders if winters

wome with the equivalent downswing that summer brings with an upswing.

We didn’t hang around to find out.

People talked about minus 35 coming as easily as plus 35 does in the summertime on the Baltic beaches where we got chance to splash.

And then, the thundering waterfall, Europe’s most thundering above all, if the guides are to be beleived.

Storfossen splashes and churns the melting snow on a grand scale and wghen it peaks in June and July, cleans the

T

his is forest country. On the road from Lulea to Pitae you encounter a sight straight out of Straffan, Smurfit’s cardboard plant billowing white into the atmosphere above.

The forests go on for ever and roadsign after roadsign tell you to watch out for the deer. That is easier signed than done.

Many of the cars in the towns up here carry the tell tale signs of an altercation between elk and engine. One of the road accidents we came across had left blood everywhere like a horror film or aftermath of a Viking raid as imagined by Hollywood, but all it was was another elegy for another elk.

How can they tell where Sweden ends and Finland begins, or Norway or the Pole, the rest of the world?

This is a unique place, a blessed place.

For agent access to accounts and special rates log on to www.hertz-gsa.ie or email traveltrade@hertz.ie

Clockwise: View across Swedish Lapland, Stockholm afternoon, Scenes from the Vasa museum in Stockholm

Page 022 Sweden.indd 1

13/10/2016 15:22

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 23

T

he most interesting bits of Philadelphia are probably the least known.

The city is supposed to span out from the City Hall, equidistant from the river and the sea. But it is at the edges that you find the heart of the city, not the heart.

The makes sense in Philadelphia.

The Mutter Museum, with its vast collection of medical and anatomical oddities, may be the most interesting in all of North America. It is an eerie place, skulls piled on each other with notes of their diseases..

As Philadelphia grew from shipping the Naval Museum and its floating exhibits the USS Olympia and the Becuna, are worth the journey alone

O

ne of the disadvantages of what Walt Disney created in 1950s is that increasingly, tourist America is becoming a theme park.

The idea of queueing systems and the way people behave in them is completely dependent on the experience of three generations now have had of Disney. The queue to the historic attractions might as well have been for Space Mountain, and the attention span of the eight graders might have been equally long for both.

The tourist centre is a blend of architectural

DESTINATION USA

Phil, Phil a rún Ó Eoghan Corry in Philadelphia Checking out the crack in Philly: The Liberty Bell contradictions, the ugly stomping wherever it can on the quaint. The president’s house is brick, with plans you can view through a glass wall as you queue to enter the buildings. The signage acknowledged, belatedly, African Americans and their role in the country’s history.

The glass is faded a bit like the South County Dublin had galloped its way over it. The little rolling hill between the Liberty Bell centre, all glass and red-bricked corners, to the national convention centre.

Red brick, white windows, 12 panels on each window, wrought iron and heritage in brick, with horrible stuff behind in broad glass 1960s windows and Wells Fargo plastered.

Even worse, someone planted a square block of a building right opposite the Liberty Bell Centre which looks like a car park.

It is all a far cry from the splendid Second Empire architecture that you find around City Hall although there is a couple of buildings which lend themselves that way. On the whole, WC Fields allegedly said when he was dying, I would rather be in Philadelphia.

Everyone knows that the momentous changes of history are almost always sprung from the platform of the high stools of pubs and taverns. Rebellions and coups and even wars are planned here, over a frothy beer or a glass of red.

Philadelphia’s

pub-catalyst may be most famous of all. The City tavern is where the declaration of Independence was composed, and it sits in neat wooden floored dining rooms, closed at 10pm and sent to bed, starch-collared the portraits of the nation’s founders, when really you feel that it should be full of inspired youths having had a pint and a half beyond their limit and about to come up with the next big idea.

P

hiladelphia tells us it is the home of love, with the LO above the VE like a mathematical equation, but the sign might as well say WA/LK, because the real Philadelphia is

for walkers. Walk here, and you will never take a wrong turn.

Walk a little south and you come to, ahem, South Street, famous in its time for hippies that have now become as starchc0llared as the City tavern itself.

A trio with a black labrador walk by, past the wire fences around green spaces that are never really green in Philadelphia, they are faded brown like this was some sort of postcolonial African capital rather than the first empire smashers of the world. After Portugal that is, sorry Portugal.

The Book Trade on South Street is no longer in business. It closed ten years ago. In its time it was one of the three great iconic American bookshops, alongside Waverley Books in Washington where you can share two great pastimes, drinking and book-buying, and Powell’s in Portland, Oregon, which was one of the first to put secondhand books and new books on the same shelf in the same category.

Alas, Book Trader is no more. Philadelphia is the poorer for it.

F

urther south again Bainbridge Street is probably what South Street looked like before it got posh. Guys sitting on street chairs reading, sadly, not paper

any more, but metal devices which maybe what happened the Book Trader in the first place.

On park benches people are eating packed lunches, sandwiches and fried.

There is a background music in Philadelphia in summer, it is the whirr of the air conditioner.

Some of them rattle and shake, and clatter.

One wonders do people define their street experience now on whether the air conditioners they pass are rancorous or not.

At the Border Rooms bar, they are serving a sandwich called the three little pigs, melted cheese meets pork, grilled cheese stuffed with pork roll, ham and bacon between roasted sourdough slices.

T

hings to do in Philadelphia.

Check out the crack at the Liberty Bell, run up the Rocky steps at the Art Museum and turn around and brandish your masculinity to the world, and check out the skulls at the Mutter museum. Peer through the portholes of the floating exhibits. If your time is short, head to the Mutter and the maritime and you will not go wrong.

But make the time, Philly is sure to fill it.

Philadelphia is represented in the Irish market by Greg Evans http://gregevansconsultancy.com

Clockwise: scene on South Street, South Street arch, View from the USS Olympia, the City Tavern, Becuna submarine

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13/10/2016 08:45

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 24

DESTINATION GERMANY

Clear about beer

Germany celebrates 500 years of pure brewing Nikl brewery in Pretzfeld. Inset: The man who enacted the beer purity law in 1516,Hherzog Willlem

M

aster brewers of Europe. This is the reputation of Germany has long enjoyed. Other countries brew more, even drink more, and play better in the champions league of marketing than the Germans, but the Germans can sit back, smile, and say we are the very Eden of brewing, the purest of the pure.

This year was the anniversary of when Germany introduced its far famed purity laws.

Herzog Willem was destined to become of the toast of beer drinkers everywhere when he

introduced the Reinheitsgebot on April 23 1516.

It wasn’t the partisans of the high stool that he had in mind.

He wanted to make sure that wheat was used for making bread and not, as prone to happen, for making beer.

Wheat was needed to feed the armies that criss crossed Europe in that and other centuries.

Beer should be the after thought and the barley that could not be used for making bread should be devoted to that. He did not understand that beer needed yeast. Nobody did. They thought

fermentation was an act of God, and so, perhaps, it is.

The beer purity laws only included three ingredients, hops, barley and water. We should be grateful for the purity laws because it set a standard for the rest of Europe to follow.

Impurities were part of the food chain for much of the history of Europe’s stomach. Even urine could find its way in to the beer that was brewed 15 generations ago. Not in Germany. Where to start the tour? Bavaria of course.

A

n annual party that attracts 6m people and serves 7m litres of beer is difficult to miss. Munich’s enormous Hofbräuhaus and the city’s annual Oktoberfest, founded by a king that had an Irish mistress, have a justifiable reputation as the place to seek out German beer.

But if you chose to avoid the crowds, beer is celebrated in an increasing number of beer trails that criss cross Germany.

The history of beer is layered into the landscape in a country where archaeologists have discovered evidence of some of the earliest evidence of alcoholic beverage.

Germany is a place to let your taste buds lead the way.

N

ico Wagner, who operates a brewery in Weimar, says this was the first purity law, worldwide for any food group. “We don’t put things in other than malt, and yeast and

Tasting at Abbey Weltenburg, oldest monastery brewery in the world,

Page 024-025 Germany.indd 1

hops and water. It is easy to understand It keeps the beer simple and pure.

It is the technology and knowledge of our brewmaster that keeps our reputation worldwide.”

His own family has an anniversary, 150 years in brewing.

“Many of those nutrition related laws are so complicated and they take a lot of understanding. For example, if you want to understand the German wine law it will take you some time, believe me. The beer purity law is so simple, malt, hops and water. Brewers had no control of the fermentation process in Herzog Willem’s time, brewers prayed for Pasteur discovered yeast 300 years later.

Weimar has a beer purity law that is 500 years old.

Other claimants are Nuremberg in 1293, Erfurt in 1351, and Weisensee in 1432. But the contest for the oldest purity law is relevant only in that these laws were only valid in the town limits.

Herzog Willem enacted the purity law for another reason, beer sommelier Sandra Schmid says. “He wanted to secure the wheat for the bakeries and hence his decree that you could use hops, malt and water for brewing. He meant barley malt. He allowed a select few to brew with wheat.”

“There is a beer revolution underway,” Sandra says. “There are many more brew styles. We now have traditional German beer styles and beer styles from all over the world, like IPA’s, porters, stouts. The brewers barrel age the beers, they brew sour beers. We have a whole new beer revolution now.”

“It is a matter of taste and a matter of expectation. Beer is always a thing to comfort people.

Beer has its regions and its identities, its own personality.’

“Most people arrive by air and Munich is a good place to start. In the Bavarian valleys you will find the real treasury, the village breweries.”

W

e started with the biggest beer-related attraction of all, the Maisel world of beer, a sort of Guinness storehouse without the tower.

Jeff Maisel of Maisel Brewery has 21 beers on tap of which Maisel Weisse is the most famous. It has a brewery tour and showrooms, and a pleasant evening set the flavour of what was to come.

n Eoghan Corry flew to Munich was hosted by.Gernany Travel n Aer Lingus operate a twice daily service from Dublin to Munich and a twice weekly service from Cork. One-way fares including taxes and charges start from €49.99. For further information visit aerlingus.com

13/10/2016 08:50

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 25

DESTINATION GERMANY

T

here are rich pickings here for those with a taste for beer. Frank Nicklas says the Bayreuth region has 200 breweries and 1,000 types of beer. “It would take you three years to taste the different beers if you tasted a different beer every day.”

The Frankische Schweiz region offers 70 private breweries and 600 beers as well as 300 regional distilleries.

The county of Kelheim is considered as beer heartland, hops from the Hallertau region, north of Munich, malting barley and spring water.

“If you want to get to taste Frankonian beer come to the region around Nuremberg and Bayreuth and in the small villages you should taste the local beer. Every one has their favourite brewery, dark, lighter, sweeter and bitter. Each village has its own distinctive brew. There is a village with 500 inhabitants near Bayreuth and they have four breweries.”

Tiny Pretzfeld has 1,400 residents, four breweries and 71 beers, watched sagely by St Kilian from the Kirche dedicated to him. We stopped by the Nikl brewery where master brewer Mike Schmitt, David Branston and Johannes Haas lined us up for tasting. The tequila boc and delicious bourbon boc, the best ti8ng we tasted on the engire tour.

S

tudent cities are more feminine, Claudia Dollinger as she conducted a tour of Bayreuth. She brought the story of Wagner to life, telling how Liszt used to play the piano with a very heavy hand, so heavy that he destroyed many pianos on his tour of Germany.

Wagner, she said, always started with the poem and then wrote the music.

We dined in beef braised in black beer and onions with cream savoy and parsley potatoes, served up in Gasthaus Zum Weissen Schwan.

Only female hops are bitter enough to put a taste in the beer, Michael Kuehnlein informed us.

It figures.

Waitress at Oktoberfest, photograph Frank Bauer

T

he colour comes from the malt, and can come from roasting in high temperatures or low temperatures.

Maxmillian Krieger, an eighth generation brewer welcomed us to taste Rienhofer Hellen Vollbier (a beer for all night drinking), Kellerwichtel Amber (coloured and unfaded, smelling of malt rather than hops and sweet to taste), Rienhofer schwanen Weiss (smelling of banana), Riedenburger (a golden dark bitter porter with a smokey head), Dolden Sud (very hoppy and

6.5 alcohol) and Doleen Bock (very new wheat bock, dry hopped so the aroma not the bitterness enters the beer).

“We need to split the starch and the ugar after one week. We dry the malt, which is important for brewing beer. The darker the malt the darker the beer. The higher the temperature of drying the brighter the malt.

In addition we have smoked malt for smoked beer which tastes like a piece of ham.” He passed aorund malt from wheat and barley for the group to taste.

W

e took a cruise from Kelheim to Weltenburg Abbey on the Danube through a high stone walled gorge, 80m wide and 20m deep.

Danube kilometres are counted backwards. We were at Km2,417, 430km off the source and 2,417 off the delta where it pours into the Black Sea. At 2850km the Danube is the second longest river in Europe.

In olden days salt barges were hauled upstream to Ulm and Ingokstadt and along the journey we could see boat hooks along the wall, testimony

to thousands of years of river trade.

Around a narrow bend to Weltenburg Abbey, we were greeted by Frater Matthias and treated to the famous monastery beer. Although monks no longer manage the process, this may be the oldest monastery brewery of them all with a documented history back to1050.

The 18th-century church is a fine example of late Baroque architecture. We dined on sausage and cheese from the monastery’s dairy. You can stay in the 16 room St George guesthouse.

W

hat distinguishes beer people, most of all, Nico Wagner says, is their forward planning.

“We need four weeks to make a batch of beer, Nico Wagner says.

“The problem is if people alike to drink a lot of beer and you are running short. The brewmater needs four weeks to get the next batch ready.”

You cannot supply it th”e day after tomorrow.

It is not possible”.

German preparedness, structre and organisation may have all come from beer.

Look what Herzog Willem started.

Clockwise: Queen Wilhelmina and tour guide Claudia Dolinger, St Killian, boat trip on the Danube, Goethe poem in Weimar and the famous beer law

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NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 26

AFLOAT NORWEGIAN Cruise Line’s Star

ship called to Dublin as part of one of its European cruises, having left Scotland, and made its way across the Irish Sea overnight, for an early Sunday morning arrival in Dublin Port. NCL hosted 14 agents on board Norwegian Star on Sunday. The line’s first brochure with euro pricing launches next week.

NCL celebrated their 50th with an anniversary cruise. M/S Sunward made her first voyage from Miami to the Caribbean on December 19 1966. Norwegian Cruise Line guests, travel partners, and current and former employees are invited to upload their photos and stories to their first 50 website,

CHINA VISA Cruise passengers arriving in Shanghai from October 1 will be allowed stay up to 15 days without a visa.

NEWCASTLE A new cruise terminal was approved for Newcastle in NSW. HURTIGRUTEN is to operate a

charter flight from Dublin airport direct to Tromso on February 25 as part of a programme of charter and regional flights to Bergen, Tromso and Oslo.

REGENT Seven Seas Voyager will

receive a makeover in early November. Silversea introduced free business class flights on select Mediterranean voyages booked before 3 December 2016 and with every 2016 and 2017 booking agents receive a complimentary sweet treat from Hotel Chocolat.

NORWEGIAN Bliss, Norwegian’s

next new build will seasonally homeport in Seattle from Summer 2018.

MSC added UNESCO-protected Saranda in Albania to its Eastern Mediterranean itineraries form April 2017. MSC Fantasia will replace MSC Orchestra in the Antilles and the South Caribbean in November 2017. Alternative calls were scheduled instead of Ocean Cay Marine Reserve which has been delayed until October 2018.

ROYAL Caribbean said Icon class vessels to be delivered in the second quarters of 2022 and 2024 will be fuelled by LNG. The cruise line will begin testing fuel cell technology on an existing Oasis-class ship in 2017.

RIVIERA MS Thomas Hardy, one of four new 5 Star All Suite Ships to be launched next year by Riviera River Cruises, is undergoing sea-trials.

SCENIC became the first cruise line to

offer a river cruising travel guarantee for every guest at no extra charge

HOLLAND America banned smoking

on all its cruise ship balconies

MSC’s all stars of the seas awards are to

take place on board MSC Fantasia on November 13-16 with awards for travel agents in six categories.

CARNIVAL sas it plans to create a new brand around two new ships to be built in China.

Ben Bouldin of Royal Caribbean speaking at the Royal Caribbean event in the Cliff House Hotel, Ardmore

Club Royal move Agent incentive adds a third tier for 2nd birthday

L

eading Irish members of the Club Royal programme gathered in the Michelin starred Cliff House last month for the launch of the new Platinum membership level.

London based sales manager Ben Bouldin said “what we have done is made gold status easier to attain and added a platinum status.”

Platinum status is reserved for agents who make more than 200 bookings a year. The programme will now have three membership tier levels: blue, gold and platinum. Although there are eight gold members in Ireland, there are no Irish agents are among the initial group of 18 platinum club members.

London-based Royal Caribbean sales manager Ben Bouldin of Royal Caribbean told agents that Ireland is delivering more new to cruise clients than agents in England or Scotland.

Royal’s market share in Ireland has recovered to former levels of “between 50pc and 55pc.”

Three winners of the Countdown to South Africa competition are from Ireland. “obviously if you work for a cruise specialist you will be more likely to reach the higher levels. That is one of the challenges of the scheme and we are looking at that.”

Previously a two-tiered membership scheme, Royal Caribbean is introducing a Platinum level to its industry leading reward programme.

High-achieving gold members are being rewarded with automatic promotion to Platinum level Club Royal members will be given more control of their membership.

They will be able to see on their personal dashboard how close they are to being promoted and what steps they need to take to reach their next target.

Other member incentives and rewards, including a new exclusive booking service in partnership with Travel Industry Services and a new member competition, Ride the Wave to Hong Kong.

Ireland has just under 1,000 blue members For those with fewer than 75 annual bookings (blue) ■ €5.68 credit per booking ■ €11.37 birthday bonus ■ €113.70 holiday cashback to redeem on any Royal Caribbean holiday For those with 75-200 annual bookings (gold) ■ €5.68 credit per booking ■ €28.43 birthday bonus ■ €341 holiday cashback to redeem

on any Royal Caribbean holiday Ability to control accelerators and earnings by giving bookings a 7-day boost twice a year, doubling credit for each booking to £10 For those with 200 annual bookings (platinum) ■ €8.53 credit per booking ■ €28.43 birthday bonus ■ €400 holiday cashback to redeem on any Royal Caribbean holiday Ability to control accelerators and earnings by giving bookings a 7-day boost four times a year, doubling credit for each booking to £15 Ben Bouldin, London based Sales Director for Royal Caribbean said, “To celebrate the second birthday of Club Royal we wanted to do even more to recognise the ongoing support of our agency partners. By introducing a Platinum level into the mix, increasing earning opportunities across the board and making it easier to track status levels, we’re giving our agents more reason to sell Royal Caribbean holidays as they reap the rewards. We truly value the support of our agency partners and are committed to not only providing them with an extraordinary loyalty programme, but also to finding new ways to engage with them in new and exciting ways.

MSC REVEAL NAME OF GIANT SHIP

M

SC Bellissima is to be the name of its second Meraviglia-class ship, the cruise line revealed at the float out of Meraviglia, at the STX France shipyard in Saint Nazaire.

The ceremony marked the start of the final phase of construction of

5,714-passenger MSC Meraviglia. The ship will be the largest afloat when it launches in June 2017.

The MSC chairman made a short presentation, turned the wheel and the flooding of the dry dock began.

MSC hosted 100 agents from around the world

at the event, including two from Ireland. Rebecca Kelly and Antonio Paradiso, MD for Britain and Ireland led agents through what will be the Promenade complete with changing roof, basketball arena, waterpark and future theatre for Cirque du Soleil. Agents had an early

start with a 6am departure by boat out onto the Loire river to watch MSC Meraviglia leave her dock for the first time ever on her float out. With the aid of seven tug boats she did a slow 360 degree turn before going back into dock to commence phase 2

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 27

AFLOAT CELEBRITY Cruises is to trial progressive dinners with a different course in each restaurant.

HONG KONG-based Dream Cruises showcased the new 150,000-ton Genting Dream at Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany

CRYSTAL AirCruises, a new venture of luxury cruise line Crystal, is to deploy a Boeing 777-200LR on 14-, 21- and 28-day itineraries to take 84 travelers around the world on an air-and-land version of a cruise.

Celebrity Cruises and Tour America customer event on board Celebrity Silhouette

Celebrity show

61 overnight stays in Europe part of S17 programme

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elebrity Cruises will focus its 2017 programme on Europe with 40 itineraries and 61 overnight stays in 19 European cities.

The programme will include a two day and overnight stay in Dublin for the first time.

■ Celebrity Reflection will double the amount of sailings offered to Europe, cruising eight 11-night “Best of the Western Mediterranean” itineraries, calling on La Spezia, Villefranche and Gibraltar, with four stops in Spain including an overnight in Barcelona.

■ Celebrity Constellation will sail a selection of nine- and 10-night cruises from Barcelona, Venice and

Civitavecchia, including Monaco and Sete, which are new ports of call.

■ Celebrity Silhouette returns to Amsterdam in May and operates cruises from there, Stockholm, Barcelona and Civitavecchia. It will overnight in Dublin on July 25.

■ Celebrity Eclipse will sail cruises of between 8 and 14 nights from Southampton.

■ Celebrity Reflection will sail from Barcelona in October.

The line offers 150 Uniquely Celebrity shore excursions in Europe, including a performance of “Antigone” in Mykonos; a Belgian chocolate workshop in Belgium; a land-and-sea tour of the Italian Rivi-

era; and a visit to the Amber Room of the Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg.

Celebrity will offer five European “Signature Event Sailings” in 2017; one to the French Open tennis tournament in June onboard Celebrity Eclipse, two British Open golf tournament sailings onboard Silhouette in July, and two more Silhouette sailings in August to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

Europe-themed offerings will include new culinary programmes and packages, a summer camp for kids and themed sailings and shore excursions.

PRINCESS Cruises won the best cruise line at the Cruise International awards.

Viking won the best river cruise and Harmony of the seas the best new ship. Arnold Donald of Carnival won the outstanding contribution to the cruise industry award. New York, and Norway’s fjords won the destination awards.

SINGAPORE Tourism Board won

the Destination of the Year award at the 2016 Seatrade Cruise Awards. The top prize at the event in Tenerife was accepted by STB’s Jason Chan, area director for northern and western Europe.

OCEANIA Bob Binder has become

President and CEO of Oceania Cruises, retaining his position of the last 11 years of Vice Chairman of Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises. Jason Montague, President of Regent Seven Seas Cruises, and Andy Stuart, President of Norwegian Cruise Line, are both becoming CEO within their brands.

STENA LINE is to add additional capacity by introducing a second ship from Europoort to Killingholme.

NUNAVAT government is considering rules to reduce the community impact of giant ships such as the Crystal Serenity, which docked in New York last week with 1,700 passengers and crew.

ROYAL CARIBBEAN has consolidated the price of its drinks package to four with the only alcohol beverage package costing $55 a day with effect September 6, and says all doubt, silent and emission gratuities are no longer included in the price. free. We will use our new Cruises will focus its expeditionary ships as CELEBRITY 2017 programme on Europe with 40 itineraries groundbreakers. To be able and 61 overnight stays in 19 European cities. It to sail using only electrical will include the cruise line’s first overnight in power is a great benefit for Dublin on July 25. Celebrity Cruises renewed the environment. It will enits ongoing partnership with Bravo Media, hance impact of experiencreator of the US cooking competition show cing nature for the guests Top Chef.

HURTIGRUTEN ORDERS LNG SHIPS

H

urtigruten says its two new 530-passenger expedition cruise ships will operate using environmentally-friendly hybrid technology to reduce fuel consumption by 20pc.

The as-yet-unnamed

I

Hurtigruten ships, launching in July 2018 and July 2019, are designed for the Arctic and Antarctic. The new technology has been developed by Rolls Royce and Bellona, a non-profit organisation that works to address climate challen-

ges. Hurtigruten’s recent letter of intent for four new expedition ships in all the largest single investment in Hurtigruten’s 123-year history.

Hurtigruten CEO Daniel Skjeldam said: “The future of shipping is, without a

IRISH FERRIES PAX DOWN 1.9PC

rish Ferries launched the France 2017 programme with a 10pc discount on early bookings.

The ferry company’s parent ICG reported that car volumes were up 5.5pc in the first half of the year and passenger numbers were down 1.9pc to

686,600. MV Kaitake is to remain on charter until June 2020.

Passenger numbers were down 1.9pc to 686,600.

Tourism bookings were over summer were broadly in line with expectations.

The group comprises Irish Ferries and the chartering of vessels to third

parties. Irish Ferries operated over 2,500 sailings in the period.

Revenue in the traditionally less profitable first half of the year is up 5.2pc to €150.5m from €143.1m for the same period in 2015.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and

amortisation were up to €30.5m from €25.5m Earnings before interest and tax were up to €20.8m from €16.4m. Group fuel costs were down €7.5m (36.1pc) to €13.3m.

Profit before tax was €19.7m compared with €14.9m in the first half of 2015.

STX Two bidders are vying for STX France which has an impressive order book stretching through 2026. The French government owns a minority interest in the shipyard and can veto a sale.

AZAMARA Club Cruises will offer its first loyalty club cruise, hosted by cruise line president and CEO Larry Pimentel. The cruise will take place in the Arabian Gulf and United Arab Emirates from October 24 to November 3, 2016 onboard Azamara Journey.

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 28

THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

RYANAIR launched its summer 2017 schedule from Belfast International airport, with 11 routes including Berlin, London and Milan, which will deliver 1.1m customers and Ryanair claims will support 800 jobs at Belfast International Airport. Ryanair’s 11 Belfast routes are to Alicante, Bergamo, Berlin-Schönefeld, Gdańsk (begins November 2), Kraków (begins October 30), Lanzarote (begins October 31), London-Gatwick, Málaga, Tenerife-South (begins October 31), Warsaw-Modlin (begins November 2) and Wrocław (begins October 31). Ryanair also announced summer 2017 operations from Pescara, Lisbon, Faro and Oradea.

AER LINGUS CEO Stephen Ka-

vanagh said cost will determine rate of growth at Aer Lingus and there was no cross-subsidy between short and long-haul markets at the airline and for four years there had been “breakeven at best” on short-haul

HSE is to make €1.8m available for the construction of a helipad at Cork University Hospital.

DUBLIN was announced as host city for

the IATA World Financial Symposium 2017.

The announcement was made at the 2016 symposium in Singapore.

TRANSAVIA will launch Mun-

ich-Dublin 3w for summer 2017 starting 11 April.

BEIJING Transport minister Shane Ross signed a memorandum of understanding with Feng Zhenglin, the administrator of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (in Dublin under which they agree to facilitate the establishment of a direct air service between their respective countries.

IAG figures indicated Aer Lingus is now the star of IAG group with RPK up 11.3pc and ASK up 13.1pc. .

ETIHAD signed a codeshare agreement withkulula.com.

VOLOTEA, is to operate a weekly B717 scheduled service from Cork to Verona from June 2017.

AIR BERLIN says it will discuss

transferring part of its fleet to a new group that would be set up by tour operator TUI Group and Abu Dhabi-based Etihad, a major shareholder.

EASYJET’s trading update showed fares down 9pc and capacity up 6pc. Shares fell 7pc on sterling worries.

EMIRATES launched an autumn sale: book by Oct 17th for travel from Dec 2016.

Jennifer Aniston made a return to the Emirates A380, and a new friend, in a new global digital and TV advertising campaign. This is Anniston’s second commercial with Emirates. The first launched last year.

VENEZUELA Airlines, including IAG chief Willie Walsh, asked permission to break antitrust law to retrieve $4bn trapped in Venezuela.

Picture shows Ivan Beacom, Yvonne Muldoon and Jenny Rafter with Aer Lingus flight crew Shauna Bermingham, Roberta Corbally, Gwen Reynolds, Carol O’Reilly and Danielle Black.

3 started, 3 to go

Etihad move to T1 to make way for Aer Lingus s2017

E

tihad’s move to T1 on January 24 and return to double daily on April 1 (read here) will solve some capacity problems for Dublin Airport, Each of the new Aer Lingus trans-Atlantic routes commenced in 2016 has a high proportion of connecting passengers.

Los Angeles autumn booking show 50pc of passengers are connecting.

Newark inaugural carried 161 connecting passengers, a figure that is being sustained in the coming months. On that flight, 50pc of passengers having started their journey outside of Dublin in destinations such as Paris, Brussels, Hamburg, Manchester, London and Edinburgh.

The Boeing 767 service to Hartford inaugural carried a 30pc load of connecting passengers, lower than the inaugurals to Los Angeles and Newark, but forward bookings show 50pc of the passengers are connecting.

Aer Lingus, flush with trans-Atlantic expansionist zeal having secured two extra Airbus A330-300s for the summer 2017 season on top of the two being delivered this year. This

A

will bring its A330 count to 12 from the pre-expansion total of seven, Talks have been re-entered with several north American airports, of which the most enthusiastic include Miami (whose lobbying activities included the IATA summit in Dublin), Dallas, Philadelphia, Detroit and Charleston.

There are more in the mix: Aer Lingus has spoken to nearly 100 different airports in their search for new direct destinations from Dublin.

Smaller US airports are showing a lot of interest in the performance of the Hartford route, due to launch in September. Aer Lingus are anxious to bed this route and the new Newark service down for 2017 before next summer’s expansion.

Willie Walsh recently flirted with the possibility of looking to Boeing’s successor to the 757 (MOM, the “middle of market” jet sized between current single- and twin-aisle offerings) instead of the nine Airbus A350s on the order books for three deliveries a year between 2018 and 2020.

Aer Lingus executives including Willie Walsh and the current and previous CEOs believing the A350 has two long a range for Aer Lingus’s requirements.

Airbus has been good to Aer Lingus with some bargain end-of-line purchases, so talk about a switch to Boeing may be premature.

What is clear is that the extra order book options promised by Willie Walsh in the aftermath of the IAG takeover are coming to pass.

Another pattern that is developing is the use of morning slots for Aer Lingus aircraft and evening slots for American codeshare partners, something that may happen if Aer Lingus joins the Philadelphia route as expected.

Delta’s reduction of services to London in the wake of the British referendum also opens up the possibility of Dublin-Detroit, a route that almost came to pass in Northwest days.

Icelandic low-cost carrier WOW Air plans to launch Keflavik-Miami 3 pw from 15 Apr 17 using an A330300,

AREA 14 MAKES A RETURN

rea 14 in Dublin airport is back.

The underground area opened in 2007 will be used again.

Check in desks are closed while Dublin airport Terminal 1 undergoes a €10m refit to bring more

light into the terminal.

Check-in desks 6, 7 and 8 have been closed until the third week in December, along with some ticket desks, and access through departures door 1 curtailed.

Passengers will be redirected to other desks and

an airport spokesperson said Area 14 will be used in some instances for the duration of the project for check-in purposes.

Some check-in facilities being moved for a time to check-in area 14, which is located in the lower ground

floor of T1 below the Arrivals Hall.

Originally built to serve an underground railway link to the airport which never went ahead, it was last used prior to the construction of Terminal 2 in 2007.

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 29

THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

Chengdu duo joy

Dublin and Shannon both win World Routes awards

S

hannon and Dublin Airports have won the top awards in their respective categories at the World Routes awards 2016 in Chengdu, China.

Cork were highly commended in their 5m passenger category.

Dublin Airport previously won the 20m-50m category award and Shannon the under 4m category award in 2014 in Chicago.

The World Routes Awards were created in 1997 to recognise excellence in marketing by airports to their airline customers, and are voted on by the global airline industry.

Declan Power and Shannon Group Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Murphy with the award at World Routes in Chengdu Declan Power and Shannon Group Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Murphy with the award at World

CITYJET Pat Byrne’s Cityjet is in ne-

gotiations to purchase Cimber Air from SAS, which owned the eight-fleet airline since March 1 2015. The proposed takeover would take Cityjet’s fleet from eight to 19.

KLM’s codeshare on Cork-Amsterdam is not timetabled in summer 2017.

LUFTHANSA is to complete its takeover of Brussels Airlines by end 2016. Brussels Airlines passenger numbers grew 17pc in 2015 to 7.7m.

RYANAIR added nine routes from Gerona including 2w to Belfast International, added Lisbon from Toulouse and increased frequencies to Berlin, Fes, London, Madrid, Warsaw and Malta, and added four new routes from Charleroi to Glasgow, Sofia, Toulouse, and Timisoara, announced a day ahead of the Lufthansa Brussels Airlines announcement.

Declan Power and Shannon Group Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Murphy with the award at World Routes in Chengdu Routes in Chengdu Four Irish airports and Tourism were short-listed for awards. The four other nominees in the 20-50m passen-

ger category were Brussels Airport, Copenhagen Airport, Munich Airport and Vancouver International Airport.

Kuwait Airways are to extend their Kuwait-New York JFK stopover in Shannon through to 2017. This service began in June for a planned four-month period, with flights at 3w. From October 31 this will change to 6w while Kuwait airport awaits FAA clearance.

Ethiopian Airlines is reportedly using Shannon as a tech stop on cargo flights to the US. Although the airport says there is nothing tentative and are not expecting them on October 8

Dublin to Toronto Year-round flights increasing to 9 SERVICES WEEKLY in peak summer season

Flights conveniently timed to connect with Air Canada’s extensive network serving 60 Canadian and 52 US destinations.

For more information please contact us at 01 6793958 or aircanada@premair.ie

26700 AC TORONTO - TRAVEL EXTRA APRIL 16 HPH.indd 1

02/03/2016 21:46

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 30

THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

AMERICAN Alison Taylor has been appointed Senior Vice President Global Sales for American. Dave Thomas who headed up the London office, has joined Qantas.

EMIRATES confirmed that Howth-domiciled former Aer Lingus CEO Christophe Mueller is joining as chief digital and innovation officer. It is believed that he is being lined up to replace the 66 year old honorary Lismoreman Tim Clarke as chair of the airline.

NORWEGIAN Thomas Ramdahl claimed that it would use 737 MAX 8 planes to make lower fares feasible from next year. The airline’s Irish subsidiary has had its application for permission to fly from Cork and Shannon to Boston stalled by the American authorities.

The 737-8 Max has also been ordered by Ryanair.

BELFAST CITY AIRPORT

reported that international passenger numbers are 56pc ahead of last year, with the 200,977 recorded until end September ahead of the record set for the whole of 2015. Belfast City processed 2.7m passengers last year and passenger numbers are running 3.5pc ahead of last year.

DUBLIN

Airport set a September record of 2.6m passengers

GECAS announced its first 737-800NG

passenger-to-freighter conversion placement with ASL Aviation Group

MONARCH said recent issues with the CAA were unfortunate and had an impact on holiday bookings more than flights.

QATAR

Airways said they would unveil their new business class seat at ITB 2017.

LUFTHANSA

Group and Air China have signed a joint venture with the aim of expanding their codeshare deals.

SHANNON Galway passenger Emmet Keary was presented with a pair of Aer Lingus flight tickets to New York to celebrate being the six millionth passenger since Shannon became an independent airport on Jan 1st 2013.

WORLD ROUTES, the air service development forum, was handed over to the city of Barcelona from China’s Chengdu.

QATAR Airways and British Airways

announced a joint business agreement that will come into effect on 30 Oct 16.

RYANAIR said it carried 1m US-based passengers in summer 2016. Ryanair is expanding Its Aircraft Maintenance Base in Kaunas. Ryanair said it could start operating from Foronda in April 2017 TURKISH deferred deliveries of 92 A321neos and 75 737 Max jets.

EASYJET

is considering buying TUIfly to enable it to continue operations in Europe after Britain’s exit from the EU.

DATALEX named Blair Koch their CTO and President of Datalex Americas.

Fintan Clarke photographs Tammy Donohoe and Liana Pavlucenko at the Ryanair announcement of new from Dublin to Hamburg and Sofia

Project RhineAir

Ryanair moves on Germany as Air Berlin melts down

R

yanair will open a two-aircraft base in Hamburg next month and add 10 new routes next summer in the wake of Air Berlin’s retreat from the airport, as part of Ryanair strategy to grow market share in Germany to 20pc.

■ New routes include Faro 3w and Thessaloniki 3w while services extended into summer to take the total to 14 include Brussels (2 daily), Dublin 5w, Gran Canaria 2w, Stansted (2 daily), Manchester (daily), Milan Bergamo (daily) & Sofia 2w.

■ In Cologne Ryanair are adding a new 4w summer service to Sofia, making it 21 routes in total, including Berlin x 5 daily and 137 weekly flights.

■ In Nuremberg Ryanair added four new routes to Bari, Madrid, Palermo and Porto, and five new summer services to Budapest, Malta, Manchester, Milan and Rome (12 routes in total).

Ryanair is to station four additional aircraft at Berlin-Schönefeld for a total of nine, and will open a base at Nuremberg on Nov. 1 where it will locate one plane and serve six winter routes.

Last week Air Berlin announced the closure of its Hamburg base and five others as it halves its fleet to 75 and cuts 1,200 jobs, offering an opportunity for Ryanair to overtake them and move into second place behind Lufthansa in the German market.

Germany is Ryanair’s fourth-largest market and

with 112m annual flights ning of the 2017 summer TRIPS ON is Europe’s second largest, schedule on 26 Mar. It RYANAIR behind England (121m) and would enable Eurowings ahead of Spain (105m), Italy Italy 22.1m to significantly expand its (82m) and France (72m).

England 20.57m capacities and strengthen Ryanair said that an ar- Spain 18.9m its position in the Eurorangement under which Air Ireland 7.2m pean point-to-point air Berlin plans to operate 40 Germany 5.6m transport market. surplus jets on behalf of France 5.04m Eurowings currently Deutsche Lufthansa AG, the Poland 4.35m operates a total fleet of biggest German carrier, for Portugal 3.99m 90 aircraft. Under the five years is both negative Belgium 3.9m new agreement, Eurowfor consumers and of dubi- Morocco 1.44m ings is to lease in 35 ous legality from an antitrust further aircraft from Air standpoint. Lufthansa is also Berlin which would fly in seeking to build up the fleet of its Eurowings livery. Another five Air Eurowings discount arm Berlin aircraft would be leased by Chief Operations Officer David Austrian Airlines. As both parties are O’Brien said “there are questions on aiming for a wet-lease collaboration the legitimacy of any bogus merger. all up to 40 aircraft concerned would We have yet to see the details, but not only be provided by Air Berlin it could well be that the European but the Airline would also remain Union could become interested.” responsible for their operations, i.e.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Air Air Berlin would continue to provide Berlin PLC signed a letter of in- their cockpit and cabin crews and tent on the wet lease of up to 40 air- maintenance. The leased fleet of up craft which will be operated by the to 29 Airbus A320 and up to eleven Air Berlin Group for the Lufthansa A319 would fit well into the existing Group companies Eurowings and Eurowings fleet, which consists enAustrian Airlines. The six-year tirely of Airbus aircraft. agreement is to start with the begin-

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NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 31

THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare ETIHAD returns to double daily on Dub

Warner Rootliep of Air France-KLM, Paul Schellekens, Dutch Ambassador to Ireland, Siobhan Scanlon, KLM head of sales, Ireland and Paul O’Kane of DAA.

4 daily to Schiphol

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KLM feeds network with new 4 daily flights

LM’s new Dublin-Amster- has proved popular with business dam flight to commence Oc- class customers and enables online tober 30 will move from two check-in for a connecting flight, daily to four times daily for summer which is currently not possible under 2017. the Aer Lingus codeshare.

Flights will be operated by The schedule has been devised 100-passenger Embraer 190, in three to compliment KLM’s long-haul TravelExtra_half_page_Sept16_outlines.pdf 1 26/09/2016 14:38:59 passengers easy class configuration.

The new route network, offering

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connections to destinations such as Johannesburg, Havana, Beijing and Hong Kong.

Dublin departures will be at 05.55, 08.50, 13.15 and 17.15 Amsterdam departures will be at 07.35, 12.00, 16.00 and 21.20.

lin to Abu Dhabi from April 1 using an A330200 in 22-240 configuration. Etihad Airways will switch its existing Dublin flights from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 from January 24. Etihad say this move follows extensive investment in passenger and retail facilities in the terminal by airport operator DAA. Etihad’s €1m lounge at Dublin is located in Terminal 2 but is closest of the three lounges in the terminal to the wide body gates on the old Pier B, the 300 gates.

The flight was reduced to single daily in September but will return to double daily on the 10th anniversary of Etihad in Dublin.

BIA In-flight food review website inflight-

feed.com gave Aer Lingus 9/10 and said that “all meals offered great value for money, have been well thought out and give you a taste of Irish dishes inspired from around the country”.

FINNAIR will fly 9w between Dublin

and Helsinki as of March 27 2017, up from the 6w winter schedule, using a mix of Airbus A319 and Embraer E190 aircraft during the 2017 summer season with a schedule to connect onto Finnair’s 12 destinations in Asia and the Far East, including Bangkok, Hong Kong, Nagoya, Seoul and seasonal services to Krabi and Xian. The Dublin-Helsinki service commenced in 2014 and was raised to 9w for summer 2016.

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NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 32

THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

RYANAIR are reducing the advance check-in window to four days from seven days before departure from the beginning of November. Passengers who wish to book more than four days in advance will have to pay €6 for their choice of seat. Passengers without the Ryanair app on their smart phones who do not wish to pay the €6 will now have to source a printer while on holiday abroad. Customers who purchase seats can check-in between 30 days and up to 2 hours before their scheduled flight departure time.

CANADA Dublin is to get two more

flights to Canada in summer 2017, Air Canada Rouge’s Vancouver – Dublin in Summer 2017.

Air Transat is increasing its frequency from Dublin to Toronto from 2w to 3w next summer. They also were Montreal weekly.

SAS

are to fly Stockholm to Shannon 2w on Tuesdays and Saturdays Stockholm to Shannon from April 1 – October 7 2017, as a result of a long-standing campaign by their GSA in Ireland Alan Sparling. The governments of Norway and Sweden say they have sold some of their shares in Scandinavian Airlines, saying the move will strengthen the regional carrier by reducing state ownership.

Night flights could be affected by the monitoring of Dublin airport noise levels

Quieter please

New noise regulations to monitor Dublin airport

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ICAO Balanced Approach is that when determining the most appropriate combination of noise mitigation measures for a given airport, operating restrictions can only be introduced after consideration of the other three elements of the Balanced Approach.

The IAA will be required to undertake a review of the noise situation at Dublin Airport immediately following commencement of the legislation. Of the airports on the island, only Dublin Airport currently and foreseeably exceeds the 50,000 aircraft movements threshold in the EU Regulation.

The IAA will be the only body empowered to make determinations on operating restrictions to apply at the airport. The IAA will not be bound by operating restrictions foreseen in the planning permission granted in 2007 for the new runway at Dublin Airport.

This suggests the IAA would be greenlit to impose operating restrictions such as a cap on aircraft movements or curfews, on the current runway configuration.

The IAA will be required to undertake noise reviews/assessments at least once every five years, following required consultation procedures.

The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport will be empowered to establish an appeal body comprising of up to five persons with relevant expertise, following consultation with the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government and with the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment.

The Appeal Body’s findings and conclusions will be published and the IAA will be obliged to consider the Appeal Body required to consider what the Appeal Body says, but not to implement it.

DELTA Air Lines says the sudden resignation of chairman and former CEO Richard Anderson, having just taken over in May, was “part of the plan.”

separate unit is to be established by the Irish Aviation Authority to deal specifically with airport noise. The unit will operate independently of its commercial activities.

The new regulatory regime will be based on the ICAO Balanced Approach, which requires the IAA to consider the noise mitigation contributions from four key components: Reduction of noise at source from quieter, more modern aircraft; Land-use planning and management measures such as zoning and insulation; Noise abatement operational procedures such as using runways alternately or gradual take off and departure flight procedures with reduced throttle thrust; and Operating restrictions at airports such as a cap on aircraft movements or curfews.

A fundamental requirement of the

became the ninth airline to gain five star status from Skytrax. There are 40 further four-star airlines, including Aer Lingus

RYANAIR RECORDS 7th 10M MONTH

CORK

(up 12.1pc) was reported as the fastest growing airport, ahead of Dublin (up 8.6pc) and Shannon (up 3.3pc) as the IAA said terminal traffic was up 5.7pc in September.

AEGEAN

will have an extended season and frequency increase to 3w next summer

SAMSUNG hinted it is terminating production of its troubled Galaxy Note 7 smartphone and warned owners to stop using their phones. The Irish Aviation Authority issued a passenger advisory notice about the device and the FAA and DOT banned Note7 phones on all US flights. Aer Lingus cabin crew have been issuing instructions to customers to have their Note 7 powered off at all times on board aircraft.

AERCAP leased, purchased and sold 143 aircraft in the third quarter 2016.

ETIHAD

BARBADOS An additional flight to

Barbados for Caribbean fly/cruise from Belfast International Airport was announced for January 2018. One departs in November

AVOLON

is to focus on Integrating CIT, and will consider M&A after 2017 spinning hubcaps and colour lights

BA customers were given the opportunity to check their luggage in and have it delivered form anywhere in London for an extra £30 in an initiative by Airportr.

CROATIA Airlines is to operate Osijek – Dublin charters in summer 2017.

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yanair carried 10m passengers in September for the fourth month in succession and the seventh month in its history.

Load factor was up one point to an impressive 95pc. Annual passenger numbers for 2016 are on course for 117m, which may be enough exceed the entire Lufthansa group of Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian and the newly acquired

Brussels Airlines, and make Ryanair Europe’s largest airline.

Ryanair became the seventh airline to join the 10m in one month club in July 2015, a club which includes Delta, Southwest, China Southern, United, American Airlines, China Eastern and the original Aeroflot, which reached 10m passengers in one month in July 1970 and put in many more 10m months

before the collapse of the Soviet Union, reaching 100m passengers a year in 1976.

Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said: “Ryanair’s September traffic grew by 13% to 10.8m customers, while our load factor jumped 1% point to 95%, on the back of lower fares and the continuing success of our “Always Getting Better” customer experience programme. As our recent

guidance confirmed, we expect average fares to fall by between 10% to 12% in the 6 months to March 2017, so there’s never been a better time to book a low fare flight on Ryanair. All customers who wish to book their summer 2017 holidays should do so now on the Ryanair.com website or mobile app, where they can avail of the lowest fares in Europe.”

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 33

IN CONVERSATION

I

came to Ireland in a difficult time globally and I am trying to contribute as much as possible to my company.

I am lucky that I am in a place where the people of this country are very supportive and understanding what is going on.

In Turkish airlines we do appreciate what the agencies, and the travel sector has said after the events that happened in Turkey.

They showed their support in every way and said that no matter what happened we will keep on supporting you. We have seen this, that we had two flights both are full.

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his is a chance for me and I am very positive about it, I am just trying to connect these two mentalities, these two beautiful people and maybe widen the pipeline.

With two flights a day to Dublin, the pipe is narrow now. We can increase this to four daily.

I haven’t checked the figures for the number of Irish traveling to Spain, Italy, Greece but we have a huge potential if more than 3m Russians and 2 or 3m Germans are coming to Turkey, then why not more Irish coming to Turkey? Why not change this? We can do this. Because I can see something: the Irish people love living, enjoy life. That’s why we need to widen the pipeline to send more and more Irish tourists to Turkey.

I think it is better to wait at least until the end of this year to see what will happen. Stability comes first, when we see a stable few months and

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Turkish Airlines manager in Ireland

Hasan Mutlu: We will grow in 2018

Onur Gul, Hasan Mutlu and Julienne Curran of Turkish Airlines, then they will sit and talk about this with the head office.

We need to see how winter is affecting our operations. If we have a good, successful winter for 2017 we can talk about increase but in 2017 the number of aircraft which will be added to our fleet will be very, very, very little.

That is why maybe for 2018 we can wait for some things because due to the capacity problem in the Istanbul side in 2017 the deliveries are kept at a lower level. The bulk of the new deliveries will be completed in 2018-19 and 20.

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e have brought catering to a different level

globally. That is why every year our catering is selected as the best in Europe, or in the world.

Our Business Lounge in Istanbul is selected as the best in the world, People are eating while flying. Nobody is trying to cut the cost for catering. Some charging for it.

But we went to the other way because when you compare it with the other expenses, catering is not one of the highest costs.

By increasing the quality in catering we have seen clearly that you can give some things that the others cannot.

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e will be e x p a n d ing globally again, but not for a year or so. In 2006 in one year we opened 24 new destinations, international new destinations and as far as I know this is a world record, never heard of that much. You can understand 3, 5, 10, 15 but 24?

We have that kind of image, a positive image

and perception on some people’s minds that yes, Turkish Airlines largest network, fine, can fly easily. We know that, we can open any destination and with the support of the network we wouldn’t have a load factor problem. That goes for Belfast too. But 2016 is not a perfect year, for everything we need to focus on 2017.

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e can understand the decrease in the tourist number because other countries are not like Irish people. Some react more radically to uncertainty, like Far Eastern, the Chinese market, Japanese market, Korean market.

Russia has come back.

As you may know things are getting better now and it will be much, much, much better in the next year or so.

When it is back then we will get back to normal. I know in 2015 the number of tourist were close to 35m which puts

Turkey number six in the world.

We were the only country with two cities in the top ten in the world, with Antalya and Istanbul, which is fantastic.

We have everything we need in Antalya and Istanbul in terms of infrastructure, in terms of service quality, in terms of weather condition, sea, history.

People who have knowledge about Turkey they are very well aware of this fact. That is why we need just a few months so everything could get back to its normal level and even over.

I

am very interested in developing Dublin in going for a third flight, maybe two days a week.

We are talking about Shannon with the cargo department to make the operations possible to stop on the way back from USA to Turkey, and then continue. Our cargo department all agreed.

Who knows maybe this

winter we can have a stop on the way back from Atlanta, from Europe, from Chicago to Istanbul and then to Shannon and to Istanbul.

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e have a big advantage. If you are flying just to point to point, Dublin to Istanbul and carrying passengers just between these destinations then it can be problematic.

But we have the largest network in the world which is giving us huge advantage. It is like a chess board, getting some destinations, switching destinations, getting the high yield ones, leaving the low yield ones.

In that way it is possible to make the or to bring the margin a little bit up which can make Irish operations profitable.

That is why we are here, to make choices, to set the strategy, to pick the high yields and swap the low yield ones.

14/10/2016 08:51

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 34

GLOBAL VILLAGE

Inside the Travel Business

ONEWORLD expanded their Train-

ing Academy, designed to equip agents to sell oneworld fares, available at travelagent.oneworld.com with more details on batraveltrade. com. For each Oneworld Training Academy module completed before October 31, agents will receive an entry to win one of 10 shopping vouchers worth £50/€50 each.

CWT Carlson Wagonlit Travel 2017 Energy, Resources and Marine Forecast said 2017 will be a volatile year for travel in the energy, resources and marine sector, driven by the combination of only slight growth in oil prices, minimal growth in both mature and emerging economies, and increases in alternative and renewable energy resources.

JAPAN RAIL Eamon Flanagan’s

Premair is promoting 7, 14 and 21-day Japan Rail Passes available in ordinary and green first class for travel throughout Japan. japanrail@ premair.ie Elena Negri of Japan Airlines called by to Premai on a recent sales mission.

SKILLS COURSE A one evening a week course for 12 weeks, the Travel Agency Service Skills course will be hosted by Corrib Travel in association with the Portobello Institute, designed for people who want to be a travel agent or pursue a career in the travel industry. The course will run from 6.30-9.30 one evening a week, from Nov 15 to Jan 31, with one Saturday workshop. €795 per student.

VISIT FLORIDA launched an e-learning programme to inform UK and Irish travel agents on Florida. The test is divided into five modules on Geography and Florida Overview, Attractions, Sports and Activities, Beaches, Multi-centre and cruise CYBER FRAUD returned to the

travel agenda this month as two agents were hit. The ITAA is advising members to be aware have u system checked out and make sure their insurance policy covers it. Fraudulent emails are programmed to bring down a system and require a ransom.

TIGS Gillian Lowry and Gordon Penney

were the prize winners at TIGS captain’s day outing to Killeen Castle, the Jack Nicklaus designed course that was venue for the Solheim Cup in 2011, hosted by Tanya Airey and sponsored by Travelport.

APG Paul Weir of APG Ireland has won

airline contracts with Royal Air Maroc, Flynas from Saudi Arabia and China’s Xiamen Airlines.

SUNWAY hosted 20 agents to launch their 2016-7 Morocco programme.

TRAVEL AGENTS can earn

commission with a new app from Hotelbeds.

TRAVELPORT is to create a new digital wing, Travelport Digital, as part of its strategic focus on the fast-growing digital economy and have appointed Fiona Shanley a Chief Customer and Marketing Officer SAD NEWS

Paul Phillips died this month. For 20 years he served as floor manager at Holiday World in Dublin, Belfast and Cork.

Innstant has added 30,000 serviced apartments to their portfolio

Disrupters dilemma Darryl Ismail on the challenges facing our industry

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here is no doubt that innovation in the travel industry is moving at a pace that can at times seem difficult to digest let alone navigate. The recent Skift Global Forum was further testament to just how disruptive our industry is becoming. There was talk of a ‘revolutionary shift’ into how consumers book.

One of the GDS companies latest intelligence paper on Defining the future of travel through intelligence - further highlights how new sources of data and information are challenging travel brands to innovate in terms of how travellers are serviced and how disruption is managed.

But what does this mean for the Irish Travel Industry and how can we adapt to facilitate this change?

First and foremost, at Innstant we believe that innovation is no longer a choice, it is a necessity - our agents and customers expect us to continuously provide value at every touchpoint.

Our collaborative approach to innovation has been instrumental to our continued success. Ongoing engagement with our agent partners has offered invaluable insights - we understand that a customer who feels valued and listened to will openly share their pain points and help to identify areas for opportunity. This

has lead to some of our most exciting innovations.

A key focus of our innovation strategy is to develop technologies that enhance the booking experience for our travel agent partners. Our latest innovation, the Smart Agent ‘friendly’ robot periodically scans reservations to identify price drops or those eligible for an upgrade. Once a price drop or an upgrade is found, Smart agent will alert the booking agent. The agent can decide how much of the saving they keep and how much they pass to the customer.

The development of the Innstant Dynamic Dashboard was a direct result of feedback from agents who were looking for an intuitive interface to easily check reservation status, manage their loyalty points and discover the latest industry insights.

Strategic partnerships with leading industry providers have also added significant value to our agent offering. Based on feedback collected from our quarterly agent engagement survey, we identified the opportunity to launch a product to help agents minimise the headache of cancelled travel plans by a client and this associated cancellation fees.

This resulted in our global partnership with affinity protection company

Booking Protect, to enable Innstant Travel Agent Partners to offer Cancellation Protection to their clients.

It also has a number of additional benefits for our agents including improved booking conversions, reduced customer service issues and increased client satisfaction.

In addition to collaboration, a core focus of our innovation strategy is product development. We continuously strive to deliver unique and quality product to agents that will support increased sales. In May 2016, we welcomed the addition of 30,000 serviced apartments to the Innstant Global portfolio in key locations in the USA, Britain, Europe, Middle East and Australia. This increased offering was in response to the growing trend towards “home from home” style accommodation for families, couples and business travellers almost 30,000 serviced apartments to its global portfolio in key locations in the USA, UK, Europe, Middle East and Australia.

Finally, we recognise that innovative thinking does not exist without innovative talent. That is why our team of technology and travel industry experts continues to grow and enables us to deliver unique products and technology solutions in line with the market opportunities.

Darryl Ismail is CEO of Innstant Travel

AWTE EXPLORES IRISH OPTIONS

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he Association of Women Travel Executives are organizing a networking event for women travel, tourism and hospitality executives on October 26.

They say this is not a launch event, just for infor-

mation gathering and some good networking, and it will be held at Dublin Airport Platinum Services.

AWTE says Ireland is one of the countries with the highest percentage of female travel executives we feel that Ireland is an

ideal place for the Association of Women Travel Executives.

The event at the Dublin Airport’s Platinum Services will consist of a presentation from Debbee Dale followed by an open forum to discuss how the AWTE

can best support female travel executives based in Ireland with Networking, development and growing business to business opportunities within the membership.

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 35

Inside the Travel Business

GLOBAL VILLAGE TURKISH As a part of the Turkish Airlines Partnership with the European Champions Rugby Cup they are offering 2 Tickets as a prize to agents issue Turkish airlines tickets before October 23. To join the competitions send name, agency name and ticket numbers to Alper Sean Kanburoglu by email SUNWAY is taking part in Spinal In-

juries Ireland’s Colour Me Friday campaign where everyone arrived to work decked out in 40 shades green and donated €4 each.

Jo Piani and Joe Marinella of Visit Savannah were in Dublin to meet travel partners.

Uniworld become the first rivercruise company to host the ITAA conference

Sign of the Rhine

Irish Travel Agents Association conference sells out

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he 2016 ITAA conference on board Uniworld An- Caribbean Quantum of the Seas in 2014. toinette has sold out.

The two night trip will start in Amsterdam, where the The river cruise ship can hold 154 passengers agents will board the luxurious ship and stay docked in who will be travelling to Amthis magical city throughout the day sterdam to board the ship and ITAA CONFERENCE VENUES embark on a river cruise. and night.

2008 MSC Poesia The conference takes place 1998 Killarney On the morning of 2009 Portlaoise on November 26-28 2016, 1999 Algarve the 27th the agents 2010 Malaga the week after the CLIA river 2000 Tralee will set sail toward 2011 Seville the German City of cruise conference in Amster- 2001 Galway 2012 Istanbul Cologne. The ITAA dam. This is the third time that 2002 Newcastle 2013 Granada an ITAA conference has been 2003 Killarney conference will take 2014 Quantum of the Seas place on Sunday held afloat, previous conferen- 2004 Citywest 2015 Jerez November 27th. ces took place on MSC Poesia 2005 Citywest 2006 Santry 2016 Uniworld Antoinette in 2008 and on board Royal

IT’S OFFICIAL: RYANAIR IS NOW A TRAVEL AGENT

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hen Kenny J a c o b s donned a school cap and satchel to launch its new Ryanair School Travel website, he was confirming Ryanair’s move to official travel agent status for the first time.

The scheme is the first to be bonded under the

Commission of Aviation regulation, under license 0766 issued on May 25..

Ryanair say the website will allow group bookings which will make it cheaper and simpler for schools and teachers to book low fare school trips via Ryanair.com.

The launch was billed

T

MAP Travel are operating flights to Tel Aviv for the Christian Solidarity Pilgrimage, led by Archbishop Eamon Martin.

Travel Shop Clarehall was the winner of the Sunway competition for a Royal Caribbean, 7 Nights Greek Isles Cruise on Vision of the Seas to travel on November 5 for 2 people including flights and transfers.

as part of Year 3 of Ryanair’s “Always Getting Better” programme.

The website offers flexibility with names and the same price for each passenger.

It will have a dedicated team to service the website.

grouping held its first conference at the Keadeen hotel in 2005.

The first day of the twoday event targets travel agency owners, managers and preferred suppliers with presentations on VoIP technology, CRM systems, training, social media marketing and behavioral economics.

HARTFORD Catherine Smith Commissioner Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development hosted travel trade in Dublin with Aer Lingus, Dublin airport and Tourism Ireland. Attendees included John Devereux, Mary McKenna, John Cassidy, Tony Collins and Colman Burke, US council. Commissioner Smith was accompanied by Sharon Traficante, Director of Hartford Airport and Susan Henrique of Connecticut Convention and Sports Bureau.

SUNWAYAlison Larkin from Falcon

ABTA which has 75 member agencies in the north, chose Azores as the venue for its next convention.

ITAA Spain, Portugal and the US are the Kenny launches school site

TRAVEL CENTRES THEMES ART

ravel Centres annual conference takes place November 11-12 in Mullingar at the Mullingar Park hotel, which played host to the Irish Rugby Team earlier this year.

It is the consortium’s 12th conference and has grown both in size and stature since the agency

CSO statistics this month show Irish outbound travel up 4.9pc to 5,030k in the first eight months of the year, following increases of 7.7pc in 2015 and 1.1pc in 2014. Should current growth rates continue Irish people will make 7.3m international trips in 2016, still down on the 2008 peak of 7.9m. But do the figures add up? The CSO figures for Spain are running higher than Spanish tourist board figures. Spain will be celebrating its millionth visitor for Ireland on October 6.

Themes for previous year’s conferences include opera (2006, 2007), stadium bands as entertainment (2013, 2014), fancy dress (2015). Art is the theme for 2017 with limited edition prints of original art as part of their workshop spot prizes and gala dinner raffle.

Continuing their first

fancy dress dinner in 2015 when they celebrated the 80’s with their ‘Back to the Future’ theme, complete with a DeLorean movie prop, attendees at this year’s Saturday night gig will be expected to turn up in costumes ranging from GAA players, Father Ted to Irish dancers and Irish rock group personnel.

top three destinations for Winter 2016 according to the ITAA quarterly members survey.

Agents said 72pc had an increase in turnover for the third quarter of 2016 (July – September), a fifth increased their turnover by more than 20pc, 59pc said offline business increased and 48pc said that over 60pc of business is based on repeat customers. Cruise Holidays were voted the top travel trend for 2017.

TRAVEL CENTRES organised

a workshop where 22 members attended a session on selling skills with Dave Pope.

TOPFLIGHT hosted a Lean Best Practice Visit for Enterprise Ireland client companies.

SKAL Daniela Otero is the new CEO of Skål International.

NOVEMBER 2017 PAGE 36

WINDOW SEAT Last month in numbers 117m Number of passengers who will fly

Ryanair in 2016 if current trends continue.

54.8m Number of passengers who flew Ryanair in the five months May-September.

5,500 Number of agents who have signed up to Royal Caribbean’s Club Royal by second birthday 161 Number of passengers from other European countries on the Aer Lingus inaugural to Newark.

155 Number of countries Irish passport holders can visit without a visa.

12 Number of restaurants in Ireland to win Michelin stars for 2017, a record

4 Number of daily flights on KLM’s new Embraer service to Amsterdam from March next

S

POSTCARDS FROM 83 LANDS

olomon builds a picture of the world we have inhabited in the last 25 years, seen from its four corners.

This is a sad book, it is a reminder of how travel writing used to be, when editorial budgets were generous, long form journalism was still being treated seriously, and Solomon was given the time and space the time and space to live with his subjects as long as he is able – searching out the dissident artists of China and the Inuit of Greenland, (he empathises here, 80pc of whom suffer from depression, a plague that has stalked Solomon through his writing life).

Far and Away: How Travel Can Change the World by Andrew Solomon

The goal is to bring no baggage with him, a mountainous task even for a winner of the National Book Award and the National Books Critics’ Circle Award and one of the most original thinkers of our time His collection of traveller’s tales, takes in seven continents and 83 countries, hot and cold, Russia, Afghanistan, Brazil, Myanmar, Antarctica, Libya. Solomon, an art historian and psychologist by training, follows the tradition of the curious American-abroad, embracing and emphatising and occa-

sionally bringing something extra to the party.

That happened literally as well on more than one occasion, as in his writing from Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11 where he describes Kabul residents hearing their live music session in recent memory. He has to teach his translator the word for hangover. The endnote is crushingly sad. “You were there in those beautiful days,” his translator recalls. “All of that is gone now.”Far and Away is published by Chatto (£25).

Busman’s holiday: Tom Maher Every month we ask a leading travel professional to write about their personal holiday experience.

This month: Tom Maher the veteran cruise agent & GSA

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hen asked to write on my favourite holiday experience I started to reflect on the numerous opportunities I have been afforded over the years to see some wondrous places.

Age 8: An Irish dancer going by boat and rail from Dublin through England, Belgium into the hinterland of Germany and staying in a castle called Wewelsburg representing Ireland at a folk dance and song festival. Little did I know or care, at the time, that I was dancing daily in a castle with a dark history relating to the second world war and is now a museum, hostel, with bar and restaurant.

Age 16: Travelling to the USA and Canada on a concert tour which would

K

Fjord cruising as it used to be: the original Midnasol sight to behold.

Regularly: To pay one euro to take the bus from Nice to Ville de Franc, walk through the winding narrow streets down to the waterside. Choose my favourite restaurant with tables by the shoreline, order a large glass of very good red wine with my meal and sit for a couple of hours watching the world go by and perhaps the local tenders bringing cruise passengers to shore. If they are English they are moved from the tables by the sea because they are only

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

LM\s new service to commence in October to Amsterdam was anticipated

by Travel Extra and many others to serve their network rather than complete with Aer Lingus and Ryanair in the point-to-point business between the cities.

This has not been the case. The smaller aircraft, operating four times a day are not just proving easier to fill but easier to fill with crucial business accounts.

Page 036 window seat.indd 1

result in 16,740 miles by coach while performing 81 concerts in 89 days. The show was called “Feis Eireann” featuring Frank Patterson (unknown at the time) and his new wife Eily O’Grady. I stood at the front of the coach for the whole trip to see and witness everything and getting paid for it all. My best mates back in the Liberties of Dublin were so jealous.

Many years later: Standing on the F’ward deck of the Hurtigruten ship Midnasol (The original) at 2 a.m. watching the Northern Lights fill the sky and entertain me for hours and marvelling at the seamanship whilst going at full speed through the ice covered flords from Bergen to Tromso. Magic !

3 years ago: Cruising to Madeira aboard the good ship Marco Polo to be in place for the New Year Fireworks celebrations anchored off Funchal and seeing the town and hillside light up. A

It has caused a rethink on the services that Dublin offers. After years when airlines retreated from full service, interlining became the exception rather than the rule, and self connecting seemed like an unstoppable force, it appears that connectivity is back in fashion. Trust KLM to show us how it should be done.

The Embraer business club and premium economy to Schiphol and while there are huge advantages for

network connectors, including the ability to check-in online which is not available with the Aer Lingus interline, they are also filling the business class and premium economy seats for key business traffic between the cities.

The figures add up. Last year 611,000 flew from Dublin to Amsterdam, 116,000 Irish visited the Netherlands and 160,000 Dutch tourists came the other direction.

This one has wings.

ordering tea, coffee or beer. Bliss…… sunshine, wine , good food and the sea.

But for me I love coming home to my native land and seeing the beaches of Donegal, the magnificent scenery of Kerry and West Cork or maybe sitting on the Hill of Howth, at night, looking across my Dublin Bay. Mother Earth shows great wonders but…Home is Home !

Who Am I ?

IN YOUR NEXT TRAVEL EXTRA: WEDDINGS & HONEYMOONS Available to Travel Agents or online November 21 2017

UNUSUALWEDDINGS Honeymoon choices SUMMER TRENDS FOR 2017

13/10/2016 09:35

NOVEMBER 2017 PAGE 37

Out and about with the Travel Trade

MEETING PLACE

Tom Donohue of Stran d Travel and Cathy kel and Janice Gault Paul Kelly of Cassidy Travel and Andrea Power of Keller Trave;l le rvil ler Ca ith Jud , llan at the 20 , 16 Amadeus golf day Anne McMu blin Du in urismNI event of Falcon First Choice Tallaght at the 2016 Amaof Visit Belfast at the To deus golf day

Ita Hendrick of VCentre Amadeus and Jackie Travel, Volker Lorenz of He the Virgin Atlantic and rssens of Travelmood at Bedsonline event

n Solutions, John Spolle Aaron Fletcher of Travel en McKenna of Gohop/ ph of Cassidy Travel, Ste Bolt of Selective travel Atlas Travel and Aaron Cup at Carton WTC during the United

Tony Collins of Topfligh t, Travel, Cliff Garland of Tom Donohoe of Strand QA travel and Kieran O’Doherty of Premier Travel during the United Cup at Carton

n e INsurances, Shanno Ciaran Mulligan of Blu aron Jordan of The Sh O’Dowd of Etihad and the Sunway 50th Travel Corporation at

Sarah-Jane Wynne, Ste Quinn at the Virgin Atl phen Byrne and Anna antic and Bedsonline event

Page 037 pics November 2016.indd 1

Jenny Fletcher of Travel Solutions and Michaela Banks of Royal Carribean at the 2016 Amadeus golf day

James Cancannon of GoHop, Vipin Choudary of Atlas Amex, Glen Melia of Atlas Amex Lorna Wood of Atlas Amex, Clare Bergin of GoHop at the Virgin Atlantic and Bedsonline event

air & Jonathan & Isobel Ad Greg Fox of Mahlatini lf day go at the 2016 Amadeus

Tony Colins of Topfligh t Clifford of O’Hanrahan with Mark and Josephine Travel at the 2016 Am adeus golf day

of dy Travel, Glenn Weir s John Cassidy of Cassi ort Sp Aaron Bolt of Selective Travel/WTC and atrick c ssi Cla t McGuigan of McGuigan, Classic 4 Travel at the 2016 Amadeus Premier Travel, Pa Skelly of Navan Travel during rtin Ma d an vel Tra & golf day n the United Cup at Carto

Carol Smith of Synneo and Paul Cullen of Lifegoals at the 2016 Amadeus golf day

Mark Marais of Chaka Travel and John Cassidy of Cassidy Travel at the 2016 Amadeus golf day

James Kenny of Sunw ay, Travel and Murat Balan Edel Doherty of QA di at the 2016 Amadeu golf day s

, ern Ireland Travel News Jonathan Adair of North blin Airport, Philip Airey Du Cormac O’Connell of g Jackson of United durin of Sunway and Barry n rto the United Cup at Ca

13/10/2016 09:36

NOVEMBER 2017 PAGE 38

MEETING PLACE

, Eimer Hannon and Paul Cullen of Lifegoals Travel at the 2016 on nn Eileen Doherty of Ha Amadeus golf day

Sarah-Jane Wynne, Ste Quinn at the Virgin Atl phen Byrne and Anna antic and Bedsonline event

, Jackie Herssens of John Bergin of Skytours lly at the 2016 AmaKe Travelmood and Gwen deus golf day

Cork SKAL Networkin g Evening on Thursda y 15th September in the Cla Quay: Francis Brennan rion Hotel, Lapps Councillor, Paul Sexto SKAL International n-TravelAgent.ie, Mary Browne, MBA & Irelan d’s Choice.

erican Holidays, Barry John Devereux of Am Andrew Osborough of rt, Barker of Dublin Airpo of Terra travel during the y WTC and Terry Murph n rto Ca at p Cu ited Un

Jennnifer Callister of Ro Raymond of, World Tra yal Caribbean, Keith vel Centre and Lee Co of Cassidy Travel Liffey x, Valley at the 2016 Am deus golf day a-

Page 037 pics November 2016.indd 2

Out and about with the Travel Trade

Lisa Hammond and Beatrice Cosgrove of Etihad Loraine Cunningham of Loraine Cunn ingham Travel and Lorraine Qu at the 2016 Amadeus golf day inn of Celebrity Cruise s at the 2016 Amadeus go lf day

Joe Tully of Tully Travel Carlow and Martin Loraine Dempsey of Dempsey Travel in Navan with Chris of Amadeus presenting Armstrong and Johnny McAloney of Belfast Inter- Siobhan Boskett raine Cunningham Travel at Cunningham of Lo national Airport during the United Cup at Carton lf day the 2016 Amadeus go

Stephanie Appleby of FCm Travel and John Sean McCarthy and Greyce Inacio: both Club Apple Travel at the Virgin Atlantic and Bedsonline event go by of Flight Centre at the 2016 Amadeus lf day

Tanya Airey of Sunway, Mervyn McNeely of Travel Solutions, Niamh Byrne of Ask Susan and Peter McMinn of Travel Solutions during the United Cup at Carton

Pat Reede of United and Eamon Flanagan of Premair at the Sunway 50th

Mert Mustafa of Peninsula Tours, Jim Furlong of Sunway and Fahrettin Cicek of Peninsula Tours in Kusadasi at the Sunway 50th celebration in Mulberry Garden, Donnybrook, September 28 2016

on andon Travel, Pat Daws Michael Doorley of Sh t lfas Be of aith lbr Ga rt CEO of the ITAA, Robe rence Murphy of Terra Te International ICTS and Cup at Carton Travel during the United

Deirdre Sweeny of Su nw Celebrity Cruises and ay, Lorraine Quinn of Rebecca Kelly of MSC at the Sunway 50th

Volker Lorenz of AmaPhilip Airey of Sunway, of Emirates and Mary as om Th deus and Anita 50th Denton at the Sunway

13/10/2016 09:36

NOVEMBER 2016 PAGE 39

MEETING PLACE

ita Kelly at the Sunway Carolyn Davis and An ard Celebrity Silhouette 50th celebrations on bo in Dublin

Vivienne Gleeson, Cla re of the TourismNI Dublin McCoy and Aoife Fee office at the TourismNI event in Dublin,

ay ne Lennox at the Sunw Tanya Airey and Yvon tte ue ho Sil rity ard Celeb 50th celebrations on bo in Dublin

Isabel Harrison of Shan non Airport, Mary Dento of Sunway and Declan Power of Shannon Air n port at the Sunway 50th

t m DoSomethingDifferen Graham Hennessy fro urTo ts sse chu ssa Pantricia Purdue from Ma andgio cap th ism at the Sunway 50

At the Travel Corporat ion sponsroed TIGS ou ting to Luttrelstown,Miriam Skelly, Marian Benton, Yvonne Lennox Tanya Airey

Page 037 pics November 2016.indd 3

Out and about with the Travel Trade

Yvonne Muldoon of Aer Lingus, Holly Best of Vir- Anne Dynan and Clodagh Whelan of Fa lcon gin Atlantic and Mary McKenna of Tour America Travel Maho n Point at the Sunway at the Tour America 50th 50th

Anita Kelly from Sunway and Katerina Bomshtein from Gran Canaria, at the Sunway 50th

at the Sunway 50th Martin and MIriam Skelly Celebrity Silhouette in celebrations on board Dublin

Onur Gul of Turkish Airlines, Yann Richard of Club Med and Eileen Penrose of Emirates at the John McGrillen CEO of TourismNI, Simon Hamilton Stormont ministe Sunway 50th r for trade and Fiona Bo Armstrong of Downpa yd tric the TourismNI event in k based hortcross gin at Dublin,

Tryphavana Cross from Las Vegas/New York and ister for trade and Hamilton Stormont min rism NI at the on Sim Anita Kelly from Sunway at the Sunway 50th ir of tou Terence Brannigan cha , blin Du in nt eve NI sm Touri

Arijana Bogdanovic of the Travel Broker and Nicola York of Justsplit on board Oceania cruise line Marina in Dublin,

Jennifer Byrne of John Galligan and Jonathan Howitt Topflight of Oceania cruise line Marina in Dublin

Karen Morgan Murphy of Travel Counsellors and Dee Evans of Cru ise Co on board Ocea nia cruise line Marina in Du blin,

ith and Sharon Jordan Tanya Airey, David Sm by ttrellstown sponsored at the TIGS event in Lu The Travel Corporation

13/10/2016 09:36

RDS Hall 3, Ballsbridge

Presented by

WEDNESDAY 22nd MARCH 2017 EXHIBITOR PROFILE

VISITOR PROFILE

• Airlines

• International Hotels/Resorts

• Airports

• Insurance

• Attraction Tickets

• Media

• Bed Banks

• National/Regional Tourist Organisations

• Car Rental • Cruise Companies • Ferries • Financial Services including Credit Cards

• Technology and Communications Companies • Theme & Leisure Parks • Ticketing Agents

• Golf Resorts and Related Services

• Trade Associations

• Ground Handling

• Tour Operators

An initiative of the ITAA supported by Travel Centres, Worldchoice and Travelsavers

Travel Agent Proprietors, Managers and Frontline Travel Professionals.

PROMOTION OF THE SHOW A comprehensive promotional programme will ensure a high turnout of travel agent proprietors, managers and frontline travel professionals.

FREE EXHIBITOR & VISITOR CAR PARKING

• Travel Agents

• Health Resorts & Spas

BOOK YOUR STAND NOW! VENUE

2017 DATE AND TIME

ORGANISERS

CONTACTS

RDS Hall 3 Anglesea Road Ballsbridge Dublin DO4 AK83 Ireland t. +353 (0)1 668 0866 w. www.rds.ie

Wednesday 22nd March 2017 2.00pm – 7.00pm

The Irish Travel Industry Trade Show is organised on behalf of The Irish Travel Agents Association by Business Exhibitions Limited 59 Rathfarnham Road Terenure Dublin D6W AK70

Maureen Ledwith - Sales Director t: +353 (0)1 291 3700 e: maureen@bizex.ie Paulette Moran - Sales Manager t: +353 (0)1 291 3702 e: paulette@bizex.ie

www.irishtravelindustrytradeshow.com 107838 TRADE SHOW 2017_V3.indd 1

9/1/16 4:15 PM