Travel Extra Ski & Asia Edition Oct 2014 by Travel Extra

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R U O

Y SKI PRICES AND OPTIONS 2015 WHICH RESORT SUITS YOUR CLIENT? TOP SIX WHERE IS THE BEST

e d a r T

Quantum of the Seas

Ryanair chases business travellers

CS Lewis trail

ER P PA

IRELAND'S PREMIER SOURCE OF TRAVEL INFORMATION Free

OCTOBER 2014

VOLUME 16 NUMBER 8

PEAKa boo Your pass to the 2015 ski market

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Page 003 News 10/09/2014 17:54 Page 1

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More tourist taxes Tunisia, Italy, Morocco and Dubai raise tourist taxes

unisia is to introduce a €13 tourist tax from October 1, continuing a trend towards increased tourism taxes. It was initially planned that the new tourist tax will be introduced in Tunisia on October 1, 2013. However it was cancelled with just days to go. Morocco introduced a €9 departure tax from April 1 2014. The country's government wants to use the money raised, estimated to be around €90m a year, to promote it as a tourist destination. Hotel room taxes in Rome increased since September as follows: €7 on five star hotels, €6 on four star hotels, €4 on three star hotels, €3 on two star hotels. The taxes are charged up to 10 nights. France cancelled a planned fivefold increase in hotel tax. The measure would have seen the hotel tax go from a current €1.50 to €8 in the regions and €10 in Paris. The government in Dubai introduced a tourism tax at the end of

Hammamet: Tunisia is the latest country to introduce a tourist tax March to help pay for Expo 2020, The tax differs among different lodging categories from 7 dirhams (about €1.40) to 20 dirhams (v4) per person per night. The tax, entitled "Tourist Dirham", will go towards paying for Expo 2020

which Dubai will host between October 2020 and April 2021. Funds will go towards infrastructural projects, or tourism promotion, as Dubai expects to host up to 25m tourists during that time.

CLIFFS OF MOHER TO HIT 1M MARK

reland will have a third 1m+ visitor attraction in 2014 if current trends continue. Katherine Webster says that Cliffs of Moher visitor numbers are 9pc ahead of the same period in 2013 as of the end of July, putting the site shortlisted for Natural Wonders of the World on course for 1,046,500 visitors this year.

Katherine says: “Visitors are strong from North America, Europe, especially France and Germany, Australia, China and for the first year in many from the British market. The Wild Atlantic Way has really caught the imagination of visitors and new routes and capacity into Shannon Airport is also adding to the overall impact.”

oments Holiday M Sharing Worth

Big two attractions, the Guinness Storehouse (+9pc) and Dublin Zoo (+3pc) will increase again in 2014 to 1,261,000 and 1,057,000 respectively. Visitors to the Storehouse from North America and England are both up 20pc, France up 2pc, rest of the world up 3pc al Australia is down 7pc and Europe in general down 2pc.

The Titanic centre (+7pc) looks set to pass the 650,000 mark. The Book of Kells (+10pc) will pass 600,000 for the first time. Tayto Park in Ashbourne (+15pc) is on course to hit 500,000 for the first time. Fota (+18pc) will go through the 400,000 barrier and Trinity Science Gallery (+15pc) will surpass 390,000.

NEWS HERTZ and Navigation Solutions launched Hertz NeverLost Companion app among giving travellers the ability to plan trips on their mobile devices, then sync directly with the in-car Hertz NeverLost GPS system ARRIVALS There were two slight changes in the WTO’s top 10 tourist arrivals rankings. With 60.7m international arrivals, Spain re-claimed third place after losing it to China in 2010 (55.7m arrivals in 2013), while Thailand climbed five places to enter tenth in the top 10. France remained in the number one spot with a total of 84.7m overseas visitors in 2013. United States was second with 69.8m arrivals. International receipts in Europe grew 3.8pc to €650bn. Northern Europe posted a 6pc increase in arrivals with Iceland recording the highest relative growth (+20pc). SEAWORLD announced it will double the size of its killer whale enclosures at parks in San Diego, Orlando, Florida and San Antonio. The first new tank will open in 2018. The company claimed the move is not directly related to the controversial Blackfish documentary. MYANMAR confirmed the start of online visa for tourists from September. TRAVEL Corporation’s new look website is now live. The Travel Corporation operates in 60 countries worldwide, has 30 award winning brands and 2m people travel with them on an annual basis? http://thetravelcorporation.com/ The Travel Corporation Ireland sells Insight Vacations, Uniworld Boutique River Cruises, Contiki Holidays for 18-35s and Red Carnation Hotel Collection. Insight Vacations, premium and luxury escorted tours. INISIGHT Vacations are restarting their tours in Egypt this coming January. They will introduce four different itineraries ranging in length from 9 to 12 days in duration. CON TIKI New to Con Tiki’s North American lineup for 2015 is the 55-day Epic Adventure, the ultimate road trip that takes young travellers through 36 states and 2 Canadian provinces.

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THE KNOWLEDGE Travel Extra Advertising & Subscriptions 6 Sandyford Office Park Dublin 18 (+3531) 2913708 Fax (+3531) 2957417 Editorial Office Clownings Straffan Co Kildare Managing Editor: Gerry O’Hare gerry@travelextra.ie Editor: Eoghan Corry eoghan.corry@ travelextra.ie Publisher: Edmund Hourican Sales Director: Maureen Ledwith maureen@bizex.ie Accounts and Advertising: Maria Sinnott maria@bizex.ie Picture Editor: Charlie Collins 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 Ida Milne ida@travelextra.ie Catherine Murphy cathmurph@yahoo.com

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CONTENTS

3-7 News Where to go, what to pay 6 Hotels: News

8 Postcards: News from the trade 13 Ski : News for the season ahead 26-29 Asia: Thailand and beyond 30-27 Flying: Airline and airport news

36 Afloat: A quantum leap 38 Ireland: Writers landscapes 42 Global Village Inside the travel industry 44 Window seat: Our columnists

Guide to selling snow

or less which can make it worth sacrificing other advantages, particularly on a short break. The efficient public transport systems in Norway and Switzerland mean that clients can take control of their own transfers and travel by rail. Don’t forget you have to haul bags in and out of carriages, a factor for families. Short transfers offered in Austria from Salzburg are a bonus.

xpectations of a skiing holiday are high at the best of times. Choosing the right package is down to identifying needs. If you get it right, your clients will book ski with you for winters to come. Get it wrong, and they won’t come back.

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 resort, ski area or accommodation.

VALUE If you are

not tied to dates, travelling with a family, or in a job like teaching, look out for low season dates such as mid January or St Patrick’s week, where you can get really good value and ONLY from the tour operators.

GROUPS If peo-

ple want to travel in a group, and stay in the same hotel, you need to plan and get your booking in early. Remind the customer that only agents and tour operators offer these group deals.

GEAR Skiing needs gear, and gear weighs a lot. Remind clients they need a proper luggage allowance if they are bringing their own, as ski boots can weigh up to 7kg.

BUYING GEAR If it is their first ski holiday, borrow from friends. Clients don’t need to buy skis. With changing technologies every year, it is much better to rent your skis in resort. BUT, if you find a comfortable pair of boots, buy them! Great Outdoors in Dublin have a great boot fitter called

KNOW your piste:

Getting the piste ready Neil. In resort, check out great deals in Livigno, Andorra, and end of season in Austria, especially in the Hervis chain. At home, check out TK Maxx in season, watch for deals in LIDL and ALDI but if you need serious kit head for places like Great Outdoors who know what they are talking about. Tour operator clients can get discounts there on production of their invoice.

MANAGE expectations. Some of the destinations come with well groomed reputations that are outdated or have been endangered by complacency. What is the skiing ability of the family members? Does the resort match their requirements?

WHEN you tell people exactly what is included it removes all the hassle. What is included in the package – flight, hotel, transfer, meals, lift pass, ski hire, childcare? What can be pre-booked from home to save time on arrival?

AREAS The days

when resorts operated their own slice of mountain ended two decades ago with the linking of huge ski areas with cable cars and funiculars, the Four Valleys, Les Trois Vallées, Espace Killy Skiwelt, Ski amadé, Kitzbüheler Alpen, Paradiski, Grandvalira, (there are more). That means you don’t have to stay in the flagship resort to enjoy all the skiing. Look out for cheaper and less crowded options or niche resorts that link into large ski areas.

TRANSFERS

Remember transfers can be long and awkward, even if you reach the resort, which can be a three hour experience, on a slow bus navigating narrow winding mountain roads, the drop off at the hotel can add to the journey and occasionally there can be an unexpected stop when the driver is out of hours. Clients should be prepared for all eventualities. Some resorts have short transfers of an hour

do as much as you can to familiarise yourself (and therefore the client) with the product before they leave. Study piste maps for major resorts all available online, that way you can both start planning their first morning’s skiing before they leave. Attend the training courses offered by tour operators.

EXTRAS Get

them ready for the prices they might encounter, which might do them an injury not unlike the one they might encounter on the slopes. You can pay €100 for four drinks in the nightclub in Verbier. Drink is cheap in Andorra or Livigno, but everything up the mountain is three times what you pay down in the valley. The trip down from Les Arcs to Bourg St Maurice can be worthwhile and enhance the holiday experience.

MEALS Most re-

sorts have a good reputation for cuisine and lively, if expensive, nightlife. The pattern is breakfast in the hotel, lunch up the mountain and dinner back in the town. Half board limits the options of the clients – do they really want to

eat in the same hotel every night? Is lunch for children included? Does the operator have an early tea for kids to give parents a bit of peace?

FAMILY Some re-

sorts offer the non skier lots of facilities; if they have a mixed family, mention the towns that are natural spa towns for those who want the best of both worlds. Find out about childcare. Is it on site? Are staff qualified? What is the staff-to-child ratio? Are staff local or employed by the tour operator? Is there an evening club, babysitting or baby listening service so parents don’t have to turn in at the same time as their kids? How close is the ski school?

NON SKIERS

If there are non-skiers in the party, make sure to tell them to pick a resort which is close to a major city such as Innsbruck, Salzburg of Annecy near Chamonix. Pick a spa resort such as Bad Hofgastein or head for duty free Andorra where you can indulge in shopping, as well as spa in the capital Andorra la Vella.

LESSONS Are

lessons exclusive to the tour operator or organised locally? Are there less expensive options? Most resorts are dominated by one or two large ski schools which may not offer the best value.

MAKE them laugh

with this piece of (useful) advice: Ditch those high heels and leather soles. You land in resort at midnight. You get off the bus, and the legs go from underneath you in the ice.

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HOTELS

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HOTELS.com monthly Hotel Price

Index estimated that prices sold by the OTA increased by 10pc to an average of 101 per night. The widespread coverage accorded the survey lead to the IHF issuing an unusual caution that these prices applied only to the 8pc of rooms sold by booking.com. The IHF themselves estimate that rooms are increasing by 3.5pc.

DOYLE Collection appointed Frits Potgieter as GM of The Kensington Hotel London.

ADARE Tom Kane's Adare Manor was put up for sale, 400 acres on offer for

30m.

PREMIER Inn announced a distribution agreement with Travelport.

MANOR HOUSE Galgorm in

Antrim, Sneem Hotel and Teach de Broc, Ballybunion, both in Kerry, have joined Manor House Hotels.

David Collins and Mark Knowles of Great National Hotels exhibiting at Holiday World.

Buyers market

AGHADOE The spa at the Aghadoe Heights turned ten: celebrating a decade of decadence.

MINOR Hotel Group formed a strategic

partnership with Sun International to own and operate a collection of eight properties in five African countries.

ITC Grand Bharat golf resort and spa will open on October 1.

HRS reported Dublin’s average room rate has increased by 16pc in the last two years, TRAVELODGE came under fire for removing bibles from its hotels.

IHF diploma course in Digital Marketing

commences Tuesday, September 23. The course will run every Tuesday, 6pm-9pm, until December 16.

HEM The 2015 Hoteliers European Mar-

ketplace workshop will take place in Hôtel du Lac, Enghien-les-Bains, Paris, from February 23.

ALOFT Hotel Liverpool on North John Street will open in October.

50 SHADES Plans to open a Fifty

Shades of Grey-inspired bondage hotel in Vilafranca, Spain, have been delayed following objections from the town council.

ORMOND HOTEL An Bord

Pleanála refused Monteco Holdings’ appealed proposal to demolish and rebuild the Ormond Hotel. The hotel, which was built c.1900 and closed in 2005, famously featured in the Sirens episode of Ulysses. The plan was rejected on the grounds that it was likely to “seriously injure” the character of the conservation area. Permission was refused by DCC in February.

PORTLAND has approved measures

to legalise Airbnb. Residents must allow safety inspections to be carried out and apply for a $180 city permit. The peer to peer room rental agency remains illegal in many US cities, most notably New York.

WORLDHOTELS expanded its

partnership with TripAdvisor to allow access to real time rates and availability on TripAdvisor’s new platform TripConnect.

Two management groups chase Ireland’s hotel bargains

he Brehon Capital group is on the cusp of buying Ireland's largest hotel, the 30m 492room Citywest complex in Saggart, Co Dublin. It confirms the trend where two major investors and management companies are in the process of snapping up he encumbered hotels in the wake of the recession. Kevin McGillycuddy, Damien Gaffney and Michael McElligott's founed the Brehon group and came to notice when they successfully developed the Marker in Dublin’s docklands and purchased Powerscourt (formerly the Ritz Carlton) in En-

niskerry, Mount Juliet in Co Kilkenny, Mount Wolseley in Carlow and Killashee in Naas, sold for 13.2m. David Collins' Hotel management group Great National Asset Management now manage 35 hotels out of Ireland. The team includes Frank Corby (ex Raheen Woods) and Denis Kane (ex Druids Glen), added to their growing portfolio when they bought the 230bedroom Breaffy House resort in Castlebar out of receivership, which had been on the market with a guide price of around 3m. The Comer Group acquired the

partially built Kilternan Hotel & Country Club for an estimated 7m. The hotel which cost 171.5m to redevelop comes with anticipated costs of 20m to reopen the resort. Other purchases include: The Westin Hotel on Dublin’s Westmoreland Street was bought by John Malone for 65m. The Shelbourne Hotel on Dublin's St. Stephen's Green was acquired by US property investment group, Kennedy Wilson. Bank of Ireland has sold half the outstanding 206m loan on the hotel to Kennedy Wilson in January.

PENINSULA GETS MIXED REVIEWS

here is no escaping the new hotel star of the summer. The recently refurbished €750m Peninsula Paris dminated the world’s media this month, having wowed the Wall Street Journal and Sydney Morning Herald among others: One reviewer gushed “20,000 pieces of gold leaf have been applied to create gilding that would have dazzled the Sun King himself.” The property is a late 19th century classic French-style building, which opened in 1908 as the Hotel Majesti and became one of Paris’ most famous landmarks French reviews, in media

and on peer review sites, were not as enthusiastic and focussed on poor and rude service. The Peninsula now features the city's most expensive suite. The hotel features: Comfortable beds;

■ Spa tubs in the bathrooms ■ nail varnish dryers in the rooms ■ photos of the room service offerings on the iPad, ■ oscillating Japanese toi-

lets ■ Sublime public areas; ■ Free WiFi; ■ Free chauffeur service in a BMW750i after 7.30pm; ■ Large rooms; ■ A view of the Eiffel Tower from rooftop gourmet restaurant L’Oiseau Blanc. The downside is that the iPads seem to control everything in the rooms and not everyone finds them easy to operate. Rooms start at €750 for a superior room and breakfast. After that, they leap to €1095, cocktails cost around €25.

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NOT JUST THE BEST 3 DAYS OF THEIR HOLIDAY. THE BEST 3 DAYS OF THEIR YEAR.

THEME PARKS HOTELS DINING & ENTERTAINMENT STAY ON-SITE AND WALK TO EVERYTHING

ALL-NEW THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER™ – DIAGON ALLEY™

HARRY POTTER, characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © JKR. (s14) © MARVEL. Hard Rock Hotel ® Hard Rock Cafe International (USA), Inc. Universal elements and all related indicia TM & © 2014 Universal Studios. © 2014 Universal Orlando. All rights reserved. 1404431/LR

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 8

POSTCARDS FROM THE TRAVEL SCENE

dam McKnight of A2B Transfers and Lee Osborne of Bookabed jointly hosted travel agents at the Croke Park Classic American Football match between Penn State and the University of Central Florida. Adam and Lee are pictured with Kevin Williams of Abbey Travel, Bookabed have added 10 new staff in the past 14 months, seven based in Ireland, two in England and in Australia.

icture shows prize winners in a organised by WTC, in conjunction with Delta Air Lines and NYC & Company on a FAM to New York City Janet Cahill of O'Leary Travel, Denise Reid of Roscrea Travel, Kay Cunningham of Corrib Travel, Caitriona Dempsey of Dempsey Travel, Miriam Gannon of Gannon Travel, Teresa Murphy of AF/DL/KL, Ciara Mooney of Freedom Travel, Rachel Dempsey and

eam South won the United Airlines Cup for the third year in a row in the annual contest between the leading golfers of the Irish travel trade. The score was 6-3 when the sides met at Carton this month, team south captained by John Cassidy and vice captained by Jimmy Lennox. United Airlines hosted 36 travel trade

They are currently on the look out for partners in various countries around the world. Plans for this year include a white label version of Bookabed to be made available to agents as well as launches into other markets worldwide. Lee says: “we recently implemented a new website with tripadvisor reviews and cancellation charges. It has been a great year and it is all down to travel agents.”

Audrey Headon of both WTC, and Lisa Cusack of Midlands Travel. Participants stayed in the Wellington Hotel, went sightseeing on Big Bus Tour (choosing the Downtown loop), visited some of New York's MoMA, Top of the Rock Observation Deck, The Empire State Building, Discovery Times Square and a show Blue Man Group. They dined in Lanagan’s, Carmine’s, Hurley’s and Fogo de Chao.

at the annual event, regarded as the most competitive on the travel industry's golf calendar. The course holds a special resonance for Jimmy Lennox who shot a hole in one at a TIGS event on the course in 2008. Picture shows Pat Reede, Massimo Larini, Yvonne Muldoon and Aoife Gregg of United Airlines with the cup.

t was a record month for hostings on board cruise ships. Cruise companies took the opportunity to showcase their product to the travel trade. Among those who hosted the trade were Cruise lines took the opportunity to host the trade. Azamara, Crystal, Holland America Line, MSC, Regent and Thomson. Andy Harmer CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association) director for Ireland and Britain was among the

urkish Airlines were the headline sponsor of the Mela multi cultural festival in Belfast Botanic Gardens. A new Belfast-Istanbul service is expected to be launched in two years’ time. Turkish Airlines are tipped to begin operating a three-four rotations weekly service from Belfast International to Istanbul Ataturk in 2016. Continuing a remarkable winning

sporting story worthy of a great sports sponsor emerged at an Etihad event last month. VP Guest Services of Etihad, Aubrey Tiedt niece of Fred Tiedt and Karen Maloney, niece of Sean Wright, square up to each other in the Etihad Lounge in Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport to commemorate the friendship and rivalry of two great Dublin sporting families, now brought together in one airline.

hosts. Picture shows a tour of the Thomson Spirit being conducted by Samantha Hale during its call to Dublin.Samantha Hale highlighted the £199 drinks package, commissionable for agents, which would cost £219 when bought on board. There is a 2pc extra charge for use of credit cards, debit cards are free but Maestro is being phased out.

streak, the fast growing Turkish Airlines won the best airline in Europe for the 4th successive year in the 2014 Skytrax Customer Survey Awards. Picture shows Onur Gul Turkish Airlines Marketing executive, Nicola Mallon Lord Mayor of Belfast, Mukesh Sharma MD of Selective-Thriftway and Ugur Tok Project Manager of TurkishIrish Association in the north at the Belfast Mela festival.

Their uncles were champion boxers at welterweight and light welterweight in the 1950s and fought a famous contest at the National Stadium in January 1955 which Tiedt narrowly won on points. Fred Tiedt went on to win silver for Ireland at the Melbourne Olympics (fistic folklore maintains he was robbed) while Wright boxed several times for Ireland at light-welter. The message is: don’t mess with Etihad.

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POSTCARDS FROM THE TRAVEL SCENE

Cathy’s Column

he handover of the reins at Emirates from Margaret Shannon to Enda Corneille as Ireland country manager (pictured above) coincided with the introduction of double daily services to Dubai. The double daily Dublin-Dubai flights means Emirates are using a three class 8-42-310 B777-300ER on both daily flights (a B777-200LR had been originally proposed for the second

flight). The new flight EK0164 departs Dublin at 22.20, arriving in Dubai at 08.50. The return EK0163 departs Dubai at 16.00, landing in Dublin at 20.50. Emirates second flight opens connections to 146 destinations worldwide. Emirates hosted the travel trade in Dublin to mark the new schedule. They say forward bookings on flights are very strong.

Cathy Burke, General Manager at Travel Counsellors

A whirlwind summer! Well autumn has crept up fast after what has been a whirlwind summer for us all at Travel Counsellors! We started the season with a bang as we celebrated our ongoing success with our Travel Counsellors, head office staff and a host of suppliers at our Conference in May. The event was full of celebration, friendship, connection and sharing of future plans. So much so we can’t wait until the next one and have already set our dates for 2015! Going into June we saw really strong summer sales which was really positive compared to industry reports of a flat trend. We’ve introduced some amazing new technology that is making life even easier for our Travel Counsellors to convert bookings, but not only that, their personal salaries are increasing too.

ebecca Kelly, Neal Baldwin, Rose Darby and Sabine Ficek of MSC cruises held an appreciation night for 70 agents in The Residence, Dublin, to thank them for their support in a period of rapid expansion in the Irish market. “Our fly cruise programme sold out in six weeks. We are going to treble our allocation for 2015,” says Rebecca Kelly who goes on maternity leave on Oct 10.

MSC plans to grow further in Ireland with the order of new mega ships and their new three-package Bella-Fantastica-Aurea offering and “Serving You” initiative for travel agents. They will also be stretching vessels as part of MSC Cruises’ ‘renaissance’ project taking place at the Fincantieri shipyard in Palermo, Sicily. MSC Armonia, is the first Lirica-class vessel to undergo the stretching process.

In July we celebrated hitting the big 60, as in the number of Travel Counsellors we have operating in the Republic of Ireland! We have seen lots of new agents join over the summer, many of whom have been referred to us by existing TC’s, which is great as there really is no better recommendation than personal, first-hand experience. This is something we find on a daily basis where customers refer their Travel Counsellors to their friends and family, and also now extends to our Travel Counsellors doing the same! As the sun shone in August we had a record number of our Travel Counsellors and their families attend the Irish Travel Trade Fun Day in Wanderers, Dublin. Everyone had a ball taking part in the array of activities and games throughout the day, with Travel Counsellors sponsoring the event too. We are very family orientated at Travel Counsellors and believe the support we offer should extend to our agents’ families, who we also count as part of the company, so events like this are great for everyone to come together and have fun. And as if that all wasn’t enough we were really proud of our Irish contribution to Travel Counsellors winning the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, the UK’s highest accolade for business success, in recognition of the company’s continued growth and overseas expansion. We received the award for International Trade due to the success of Travel Counsellors expansion in Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Dubai and most recently we’ve expanded into Belgium. The Award was announced on 21st April, The Queen’s Birthday and was presented recently to our Chairman David Speakman at a celebration in our Bolton Office. All of our Travel Counsellors around the globe were also fortunate enough to be able to share in the presentation by watching it live on our internal company TV show – TCTV.

ravelport were the sponsors as the Travel Industry Golf Society sent 64 golfers into the field for the captain’s prize at Bray Golf Club. It has been a big year for Travelport who became the first GDS to offer Ryanair as the low cost airline rejoined the traditional agent database and they increased their share in enett. TIG captain Volker Lorenz of Amadeus hosted the event which had an

impressive array of prizes and a generous draw for staff at Bray Gofl club. The competition winners were John Spollen and Audrey Headon. TIGS is back in growth mode after years of decline. If you are interested in joining TIGS check out their website www.tigs.ie for more information. Picture shows the team from event sponsors Travelport: Robbie Smart, Joanne Madden and Tara Hynes.

So into September! We are now busy planning an array of events and activities over the coming months to support our agents. This includes on the road training, exclusive Travel Counsellor’s Fam trips to Sri Lanka & Argentina and not forgetting the event of the year - our Global 20th Anniversary Conference in Manchester in mid-November. No doubt it will be Christmas before we know it!

Email: cathy.burke@travelcounsellors.com Twitter: @CathyBurke1 or @TC_Ireland Facebook: Ireland Careers @ Travel Counsellors Connect with me on LinkedIn

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 10

DESTINATION HIKING BOOTS

iking and cycling are becoming major players for the Irish holiday industry, as more and more of us quit the fly-and-flop choice for a more active break, either at home or abroad. We’re becoming more health-conscious, and for some, the gym option does not cut it. We like the open air, the freedom and companionship of the hills and the roadways. Cycling clubs whizz by outside our house in rural Kildare all weekend, while up on the mountains of Dublin and Wicklow you never know who you will bump into on a hike. Walking festivals are the trend du jour this summer, and a quick perusal of Google will also find a list of weekend charity cycles. Long a fan of cycling, I’m not so fond of Shank’s mare. I’m slow, and wheeze when faced with a gradient. But not being one to give in, this summer I decided to overcome my reluctance to hike, and sought the advice of a friend who is an experienced Alpine mountaineer and habitual hillwalker about combining a walking holiday with a trip to the continent. “You should start at somewhere like La Chaise Dieu in the Haut Loire, it’s a good introduction to more serious walking in the Alps. Less challenging but acclimatizing as it is both warm and at about the altitude of the higher Irish peaks.” So, en route, I find myself waiting at Terminal Two in Dublin Airport for an Aer Lingus flight to Perpignan, on the southern Mediterranean coast of France. Looking over my fellow passengers, the scale of the Irish newfound love affair with hiking is self-evident, as walking shoes and trousers abound, and many also sport the telltale canvas hats hanging on a string around their neck.

They are mainly heading to the nearby Pyrenees, but for me, it is a spectacular drive up country and uphill through motorways that were a major engineering and blasting feat, to the pretty hilltop town of La Chaise Dieu in the Auvergne. It’s not God’s Chair, but God’s House, from the Latin casa dei. The name comes from the locating of a Benedictine abbey here in 1043. The abbey became a centre of power for the Benedictines, and what is now a village that is sleepy apart from the walking fraternity, was home to Pope Clement VI in the 14th century. Today the Benedictines have gone, and the beautiful old abbey church is run as a parish church, a hub in the quiet of the village. The church is dominated by a casket of Pope Clement, a testimony to the power the abbey once held within the Catholic church. But the most spectacular thing in it is an enormous and exquisite organ which becomes the focal point of the celebrated annual La Chaise Dieu festival of sacred and classical music, which is now in its 49th year. http://www.chaisedieu.com/en. Forty festival concerts bring in about 25,000 visitors to the town in the month of August. Sitting in the few street cafes, you get to enjoy free and rather haunting concerts as the musicians practice hidden from view. La Chaise outside festival time, is sleepy, but nevertheless in quintessentially French village style has a few very fine restaurants. When we are there in early August, mushrooms - woodland girolles or chanterelles and cepes are all emerging in the daily specials. We reflect guiltily on the fine specimens we squashed pitching the tent.

Hi Hikes Ida Milne finds the Auvergne an uphill task Travel Extra’s Ida Milne meets some friends on the trail in God’s House

’ve committed the first sin of novice walkers, I’ve brought a brand new pair of hiking boots. My instructor swiftly orders me to abandon them in favour of a pair of runners. “They’re not worn in, you should have worn them around home a few times at first. You’d get blisters.” He’s mentioned the b word, the dread of we women who like our heels.My second sin was to don a pair of denim shorts. Denim, apparently, is totally unsuitable for walking as it dries so slowly if it gets wet. And shorts are not good for walking off trail, as you are risking scratches and perhaps even snakebites. I’m not sure that was a real threat, but I was not going to risk it. Armed with water and a map, we head off every day on one of the many marked trails circling the town. The necessity for an old-fashioned map becomes apparent as the phone signal disappears in the woodlands, and the trail signs are always where they should be, where you have to make a decision about which path to take. We walk for hours

without meeting another human, stopping to talk to a bunch of nosey horses who run after us, or to admire the array of wildflowers. I see blue cornflowers, violets and pansies growing in the meadows and in the trailways. It’s hot, and I find the uphill going tough, so the walking is interspersed with a few stops to admire the scenery or eat an apple. Anything but admit to my unfitness which was no doubt very evident to my walking companions. Our pace is apparently, not all that bad despite the handicap of the unfit novice – they tell me that about four kilometres an hour is a respectable enough pace for hillwalking.

ack home, I’m bitten by the bug, and am working – and wheezing - my way through the growing plethora of trail walks through the Irish countryside. Ticknock has come to be a particular favourite, a really good 90 minute workout within easy

reach of those near the southside of Dublin. I learned another lesson on that this week – never travel without your backpack and your raingear – when the skies suddenly turned dark, the gales started to howl, and the rain pelted down. I was alone on the hill, another sign that I had not taken proper precautions and checked the forecast before I set out. Perhaps the most beautiful walk locally is the Spink, a spectacular and challenging climb up through the forest at Glendalough to the cliff towering over the upper lake, along a ridge with wonderful views back towards the coast. A friend who works in the ambulance service says that there are often callouts to rescue people. Our Westie dipped her mouth into a puddle of bog water and tumbled off the railway sleeper pathway into a ravine; I yanked her back up with her lead. Later, we note that the Wicklow park’s website states that the rescue service will not be called into action for

dogs. Unlike the quiet trails of La Chaise Dieu, the Spink is almost like a city highway, with hiking clubs and families – mostly the new (and often Russian-speaking) Irish – enjoying the exercise and the beauty. At the far end of the Spink, the path descends to a mountain stream and the now idle copper mining village. This section is almost more challenging than the climb, as the path has disappeared into rocks and scree, threatening to those who without proper hiking footwear.Looking back up from where we have transcended, we see goats, sheep and deer nestled in against the mountainside, the heathers, the outcrops of bare rock, the tonal greys, purples and greens of the Glendalough landscape. That’s where the connection between it and LaChaise Dieu hits me. It’s a place to celebrate life, its beauty and its challenges. It’s another house of God.

■ Aer Lingus fly from Dublin to Perpignan three times weekly from April through to September. Current lead in fare €59.99 one-way including taxes and charges. For more advice on hillwalking safety see mountaineering.ie.

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Page 012 Skiwelt 10/09/2014 08:18 Page 1

OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 12

DESTINATION AUSTRIA

t is always comforting to turn a bend on a ski slope and look up at the Wilder Kaiser, emperor of the winds. The Kaiser is constant as everything changes around him in these mountains, Lifts have been revamped and updated. Artificial snow making machines have been installed by the hundred (after a bad winter in 2007-8), to safeguard against slow-starting seasons. Like this one. After a big dump of snow in October it was dry for the weeks before Christmas. “We did not know where it came from but we had snow on Saturday night,” Anita Baumgartner of Skiwelt tourism said. “We had the best ever start to a season and then it dried up.” The absence of snow was a problem. The tiny sprinkling we got was called a mausefalla, up to the knee of a mouse. The Skiwelt invested Eu11.5m in snowmaking and it paid off. When I visited in December parts of the region looked like a tin of white paint that had been tossed from side to side, with white spills of slope down the green mountain. Ski instructor herearound for the past 29 seasons Hubert Treffer says it has opened up new options for skiers. “All we need is minus three and we can make snow. It gives us a wide range of skiable piste even at the start of the season.” The emperor is also snowcapped, looking down on all, granity eyebrows raised in astonishment.

Restaurants with a view

HeartWelt

Eoghan Corry samples the Ski Welt and asks what is behind Austria’s popularity with the Irish? Christoph Stoeckl runs a ski school in the Skiwelt where he has skis that six month old children can use, without needing ski boots

here are surprises in the hills. Up at the Alpeniglu Igloo Village near Brixental, they reconstruct a village of igloos every year skiers can stay (Thursday to Sunday), sup and get married. At the nearby ski school Christoph Stoeckl, whose youngest student is 14 months, showed us his no-boots-needed skis for children under the age of two. At 1,300 metres in the mountain above St Johann is a real treat, Ann Marie Foidl, president of the Austrian Sommelier federation, runs a restaurant Angerer Alm in Obergurgl where her daughter Katharina Foidl serves up Tyrolean home cooking, with 3 - to 5course menus in the

evening, utilizing the own dairy farming, the herb garden and the produce of surrounding farms. Even the toilets are a work of art, the taps simulating water that pours onto your hands from a tin jug. The wine cellar beneath would not be out of place in a posh Parish eatery. But don’t go to the wine without tasting her elder flower cordial. Our lunch there took four hours and we were reluctant to leave. The director of the tourism office, Gernot Riedel, delayed a meeting to sing an old folk song about a lover’s tryst in a mountain hayloft. There is a toilet with a better view, the Sonnenalm in Skiwelt, where skiers do number one

looking at the breath-taking mountains beyond. Piste takes on another meaning there

ine core resorts in Austria have been serving the Irish skier for decades. While the favourite destination of English skiers is France, Ireland prefers Austria and we keep going back for more. The resorts of the Skiwelt, Westendorf, Ellmau, Going, Scheffau, Söll have been favourites for three generations of

skiers. The two big ski operators who serve the Irish market have tried to sell us other night options, but they didn’t work. Tour operators say that even those new resorts which have access to the same slopes don’t work. It is a habit thing. We like going back to our favourite bars, and we like the prices there, 10.20 for a schnitzel in Westendorf and 19 in St Anton. All across Europe the days when resorts operated their own slice of

■Topflight offers holidays to the villages of the Ski Welt, including Soll, Westendorf, and Kirchberg which also has Ski Welt access. St Johann in Tirol, a favourite resort of the Irish, is also close to the Ski Welt, for a great day’s skiing. Just bring your favourite ski instructor to show you around. ■ The Ski Welt Lift Pass costs €225 for adults, 180 for youths, and only €112 for children. ■ The Kitzbuehler Alpen Lift pass costs €249 for adults, €192 for Youths, and €124 for children. ■ 5 Days Ski School costs €160 for adults. And A first time ski pack costs €419

mountain ended two decades ago with the linking of huge ski areas with cable cars and funiculars, the Four Valleys, Les Trois Vallées, Espace Killy Skiwelt, Paradiski, Grandvalira (there are more). Skiwelt, accessible from Westnendorf, Soll and other places, claimed to be the biggest in Austria. They commissioned research to prove it and found they had 279kkm of slope. Other resorts were exaggerating their numbers by claiming more than one run down the same slope. A one kilometer bus ride brings you to Kirchberg to access more slope. They also have 10km of floodlit piste for the night skier. It means a wide range of accommodation choices for the skier includingeu22 a night pensions and 70 hotel options. At night when we tested the floodlight experience, we found the mountains more enchanting than ever. The slopes were empty and crisp with the clear night air, the stars cavalcading around us from horizon to horizon. I try to remember the instructions to be a better skier. Big toe, little toe, tilting lateral movements, always facing down the fall line. The emperor of the winds was still there, black and laughing at our lack of grace.

■ Topflight will have charter flights from Dublin, Cork and Belfast to Salzburg for the winter season, as well as tailor-made holidays via Munich. ■ A week at the newly refurbished 4 Star Post Hotel in St.Johann in Tirol – half board is only €879 in January ■ A week in Soll – B&B pension – starts at only €549 in January ■ A week in the 3 Star Post Hotel in Westendorf – starts at €699 ■ A week in Kirchberg – in the 4 Star Hotel Alexander – starts at 999 in January ■ Topflight 01 2401700 www.topflight.ie

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 13

rish operators have spent the summer negotiating next winter's deals and continue to retrench and consodidate. Ski bookings for 201415 are sllightlu ahead of last year according to Crystal and Topflight but both are slow to coommit to growth. Crystal and Topflgiht wil share flights out of Cork. Independent flyers found low-cost luggage restrictions a problem - a pair of ski boots can weigh 7kg. An earlier Easter (Apr 5) means that the charter season cntinues for a fortnight after St Patrick’s Day. Capacity out of Belfast has been reduced as. Inghams no longer run an Innsbruck charter and confine themselves to Salzburg. Crystal and Topflight are sharing a Toulouse charter out of Belfast this winter. The February mid term coincides in both jurisdictions on Saturday February 14th and this is selling particularly fast,. The Christmas December 20th departures are offering particularly good value at the time of going to press.

YOUTH passes are on offer in an increased number of resorts this winter. They average about 35pc less than the adult pass and are available at an increasing number of Austrian resorts, generally up to age 15. Children’s passes, generally at half price, apply to under-12s in Norway, under-11s in Andorra and under-5s in France, Italy and USA. TOPFLIGHT

ski 2014-15 brochure is offering alternatives to the traditional seven-day holidays, the emphasis is on the new chalet offering from Topflight and their weekend ski breaks to European destinations such as Austria, France and in particular Norway. Most of the Austrian and French ski

SKI & SNOWBOARD NEWS 2014-15 resorts can be selective on the dates on which they will offer a short ski stay, but Norway (especially the town of Lillehammer) offer families and first time ski clients an excellent opportunity for weekend or short stay ski breaks. Topflight will use Aer Lingus charters again on their ski packages in 2014-5. The flights are: ■ Andorra Sunday charter flights from Dublin and Belfast – via Toulouse ■ Austria Saturday charter flights from Dublin, Cork and Belfast – Salzburg ■ France Saturday charter to Lyon plus tailormade Cork Geneva ■ Italy Saturday Milan Linate for Livigno ■ New Hampshire Aer Lingus Boston Colorado 2 Leg hop to Denver - best route/price at time of booking ■ Canada 2 leg hop to Vancouver – best route/price at time of booking ■ Norway Flights to Oslo for holidays to Lillehammer and Trysil.

SKIWELT Wilder Kaiser Brixental has increased to 280km of slopes for the coming winter, of which 85pc will have snowmaking facilities. The Skiwelt has challenged other ski areas to certify their pistes, in the absence of international standards some resorts were double counting the wider pistes as two runs.

CRYSTAL main-

tain ski plus package offer in 82 properties and 36 resorts in five countries, then resume story at “offering”

SKIWELT St

Patrick’s week departures (March 15th) offers include free youth passes for under-15s with each adult ski pass.

BULGARIA

will be accessible from Ireland after all in winter 2014-15, but only from

Snow’n’tell What’s new in ski this winter

Belfast. Peter McMinn’s Travel Solutions is introducing a ski programme from Belfast to Bulgaria for winter 2013/14 to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of Radka Lynn's Balkan Tours. Ski holidays to Bulgaria are on sale from €574pp for seven nights. Weekly departures from Belfast to Plovdiv will operate from December 28, 2014, to March 15, 2015.

MÉRIBEL The main Méribel access piste to the Chaudanne area, the Traversée bourbon, has been made easier. This narrow blue run is broader and gentler at the bottom, thanks to extra space being created by the removal of pylons supporting the Saulire lift. The steepest section of Martre, below the former Plattières mid-station, was re-shaped and the incline made more gentle. The beginner Ourson rope tow at the foot of Mottaret’s slopes was replaced by an upto-date ‘magic carpet’ lift. BAD GASTEIN is offering a free lift pass for over-60s staying six nights over the St Patrick’s Day period, departure of March 15th.

HIGHLIFE, the

Irish chalet specialists are offering 10 centrally located chalets in Morzine, Méribel and Val d’Isère. www.highlife.ie +353 1 677 1100

WHERE to Ski and

Snowboard editor Chris Gill says size matters for skiers. “Weekend visitors to ski resorts may not care about the size of ski resorts. Many holiday skiers spending a week in one place like the variety that big areas provide – and bigger resorts can and do charge more for their lift passes; so size is a key part of the choice process.”

BRECKENRIDGE is replac-

ing the Colorado Super Chair quad with a highspeed, six-pack chair. The increase in uphill capacity (approximately 30 percent) will move skiers and snowboarders up Peak 8, a notoriously crowded area of the resort, more quickly.

CRYSTAL is the

only company offering direct flights to Innsbruck and Chambery this winter, offering the fastest transfers to Mayrhofen from Innsbruck and up to an hour advantage in shorter transfers to the French

resorts from Chambery as opposed to Lyon.

MÉRIBEL will install four new lifts by 2022. Two new gondola lifts have contributed to re-shaping two main access pistes. Mottaret, a new Plattières lift replaces the existing 28year-old Plattières 1 and 2 gondolas. This ten-seat gondola carries up to 40pc more passengers, transporting up to 2,800 people per hour. The existing Plattières 3 gondola will continue running as before. The total investment is €17.2m. has COURCHEVEL The new six seater chairlift from Le Praz will replace the old and slow Bouc Blanc draglift At a cost of €7m the new lift will move 2700 skiers a total of 1853m at five and a half metres a second. The elderly Praz juget draglift and Col de la Loze chairlift in the same area have been removed. It is a 6 seater detachable chair (with hood cover so more susceptible to high wind but not as exposed as the gondola was) will have a capacity of 2,700 skiers per hour at 5.5 m/s. Also ready for Christmas 2014 will be the new

Aiguille de fruit six man lift which will replace the old three man lift. There are plans for a whole host of new lifts in the Courchevel area with €140m being spent over the next eight years and by 2019 there will be seven new lifts running from all the lower Courchevel resorts.

VAL THORENS

has a new high speed chairlift called Pionniers that will replace the old Three Vallées Chairlift. The new Funitel gondola takes skiers from 2780m up to 3000m in approximately 2 minutes and offering two new, high altitude pistes.

CONTIKI have introduced ski chalets in Austria for the 18-35 market.

POWDER White

has expanded its European 2014/15 winter programme. It will include a Slopestyle week, snowshoe & skidoo experiences.

CRYSTAL Ski

Holidays introduces ’Your Guide to the Mountain’ a 236 page guide with winter holiday ideas covering 135 resorts worldwide.

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 14

DESTINATION SPAIN

he key selling point of Sierra Nevada, the southernmost ski area in Europe by a very long way, is the sun. You cannot miss this bright shining fact, even after it has set. The brochures, websites and posters have told you about it long before you reach the mountain and repeat it at every turn, the morning sun throwing dramatic shafts of light and shapes onto the snowscape. By the time you finish your ski run, the sun itself has called upon all its forces to remind you. It is baking hot and crowds of people are soaking up the rays in the strip of bars at the bottom of the pistes. These bars, Cuna, Tia Maria and Parallel look and feel the same. Unlike the more intimate smaller ones they don't serve tapas with the drinks, but they serve a different purpose. Their terraces face the afternoon sun and straight towards the mountains, away from the resort. On Saturdays you can relax in a deck chair for a few hours in the afternoon, then head back up for more skiing. From 7pm to 9pm at weekends the gondola reopens and the long, sweeping El Rio piste is floodlit for night skiing.

his is a big deal, because Sierra Nevada is well set up for a short ski break. It is 32km from Granada, and two hours from Malaga and the playground of many Irish owned holiday homes. It is a longer flight time but a short stay in the sunshine and the free tapas in many of the bars makes you wonder why more Irish do not come. The clever thing is to hire a car and drive along the Cypress and palm tree perfection of the contoured road. Most Irish rent a car to travel a rela-

Sun kissed piste

Eoghan Corry visits Europe’s best kept ski secret.

Afternoon sun bathing is a signature of Sierra Nevada tively hassle-free 100km along the A7 to the slopes. A bus serves Granada and Malaga, but connection times are not ideal. There is a much more flexible all-day service from Malaga's central bus-station, you can get there via very efficient airport shuttle bus and tickets can be bought and printed online via alsa.es. Granada is a 45 minute journey and costs 9 return. If the snow doesn't fall, and even if it does, Granada is only half an hour away. In winter, there are few lovelier sights than the Alhambra's delicate red brown walls, a striking ancient foreground against a towering backdrop of hard white. But the traffic can clog on the mountain road if you return at the wrong time.

he Sierra's gentle slopes and wide runs make it good for beginners and intermediate skiers, not to mention noisy snowboarders in those irritating clown hats. When they are all open, the total length of the 39 ski runs stretches to 61km. The longest run is the 3.5km Rio. The resort is controlled by Cetursa, a public-private partnership. They run the public transport in the resort through its layer cake of Sol y Nieve and Borreguiles to the high spot of Pradollano as much as the ski lifts. Recent investment includes a new chairlift with increased capacity and what they claim is the largest snow making system in Europe which guarantees the resort will be open, careful that no American style chemicals are added. It is a big operation.

Many of the slopes are south facing. It means sometimes that the wind stops by instead of the sun. Because of the altitude, most skiing is above 2,600m, the season is long, running from the start of December to the May bank holiday weekend, turning the resort into an each afternoon beauty contest of bikinis and T-shirts. The lifts run long hours too, from 9am until a staggered closing between 4.45pm and 5.30pm. We stopped by on a windy day the see the operation as run by a control room built in 1995 draw-

ing information from 250 automatic and 100 manual stations around the piste. “The air is really dry air here,” says Andreas Bielser, “normally it is less than 10pc humidity. It leads to a different type of snow.” “When the snow is blue it isn't snow.”

t is at night that you realise that you are in southern Spain and why the Nevada is somewhere special. Now the bars turn into centres for the performance arts, real tourism attractions, instead of the Apres Ski that we are used to.

Young people take out the guitars and start the flamenco session. There isn't room to swing a mouse, never mind a cat, but improvised dances are taking place along the narrow bar aisle. All along the bar the trappings of Andalusian culture, hung hams, difference grape-based drinks and fire waters that would knock the ice off an avalanche. It is splendid, and it is inexpensively splendid. Sometimes when we ski we end up in a barn with overpriced drink, piped music and rude service. On the Sierra Nevada you find the polar moun-

■ Eoghan Corry travelled to Malaga with Aer Lingus. Flights contune daily through the winter. ■ He stayed at the the hotel Meliá Ziryab, a guest of the Spanish Tourist Board ■ Sierra Nevada is Europe’s southernmost ski resort, with the largest number of sunny days. It offers more than 100 km of slopes, suitable for skiing, the latest facilities and one of the biggest snow parks in Europe. This triangle, completed by Granada and the Tropical Coast, represents a unique tourist destination. ■ Students of the Instituto Cervantes will be able to get special tourist packages for skiing or snowing in this area of Granada

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DESTINATION SPAIN tainous, snow-covered avalanchous opposite of those things. Where to go? Ski instructors are the ones who know the best haunts amid some of the best value après-ski I have found on my lofty mission to ski the snows of all seven continents, free tapas coming alongside with the 2 vino tinto and 2.50 San Miguel. The resort is choc-full of small bars where impromptu flamenco guitar sessions are likely to erupt at any time, with an easy informality that would do justice to the west of Ireland. The bars in town tend to close before midnight, which is the time to move to the discos up the hill in Pradollano, Sticky Fingers, El Chicle and Soho are good places to dance away the night.

here are 23,000 beds with easy access to the mountain. With two or three exceptions, the hotels are not particularly striking for their aesthetic beauty (don’t expect a n Andalusian village, this is a collection of hotels, shops and apartments built on top of an underground car park), but inside they are of a good quality. At the top end are the Melia chain hotels, the labyrinthine 147-room Ziryab with big-windowed views across the mountain, the 221-room Sierra Nevada just 100

Ski school with San Miguel for starters metres from the ski lifts and the 177-room (including 28 quadruple rooms). The oldest, Sol y Nieve 50 metres from the ski lifts with its personal ski lockers and GrecoRoman swimming pool. The clamour for meals is not for everyone. “Like Butlins,” a colleague decided. More kindly, it is like the Italian resorts of 20 years ago. Further up the mountain the exquisite five star Hotel Vincci Rumaykiyya, with its woodcut receptions rooms, log fire, cosy bars and spa and Restaurant La Alqueria. There is a ski-chair on the doorstep of the hotel.

he best restaurant in town is the Ruta de Veleta, though it is pricy. The Andulsi is worth a try, and for hungry teenagers look no further than the buffet in the Melia Sol y Nieve. The tapas are genrally free, an increasing rarity in Spain. For tapas, try Copo Patanegra Jamon Serrano and the truly authentic Cartujano, in the shopping mall opposite the Melia Sierra Nevada. For a log fire, cushions, tapestries and a bit of arabesque chic try the relaxed Crescendo. If you are feeling particularly peckish, the bar menu features hamburgers and fajitas.

The La Alqueria was our signature meal, five star Spain worth coming to sample if there was no ski resort to distract you. The Spanish are good at catering to family holidays, and hotels such as the Sol y Nieve have their own play groups and entertainers. There is also an Infant Ski School. Snow shoeing through the white mountains is one of the headline activities here.

igher again and you have a sports centre with international standard gyms, pools and play areas, the outdoor courts buried under feet of snow. Send the football and

hurling teams to ski here for a week and you will have team bonding of conquistador standard (they argue in Andalusia if it was a conquista or reconquista, like Ireland, this part of Spain had eight centuries under the conquerer). Send the camogie team as well and you might have success for generations to come.

here are many ways of deciding the character of a ski resort. You can judge by the length or width of the pistes, by their steepness or whether they match the colour codes of the piste map, or the life in the bars when you de-

scend from the mountain, the price of beer, wine or cocktails and what time they call last orders. But the surest way to check out a ski resort is to take off the shin biting boots, sit quietly in the corner and watch who comes and goes. By their clients shall you know them. This is Sierra Nevada at its best. Lively family banter, groups of teenager, children and also the couples and the elderly, for a Spanish family is a multi faceted wonder. Sierra Nevada is of the generations. The home of conquistador, troubadour, and skíadóir. Long may it remain so.

Clockwise: lunch on the deck, admring the window view form the Ziryab hotel, resort at night, centre points of the slopes and the control centre

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DESTINATION FRANCE

igne-agers. You can see them everywhere. They have the air of discovery about them, that they know something everybody else doesn’t. Their secret isn’t that sophisticated. I you find Val d’Isere too pretentious or expensive, carry on up the hill to Tignes. There is lots of potential for Tigne-ager kicks. Off-piste activities include some creative new ones.

went to investigate the changes brought to the resort by the addition of the new télécabine de Tovière. It replaced a slower lift which allowed six persons to stand. Now the Telecabin can accommodate 10 people seated. It is a small change but has changed the dynamic of that section of the terrain. A new lift is a multi faceted thing. People plan their day differently. That means a lot in Espace Killy, where 80 lifts bring 100,000 skiers on to the mountain each day, (it should be Kelly, the terrain was named for the ski champion descendant of a Tipperary-born Napoleonic soldier). My plan, as always is to travel far from the accommodation on the first lift, as far as I can. It takes just seven minutes main lift link to Val d’Isere, then onwards to the top left hand corner of the piste map was my target in Espace Killy. Alex Stojanovski, who had skied in the Olympics for Macedonia took me out to show me the slopes and planned a series of journeys for me. I would make my way back slowly. By the end of the week my route had become a routine: Tufs, Edelweiss or Creux/Mont Blanc, Marmottes, Fountaine Froide, Santons, Solarise Express, Loulette, Glacier, Leissieres, Col De L'isrran, Pyramides down to Le Former, a short bus journey and the

Olympique home. The conversations, after the breathless skies, were short as a lift run and in a shared language of snow lovers. Skiers of all levels quickly find their favourite staging pistes, lamp pistes, piste boxes and falling pistes. The much-skied Prarirond has become known as paranoid to the large Anglophone audience who come every year. Two slopes have the distinction that people get tattoos with their names: Combe and Anemone (accessed by Palfour lift). The routine brought me into Val d’Isere every day, trying to avoid a tumble on the scarey black that everyone who visits the iconic resort spends at least part of the day watching. If you are going to fall, fall down in public.

al d’Isere has an air of history and stability about it, important for those who value such things when the French Alps were invaded by custom-built 1960s steel and concrete resorts. Ski resorts should all be about the terrain. They should be about the snow and the slopes and the view from the mountain.

These lipine resorts around the Swiss and Italian borders have all of these things. What Val d’isere has extra is class. Not the glitzy chic of Madonna de Campiglio, or the over priced grandeur of Zermatt. Class and convenience, because, unlike Verbier, you do not have to travel for kilometres to reach the slopes. My first visit to Val d’isere was as a novice skier with the family in 2002 and I was hooked.

hat was then and this, Tignes, is now. I am trying to be youthful. Tignes has long been acknowledged as more sporty and sprightly and less stuffy than its neighbour, pretentious and pricy Val d'Isère. The two resorts shares the same ski terrain although Tignes has ended up with some of the better bits (try to find a better red than the Double M run in the morning sunlight) as well as a livelier night scene . The Folie Douce, part of a chain of bars that can be found in three resorts, has acquired the reputation as the danger spot on the resort: it featured on English TV show Sun

ignes has a variety of skiing for all levels and can be split into four areas, La Grande Motte Massif, Palet/L’Aiguille Percée, Toviere and Les Brévières. The Grande Motte is the highest massif in the Espace Killy; a mass of rock, ice and permanent snow cover. It is the only part of the Espace Killy ski area which is open in every season. I t can be accessed by either the Funicular railway (which runs in all weathers, taking approximately 3000 skiers an hour), or by taking the Lanches and Vanoise chairlifts, then finally the Grande Motte Cable car. The scenery is best at the top of the Grande Motte and you should stop long enough to look

Tall Tignes Eoghan Corry visits Val d’Isere’s less pretentious sister

Early morning looking towards Vanoise

across the mountains and at the Vanoise National Park, the Grande Casse (3852m), Mont Blanc (4807m) and the Grande Sassiere (3747m). The Grande Motte offers a good choice of wide open blues and some more challenging reds. It can often be deceptively cold on the glacier, and not always conducive to learning as some of the slopes can be steeper than expected. The L'Aigulle Perce /Palet massif is accessible from Val Claret by the 'Tichot chairlift' and from Le Lac by the 'Palafour'. There are a number of cruisey intermediate blue and red runs. Although there’s not a huge selection of blacks, you can try the 'Sache', a long black run from

the top of the L’Aiguille Percée (the famous 'eye of the needle') to Tignes Les Brévières. It provides some fierce moguls and challenging skiing. The Toviere sector provides links with the skiing in Val d’Isere, and is accessible by taking the 'Aeroski' bubble from Tignes-Le-Lac or the 'Tufs' and 'Bollin' chairlifts from Val Claret. You can enjoy a number of gentle blues and more challenging reds, particularly the Combe Folle which leads into the mogul covered, steep black Trolles piste down into Le Lac. This area tends to be busy as it is the link with Val d'Isere and the whole of the Espace Killy. The lowest part of the Tignes ski area, Les Brévières is a sun

trap from early on in the morning, making it the perfect resting point for a spot of lunch on a sunny day, especially in the warmer months of the season. The pistes in this area mainly consist of easy wide blues and slightly more challenging red runs. The highest point in this massif is the L’Aiguille Percée (2748m) which offers some visually dramatic and geological oddities in the rock formations, and location of the famous "eye of the needle". There is a board park at Val Claret giving riders the chance to try their hand at some freestyle jumping, rails and ‘big air. Tignes has access to some of the worlds best off-piste.

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DESTINATION ESPACE KILLY Sex and Suspicious Parents. The afternoon can be whiled away there without taking a tumble. The task later on becomes more difficult. The icy bit of après ski is avoiding the large barn like bars that proliferate around here, with overpriced drink and undersupplied atmosphere. Help was at hand. I was part of a Crystal ski package holiday, looked after by a small team of reps led by the efficient Olivia Knight and Nathan Edge, mostly students and newgrads who are wintering out. They were a committed an industrious bunch, on call for every problem from a broken leg to a malfunctioning ski pass. The first text message came before check-in: If you need us now or during your holiday in TIGNES, please call or text. One of the delegated tasks is the pub crawl through the bars of the resorts, using the free bus service. There are 40 bars to choose from. Loop is their favourite bar, DJ Chris Wharton had them dancing on the very first stop, then the night progresses through the Underground Saloon, Couloir, Drop Zone, Blue Girl - Melting Pot and Cowuire, a saloon bar with live music. Le Cofe Deck is a terrace chllled out bar for those that don’t like the

Don’t worry, they give you a scuba suit pace. Too many English? Embuscade café his where the French take refuge while Palette de Boulee uses local products.

here are 31,000 touristic beds here and on a snowy morning, and Tignes development is working on more. The council has a programme to avoid lits froids (cold beds or unoccupied beds). They work with owners to rent the apartments as much as they can during the winter. “Our target is to bring younger people to practice sports,” Margot Sella from Tignes Develop-

ment says, “85pc of our visitors come to ski every day. We are very different other resorts. We have places f r o m small studios to five star so everyone can c o m e here.” There are also lots of young families, childcare costs eu40 in the morning, eu40 afternoon, or Eu10 an hour and Eu15 in the evening. “Don’t come here to do shopping, come here to have fun.”

or those for whom the mountains are not fun enough, you can dig a hole in the ice to investigate the original Tignes, drowned by a 1950s hydroelectric project. Ignore the impression created by the posed photograph, for those that value their body temperature, which is most peo-

ple, you take a dry suit and spend 30 minutes on an accompanied dive. There are small holes to surface and in between you are brought to a netherworld, a strange half lit place where you can listen to the crackling bubbles and look back at the shafts of light coming down through the ice mantle. It is the opposite of the big sky snowy world above. It is a limpse of life as an Arctic Chad, where the colours and the sounds are of the ages.

here are cheaper places to ski than Tignes, but the ease of access to the slopes, and free amenities (the lift pass gives free access to an extensive aquatic and wellness centre, Lagon) and free bus service between the various social hubs mean unexpected savings. But for the party goer, the descent through the night can be as exciting as any day slope. On the second night in Tignes, the ATM nearest the hotel has run out of money. It is that sort of place.

■ Travel Extra's Eoghan Corry travelled with Crystal Holidays on their charter to Chambery, Crystal Holidays +3531 4331010 www.crystalholidays.ie ■ He was accommodated by Crystal at the Hotel Diva, a hotel 30m walk from the Val Claret lifts with above-average restaurant and facilities (sauna and hammam).

Clockwise: the famous ski lift, each ski package starts with an advisory meeting with your reps, ice dive without the signature scuba suit, the resort from the mountain and preparing for the early morning coach ride home

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tarting the ski trip with a shake seemed like a good idea. At 85kph, travelling sideways at 90 degrees to the ground. you cannot do anything else. Even veterans of the roller coasters of the world will be scared. The hurtling and twisting and being thrown around the Bobraft is not the scary bit. It is the knowledge that people do this competitively, hurtling around the Olympic course in quest of precious metal and world wide fame instead of a cheap tourist thrill. Competitors lose fingers, even lives, doing this. We can imagine that we are in our own Olympics here. The course looks about right. The big curves are three metres high, like great flat walls. But our bobsleigh is a rubber raft, like driving a bumper car rather than a Ferrari. Sitting in it is like a bath, feet apart with a colleague behind. We have big helmets and big screams. It doesn’t seem that bad. And then we came to bend six of the 19 bends. There, as the pilot of the bobsleigh said, is where it picks up speed.

opflight’s sister company Ski beat was showcasing its chalet. Their chalets are well situated near the lifts and ski hire, more a main street pad than a mountain shack. It makes every hour of the day seem personalised. This is our home, our dining room, our bar, our ski lift, our snow, our resort, our Paradiski. What are other people doing on it? The chalets are catered and add to that romantic image of skiing. They offer a welcome contrast to the monolithic blocks of shoe-box apartments built at the inception of La Plagne in the early

Le Plan for La Plagne Eoghan Corry finds a chalet is the best option for the world’s most popular ski resort

The mountain scenery of La Plagne as reflected in the goggles of Italian world cup ski racer Silvia Moser. La Plagne was listed as the most popular ski resort in the 2014 International Report on Snow and Mountain Tourism 1960s, “While you can book for one or two people the real trick is to get a big gang going,” Scott Charlesworth resort manager for Ski Beat says, “creating a home away from home, at a catered Topflight chalet.” Many come with childcare, crèche and nanny services. Our chalet in La Plagne was staffed by a Derry woman, Roisin O'Neill. She looks as much at home as she would on the Sperrins.

a Plagne is officially the world’s most popular ski

resort with more than 2.6m visitors annually. That means lots of investment, fast lifts and the highest standard of grooming. That means traffic on

the narrow roads, six hour and five hours for the transfer from Lyon in February half term (next St valentine’s Day). It means lively après ski and people willing to

■ Topflight offers holidays to France, with charter to Lyons this season direct from Dublin. ■ The growth in Topflight this year will be their new ski chalets, which they are bringing onto the Irish market, really for the first time. Topflight Chalet Collection has 50 chalets is a very exciting development. Ski Beat, part of the Topflight group, are publicising their holiday offering in six French resorts for next season, La Rosiere, La Plagne, La Tania, Les Arcs, Meribel and Val D'Isere. ■ La Plagne, 3 hours transfer from Lyons, has 225kms of piste, with a great 10km run. The resort is great for families and beginners, but as part of Paradiski, offers challenging on and off-piste skiing – with 15 Black, 29 Red, 80 Blue and 10 Green Runs.

try anything in the bars. “Fifty jaeger bombs for 50,” said the sign outside Mine Bar. Like all playgrounds it needs lots of beds for the snowbirds of Europe,

60,000 including 1,400 apartments, 11 hotels (the majority self catering) and 30 tourist residences. That means crowds on the slopes too, funneling into lifts on busy days.

■ The resort offers ice skating, ice-climbing tower, bowling alley, skidoo driving, sports centre and also the famous Olympic Bobsleigh at Plagne 1800. ■ Chalet Bartavelle, located right beside the slots and sleeping 15, cost from €849 on the 3rd January, including Topflight charter flights, transfers, and a full catered chalet service, including Breakfast, Canapes and Apertifs, Afternoon Tea with Homemade cakes, Wine & Soft drinks with dinner, and lots of extras. ■ A 6 day La Plagne ski pass costs €241 for adults, while the Paradiski lift pass costs €285. ■ Under 5s get a free lift pass, when an adult is buying a lift pass. ■ Topflight on 01 2401700, www.topflight.ie

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DESTINATION FRANCE Forget what they tell you at school, the geography of the Alps changes when the stadium skiing season begins. Crowds mean there are people to accompany you on every turn, like when I tumbled and buried my iphone in the piste. It was found, despite the fact it was on silent, vibrating helplessly in the upturned powder until an eagle-eared student from Languedoc plucked it from its snowy grave. It means new lifts and fast lifts. If you want last year’s lifts go somewhere else. When someone in France builds a new lift the old one goes to Bulgaria.

on’t despair. There is always a quiet place to be found, far away from the Jaegerbombers and the kindergarteners and other hazards of the slopes. The playground is very big indeed, 225km of slopes on the La Plagne side, and a total of 425 km in Paradiski which takes in Les Arcs. To get there you jump on a cable car to paradise built for two hundred. The longest single run is 10km, from the icy heights to the forested valley floor. It is worth taking at least once during your stay. It makes your realise how unrepresentative the farcically unpicturesque and deceptive Plagne Centre really is.

La Plagne offers a total of 425 km when the Paradiski area is taken into consideration From the town, the valley is hidden behind urban-style apartment buildings; the green run follows an underpass straight through one block. It is essential hat skierso have a plan for le Plagne, and work out where you wil be staying in advance of travelling. It is not one resort, but made up of 10 separate villages scattered across a gentle plateau alongside some steep mountain terrain. Four of the villages are older low-lying traditional farming villages and the rest are ski resorts purpose-built at different altitudes during the ski resort building spree of the 1960s. Belle Plagne and Plagne Centre are the heart of resort, while Champagny-en-Vanoise. Montchavin are modern

box-resorts but located in a more rural environment

was back to the slopes to learn but at this side of the Alps there are too many iconic mountains all around to allow me concentrate on the slopes. All around me are the tourist skiers, craning their necks up to look at the jagged peaks, Les Dents du Midi brooding angrily under a cloud, or Mont Blanc resplendant in the sunrise, or the whole amazing chocolate box panorama from the Bellecote glacier. I pose on front of Mont Blanc with my instructress Italian World Cup skier Silvia Moser from the Oxygene ski school. Her job is to loosen my limbs and get me skiing like a champion. I am too old for that, but she is

kind enough not to point that out. Instead she lets me enjoy the scenery and take the piste at my own pace and appreciate all the little surprises – like skiing through a tunnel. Metteo, her colleague instructor looked like he was about to run out of

patience: “ski like you have two suitcases in your hands, like someone pushing, commit to the turn, put those skis closer together. With some fresh snow at the top, this place is exhilarating. Silvia encourages us to go faster down

the swooping red runs, and my limbs even begin to loosen. The cloud over Mont Blanc even lifted in sympathy.

SKI WINTER 2014/2015

NOW ON SALE!

F LY F R O M D U B L I N , C O R K & B E L FA S T

Clockwise: fine dining in the sun, Silvia Moser and Eoghan Corry with Mont Blanc, Savoiarde mountain meal and Ski beat’s chalet,

Call 01 240 1700 • Visit www.topflight.ie or see your local travel agent

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SKI & SNOWBOARD 2014-15

eptember is traditionally the time when tour operators launch their new destinations and the rest of us start browsing websites to plan next season’s ski holiday. There are a number of key factors to consider when booking a winter holiday and here are our top picks for winter 2014/2015:

Catherine Murphy’s annual pick of the best places to ski, stay and play on the slopes this winter

Six of the piste

6 TRENDS

Premiere Neige is where it's at. If you're an expert skier keen to get your first turns in on the first snow of the season or even a beginner looking to take lessons on empty slopes, mid-December can be a good option. Resorts limit the number of slopes they open at this point and you need to check snow conditions (www.snow-forecast.com but high altitude resorts like Tignes in France are usually a safe bet. We visited the Ski Welt in Austria and the Dolomites in Italy last December and managed to ski on-piste every day. This winter, you could visit Austria in mid-December via scheduled flight to Munich, returning on the empty leg of Topflight's first charter of the season (december 20th). Chalets are the place to be this winter with Highlife, Crystal Ski and Ski Beat all offering chalet holidays from Ireland. Chalets offer a refreshing change from hotel or apartment accommodation and are a great option for groups. Highlife offers a range of chalets focusing on great food and service in the French Alps. CrystalSki has chalets in various countries, ranging from comfortable, functional

Stacked high for the season ahead chalets for large groups (up to 30 people) to more luxurious chalets in their Crystal Finest programme. Ski Beat offers chalets in French resorts like La Rosiere and La Plagne and again, the emphasis is on great food and service with a choice of contemporary or rustic chalets. If you're still keen on self-catering accommodation in France, the good news is that apartment standards are improving across resorts. Traditionally known for having cramped 20 square metre apartments with bunk beds in the hallway, French resorts are now seeing the light and upgrading. Resorts like Les Menuires in Les Trois Vallees, Vallorcine near Chamonix, Flaine, Les Arcs in Paradiski and Avoriaz in Portes du Soleil have all introduced four and five star apartment complexes with improved facilities and services. If you simply can't get enough hours on the slopes, take a look at Les Arcs in France's Paradiski this winter. The resort, home to double Free ride world champion

Adrien Coirier, has announced that it will open its slopes for longer this winter, from 9am until 8pm, offering skiers a whopping eleven hours on the mountain each day. See www.paradiski.com <http://www.paradiski.co m/> for more details. Irish skiers may be seeing fewer English holidaymakers when they visit Swiss resorts this winter. Following legislation to ensure a minimum working wage in Switzerland, many English chalet operators have pulled out citing prohibitive operating costs as a result of the new law. Some operators, including the VIP chalet group, have stayed on in Zermatt and Verbier. In France, there's a continuing legal row over whether non-French ski tour operators can offer free guiding services to holidaymakers. The action was originally taken by the ESF (French ski school) against an English operator and has dragged on for the last two ski seasons. In response, companies like Crystal Ski now offer a 'social ski' service. In Val d'Isere for example, an instructor from Evolution 2

ski school is hired to show guests around the mountain. The bonus is snippets of instruction along the way! Night-time snowshoeing. There's something magical about snowshoe-

6 THINGS TO TRY THIS SEASON

ing after dark, with only the light of the moon, stars and a small headlamp to show you the way. Your excursion doesn't have to be an arduous one – in Madonna di Campiglio in Italy's western Dolomites, you can hike for 20 minutes or an hour to the lakeside Refugio Nambino. Tuck into goulash, polenta and other traditional local food afterwards. Better still, stay the night! w w w. n a m b i n o . c o m <http://www.nambino.co m/> Test your nerves on the highest zip wire in the world. Val Thorens in Les

Trois Vallees is now home to La Tyrolienne, a 1,300 metre long zip wire that flies you along at speeds of up to 105 kph, 250 metres above the ground. We wouldn't expect anything less from the highest ski village in Europe. Night-skiing. Expert skiers might write this off as an intermediate skier's pursuit but Soll's night slopes tell a different story. Here, local experts come out to enjoy immaculately groomed, illuminated slopes. There's an excellent toboggan run nearby and for St Patrick's day (or night) the slopes are lit up in green. Soll is situated in the heart of Austria's 280km Ski Welt. Ski touring. This combines skiing or boarding with mountaineering and represents the absolute essence of going into the back country. Using skins attached to the base of your skis and releasable bindings, you avoid lifts and climb the mountain off your own steam, revelling in powder descents afterwards. Chamonix, Zermatt, Val d'isere, St Anton, Gastein are all classic touring areas but if

you're a novice, try it in the Austrian resort of St Johann. Most ski resorts across Europe now offer novice ski touring courses. Bob raft. If the notion of hurtling along a bobsleigh course is just too much for you, take the fun alternative. In La Plagne, Paradiski, France, you can jump into a bob raft with three other friends and enjoy a ride on the bobsleigh course at speeds of up to 85kph. It's slightly hair-raising but everyone can try it and at around 30 euro per person, isn't overly expensive. Go mountain biking on snow. Yes, that's what we said. Two evenings a week, Val Thorens opens up a number of slopes for guide-led mountain biking descents. French resorts are absolutely mountain bike crazy in the summer so the crossover into winter doesn't surprise us. www.valthorens.com for further info.

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6 FOR EASTER 2015 Easter is relatively early next year and tour operators will continue offering packages until then. It's not unusual to get lots of fresh snow in April in the Alps so you could have beautiful spring weather one day and winter conditions the next. The best resorts to visit at this time are typically high altitude, often part of large, interconnected ski areas. Tignes, l'Espace Killy, France. High-altitude and snow-sure, Tignes is linked to Val d'isere in

France's Savoyard region and offers some marvellous ski terrain for those who don't want the season to end in March. The skiing makes up for the fact that Tignes is one of the ugliest purpose-built resorts on the planet. Zermatt, Switzerland. Historic Zermatt will celebrate the 150th anniver-

sary of the first ascent of the Matterhorn in July 2015, making it a great year to visit. Its high altitude also guarantees that you'll get skiing in April. Not to mention the appeal of its pretty resort centre and glitzy shops. Val Thorens, Les Trois Vallees, France. Val Thorens keeps pop-

ping up in our 'best for' lists and not without reason. The Cime du Caron cable car takes skiers and boarders to 3,230 metres, an altitude that gaurantees late season skiing and offers a vast ski area that takes in Meribel, Courchevel, Les Menuires and St Martin de Belleville.

Verbier, Four Valleys, Switzerland. Our idea of heaven on earth. The top of the Mont Fort sector offers incredible views and skiing with lots of lift-accessible off-piste and high mountain routes. Perfect for late season ski touring and free ride with four valleys connected, including Nendaz,

THE MOUNTAIN IS CALLING

At last the time has come. Make it your own at crystalski.ie

Veysonnaz and Thyon. Les Arcs, Paradiski, France. This paradise for intermediate skiers is also appealing to off-piste fans who typically enjoy a late season trip to the Alps. It's linked to La Plagne and Peisey-Vallandry, offers a vast ski terrain and is a good bet for April skiing. Obertauern, Austria. We skied here in mid April last season and it was bucketing snow just in time for Easter guests. In 2015, it will be fifty years since the Beatles came to high altitude Obertauern to shoot part of their movie, Help. Make sure you ask to ski with instructor Franz Zwanzger from Krallinger ski school, who taught John Denver, Abba and the King of Jordan to ski in previous years.

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6 CITY & SKI

Sierra Nevada – Granada, Spain. Enjoy the intermediate slopes, Flamenco bars and four star spa hotels of Sierra Nevada then stop off in Granada for a few days to play golf, soak up the city's romantic atmosphere and visit the Alhambra. A major plus to visiting the Alhambra during winter is that there are far fewer people. Alta Badia/Dolomites – Venice, Italy. Ski the Sella Ronda circuit, soak up the stupefying scenery of the Dolomites and sample the region's fine cuisine before stopping off in Venice for a totally different experience. If you're travelling in Spring, take in a tour of the Prosecco wine region, which you pass through on the way. Lake Tahoe – San Francisco. They call this road trip the 'city, ski, sip' tour. Spend a few days in San Francisco, take in a couple of wine tours in Sonoma county or Napa Valley, then drive to Lake Tahoe where you can ski various resorts including Heavenly, Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley. Lake Tahoe straddles the California – Nevada state line so you can choose to stay in either. Bad Gastein – Salzburg, Austria. Enjoy the ski terrain and renowned thermal baths of the Gastein valley before making the one hour trip to Salzburg for a Sound of Music tour, Mozart evening or just to soak up the atmosphere of this lovely town. Bad Hofgastein is best known for the fantastic Alpentherme wellness centre while Dorfgastein is the place to be for offpiste skiers. St Anton – Inns-

bruck, Austria. Cosmopolitan St Anton has its own train station, which means the Orient Express passes through. It also means that on days that you don't want to ski, you can take the train to Innsbruck. Visit the Christmas markets in December for unusual gifts. St Anton is home to some of the best off-piste terrain in the world so you may not be able to drag yourself away. Alta/Snowbird – Salt Lake City. Book into the Alta Peruvian Lodge, enjoy the local ski scene, terrain that's suitable for all levels and an oldschool resort that doesn't allow snowboarding. Boarders have to hang out in nearby Snowbird instead. Alta is just a 40 minute drive from SLC where a visit to the Mormon tabernacle and a tasting of the local Polygamy beer (we kid you not) are must-dos.

6 FOR GROUPS

Pas de la Casa, Grandvalira, Andorra. They don't call it the Ibiza of the slopes for nothing. Younger groups who want to party will enjoy Pas de la Casa's bar offerings, by which we mean plenty of free shots. For those who still have the energy to ski, Pas de la Casa is part of the 200km Grandvalira ski area. Mayrhofen, Austria. Not only does it have the Van Penken snow park one of the best in the world with six different areas for different levels it also hosts two major festivals, the Altitude comedy festival, curated by Andrew Maxwell, from March 23-27 and the Snowbombing music festival from April 3-11. Need we say more? Sauze D'Oulx, Italy.

Part of the Milky Way ski area that takes in Sestriere and Claviere, we rate Sauze as a group destination because its runs meet up at the Sportinia area – perfect for lunch meetings among groups of different abilities. Prices are reasonable and the resort is also known for its lively nightlife. Soll, Ski Welt, Austria. Soll is one of those resorts that manages to appeal both to apres-ski fans and families alike so is a good bet for mixed groups. It's also the gateway to the 280km Ski Welt which takes skiers to Brixen, Ellmau, Scheffau and Westendorf. Val Thorens, Les Trois Vallees, France. Val Thorens offers vast terrain for ambitious intermediates, lots of offpiste options for advanced skiers and a central beginner's area where novices ski for free before progressing to buy a half-price lift pass - so there's something for everyone. Definitely a hot spot for younger groups. Kirchberg, Austria. Just 6km from glitzy Kitzbuhel, Kirchberg has hosted the Ian Dempsey Today FM ski trip a number of times and knows how to cater for groups of all sizes. Set in the heart of the Kitzuhelerhorn, it offers skiers access to Kitzbuhel's 170km of slopes on one side and the Ski Welt's 280km on the other. Nightlife is young and lively.

FOR ADAPTIVE SKI

For members of your holiday group who use a wheelchair, are visually impaired or have an intellectual disability, lots of resorts offer adaptive ski services to get them out

Warm feelings in a cold climate onto the slopes - whether its learning to ski or getting someone to drive them down the mountain in a 'ski-taxi'. St Johann in Tirol, Austria. Instructors at the Wilder Kaiser ski school have lots of experience working with visually impaired skiers from the Ski Club of Ireland over the years, making St Johann our number one spot for visually impaired skiers. Alpe d'Huez, France. It's very common to see ski taxis whizzing around the mountains in this resort. Visitors with paraplegia learn to ski using a kind of ski seat with a single ski underneath and mini hand-held skis on either side for balance. Alternatively, the ski taxi option means they are driven down the mountain by a guide. Breckenridge, Colorado, USA. One of our favourite Colorado resorts, the old mining town of Breckenridge has a long-established adaptive outdoor recreational centre and would be one of our first choices for adaptive skiing. Loon, New Hampshire, USA. If they can think of a way of getting you onto the mountain, they will. Instructors here will adapt systems to enable people with all types of disabilities to get on the slopes. Some staff

members have disabilities themselves so they know what they're talking about. Kirchberg, Austria. A special mention goes to Hotel Brauwirt where the owner has ensured that all rooms are disabledfriendly.

6 FOR SCENERY

Klosters, Switzerland. For the last number of years, Klosters has been working with injured soldiers to get them out on the mountain so again, it has the necessary experience. The Dolomites, Italy. The jagged rock formations set this area apart from the Alps. You simply cannot beat the amazing scenery that you'll soak in as you ski the Sella Ronda circuit. Stay in Selva/Val Gardena or San Cassiano. Wengen/Grindelwald, Jungfrau, Switzerland. Home to the imposing Eiger and conversely, some of the prettiest chocolate box Swiss scenery imaginable. Also home to Europe's highest railway. It doesn't get

more Alpine than this. Verbier, Switzerland. The panoramic view from the top of the jumbo cable car at 3,300 metres is unbeatable, taking in Mont Blanc and many other impressive peaks. Even if you're not going to ski down the challenging runs from here, take the cable car up to take in the views. Courmayeur, Italy. Bella, bella. Even strolling along the pretty cobblestoned streets of classy Courmayeur, you can admire the imposing mountain scenery. Go in March for sunny days, al fresco dining on the mountain and deep sun tans. Chamonix, France. Nothing can compare to the incredible formations of the Glace du Mer as you ski the glacier from the top of the Grand Montets cable car. If your skiing isn't quite at that level, another way to be stunned by the wonder of Mont Blanc is to base yourself in Megeve and take a flight in a light aircraft, it's absolutely worthwhile. Alpe d Huez, France. Watch out for the mer du nuage or sea of cloud that s visible on certain days and seems to stretch all the way to the nearest city.

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Even if the weather is warm all the main European resorts have snow making equipment

6 CHALLENGES

Verbier, Valais region, Switzerland. You need a parachute to get off the steep moguls at the top of this marvellously long field of bumps. Definitely not for the faint-hearted but what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger and Tortin is a great run for practising mogul technique and improving your ski fitness. Trifide, La Grave, France. Get kitted up with a harness, helmet and take a local guide to negotiate this notorious couloir. There have been a couple of deaths on this run so mistakes are strictly out of the question. Grown Scandinavian men have been known to turn back from the tricky entry point, weeping for their mamas. Baldy Chutes, Alta, Utah. Lovely steep chutes, as the name implies. Only opens in the right weather conditions so it is possible to spend a whole holiday in Alta and not get to ski it. That doesn’t stop you from dropping the name into conversations and pretending.... Corbett's couloir,

Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Another tricky entry point keeps most mere mortals away from this infamous couloir. La Balma, Alagna, Piedmont,. Freeride heaven when the snow is good. Hire a chopper to drop you in for a long, lovely off-piste run down to the little village of Alagna. Highland bowls, Aspen, Colorado. Okay so it's at least a 30 minute hike to the top or longer if you're unfit but there are various drop-in points and a variety of excellent powder bowls to ski. You're more than likely to hear Chris Davenport, famous for skiing all of Colorado's 14,000 ft peaks in a year, hollering with enjoyment on this long off-piste run. Scheffau, Austria.

6 FAMILY VALUE

This little village is linked to the 280km Ski Welt. Scheffau s ski school director has invented a unique ski boot that allows toddlers as young as 14 months to get onto skis and find their balance. If that s not family friendly, we don t know what is! A

good bet for families with far more reasonable prices than countries like Switzerland and France. Champoluc, Italy. The lovely resort of Champoluc in the Aosta valley is linked to nearby Gressoney and Alagna and is a good mid-market option. Nestled beneath the Monte Rosa peak, it's also very pretty, which proves that you don't have to put up with ugly resorts to get value for money. Bormio and Cervinia are other good value Italian options. Hautes Pyrenees, France. A cycling mecca during Summer, the resorts of Grand Tourmalet, Cauterets and St Lary become firm family skiing favourites in winter. The region is famous for its 19th century spas and architecture, its natural beauty and affordable prices. Stay at the Lyon dÓr hotel in Cauterets, which offers large family rooms and excellent food. Kranjska Gora, Slovenia. Eastern Europe continues to attract skiers who don't want to break the bank completely. Ski runs here are small but perfectly formed, the food has an Italian twist and a round of drinks for your pals is affordable. Bansko and Borovets in Bulgaria are other cheap eastern European favourites. Brides les Bains, France. This traditional spa town offers the best of

both worlds - prices are cheaper, the town isn t purpose built and it s linked to the massive Les Trois Vallees. Granted, you have a longer lift ride in the morning to get to the main ski area but once you allow for that extra half hour, you re laughing. Nightlife is quieter for families or couples who don t need to dance on tables to enjoy their holidays. Pinzole, Italian Dolomites. Situated just down the road from glamorous Madonna di Campiglio and linked in to the same ski area, Pinzole is another good option for families with cheaper prices, quieter apres-ski and a lift to the main ski area. Red mountain and

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK Whitewater, Canada: Set in British Columbia’s Kootenay rockies, these little-known resorts offer steep slopes, deep powder and diverse terrain for off-piste fans. Not so easy to reach as better known Canadian resorts but worth the extra effort

when you finally launch into that powder. Hire a SUV and hit the powder highway. Stay at Red Robs at Red Mountain or the Prestige lakeside resort in Nelson. Vallorcine, Chamonix valley, France. A twenty minute drive from bustling Chamonix, Vallorcine might as well be a million miles away. A pretty little hamlet at the end of the Chamonix valley, it’s situated close to Argentiere and looks up at the Grand Montets ski area. Popular with families but also a good bet for advanced skiers who want to go off-piste in search of hidden powder stashes. Stay at the Bellevue Alpine lodge where owners Mandy and Mike offer a very personable service and excellent home cooked food or at the Residence self-catering apartments opposite the lift in the centre of the village. South Korea might not be the first place to think of when it comes to skiing but this year, English company Ski Safaris have launched it both as a stand-alone destination or as part of a unique ski asia safari that combines it with Niseko, Japan (see below). An all-important part

APRES SKI... of most people’s ski holidays. If you really want to party, go to the

Moosewirt in St Anton, Le Rond Point in Meribel, Fire and Ice in Ischgl, La Folie Douce in Val Thorens, Alpe d Huez and Val dÍsere or Le Farinet in Verbier. Gastronomy. If you have cash to splash, spend it on good food. Go to Gressoney or Champoluc in the Aosta valley for Italian delights, Courchevel if money is no object and you don’t mind booking in advance, Colorado if you like American-style fine-dining. Last winter we loved Italian cuisine; Chalet Fiat on the slopes in Madonna di Campiglio and the Rosa Alpina hotel in Alta Badia, home to the Michelin two star St Hubertus. If luxury is a must, check out Le Chardon chalet in Val d’Isere, Humber Valley resort in Canada, the Hermitage Spa Hotel in Soldeu and Aspen Signature properties which are stunning and come with an equally stunning price tag. If you’re travelling with children, pick a resort with a short (1-2 hours) transfer from the airport, good all-day crèche facilities, compact resorts that are easy to walk around or that have good shuttle bus services, hotels with family suites, nanny services and family-friendly policies.

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 23

SKI & SNOWBOARD 2014-15

Even if the weather is warm all the main European resorts have snow making equipment

6 CHALLENGES

6 FAMILY VALUE

APRES SKI... An all-important part of most people’s ski holidays. If you really want

to party, go to the Moosewirt in St Anton, Le Rond Point in Meribel, Fire and Ice in Ischgl, La Folie Douce in Val Thorens, Alpe d Huez and Val dÍsere or Le Farinet in Verbier. Gastronomy. If you have cash to splash, spend it on good food. Go to Gressoney or Champoluc in the Aosta valley for Italian delights, Courchevel if money is no object and you don’t mind booking in advance, Colorado if you like American-style fine-dining. Last winter we loved Italian cuisine; Chalet Fiat on the slopes in Madonna di Campiglio and the Rosa Alpina hotel in Alta Badia, home to the Michelin two star St Hubertus. If luxury is a must, check out Le Chardon chalet in Val d’Isere, Humber Valley resort in Canada, the Hermitage Spa Hotel in Soldeu and Aspen Signature properties which are stunning and come with an equally stunning price tag. If you’re travelling with children, pick a resort with a short (1-2 hours) transfer from the airport, good all-day crèche facilities, compact resorts that are easy to walk around or that have good shuttle bus services, hotels with family suites, nanny services and family-friendly policies.

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Page 026 Asia Guide 09/09/2014 20:32 Page 1

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A S IA G U ID E

ever has Ireland enjoyed so many one stop connections to so many Asian destinations, through Istanbul, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Over 200,000 seats each were filled by Emirates and Etihad out of Dublin last year with a big increase coming this summer with the move to double daily. Turkish increased Dublin to Istanbul from seven to ten flights a week. The airline has over 200 onwards destinations connecting through Ataturk airport. Here is a brief guide to some of the riches on offer:

Destinations to watch as Ireland gets more Asian connections

The increased east

CAMBODIA

The great Khmer temple complex at Angkor is the country’s biggest tourist attraction with 2m visitors each year. Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in south-east Asia, passing bird-filled wetlands, rickety fishing boats and villagers waving excitedly from the shore. Phnom Penh sights include the Royal Palace, whose gilded pagodas are similar to those in Bangkok. The Tuol Sleng Museum and collection of bones at the Killing Fields recall the horrors endured under Pol Pot’s regime.

CHINA The Great

Wall is a short trip from Beijing, other signatures include Xian where the terracotta army as located, the Yangtse river and the soaring skyscrapers of Guangzhou.

INDIA The big change in India has not had a definited date yet but is on the way: the long awaited introduction of Visa on Arrival for Irish passport holders. The Golden triangle of Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Fatehpur Sikri is where the first taste tourists go. An easier introduction to India is Kerala, with its Arabic charm. Once past those you can spend a lifetime

Aircraft in Dubai at sunrise: many of the connections opened up by Emirates and Etihad double daily services are in Asia discovering the different palaces, landscapes and cultures. What may be the most beautiful landscapes on the entire planet can be found high in the Himalayas at Ladakh. Teeming Mumbai, the deserts of Rajastan, and the rich cultures of the Ganges and Indus rivers are worth a look. Incredible India say first time visitors favour their 6 night group tour Classical India from €649 and their 12 night group tour 'Classical Rajasthan covers the majority of the North in one trip. Martin Penrose of If Only has organised a major fam to India from the Irish trade.

INDONESIA

Bali is the tourist hub but you can escape the crowds out on the tiny island of Nusa Lembongan. Ubud is the Bali’s cultural heart there are great art galleries and countryside to wander in. Lombok has a scaleable volcano, Mount Rinjani, and is growing in popularity. The most obvious resort is Senggigi, flanked by white-sand bays. Gili Trawangan is a hot spot for divers. On Java you can find the Buddhist and Hindu temples of

Borobudur and Prambana.

JAPAN

Urban and rural culture in equal measure, stunning landscapes, crowded cities and amazing food. Visitors congregate at Buddhist Monuments in the Horyu-ji Area, Himejijo, Shirakami-Sanchi, Yakushima, Ancient Kyoto (Kyoto, Uji and Otsu Cities), Shirakawago and Gokayama, Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome), Itsukushima Shinto Shrine, Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara, Shrines and Temples of Nikko, Gusuku Sites and Related Properties of the Kingdom of Ryukyu, Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range, Shiretoko and Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine and its Cultural Landscape.

LAOS

Star attractions in landlocked Laos are the Mekong islands of Si Phan Don, home to fishing villages, waterfalls and rare Irrawaddy dolphins. Boutique hotels can be found in the country’s capital, Vientiane, alongside colonial villas, pleasant boulevards and Laos’s most important golden stupa,

the 150ft-tall Pha That Luang. Luang Prabang is one of the most beguiling cities in Asia, with Unesco World Heritage status and faded French charm.

MALAYSIA

Beach-lovers can choose between islands off both the east and west coast, Pulau Langkawi, and Palau Tiomen. The Perhentian Islands are the least developed. Malaysian Borneo attracts wildlife fanatics to the lush states of Sabah and Sarawak. At Sabah you can view orangutans, dive at Pulau Sipadan and climb Mount Kinabalu (4,095m). Sarawak is famous for river trips to see indigenous tribes living in communal longhouses. Cities such as Kuala Lumpur and Malacca have a rich heritage and well-preserved colonial architecture.

PHILIPPINES

A new slogan: More Fun In The Philippines and increased air lift through Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Istanbul, this archipelago has a mixture of pastry beaches and heritage sites, the baroque Churches, Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park, the

Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras, the historic Town of Vigan and PuertoPrincesa Subterranean River National Park.

SINGAPORE

is clean and respectable in its modernity, with ageing colonial relics, vibrant nightlife at Clarke Quay and even urban rainforest, at Bukit Timah.

TAIWAN

Three key attractions in its armoury, the beautiful Taroko Gorge, the first tall building in the world to reach more than 500m, Taipei 101 and the ancient imperial treasury of China, now housed in the Palace Museum.

THAILAND

Forget the publicity generated by the coup, things have never been so stable in Thailand, who are anxious to bring Chiang Khan to the famous northern circuit of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. Famous beaches can be found on two separated coastlines of what is easily the most popular Asian destination with the Irish. who travel in numbers (an anticipated 63,000 visitors

in 2013) and base themselves in Bangkok and go overland to Pattaya or by short flight to Phuket, Koh Samui or Chiang Mai. Huge investment has kept hotel standards high and opened new possibilities. You can spend a lifetime exploring all 77 provinces so don’t stop there, especially attractive are the highlands and rich cultures of the Mekong.

VIETNAM

Signature attraction, a contender for natural wonder of the world, is the soaring limestone peaks of Halong Bay. At Mui Ne you can find sand dunes, watersports and luxury hotels. The signature cities are historic Hue and Hoi An, where tailors cut silk to order in streets lined with Unesco-preserved houses. Tours generally begin and end in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, home to the moving War Remnants Museum and a jumping off point to try out the impossible narrow Cu Chi tunnels, and Hanoi where you can visit the simple cottage headquarters Ho Chi Minh and his embalmed tomb. Best hikes are in the misty hills of Sapa.

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DESTINATION THAILAND

here was no sound. But the lightning flashed over the Spanish designed bridge under the sky. A crescent moon hang above it all. The city here is low, nothing could be built that was highest than the highest point of the royal palace and it adds to the effect. The most extraordinary thing is the light, the bright shining electric light on top of the temple towers, not just the main tower but the four satellite towers as well. The light casts a long corridor along the water, which is moving fast, very fast, under the crested moon. The fissures on the monument look different at night time. It was like someone has taken a pin and drawn it through the sand. because the monument is sand coloured. There are lines, there are cracks, there are little castellated junctions, and all of this beautiful, but more importantly it is different from what you see by daylight. The skyline of Bangkok is not far away: the tall sky scrapers, the red flashing lights on top of those sky scrapers. The cityscape where the old city lies is a different world because Bangkok traffic dictates that it has to me. It is a long way away, perhaps four kilometres, 15 minutes in the early morning but by the time traffic begins to build it is an hour and a half away, an eternity. On the bridge above us a couple are taking a selfie, a moment captured forever under the crescent moon.

he signature attraction here, down-river from the lights and dancing girl, is that touchstone of Thai culture: Royal Palace. It shows how Europe invaded the consciousness of the place, even though its armies never marched on Bangkok. The Thai Royal family may be the most diplomatically astute dynasty in history, their measured serene deliberation has kept their people free from colonialism in all its guises, pomps and pretensions. And then, in the rooms of their wood-panelled palace you see that the Royal family also learned a little ostentation. The palace to which you are shown looks nothing like an Asian res-

Secret Bangkok Eoghan Corry goes downriver in the Thai capital

The Royal Palace in Bangkok’s historic quarter: ignored treasure of Thailand idence. It bears all the hallmarks of being designed by someone who has been to see too many ostentatious European palaces. The contrast with the traditional lifestyle could not be greater. The culture of these people celebrated deities and spiritualism, not materialism. Somewhere along the way the Kings of Thailand learned otherwise. But like all of their policy it was measured. Just enough to impress the Europeans, not to irk them.

he sun was still high in the sky when our cookery class began. The working Chao Phraya river outside hummed with traffic, long barges sometimes with seven, eight or nine carriages passing up and down sending a wash across to our sunny landscaped hotel front. Our chef was from Cairns and she left us in the hands of chef Naritta "Oil" Tongjitti who had been working here for 10 years. She adeptly chopped chile number five which she said wash medium, using the sharp blade against her knuckles with alarming ferocity. Beware, she said, one of the pupils when they were pestilling the chile managed to flick a bit up into her eye. It was slow, it was careful, it was arduous, it was almost spiritual, all the things that you would associate with Thailand were happening here in the open walled kitchen

under the humidly frying sun. She added a generous jollop of soya oil on to the chile and lit the flame. The pungent sharp expression went straight up the nose. The class began to sneeze and sniffle one by one, and it was joyous. Next in an apple egg plant, chopped meticulously in fours with the precision of a master painter. It was preceded by some fish oil.

n the manner of these things the Siam hotel has a high staff to guest ratio: 39 rooms and 140 staff. Manager Jason Friedman says the location of the hotel is one of their greatest straits. The Peninsula, Oriental, Sukhothai, Fours seasons, Shangri la and shopping district, Lumphini Park, and financial districts are all in modern Bangkok. “For forty years all the development in Bangkok has happened down there. There are many reasons for that.” Where we are is historic Bangkok. Chinatown, Grand Palace, government, old town, Khao San Road, palace district. This is the seeds of society has been for 700 years. No buildings can be built taller than the Royal Palace. This is the most intact area of the city. It is the largest old town district of any city in South east Asia. But it is unknown. Our industry has been selling modern Bangkok for 40 years. They won’t sell you historic Bangkok.” “It is only four kilometres. In the morning it is 15 minutes. During the day it is an hour or an hour and a half. Everybody comes to see the Grand Palace once, but they miss the rest of it. Our great joy at the Siam is not just the hotel but the fact that we are in this incredible neighbourhood. It is a paradigm shift in the way we talk about Bangkok as a destination.

Bangkok has the best cultural historic District of any city in South east asia, untrammelled, untouched, authentic, real Bangkok. It is a whole new way to experience the city, temples and palaces and restaurants and museums, incredible adventure around the neighbourhood.They don’t see tourists so they treat you like you are up country.” Once you arrive at the Siam you will not get in a car again until you leave. Everything you do you do by walking, tuk tuk or by our boat. So traffic is no longer an issue. Our average length of stay here is five nights because you get the full resort experience at the Hotel. Ewe are not a boutique hotel. We are a full service luxury resort.”

liminating the curfew altogether was welcome, because so much of Bangkok life happens at night. The famous night market is no longer the heaving mass of all human character that it once was, but it is still an essential visit on the tourist itinerary. Heat is the issue, when you walk one of the epic walk through Bangkok city during the daytime, it is balmy and hot and, for an Irish person, can reduce a shirt to a wet rag in a matter of minutes. That means so much activity transfers to the hours after dark that you could imagine Bangkok it's a different city, having arisen at sundown and prepared to go back to its home before sunrise as effectively has any creation of Bram Stoker. When I walked through those streets during and in defiance of the curfew, that night-time city was expurgated, killed with a stake through the heart. It applied too, to the nocturnal activities for which Bangkok in famous: probably unjustly, because other cities have the same activities with the reputation. For me I see a sweet smile and a short skirt as an alarm signal that I'm about to be robbed, a policy that has served me well over the years.

ore coconut she said, as the fry started. The heat was intense outside but inside in the kitchen it was even hotter. Then came the moment of truth time to put the chicken in. One of the apprentice cooks dropped the chicken in and splashed the green prepared sauce in every direction. A moment of panic. Nobody was burnt or hurt except the dignity of one of the participants. The hotel supplied some impartial tasters. And then one of them declared: “mmmm, something amazing. But for decoration I take this one.” In the end it was the one with too much oil that was declared the winner. What is amazing was how different each of the dishes tasted, even that by the resident chef. The whole exercise took 20-30 minutes. It is a great way to spend an afternoon. None of the passing boatmen laughed. That we noEoghan Corry travelled to Thailand as a guest of the Thailand Tourist Board. he ticed anyway. stayed at the Siam Hotel. /www.thesiamhotel.com

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DESTINATION THAILAND

f there is one sound that defines that you are in the tropics, it is the cicada. The chirping is not exactly exotic, but it is, like a call to prayer from a mosque, a definition that your journey has brought you into another world. The cicada is ubiquitous all across the planet including two disconnected cousins in Australia and Tasmania. They chirrup in the morning, the evening and through the night. Once the backing track has been established it is time to listen for the extra layers of sound. Our night in Chatnat Eco resort was noisy, a bit like you had booked a hotel on the seafront of a noisy Balearic or Canaries resort. The animals provided the beat to this club, raucous and noisy and amorous as any teenagers on a post-leaving cert holiday, and sometimes just as cacophonic or lacking in musical integrity. But hey, here in the highlands of north eastern Thailand it was truly beautiful. Our ducks quacked, and when the morning sun had begun its climb through the forest and the bamboo and the palms, a cock crew in the disgruntled way cocks crow everywhere on the planet. The rest of the chorus was very local. And, more menacingly, there was also the ubiquitous hum of the insects and the mosquitoes working their way through the clouds of spray that we had put in their path to deter them.

firefly dropped from the ceiling and continued to glow in my palm. It was the first time I seen anything like this up so close and it seemed like a prayer to heaven, a state of outreach that seems to prevail through all of Thai society, its Buddhist temples as central to modern life as mobile phones or the tablet. There were gekos

Reincarnation river Eoghan Corry visits Loei in north eastern Thailand The Thailand bank of the majestic Mekong looking towards Laos: Loei is a favourite un-touristed region for Thaiphiles everywhere, one scrambled through the same leaves and roof top as the insects. If you want to keep the mosquitoes away, it is not spray that you need more of, it is gekos. Lana Bugonovich from Australia, one of the travel journalists on the trip, hates gekos. She had one in her room, just for her. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Chant toukey toukey back at the geckos,â&#x20AC;? was the advice she got from a well travelled colleague. She tried. It did not work. When she tried to chase it out of the room it ran under her bed and stayed there, contemplating reincarnation.

his is the new Chiang of northern Thai tourism, many tropical miles from Chiang Mai and Chaing Rai, Chiang Khan. There is more than distance involved. The official Thailand tourist site declares: There are no bars nor any nightlife to speak of and Chiang Khan is so sleepy that it virtually grounds to a halt at night. We tested it out, walking the streets parallel to the river bank in the dark. there was a market of

sorts, but this could not be mistaken for a real tourist town. Mysterious and dark, even quieter and mystical, we saw Laos on the other side of the dusty Mekong. We were back at sunrise the following morning to give sticky rice to the monks and receive their blessing. The blessing is chanted solemnly, and carries an air of solemnity that affects the whole town. A huge beetle was doing the breast stroke in a puddle, wondering if it would be reincarnated as a monk or an alms giver. Being a monk is something of a fashion accessory here. Many men have spent a period of their life in a monastery, and others were despatched by disapproving mothers to learn spiritualism as young men. The first monk, like an advance party, had come through and issued his blessing. The tourists all hunched, waiting and then nine of them came together. A woman running back to her mat having taken her photograph now wanted to give the rice. Berobed, barefooted and

with short hair. They came in a crocodile, oldest at the front, the youngest at the back. While the monks have 226 rules to follow, our guides assured us there only five rules for Buddhist lay people. But they kept forgetting the fifth precept of Buddhism: do not lie, so we cannot even be sure of that.

hoes off tourism, is the phrase. Temples, spirituality, contemplation and above all relaxation are the currency of Thailandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s northern inland tourism. With each new temple, the shoes have to come off. With lace up shoes, and a bad back it can be trying. But it is worth persevering.

nd, it being the tropics, somebody has organised a bicycle tour. Even at 6 AM you can feel the heat. The sky is turning a deeper shade of blue. We collected our bikes at the hospital which seemed appropri-

ate with helmets and bottles of water (to complete the theme we finished at the mortuary and a van with a blue flashing light came to bring us back home). The sense of anticipation was heavy in the air ;ike the humidity, 31 degrees in the tropics on a bicycle with a bell on each side. We had precious little knowledge of what lay ahead of us. This was going to be experiential, in the way the guys give the PowerPoint presentations about experiential tourism never dreamed of. We set off, the low sun behind us, a long shadow pointing into the corner, into a drain into which the excess water runs during the rainy season. There are patches of water buffalo dung along the cycle path in the distance the mountains have a green top for the forest and a brown section coming down in streaks like chocolate in a bowl. Vans, tuk tuks and pickup trucks go whizzing by but what strikes you most is how the colours respond to the

low early morning sun. Later in the day the light will be blinding, so bright that looking and appreciating this countryside becomes more of a task. Now Thailand is delighting and rejoicing in the subtle colours of the morning time.

o greater contrast from the white sand resorts to the south could be found than on these narrow roads. Exploding greenery encroaching on both sides, creeping over the white line that is supposed to demarcate the markings of what is driveable and what is never truly walkable. The pools of water, ponds and mini lakes dusty as tomato soup. The sound in your ears is the chirping of the calming magnificent melancholy birdsong and the menacing malevolent insects that are plotting a course through the vapour of your insecticides. the roads are classic country roads, potholes peering through as if the layer of tarmacadam that was cast

Eoghan Corry travelled to the province of Loei as a guest ot the Tourism Authority of Thailand. He travelled with Etihad to Bangkok via Abu Dhabi.

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DESTINATION THAILAND upon the last eight years is not going to subjugate the millennia of comings and goings along these well trekked paths, and above all heat, the unbearable unrelenting heat, from a sun rises without fail from a the sky that clears without fail, and clouds again without fail, and occasionally reminds us of other tricks it can perform with thundering booming thunderstorms that come each night to answer the rising humidity and start the process all over again.

n the pagoda outside the ghost temple, the gaily decorated icons look for all the world like something from the other side of the Pacific ocean. The colours are different and distinct, less glaring than you find elsewhere, a deeper shade of purple a lighter shade of yellow, sky blue as if the ghost decided to support the Dublin football team in a flash of other worldly inspiration. The heat is so intense it burns the soles of your feet through light shows, and you watch for darker patches of pavement where the sun has not warmed it to hellish intensity. Every temple becomes a refuge if only because of the heat and the act and art of meditation comes naturally to those who step inside to allow their body escape from the climbing mercury out-

Shoes off tourism at Wat Ponechai in Loei side.

n a large dusty courtyard we visited another temple. A funeral was taking place nearby. Long orations and chanting in something like sean-nos. Tourists were being taught to dance and bang a room and dress for a parade, while some bored youths helped them along. Everybody went home. Nobody got hurt. Maybe the art of music or the aesthetic of tourism in Thailand but that was all. Parts of this tourist attraction looked like a working construction site. Parts of it looked like a manicured garden with over hanging greenery. The mix was just right. Parts of it looked like a

sandy car park with weeds growing here and there. Two long serpents stretched out on either side of the temple door, gaily painted in those bright colours that made them look far less threatening than anything you would find in a medieval church in Europe.

hey had other activities in mind. We built Pasat Loy Krohon prayer rafts and lit candles on them and released them into the Mekong. The purpose was to â&#x20AC;&#x153;send away bad luck, bad health and other bad thingsâ&#x20AC;? from our lives via the Mekong River to the sea. Some were picket to

put on their masks and wear them for the Phi Takhon ghost dance, as supervised by Master Phramaha Bunpeng. The master divined the personalities of those who had prepared their masks, and calculated their fortunes ahead. He was kind in his assessment of our art. For some (me) this was embarrassment tourism.

f north eastern Thailand came with a flavour it would be is that slightly sweet dried coconut, it looks like layers of pasta or soft liquorice when you bite into it, rolled up like petals of flowers, you nibble away. They brought us to see it being made. The prepa-

ration does not add the attraction. An open pot surrounded by flies, if not on the pot, in the vicinity. You never get to look at food preparation in a developing country. It is just as well. It does not do justice to the range of amazing local cuisine from the kitchen of the lost world: marinated ant eggs, garlic pork, oyster sauce with dried mushroom, fried bean curd, fried snakehead (a fish) and chicken com yang. You have not lived until you have tasted rice in a pineapple on the banks of the majestic Mekong, chugging along as if the ancient Lan Chang Kingdom was still extant. The locals dispense

culinary advice: avoid peeled fruit and salads, buy the whole fruit. And keep an eye out for reusable plates washed in a bucket of water sitting in 35 degrees

here was an ant in my camera. I thought it was a bird against the blue skies in the first few photographs Maybe he was contemplating reincarnation as well. Perhaps I should have given the monks more sticky rice. If I had listened more carefully I think the ciadas were warning me.

Clockwise: saying goodbye to bad luck as the Pasat Loy Kroh floats away, a shrine on the Mekong, ghost dance at Phunacome Resort, the mayor of Dansai with a water wheel used for irrigation, and Chiang Khan River Mountain Hotel

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THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

AER LINGUS’s flight to San Fran-

cisco, currently 5w, will be daily from May 1 on which date Orlando will go from 3w to 4w with an extra Wednesday flight. The Cork to Brussels service has been suspended for the Winter (operated 2w in 2013/14). Cork to Munich service has been reduced from 2w to 1w from Dec 20 to the end of March when it will revert to 2w. Cork to Malaga has reduced from 3w to 2w between November to the beginning of March when it will revert to 3w.

LIVERPOOL Former Manchester

Airport managing director Andrew Cornish is joining rival Liverpool John Lennon Airport as CEO. He was chief customer and brand officer at Aer Lingus for a while in 2012.

AER LINGUS Chairman Colm Bar-

rington was reappointed to the role for another year to September 2015.

RYANAIR is among 9 companies that

submitted non-binding proposals for the acquisition of Cyprus Airways.

FINNAIR aims to start using outsourced cabin service on its Singapore and Hong Kong routes in the first quarter of 2015.

TRANSAVIA is considering new European bases outside Netherlands and France.

IAA The IAA reported an average 1,654

flights in Irish airspace, up 5.2pc from last August. August 14 was the busiest day, with 1,835 flights and 700 flights at Ireland’s main airports. Dublin was up 2.6pc to an average of 528 daily movements, Shannon was up 26.9pc to 71 and Cork down 3.7pc to 63.

AER LINGUS is to code share with

Flybe between Southend, Southampton and Invernesss and the US/Canada.

TURKISH has extended the arrange-

ment where passengers connecting through Istanbul with Turkish Airlines who have a waiting time at least 6 hours is welcome to a complimentary tour of Istanbul. Turkish launched a new route to Asmara, Catania and Luanda and increased the frequency of flights to Varna.

BRITISH Airways is allowing potential

passengers to hold seats for a fiver on aircrafts.

AER LINGUS results for August

were even better than July, driven by strong long haul growth from extra routes, but also a high seat load factor. Overall results were up 7pc, driven by long haul (up 22pc, load factor down 0.8pc to 91.4pc), short haul up 3.3pc (load factor up 1.4pc to .pc). This was despite one aircraft less in the short-haul fleet – the aircraft was designated as a stand-by rather than as scheduled

RYANAIR have continued to hold their

growth rate of 4pc, up to 9.4m for August (Q1 and July both up 4pc), load factor up 4pc to 93pc (Q1 was up 4pc, July was up 3pc), Ryanair may now surpass their target of 86m passengers in 2014 having already raised it from 84.6m for this year and raised the 2015 target from 89m to 90m.

The Gold Star lounge at Heathrow T2 for Aer Lingus customers and partner airlines

Lingus LHR home

An irish touch to Aer Lingus €1m lounge at Heathrow

lounge cost €1m and is fitted out by Dublin based Glenbeigh Construction with Irish stone, Irish wood and other home-sourced furnishings. Ciaran MacDonagh and Robbie Lynch of Aer Lingus and Chris Butler, Airline BusiLINGUS LINKS AT HEATHROW T2 ness Development DirecAer Lingus interline partners at Heathrow T2 tor of Heathrow hosted a group of trade and travel Air Canada Moved S African Oct 22 media at the new Aer LinAir China Moved Sri Lankan Moved gus Lounge in Heathrow Air NZ Oct 22 Thai Moved T2. SAS Sept 10 United Moved Aer Lingus uses gates Singapore Sept 17 US Airways Moved

he sound of a west of Ireland waterfall wil greet guests who enter Aer Lingus’s lounge at Heathrow Terminal 2. The new Aer Lingus Gold Star

21 to 26 in the new terminal. The Aer Lingus inter line partners are based in the terminal including Air Canada and United with whom Aer Lingus have important codeshare agreements. It is the second biggest user of the terminal in movements behind Lufthansa and third behind United in passenger numbers. The party were given a tour of the terminal and learned of an innovation that may change flying behaviour: all restaurants in the terminal offer on board picnic options.

US AGENTS SUPPORT NORWEGIAN

JFK and he US De4w to Los partment of Angeles, Transportawhile 6w tion further delayed O s l o the application by Florida and Dublin-based NorBangkok wegian Air Internaround trips tional’ for a fifth are refreedom route from placed by Gatwick to JFK by 7w Calirejecting an applifornia and cation for certain Bjorn Kjos JFK. Norexemptions “on wegian procedural CEO Bjørn Kjos says he grounds.” Norwegian stressed the hopes to utilise his upcompermit refusal is NOT a de- ing B737 MAX 8 aircraft nial. Norwegian long-haul on thinner routes such as to Glasgow, schedules for next summer Boston show Gatwick as 6w to Bergen, Stavanger and

Trondheim. He said there is not a leasing company in the world that has the purchasing conditions we have for the 737 MAX, for which Norwegian have 100 on order. The American Society of Travel Agents is supporting Norwegian’s proposal, as are FedEx, Atlas Air, the Travel Technology Association, the European Low Fares Airlines Association, Washington Airports Task Force, Broward County Aviation Department, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, and the Greater Orlando Aviation

Authority. Documents on file with the USDOT indicate the route's opponents include Air France/KLM/Delta, American, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, SAS, United, US Airways and American trade unions ALPA, APA, SWAPA, AFL-CIO (TTD), AFA, IAM, TWU and European trade unions ECA, ETWF, Norwegian trade union Parat, and the Air Crew Working Group of the Sectoral Dialogue Committee.

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Welcome to our Home. We are moving our flights to the Worlds Best Terminal.* From 26 October 2014, when you are flying from Dublin and Belfast with British Airways, either to London Heathrow, or connecting to our worldwide network, you will land at our state of the art Terminal 5. Enjoy quicker, smoother transfer through Heathrow, as well as award winning shopping and an array of dining options. For further information visit ba.com or contact your local travel agent. To Fly. To Serve.

*The World Airport Awards based on 12.1 million surveys in a nine month period in 2013 and 2014.

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THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

VIRGIN Atlantic is to add Heathrow-De-

troit (daily) and increase frequencies to JFK (5th daily), Los Angeles (additional daily), Atlanta (additional daily in the summer), San Francisco (additional 5 per week in summer), and (additional) daily Miami in winter). Delta will operate Manchester-JFK (daily). Virgin will take over Delta’s Manchester-Atlanta route and Delta will take one of Virgin’s HeathrowNewark services as their transatlantic joint venture develops. Virgin will cease routes Heathrow to Tokyo, Mumbai, Cape Town and Vancouver, at various dates from Feb 2015, but say they will restore them if capacity at Heathrow makes it possible.

LONDON Airports Commission chair-

man Howard Davies said the decision not to shortlist the Isle of Grain as an option for a new London airport (as championed by London mayor Boris Johnson) leaves the city with three choices: lengthening an existing runway at Heathrow, a third runway at Heathrow, and a new runway at Gatwick.

ALITALIA is to close routes from Turin

to Alghero, Bari, Catania, Lamezia, Naples, Palermo e Reggio Calabria from 1 Oct leaving only routes to Rome and Tirana (Alitalia’s only international route from Turin).

BRITISH Airways will remove four

meals from its in-flight menu from Oct 1: fruit platter, bland, Jain and seafood meals.

TURKISH National Geographic Chan-

The entrance area to terminal 2 in Dublin airport

Airports up 7pc

nel Turkey and Turkish Airlines have announced the production of a series that for first time will open the doors of the airline company to a camera crew to film its daily functions.

WESTJET reported the highest load factor in its 14 year history, 89.3pc.

IBERIA launched an online booking tool replacing the process whereby agents contact Iberia groups via email for requests.

TURTLE Security officials at

Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in China caught an eight-year-old boy trying to smuggle his pet turtle onto an aircraft by hiding the reptile in his underwear. A similar story emerged last year when a man was caught trying to bring a turtle on board a flight at Guangzhou Airport by hiding it in a KFC hamburger (which the fast food chain doesn’t sell).

RETAIL AWARDS five airport re-

tail outlets are vying for the 2014 Retail Excellence Awards: The Loop at Dublin Airport (Company of the Year category); The Loop at Cork Airport (Company of the Year and Top 100 Stores); Jo Malone at T2 Dublin Airport (Top 100 Stores); Topaz Filling Station at Dublin Airport (Top 100 Stores); and Victoria Secrets at T2 Dublin Airport (Karen Grehan, Manager of the Year). Category winners will be announced in November.

RUSSIA’s Ministry of Industry and

Trade offered to supply Red Wings Airlines with Tupolev Tu-204 aircraft for flights to Crimea after Dobrolet, which operated Boeing 737s, suspended flights on August

Summer peaks show growth in passenger numbers

unday, July 20 was Dublin Airport’s busiest day of the summer with 81,521 passengers. Belfast Aldergrove’s busiest day was July 11 with just 18,000 passengers. Cork Airport’s busiest day of the year was July 20 with 9,364 passengers. Thursday August 29 was the busiest day in the history of Knock Airport with close to 5,000 passengers on 30 flights to 13 difference destinations. The previous busiest day of the year was Thursday July 31 with a total throughput of 3,656 passengers.

Dublin Airport is on course for 21.1m passengers this year if the current 6 to 7pc rate of growth continues. It could be even higher if winter route expansion plans see fruit. The airport recorded 2.3m passengers in August, 6pc up on last August: 695,000 on English, Scottish and Welsh routes (up 3pc), 1.3m on continental routes (up 6pc), 260,000 on transatlantic routes (up 14pc), 67,000 on other international routes mainly Middle East (up 17pc) and 8,000 on domestic routes (up 8pc).

DUBLIN’S BUSIEST 2014 Sun July 20th 81,521 2013 Sun June 30th 78,040 2012 Fri June 29th 72,846 2011 Sun July 31 73,515 2010 Sun July 25 71,431 2009 Sun July 26 81,113 2007 Sun Aug 5 93,275 2006 Sun Aug 6 96,931 2005 Sun July 31 86,126 2004 Sat July 31 73,791

MOST CAR COMPLAINTS ARE DELAYS

he Commission of Aviation regulation say complaints against airlines were up 54pc in the six months to June 2014. Of the 2,180 queries received, 1,677 (77pc) related to an assortment of baggage, pricing, safety

and air carrier policy issues. Of the complaints 66pc related to departure from an Irish airport, 6pc related to arrival from a non-EU airport and 28pc to departure from an airport in another EU member state. Of the aviation complaints 41pc related top

long delay and 24pc to cancellation. The commission commented: Complaints are frequently received which initially appear to fall under Regulation 261/2004 but investigation later reveals that they are best dealt with in another manner. The

“other” category represents this group of complaints. CAR says 78pc of the complaints received during the first half of the year (283 out of 364) have been resolved by mid August..

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THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

Ryanair’s 737 Max-8 order changes Ryanair targets

The extra eight

Rendering of Ryanair 737-MAX 8 in flight: the MAX will have eight seats more than Ryanair’s current craft Analysts say the order would mark Ryanair order for 100 of current models, and with the addiBoeing’s new 200-seat B737 tional seats the cost would be about a new phase in efforts by Boeing and European rival Airbus to appeal to MAX 8 jetliners wil change 20pc lower. Ryanair outlined the impact of the ultra-low cost carriers. the entire business model for the new craft: Ryanair entered into this new airSwords-based airline. craft agreement, the day before it took Although he is not a big fan of the ■ Boeing Sky Interior to enhance delivery of the first of 180 new Boedesign of the craft, Michael O'Leary customers’ onboard experience ing 737-800 aircraft. is attracted by the 5pc-per-seat sav- ■ Slimline seats which will provide The current 180 aircraft order will ings offered by the MAX, and the more leg room (average. over 30 see Ryanair’s fleet grow from 304 to extra eight seats against Ryanair's inches) 420 (allowing for lease returns), and current 189-seat 737-800. ■ CFM LEAP-1B engines, which traffic rise from 82m last year to over First flight of the B737MAX is combined with the Advanced Tech112m by 2019. scheduled in 2016 with deliveries to nology winglet and other aerodyThe order means Ryanair’s fleet customers beginning in 2017. The namic improvements, will reduce will rise to 520 aircraft (allowing for 737 MAX has more than 2,000 or- fuel consumption by 18pc in sales and lease returns) while traffic ders. Ryanair’s configuration and reduce Ryanair has ordered 100 craft with operational noise emissions by 40pc. wil double from 82m in 2013 to 150m options for 100 more to be delivered Ryanair took delivery of the first of passengers p.a. by 2024 It also opens the prospect of trans2019-24. their last order of 180 new aircraft this Michael O’Leary also raised the month and are planning to release Atlantic with the slightly longer range airline’s target to 150m passengers by their summer 2015 earlier than ever of the 737 MAX. Norwegian recently ordered 100 2034, up from the previous 120m. before. B737 Max 8 aircraft which they say Those extra seats will make a big “Apart from Charles De Gaulle, difference on high frequency routes, Frankfurt and Heathrow, every other wil be flown on trans-Atlantic routes he told Travel Extra. airport is now on the cards,” O'Leary from Boston to Norwegian and Scottish cities. The planes reduce fuel consump- said. tion by about 18pc compared with

RYANAIR GDS bookings are still a very small percentage of Ryanair sales but departing corporate travel and groups co-ordinator Leslie Kane said the airline is getting 300 group enquiries a day, with about 50pc of those coming through the trade. Another recent departure from Ryanair. Howard Millar. ruled out any interest in the position of CEO of Aer Lingus after Christoph Mueller's departure next April, citing conflict of interest with his membership of Ryanair’s board. Michael O’Leary repeated his committed to stay on for another couple of years and said he is unfazed by the departure of two of his most senior executives. There was a view of Ryanair that we were cheap and nasty; I think that was a byproduct of my personality. AER LINGUS Regional’s twice daily 06:50 and 16:25 service to Leeds Bradford to begin October 23 aims to fly 70,000 passengers in first year. Regional said ALL key British business and tourist hubs are now served by Aer Lingus Regional. STOBART Air MD Julian Carr said the company is in talks to expand its white label business beyond its current Aer Lingus and Flybe operations. WATERFORD Passenger numbers at Waterford Airport were up 42.5pc in the eight months to August 31. RYANAIR has dropped plans to launch a direct route from Dublin to St Petersburg in 2014. NORTH KOREA Spanish agency

Destinia became the first OTA to offer flights on the state-owned airline of North Korea.

MEXICO President Enrique Pena Nieto confirmed Mexico City is to get $9.23bn towards its new 120m passengers a year airport. AER LINGUS Chairman Colm Bar-

rington was reappointed to the role for another year to September 2015.

ETIHAD Airways is to stream today’s All Ireland hurling Final live on its flights. TAROM are to launch a Friday 1w flight Dublin to Iasi on the Moldova border on October 30 using a 737-700, prices from €188 on www.tarom.ro. CORK Chamber wants an annual €10m

grant for Cork Airport to offer the same type of deals that Shannon Airport can to attract new routes.

KNOCK Ireland West Airport had its busiest ever month with 102,774 passengers, 20pc up on August 2013 and on target for 700,000 passengers in 2014 for the first time. UL University of Limerick launched a postgraduate Diploma course in Aviation Leasing. FINNAIR celebrated its 60th birthday. QATAR Airways will launch Doha to

Cape Town on November 3.

EXHIBITION Siobhain Danaher’s Michael O’Leary of Ryanair and Ray Conner of Boeing

Planet Portfolio opened in Belfast City Airport.

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THE FLYING COLUMN ETIHAD confirmed Sydney as the second destination to be served by the A380.

ROBOTS will collaborate with humans in building Airbus aircraft under the EUfunded Valeri project. Watch the demo video here.

ETIHAD announced changes to its dou-

ble daily schedule between Abu Dhabi and Johannesburg from October 26 which will tie in with their double-daily service from Dublin. United Airlines is the First Airline to offer Uber Service via Mobile App.

CSO figures show that the number of pas-

sengers using Kerry Airport dropped 28pc over five years (from 462,115 passengers in 2008 to 306,042 in 2013). Paschal Donohue said he is committed to securing the completion of the renewed public service obligation grant Kerry Airport relies on to retain flights on the Kerry to Dublin route.

QANTAS Alan Joyce’s Qantas said it is

to cut back overseas routes and set Jetstar on course to become Australia’s main international airline. Qantas upgraded economy meals with bigger serves and boxed dinner packs.

BRITISHAirways plans to suspend its

London Gatwick-Las Vegas service from December 3 to March 11 and reduce its Heathrow-Accra service from 11 flights to daily, cancel its Tuesday Heathrow-Montreal service, reduced its Heathrow-JFK service from 62 flights to 56 flights and cancel its Monday Heathrow-Newark service from October 26 to March 29.

AMERICAN Airlines will extend its

$150 fee for unaccompanied minors to include children up to 14 years of age from Sept 3.

RYANAIR launched its Danish language website, the airline's 15th own-language website.

AIR BERLIN announced the first elements of restructuring, to focus on “Europe, touristic and long-haul.”

COMPENSATION Airlines will

owe $80m compensation to passengers delayed between US and Europe in 2014.

A350 BATTERIES The US FAA

laid out conditions for the A350 lithium batteries.

RAIL v AIR Deutsche Bahn launched

a lawsuit in the US against airlines over 19992006 price fixing.

TAP launched a route to Manaus and Belem.

BOEING Ireland and Britain president

Roger Bone will retire at the end of September with Michael Arthur assuming the post on October 1.

RYANAIR submitted a non-binding offer for Cyrus Airways on Friday.

MALAYSIA Airlines will cut its workforce by 30pc as part of a restructuring that will cost $1.9bn.

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

Get to the gate aid

Chauffer service helps Emirates destress each journey

he journey to Australia started with a smile. The driver was 10 minutes ahead of the appointed time. He came in a long black car ready to take my luggage and transport me to Dublin airport terminal 2. As stress release measures go, this was as good as it gets. Emirates business class experience starts in your kitchen. You don't even the home before they start improving matters for their passengers ahead of the turmoil that is the airport experience for even the most journeyed business traveller. I suspect that if they stress tested people at the check in desk like they do banks, the Emirates passengers would come out on top.

y chauffeur journey came with an added complication, an important piece of electrical equipment left behind which we had to return to retrieve. If I had been driving myself this would have been experience to harden the arteries. All went seamlessly, and, if the phrase can be used for a journey by air, swimmingly. Emirates use the Anna Livia lounge in Dublin airport. There are a couple of advantages. One is the window view of your craft. As the Gulf carriers generally use gate 410 in Dublin’s Terminal 2, you can keep your aircraft within eyesight from the lounge as you sample the fare.

n-board business class comes with as much legroom as makes the seat pitch largely irrelevant. Business class legroom is 60 inches and 18 inches wide on the Airbus A330-200 three class and 48 inches pitch or 77 inch bed length and 18 and a half inches wide on the A380. A speciality of Emirates is their screen size. They have the largest entertainment screens in the air: 10 inches in economy and 15 inches in business class. Ice stands for Information, Communication and Entertainment, and you can select from 130 channels what you want and when to watch it. As many airlines move towards asking passengers to bring their own tablets on board, or providing them with devices, Emirates is going to

The bar where the time zone changes with every drink stick with its seat back video. It has internet and email options but they are a tad expensive, at $20 an hour or $1 a message on your screen. In Dubai I was met by a hostess with a board and my name on. Her job was to accompany me to the gate for Sydney and put me safely on board. It was an extra touch that would save many a tired traveller.

mirates has paid a lot of attention to its food and wine over the past first arrived in Dublin and each time brings things forward in their march towards the culinary friendship of the airways. The menu includes traditional Emirati cuisine developed in conjunction with Mezlai Restaurant Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi: Arabic spiced stuffed chicken with saffron scented cracked green wheat and beans (which cunningly solves the vegetarian option dilemma). Otherwise you can pick from: ■ Traditional Arabic mezze ■ Root vegetable Shepherd's pie covered with cheddar cheese glazed mashed potato ■ Yellowfin tuna seared tuna with artichoke and asparagus salad, lopped with mayonnaise dressing ■ Chicken biryani chicken marinated in aromatic spices and slow cooked with rice, garnished with fried cashew nuts, raisins and onions, served with raita ■ Veal scallopini pan-fried veal served with wild mushroom and parsley sauce, accompanied by broad beans, roasted cherry tomatoes and mashed potatoes. ■ Fine shellfish ragout of fresh scal-

lops, salmon and prawns in a creamy chive fond, served with seasoned broccoli florets, snow peas and tagliatelle ■ Reds were Chateau Monbousquet 2004 St Emillon Grand Cru and World’s End Spirit in the Sky 2010 from Napa Valley. Whites were El jardine de Lucia Albarino 2012 Rias Baixas and Au Bon Climat Chardonnay 2012 Santa Barbara with Quinta do Portal Colheita Port 2000 Douro.

he signature attraction of the Emirates A380 flight from Dubai to Sydney is the business class bar in the sky. There is adequate service to your seat, but on a 12 hour flight you need to stretch your legs and clear the head and have a conversation the many interesting people who congregate at the bar. Something I noticed this time: the people who go to the bar can be categorised by age and nationality. You are more likely to find young male Irish, British or Australians at the bar while other passengers prefer to remain in their seats watching Anchorman two or Muppets most wanted. The A380 bar is certainly selfie heaven. Facebook must have an entire category of photographs taken at the A380 bar on Emirates. When I take my own selfie out, it never fails to impress. But that is only a small part of the 12 hours, as the second leg of the trip to Australia, as the 70,000 Irish people who make that journey to our favourite long haul destination every year know, can be long.

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THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

Lingus loungers

A330s to get lie flat business class seats this winter

er Lingus has released a preview of what transatlantic passengers can expect in its all-new Business Class cabin on its A330s from March 2015. Among the key features are seats from Thompson Aero Seating, which convert into two-metre-long lie flat beds and include a massage function, 16-inch in-flight entertainment monitors, and personal charging points and USB plugs for every passenger. Passengers travelling with their electronic device will also be able to store their laptops in a dedicated personal stowage area, while a seatback mini tablet holder will provide additional storage space. Complimentary onboard Wi-Fi will also be offered in the Business Class cabin. The on-demand food and beverage service will offer a “fusion of the best of traditional and modern Irish” cuisine, and the specially selected wines will help to create a “truly top restaurant experience” onboard. The seats will be in a 2-2-1 configuration, with the single “throne” seats

RYANAIR is to restore Lisbon-Porto from late October (twice daily) and PortoBerlin and Hamburg in summer 2015.

ITAA president Martin Skelly samples the new Business Class seat the most coveted. The first to be fitted with the new seats will be the 330200 where the number of seats in Premier will be reduced slightly from 24 to 23. Gary Montgomery, CEO of Thompson Aero Seating said the 'Vantage' seats was among the Portadown company’s most coveted prod-

ucts. Aer Lingus will take delivery of a total of 189 Thompson ‘Vantage’ seats for seven of its A330s towards the end of this year, before launching the new premium product in March 2015.

Ryanair turns on charm for family and businessmen

QANTAS and Virgin Australia passengers are now able to use their electronic devices at all stages of flight (provided they are set to flight mode). The new policy applies to all domestic and international Qantas flights. Virgin Australia domestic and short-haul international flights will be allowed gate-to-gate device access. STOBART Air MD Julian Carr said the company is in talks to expand its white label business beyond Aer Lingus and Flybe.

FR for FRiendly

yanair’s customer services manager Caroline Green says that Ryanair’s new family product has been well received across the airline’s main markets. The family product was launched before the school holiday season, featuring ■ 50pc discounts on children's seats, insurance and checked-in bags ■ Infant fees reduced to €20 and kids to get a free 5kg bag allowance ■ Two free pieces of infant equipment including buggies, booster seats, car seats or travel cots ■ Bottle warming and baby changing facilities on board aircraft The family product was first proposed at Ryanair three years ago but only saw the light in the midst of a raft of customer service improvements that were implemented by the airline. Ryanair recently launched its longawaited new app for iPhone and Android devices, enabling customers to

DATALEX reported profits of $600,000 for the first six months of this year, three times what it earned in the same period last year.

book flights, hotels and car hire, view live flight information, check-in and download their mobile boarding passes. The launch comes nine months after FTE reported that the low-cost carrier was developing mobile boarding passes. In another departure from its budget tradition, the airline announced a new, flexible businessclass ticket with the slogan: ."your boss will approve.," Ryanair's business ticket, which reverses some of the airline's policies like fees for services like a seat assignment. Ryanair Business Plus provides flexibility on ticket changes, a checked bag of up to 20 kilograms, fast track airport security at some airports, priority boarding and premium seats. The new fares start at €70. The airline is to introduce a new style loyalty scheme but will not have executive lounges, special menus, or reclining seats.

ETIHAD Willie Walsh said Etihad’s bid to win approval to buy minority stakes in several European airlines is being over-scrutinised by Europe, “I have no issue with Etihad investing in these airlines; from a principle point of view I would say I’m fine with it. My view is very simple, I believe ownership and control restrictions should be removed and I think it is nonsense,” Walsh told Arabian Business. ENGINE MUSIC Music producer Matthew Dear and General Electric acoustic engineer Andrew Gorton collaborated on an electronica song called 'Drop Science'. With the help of Gorton, Dear sampled 1,000 recordings of jet engines and equipment at General Electric research centres to create the track. QANTAS posted losses of A$2.8bn for the financial year ending June 30. BRITISH Airways will add pulled pork to its first-class in-flight menu. QATAR Airways London Heathrow A380 inaugural was delayed further. BACK IN PROFIT Trade group

Airlines for America estimated US airlines doubled profit margins in the first half as revenue rose three times faster than costs

RYANAIR John Hurley will join Ryanair as its Chief Technology Officer from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt plc on September 15. John will be responsible for developing and implementing a world-leading digital and technology strategy, heading up a team of 200 people as he oversees the roll-out of the Ryanair Labs digital innovation hub based at Ryanair’s new Dublin campus in Swords. SHANNON Florida-based Vortex Aviation will invest up to $3m in a new aircraft engine servicing facility in Shannon, which is set to open within in the next three months. CSO statistics showed that 270 working days were lost when Aer Lingus cabin crew took to the picket line in May RYANAIR and Aer Lingus received the

Agents notice that families have turned back to Ryanair

least amount of complaints to England’s Civil Aviation Authority in 2013 – 37 against Ryanair and 38 against Aer Lingus.

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AFLOAT

Quantum leap

220 CRUISE CALLS

Overall 220 cruise ships will have called to Irish ports by season’s end: Dublin has had three large ships lining its designated cruise dock on the south port (opposite Grand Canal Dock) on two separate days during August, peak day for passenegrs was August 20 when MSC Magnifica was joined by Thomson Spirit and AIDA flooding the city with 5,000 tourists. Cork had three ships in on Thursday August 21, MSC Magnifica with 3,000 passengers, Aida Cara with 1,300 and Sea Cloud 2. Galway wants to upgrade its harbour to join the cruise-call party after the Artania called with 1,800 passengers but had to leave early.

UNIWORLD‘s 2015 brochure features

45 extra departures on the popular Danube and Rhine itineraries in tis new brochure. SS Maria Theresa will launch in spring, and all-inclusive itineraries include all-day dining, unlimited beverages; all onboard and shore gratuities; the highest guest to staff ratio in the river cruise industry; fully hosted shore excursions including VIP access and exclusive Uniworld experiences; all onboard local entertainment; luxuriously appointed riverview staterooms with beds by Savoir of England including a pillow menu, and marble clad bathrooms featuring L’Occitane en Provence bath and body products; free Internet and Wi-Fi; all arrival and departure day transfers. Early booking savings of up to €1,600 per couple are available on all cruises and departures. Book before the 31 October 2014.

AMA River line AmaWaterways will wel-

come two new ships to its fleet in the spring of 2015 when AmaSerena and AmaVista take to the Danube, Main and Rhine. Both 164-passenger vessels will offer connecting staterooms, which is a first for the cruise company.

DUBLIN Bay Cruises have a new sailing schedule from Sept 6.

SILVERSEA’s Explorer completed its first journey through the Northwest Passage (Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, to Nome, Alaska) on September 1 after a 23-day voyage.

IRISH FERRIES Irish Continental

Group, which owns Irish Ferries, reported revenue of 130.7m for the first six months of 2014, an 8pc increase compared to same period last year. However, first half operating profit was lower at 5.2m, down from 6.4m in 2013. Group fuel costs rose 10.5pc to 26.4m for the first half of this year. The Group carried 683,800 passengers during the first six months of this year, a 0.8pc increase, and RoRo freight increase 18.5pc. Chairman John B McGuckian credited growth to “The introduction of the new RoRo ship Epsilon on the Dublin-Holyhead and Dublin-Cherbourg route.”

UNIWORLD Boutique River Cruises

is launching a new series of Ganges River cruises in January 2016 on a new river cruise ship. The all-suite Ganges Voyager II will sail from New Delhi to Kolkata (Calcutta) on a 12night itinerary that combines seven nights onboard with a five-night land tour.

Virtual balconies just the start of Quantum offering

eople will be paying mroe for their crusie but getting more for their money when Quantum of the Seas embarks on its first sailings from New York in November. After six months she moves to Shanghai and will operate from there for the conceivable future. Anthem of the Seas will take up the New York run beloved of Irish cruisers. The ship will feature super fast Internet, queue free embarkation, robot bartenders and mobile apps to enhance the onboard experience. Its signature was already apparent before the ship trasnferred from Papenburg to Bremerhaven for final fitout: a 30-foot-tall bright magenta polar bear standing on the 13th deck titled From Afar, The sculpture created by Denverbased artist Lawrence Argent and is the first of a 2,980-piece art collection that will appear on the ship. Some of the features will be retro fitted on other Royal ships. Virtual balcony screens are already available in inside cabins on Navigator of the Seas. The focus was on Quantum of the Seas, so near completion that they have the artworks in place and the carpets in rolls ready to be laid. Travel Extra joined 150 media and trade from around the world to see the new baby. See more pictures here or connect with the album on Facebook. Royal's CEO Richard Fain, who took the tour himself said advance bookings for Quantum of the Seas are coming in faster and at a better rate than they did in advance of Royal’s last two showcase launches, Oasis

The inside cabin on Quantum of the Seas with its virtual balcony and Allure of the Seas. In an interview Fain said a lot of effort went into with Travel Extra, Richard Fain was making these as realistic as possible, more frank than a CEO of a major down to the nature and tone of the corporation usually is. shadows on the screen. He said that the rates they were There were temptations to change charging to get back the enormous in the concept to allow movies and extra recreational and entertainment sports events be put on the wall facilities (a virtual skydive, the first screen, but he said that would corrupt bumper cars at sea) would be higher the idea. than cruise customers are used to, but Quantum’s virtual balconied inside we don't need charge too much of a cabins may be a game changer. premium to justify the investment. Richard Fain said “nobody is going Many of the features of Quantum to opt for an inside cabin ahead of an of the Seas have been well publicised, outside one, but this is better than the North Star protruding like a uni- even our mock-ups suggested it corn horn over the option, the sitting would be.” room entertainment space 270° the The inside cabin screens were devirtual skydive and, most spectacular signed to give a view from the perof all, the screens designed to give the spective of the cabin. impression that everyone has an outside cabin.

QUANTUM PHYSICS: A ROYAL CARIBBEAN BRIEFING and 14 bars on Quantum, six of which will TIME SAVING Richard Fain said the devel- restaurants be premium restaurants. Brian Abel spoke about Quanopments would make the mechanics of taking a cruise a lot easier. Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said the technology would prevent passengers losing the first day of their cruise. She said the Royal Caribbean boarding process was on course for a 15 minute sidewalk to ship experience even on the giant Oasis and Allure ships, with 60 to 90 check-in desks.

NORTH STAR Joshua Helz said the North

Star gondola has been completed and is ready for Installation when the ship moves to Bremerhaven on Sept 21.

APP Quantum’s new IQ app will be free and will

replicate the content of the printed bulletin Cruise Compass, although the paper version will still be available.

DINING Cornelius Gallagher, Director of Culinary Operations at Royal Caribbean, said there were 18

tum’s food & beverage programme and said the dynamic dining concept is about technology as well as product. Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said 150,000 people have booked meals on Quantum, booking their dining in advance for an average 7 out of every 8 nights on board.

ANTHEM Construction of the next installment of

the Quantum Class story, Anthem of the Seas, was ongoing in the Meyer-Werft shipyard during the visit. Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said the only difference between Quantum and Anthem would be the Broadway show, We Will Rock You on Anthem as against Mamma Mia on Quantum.

RETROFIT Lisa Lutoff-Perlo spoke of the

plans to retro fit balcony screens, luggage tracking, dynamic dining and bandwidth to the rest of the fleet.

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 37

Armonia cut in 2 MSC begins resizing project to extend 4 ships

SC Cruises has begun the 50m upgrade of its smallest ship, MSC Armonia by cutting it in two! Work to insert a new pre-built section into the 60,000gt vessel has now begun at the Fincantieri shipyard in Palermo, Sicily. When completed, the cruise ship will be 24 metres longer than before and boast an additional 193 cabins. The engineering feat marks the start of the cruise line’s 200m ‘Renaissance’ project, which is transforming all four of MSC Cruises’ smaller Lirica-class ships (MSC Armonia, MSC Sinfonia, MSC Opera and MSC Lirica). Each ship will take approximately nine weeks to lengthen and refit, with

the new-look MSC Armonia sailing out of the shipyard on November 17. After a repositioning cruise from Genoa to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria it will begin a winter season of weeklong Canary Island sailings. Sister ship MSC Sinfonia goes in for the same treatment in on January 12 2015, with work starting on MSC Opera and MSC Lirica in May 2015 and August 2015 respectively. The whole ‘Renaissance’ programme should be completed by November 2015. The lengthening work involves each ship being cut in two just in front of the funnel (slightly behind the midway point) and then separated so the new section can be inserted. The hull is then resealed.

MSC Armonia is currently 251 metres long, carries a maximum of 2,199 passengers and has a gross tonnage of 60,000gt. Once the new section is inserted it will be 275 metres long, have a gross tonnage of 65,000gt and be able to cater for 2,679 guests. In addition to the new cabins for passengers and crew, each ship will undergo a host of on-board and technological improvements. These include the addition of a spray water park for children, extended designer shopping outlets, refitted restaurants and public areas and new storage areas. MSC Armonia and MSC Sinfonia will also benefit from improved bow thruster technology.

AFLOAT ANTHEM Hit West End musical We Will Rock You will be the main show onboard Anthem of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s Lisa Lutoff-Perlo told Travel Extra. The long-running Queen tribute musical ended its 12-year run in London's West End in May this year and will be showing on the Southampton-based ship from April. AZAMARA Club Cruises are offering members of its loyalty club Le Club Voyage access to an onshore concierge called Le Club Voyage Ambassador, complimentary nights, for-fee cabin upgrades, special offers and priority check-in. Perks that have been discontinued include omplimentary sparkling wine upon arrival, gifts for progressing to higher tiers, free laundry service, complimentary wine tasting events, and free internet. ROYAL Caribbean sold Celebrity Century to Chinese Company Exquisite Marine, part of Ctrip Holdings. ROYAL Caribbean will roll out its "Dynamic Dining" concept to Oasis of the Seas next year and possibly to the rest of its fleet. The programme is being launched on its two newest ships Quantum of the Seas and Anthem of the Seas. Royal says this marks the end of fixed time seating and main dining rooms and introduces flexible, multichoice dining. NORWEGIAN Cruise Lines has acquired Prestige Cruises Holdings for $3.025bn, the parent company of Oceania and Regent Seven Seas Cruises. Prestige has eight ships; five under the Oceania banner and three flagged Regent Seven Seas, with another build on the way for summer 2016. Norwegian has 15 ships, with four more on the way. Norwegian has established itslef as number three in the industry, behind Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd.

Royal Caribbean CEO Richard Fain rides the first bumper car at sea

QUANTUM PHYSICS: A ROYAL CARIBBEAN BRIEFING they won’t be programmed to respond to my wife doesFAILSAFE As some of this technology has n’t understand me. never been done on land, the question arises whetehr it wil work The technology is holistic, Fain said, we take existing technology and see what we can do with it. We want to be as flexible as a yoga instructor.

BANDWIDTH Quantum will be the most con-

nected ship on the ocean, with have more bandwidth than all the world’s cruise ships put together. Bill Martin explained how the bandwidth works on Quantum of the Seas and Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said the price of Wi-Fi has not yet been decided. Richard Fain said the bandwidth not possible under old systems.

ROBOTS The bionic bar was the big revealt of

last month;s technology launch. In response to questions about the bionic bar Richard Fain said the technology will check age ID, customise the service and would be served by a factory rather than humanoid robot – and

RECYCLING Fain said the ship’s refuse will

be frozen and stored for recycling, giving Royal Caribbean what he called the coolest garbage at sea. Everything on the ship would be incinerated or recycled. There energy consumption would be down leading to a 20pc improvement in Quantum’s environmental footprint, spurred by the installation of 60,000 energy saving light bulbs. He said Quantum is most environmentally friendly ship on the Ocean, with a reduced friction hull literally floats on air.

QUEUES Richard Fain showcased the bright red

bumper cars amid enhanced the onboard activities, explained there were plans to avoid queues for north star and other activities and said the entertainment space as a new kind of space.

SEADREAM Shoreside casual touring will return to SeaDream Yacht Club this autumn and winter, when the line rolls out several free, crew-led excursions during the line's 2014/15 Caribbean season. Veteran crew members will lead passengers to their favourite spots in the islands like Esperanza and Shoal Bay in Anguilla and Flamenco Beach in Culebra. Many of the excursions are active and require hiking and/or biking. CARNIVALwill offer 10- to 14-night voyages from the port on Carnival Pride, beginning autumn 2015. HOLLAND America Line's newest ship officially began construction this month when a 680-ton block was lowered into Fincantieri's Marghera shipyard for the line's 99,500-ton, 2,650-passenger ship, scheduled for delivery in February 2016. The first in the new Pinnacle Class, the yet nunamed ship will become the largest in Holland America's fleet. CRYSTAL Cruises is introducing a series of shore excursions designed for passengers who like to sleep in. Crystal Adventures will depart between 11am. and noon, rather than 9am as has been traditionally the case.

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 38

DESTINATION IRELAND ITIC

The Irish Tourism Industry Confederation’s Budget submission called for greater focus on national competitiveness.

FÁILTE Ireland Director of strategic de-

velopment Aidan Pender told an Oireachtas All Party Consultation Group on Commemorations an 'Independence Trail' planned for Dublin would have to tell the wider story of Ireland's journey to independence rather than looking solely on the events of the Easter Rising.

Wardrobe wonder

BORDER UPLANDS The fast

evolving Border Uplands Project showcased the tourism offering in the ICBAN, Fermanagh District Council and the County Councils of Cavan, Leitrim and Sligo. The 3.1m project is funded under the European Union’s INTERREG IVA programme and managed by the Special European Union’s Programme Body (SEUPB).

Belfast looks anew to its forgotten writer CS Lewis

ATTA The Adventure Travel Trade Association’s World Summit which comes to Killarney on October 6-9.

LIMERICK A new 52-page visitor

guide to West Limerick has been launched.

FÁILTE Ireland officially launched the Wild Atlantic Way app.

VAT The Restaurants Association of Ireland

indicated that the reduced 9pc VAT Rate results in 31,584 new jobs. Fáilte Ireland reported that employment in the targeted hospitality and tourism sectors increased by 30,000 since the Irish government cut VAT,

TITANIC A MillwardBrown survey commissioned by the NITB showed that 75pc of visitors from overseas had included Titanic Belfast in their planning before visiting the North. Titanic was the highlight of the trip for 70pc of visitors.

REDHEADS Organisers of the fifth

annual Irish Redhead Convention – which took place in Crosshaven, Co Cork, last month – claimed the event could become as important to Irish tourism as the Rose of Tralee.

FÁILTE Ireland will spend up to

20m creating a new brand and logo for Dublin similar to ‘I Heart NY’ in a bid to clean up the capital’s image.

DIASPORA CENTRE There

are six contenders for the National Diaspora Centre attraction, which is expected to deliver 300,000 visitors a year to one of Birr, Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Dun Laoghaire or Limerick.

WYSC the World Youth and Student

Travel Conference, which takes place at the Convention Centre, Dublin, from September 23 to 26. Over 700 travel professionals from over 450 organisations will be at the event.

CARTON House in Maynooth hosted

the 56th International Garden Centre Congress showcasing Irish Garden Centres, and attractions including Guinness and Jameson.

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA named Ireland as the most underrated holiday destination in a Wall Street Journal interview.

One of two apolitical wall murals in East Belfast that celebrate the life of CS Lewis

ith unbounded enthusiasm East Belfast tourism partnership printed 10,000 leaflets promoting the CS Lewis trail. The enthusiasm should be well founded. Lewis’s books still sell 2m copies a year. The 1990s films ignited interest in his world. Lewis’s connections with east Belfast are unchallenged. Other cities are having a look in but this the landscape of his childhood. Unlike the 1980s attempt to turn Down into the Brontë home, on the tenuous premise that the father of three sisters lived there and grew up this, this connection it is real. At the rectory beside St Mary’s Church in Dundela, you can see the face of the lion on the door knocker. This is where the young Jack encountered the lion exactly positioned at little boy eyeline when he came to rap on the door. The lamp in the entrance hall to Campbell College became the Lamppost was a major landmark in north east Narnia. The names of the places around were transposed into his books. But turning CS Lewis into tourism cash is a little more complicated than that.

he church where his grandfather was rector has a beautiful Michael Healy window dedicated by Lewis to his parents in the 1930s, but it is not open most of the time. His first childhood home is demolished, now Dundela flats festooned in

paramilitary flags. The road outside is busier than when his childhood dog Jack was knocked over, one of the first dogs in Ireland to die on the road. Clive wanted to be known as Jack afterwards in hi dog’s memory and his parents agreed. His second childhood home Little Lea is where he and his siblings went to play in the attic and where the name Narnia was inspired by one of their board games. It is still a private house, inaccessible to tourists, even though there is a certain allure in the fact that you must peep through the gate to see where the great man got his inspiration. At least it has been saved the fate of nearby Red Hall, the home of his literary cousin Austin Greeves, where the adult CS Lewis stayed and wrote Pilgrim's Regress. It was demolished in 2003 despite protestations from conservationists, and now the site lies derelict, a vacant lot. There are two CS Lewis graffiti wall murals, one bearing a better likeness than the other, they are asked lost among the Street Art of the troubles. In the little streets around the shipyard the murals depict passed away paramilitaries and the cause of Ulster identity. They are infinitely more interesting than the labyrinthine theological murmurings that formed most of Lewis’s body of work. Narnia alone will not propel him up there with van Morrison and George Best among the footstep tours of East Belfast.

ll that may be about to change. East Belfast has a CS Lewis festival with innovative and creative tour opportunities. In an inescapable irony, the East Belfast command headquarters of the UDA is now the headquarters of East Belfast Visitor centre. The room from where Jim Gray planned his campaigns now filled with talk of walking and cycle trails and community enterprises: the Comber Greenway, (with new greenways to be extended to the Connswater, Loop and Knock rivers), Sam Thompson bridge’s 100,000 crossing since April, the Let’s Twist Again sculpture, the urban meadows, the yardmen, sky panels, Titanic street art, the memory chair and the hollow where the three rivers meet. Terrorism to tourism in one easy bound. Ken Archer the taxi driver has taken a few Lewis tours. He is astonished at the number of people from Japan in particular who have read his every word and wish to seek out his every inspiration. There are more where they came from. There is a statue of him poking into his own wardrobe at the Hollywood Arches, the Searcher, a centenary sculpture. The motto on the ground that circulates the searcher encapsulates an East Belfast world view, CS Lewis, Ulsterman, writer, scholar, teacher, Christian born 1898 reborn 1931. This area is to be transformed. It will become a CS Lewis garden, a

C.S. Lewis Festival run by East Belfast partnership takes place from Thurs Sunday November. 20th - 23rd www.communitygreenway.co.uk

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 39

DESTINATION IRELAND £250,000 CS Lewis pavilion of performing arts open air spaces and memorial. Children play the parts of characters are already part of the existing festival. Projecting Nadia into the heart of the local community will help win them back to Lewis, and identify with him in a way that is always difficult. They seemed very different places and very far apart, the world of the rivet men of the shipyards and the world of the man who passed from Campbell College to Oxford to the vicissitudes of theological debates and a children's tale with plot twists that suggested he may have popped mushrooms on the Hollywood Hills on his morning walks with his brother. Winning Lewis back for the community is a precursor of things to come for the CS Lewis tourism movement.

elfast is in bloom. In 1971 I had first come to Belfast. My grandfather, Harry McHenry, interest how walkable the city centre was. Everything can be covered in a few blocks. It was true then and it is true now. I fell in love with the city instantly, Belfast had come into money in the 1860s with the unexpected bonus of the American Civil War having cut off the cotton mar-

ket, leaving the way open to a linen boom. Like an heir who never expected the uncle to die, it went about spending it on buildings. Dublin's money had come about 100 years earlier, so Belfast's architecture was different, a wonder to my youthful eyes, all red bricked, Victorian, straitlaced, as if it had starched its collar and ironed its tie before going off to Sunday service. Dublin with its Georgian door tops, and great domed Gandonesque structures, seemed extravagant and extrovert by comparison. The shambolic Smithfield Market was what impressed me most of all. There my uncle Harry showed me photographs of old Belfast, the waxen white faces of shipyard workers as they spilled through the streets, 28,000 of them heading to Queens Island at peak, a great, well-fed bygone era. Later that day he showed me the Albert clock that I had seen in one of the old pictures. It looked like it was about to topple over. In a sense everything that the Albert Clock and the city was built on, was about to topple over. Some of the discussion among the children I played with was whether it was right or wrong to go to the Ulster 71 exhibition. It had swings and rides and all the wonder-

ful things the children would desire. But it represented 50 years of the Stormont regime and its attempt at sectarian social engineering, and even 10 and nine-year-olds where uneasy with that. The children knew it was a passing phase, like the one-dimensional Stormont regime was instigated it The Albert Clock is still there. Stormont fell. Smithfield perished. But Belfast's starched collar architecture somehow muddled through the 35 years that people used to call the troubles, but some refer to by other names now. This autumn there will be a festival every week well into December organised for the city's burgeoning tourist audience. My uncle Harry would be proud.

here are lots of places to stay and eat for the festival

visitor. In 1983 when Barry McGuigan fought Italy’s Grigorio Nati to win the European featherweight boxing championship there were 12 restaurants in Belfast. Nowadays there are 400 restaurants. I remember it because in my youthful exuberance, instead of going along for the ride with the other boxing and sportswriters of the time, I was predicting an unmerciful falling out between the boxer and his manager

The grandfather’s door handle and that operation McGuigan would all go horribly wrong. Unusually, for my overstated units, I had underestimated the falling out would be. There are three hotels in Belfast, the Wellington Park, the Europa, and a distance lodging in Dunmurray. If you fell out with one, you were not likely you have money options. I remember Barney Eastwood fell out with Europa over the bar bill for a port-fight party (lie the fights, the bar bills were epic), and his only option was up the road. The Wellington Park has its advantages. On Wednesdays, nurses were spent in free nightclub.Al my assignments involved at least one Wednesday stopover.

he Segway company of Northern Ireland operates tours from unit seven of the little Docklands development that fills the waterfront between the Titanic centre and the Odyssey It is an enticing location. Segways costs £6,500 each so it is a good idea not to bring them into an environment where they would be damaged. Or even up a hill. This is a good choice, the views are mind-enhancing, nobody is going to get covered in dust or mud, and the water docks will be flat largely pedestrianised. There is even a play area with ramps where tourists can practice Segway movements and get the choreography rights for an assault on the paths

around the grassy area which commemorates those who died when the Titanic sank. There is a coffee stop the pumping station, one of the several components of burgeoning Titanic tourism industry. And there is lots to see, the SS Nomadic (restored), SS Catherine (restoration debate under way for some decades now), and the film studio come converted paint house where game of thrones films. Segway is now a verb, in wide use to describe any sideways approach to a prickly subjects, like whether Segway tours are a good idea or not. Titanic may even become a verb in the future the future. I have Titanicked once or twice myself in the past.

Clockwise: Eoghan Corry takes a segway tour of the Titanic quarter. Taxi driver Ken Harper with CS Lewis statue, SS Nomadic and Lewis’s Campbell College alma mater

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DESTINATION IRELAND

nusually for a poet Seamus Heaney knew a thing or two about marketing. His poems were accessible and direct and occasionally emotional. The same could be said about the Heaney tourism product which is wining its way into the itineraries of the world’s literary footstep tourists, fans, and Heaney-boppers who used to turn up in such large numbers for his performances and to buy his books. Heaney’s most powerful performances would have included the Poet and The Piper with Liam Og O Floinn as seen at Derry fleadh last year or at Willie Clancy week in Miltown Malbay. There are few things as refreshing as finding there is another dimension behind the poetry of one so recognised and analysed, and that is what happens on every step of the journey through Heaney’s childhood terrain in a small group of adjoining parishes in South Derry. Heaney grew up on a boarder, several borders. Tour guide Eugene Kielt wil bring you an important one beside the homestead of his early childhood. Without a guide you would miss the small things that are somehow big things, like the drain, culverted under a road on the diocesan border between Derry and Armagh, the border between his

Eoghan Corry on the trail of Derry’s laureate

Heaney’s heartlands Barney Devlin: Heaney’s poem The Forge captured his workplace enforced choice of school, St Columb’s or St Pat’s, To see the fast rushing Moyola, you pass through an estate in Castledawson, its identity crisis manifested in lamposts festooned in Union Jacks and Unionist and Scottish paramilitary regalia. Here Eugene read Heaney’s own requiem to the borders of his childhood, the border between the territories of the conqueror and conquered. His ancestry came from both sides of that river and the tour is at its most interesting and edgy when it moves from the marsh and the bog and the homesteads of Bellaghy into Castledawson and Magherafelt. South Derry, like much of rural Ireland, has kept

the fabric and integrity of its terrain and community so apparent in those early poems beneath the surface of gentrification and aggrandisement. That is what great landscapes do. Landscapes do not come greater or more familiar than those of the Heaney trail.

oner’s Bog may be the location for Seamus Heaney’s most quoted most famous poem, but it is the requiem for his cousin Colum McCartney that is the best situated for tourism purposes. The nature reserve looking out on church island was the landscape that Heaney describes in The Strand at Lough Beg after his cousin Colum McCartney was killed at

Clockwise: Eugene Kielt at Lough Beg, the grave, Moyola river and Heaney’s first childhood home at Moss Bawn, since rebuilt

a British paramilitary checkpoint returning from the 1975 all Ireland semi-final. The Strand on the west shore of the Lough Beg natural reserve is a large expanse of wet grassland that is flooded each year. there were cattle grazing when we called. Here you climb over a stile and you can pick some blackberries just as Heaney described from his childhood. You can also see the folly built by Bishop Harvey to make Church Island look like it had a church on it. It does not. Like much of the paraphernalia of conquest in Derry it is a façade. It is a folly, a tower without a church, and a beautiful backdrop for photographers hunting the Heaney Trail, almost an in-joke by the ancient culdee monks who choose the sight, in a cross-century cultural collaboration with our towering late 20th-century Irish ports. To look for the people who feature most prominently in his poetry its easier than you might expect.

ellaghy has the look of a tidy village, a well finished place a bit like a completed free verse poem with the final dot applied to it. The Bawn is a white house that sits on top of a hill surveying the length of Castle Street. The name indicates there was once a planter’s castle here, but now the whitewashed walls are garrison the memory of the hinterland’s most famous resident. The Heaney Collection in an upstairs room is small, The satchel he carried to school and a collection of his books, some photographs of a more youthful similar laureate than we are used to, a picture of him in the bar and an engraved copy of Digging, his most famous poem, familiar to Irish school children of three generations now, was in his very first collection. The prize won so young. There is no headstone on his grave, a year later, but that is no deterrent to the increasing number of people seeking his last

resting place. There are two signs directing you past the large parish, its square tower comfortable of its and its community’s positions in a countryside divided between conqueror and conquered for 300 years. with all the baggage that entails.

t journey’s end, a simple wooden cross sits on his carpeted grave by the cemetery wall. No horseman passing by, the epitaph has not yet been decided. There is a quiet unpretentious air to these villages. Bellaghy is the site of the interpretative centre which wil be built, but it could equally be Castledawson festooned in Union Jacks and Unionist regalia, an odd Scottish saltire and lion thrown in, struggling in its insecurity to confirm its identity. Heaney understood and was at home in both, he knew about borders and identity. It shaped his poetry. It may be about to shape his tourism trail as well.

■ Eugene Kielt organises tours from Laurel Villa Townhouse, Magherafelt. ■ The guesthouse was home to Heaney readings and the Heaney commemorative On Home Ground festival in September. Rooms are dedicated to Heaney and literary figures such as Patrick Kavanagh, Michael Longley and Louis Macneice ■ http://laurel-villa.com +4428 79301459

Page 041 Getabed 10/09/2014 08:11 Page 1

PAGE 41 JULY 2014

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

Getabed.eu: The latest bed bank to have entered the Irish market

etabed.eu are the latest bed bank to have entered the Irish market. John McKibbin joined as Sales Manager to launch getabed to the Irish market. With a very strong relationship with Irish agents, John was very confident that there was a big enough market for getabed to make a similar impression on the Irish trade as it has done in England. They were established 23 years ago in the UK, and traded in Europe’s most competitive and mature market, winning numerous awards and growing to become arguably the largest independently owned company in the accommodation only sector. Getabed has expanded to the north and have recently opened an office in Dubai to spearhead international growth in the Middle East and other emerging markets throughout Asia and Africa.

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ohn comments “I was attracted to getabed based on their extremely strong reputation in England. getabed’s consistent track record of growth, profitability and product development is second to none and coupled with their awards over the last five years for service, professionalism and building an unrivalled partnership approach with their travel agent partners, I had no doubt that getabed will soon make its mark in the Irish market.” John McKibbin goes on to say “As creden-

tials go, in the bed bank market, either the Irish market which I know well or England, they don’t get much better than getabed. I am really excited by the level of support we have already had and with this level of interest, I know getabed are poised to be as successful in Ireland as they are in England”. Having made a strong start in Ireland, getabed are confident that they will soon become a firm favourite with agents. Their Freephone number (1800 939 130) has already proved popular with agents nationwide, and many agents have already commented how refreshing it is to speak to a friendly and highly experienced, knowledgeable customer support agent at the end of the phone. Also proving popular is getabed’s no cancellation policy – it is only passed on to the agent/customer if the hotel has a cancellation policy in place.

o whilst getabed.eu may be a new name in Ireland, they certainly have plenty of experience in ensuring a winning strategy for agents, and they are certainly here to stay. getabed understand more than ever the importance of creating a point of difference. Never has it been more important than when entering an already crowded market place, which inevitably leads to casualties, some of which are still fresh in our minds. getabed also believes that we haven’t seen the last of these, and

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constant dialogue to understand and more importantly aid the agent’s needs. Innovation remains high on the agenda at getabed, with the team constantly striving to be early adopters of technology and sourcing exclusive product to pass on to the travel trade. Their proven trade only business strategy has been successful based on their exemplary endto-end service delivery, which has seen them work with some of the best known brands in the business.

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Page 042-043 Agent 10/09/2014 17:15 Page 1

OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 42

GLOBAL VILLAGE

Inside the Travel Business

ETOA is now accepting final early bird

registrations for their largest member workshop GEM and next year’s Ireland and Britain specialist March Marketplace.

UNITED Irish Pilgrimage to Lourdes re-

ported a loss of 41,763 for 2013, the year of the floods. It inspired a contender for best travel headline of the month: “Lourdes tour operator hit by losses following biblical flood”.

NDC The American DOT’s approval of resolution 787 was hailed as a breakthrough for NDC implementation in the USA.

THAILAND Tourism Authority of

Thailand hosted 900 travel media, bloggers, celebrities and travel industry executives from 47 countries as part of its post-crisis recovery campaign, focusing on marketing and social media managers rather than product managers. TAT London invited 16 English tour operators, three South African tour operators, six South African media, four English media and one media from Ireland.

TRAVELPORTsigned a new long

term agreement with Delta Air Lines to host their core reservations and operations systems. Travelport Britain and Ireland appointed Paul Broughton from Chambers Travel Management as Commercial Director and Claire Osborne to newly created Technical Director.

BRITISH Airways said that all Ireland

Group Sales are to be transferred to the airline’s Group Sales office in Manchester. New contact details will be in place from this date. Details of the groups’ terms and conditions can be found on batraveltrade.com. For all new and existing bookings, Irish travel agents can call: +3531-5319039 Mon- Fri 08.30—17.00.

LOWCOSTtbeds, in association with the Maltese Tourist board, are hosting a Fam trip to Malta from October 6.

WTM The Holiday.com domain name is to

be auctioned at WTM in London on November 5th, with offers of seven figures anticipated.

ATM is to offer GDS limo bookings. TRAVELPORT has now signed up 50 airlines to participate in its Rich Content and Branding Technology.

FLYBE The ITAA Affiliate Programme reported its 70th member, flybe.

DREW Duggan’s Adventure Holidays'

top-selling products this year include selfguided leisure cycling and walking holidays, particularly with the over 50s market to destinations with short transit times

THAILAND Kobkarn Wat-

tanavrangkul, former head of the Toshiba Corporation in Thailand, has been named Thailand’s latest Minister of Tourism.

ATM Next year’s Arabian Travel Market is to focus on the $140bn family travel market.

WTTC Hernando de Soto and Gaston

Acurio were announced as key note speakers at WTTC 2014 Americas Summit in Lima.

Citywest: where the ITAA will combine their technology workshop with their AGM and an aviation workshop

ITAA’s workshop

Two day showcase for airlines and technology at AGM

he Irish Travel Agents Association is to host a major twoday golf day and trade event around its annual AGM in Citywest, Saggart next April 24-25. The event will include an airline and technology showcase, stands from 60 exhibitors and a barbecue and disco for 400 travel trade staff. Transport will be provided from venues around the country.

It is the first major expansion of the ITAA’s AGM since the annucal meeting was decoupled from the conference in 2006. In recent years the IT~A has had a technology event which was staged at Moran’s red Cow Hotel. When the conference was staged at irish venues a mini exhibition, similar to that at the annual conference of the irish Hotels federation was staged in consjunction

with the event. the new event in April wil combine al elements of ths with the AGm and a scoial evening aimed at brinign togetehr all employees of ITAA memebrs for the first time. It is a thorow back to the mega dinner dances whichw ere part of the ITAA conference in the 1980s.

ANTONIO’S PLAN TO GROW PORTUGAL SHOULDER

ew Director for the Ireland and British Markets Antonio Padeira wants to grow the off peak market out of Ireland. He said that the large numbers of Irish people who travel to Portugal ion the summer would form a base for greater numbers of holiday makers in the shoulder seasons. Speaking to Travel Extra in Dublin shortly after his appointment he said that restoring the flight to Madeira was a priority for his organisaiton. “We have suspended promotion of Madeira until we have resolved this. The regional tourist board and the Portuguese Tourist Board are in negotiation with several airline compa-

nies to try to restore a direct flight. If we don’t have a direct flight we have to go through Lisbon.” A former director of marketing at Portugal’s Tourism Institute brings great familiarity he says “the final goal is to push the winter but to do that first we must push the shoulder season.” “To do that we must find new product, a new niche market segment and push that with tour operators and travel agents.” He mentioned the new hotels in the region of Évora such as the cork hotel but conceded “Alentejo will never be a destination of big numbers and we don’t want it to be.” He said Odeceixe, on the Alentejo-Algarve border was

probably the best beach in the world. Speaking of the 41 golf courses in the Algarve he said: “I know the problem of golf. We have a little big higher prices than our main competitors in Spain. We have studies which show that the average quality of our product is better.” “We don’t want to be identified as a mass market for golf. It was always a little bit more expensive but that was not a problem until the before the crisis. Then the numbers for golf in general dropped. I think we did not achieve the numbers before the crisis. Prices have reduced a little to restart the market.” The golf mareket has spread form its traditional core. In Lagos you have a

Antonio Padeira at the Portuguese embassy lot of new course. Palmeeiras has astonishing vies of the ocean. “The Algarve for families is a good product. People with children must go in summer, but outside of peak season couples and people older than 50 or 55 will find it fantastic, cheaper than the summer. September is not so crowded and you still have 20pc of the Algarve summer to go. Let’s try to start speaking about that.”

Page 042-043 Agent 10/09/2014 17:15 Page 2

OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 43

Inside the Travel Business

GLOBAL VILLAGE

Quonference call Royal Caribbean to host 200 Irish Travel Agents

AFFORDABLE Car Hire is offering 10 per booking in shopping vouchers as part of its free lunch Fridays offer. AGENTS booking their Hertz car hire through Travelport Galileo or Travelport Worldspan can win a 50 one4all voucher each week from now until November 30 with the an overall prize of a 2-night break for two including an evening meal at a hotel of their choice. Paul Manning asked agents to email weekly reservation IDs to him. TRAVEL COUNSELLORS

will hold their Ireland conference on Thursday and Friday April 16 and 17 2015, venue to be announced. Three new recruits in September bring the home working travel group's numbers up to 60 in Ireland with a further 25 in the north.

CAR The Commission for Aviation Regulation has granted Irish travel agency licenses to two English-based agencies, all inclusive China specialist Wendy Wu Tours, the Wimbledon based Broadway Travel Services and Blue Sea Holidays and a tour operator licence to There is no central dining area on Quantum of rthe Seas: Le Grande where delegatesl dine on one night Sindaco Ltd trading as Fanfare. The trading As well as the 200 ITAA agents, name of Mercury Direct was also added to the oyal Caribbean is to host 190 dinner. On Saturday conference registra- there will be 400 UK agents and 800 listing for Sunspot Tours. ITAA conference delegates as the 2014 agencies get to- tion will open at 9am and the confer- other travel professionals from OASIS Travel opened its fifth agency and getehr is held on the inugural sailing ence will take place. There will be a around the world. cruise centre at Lisburn Road, Belfast. members only session and then in the The 200 places at the conference of Quantum of the Seas. Delegates will arrive on board at afternoon a lunch and team activity, have already been filled and there will LOWCOSTbeds launched their City is a waitlist for further delegates. Break trade promotion: book a city break with lunchtime on October 31st. There are followed by a formal dinner. Everybody will be off the ship at All aboard for a brighter future will lowcostbeds and travel agency staff can earn a tentative plans for a golf day the day 7am and transfers will be arranged to be the theme for the annual confer5 one4all voucher for bookings over 250 before. made before September 30. That evening there will be cock- Heathrow, Gatwick and Southamp- ence. tails, a tour of the ship and a casual ton, AEREPS John Donohue of Aereps confirmed that two planned joint Irish Travel Trade FAMs to New York at the end of August and Las Vegas in October are going ahead as Adam Alford continu- presented by that owcost Beds’ planned, despite the decision of Aereps to end new manager for ing to run the USA, growth. representation of its suite of travel products. Bear in mind our local the combined Canada and Latin AmerIPW Registration opens earlier than usual in markets of Ireland, ica. All will report di- Irish beds business is late September for IPW 2015 in Orlando, to be now up over 40pc year Britain and Middle East, rectly to Alex Gisbert. held May 30 to June 3. IPW (Pow Wow) in Clem Walshe says this on year so we need more Paul Riches, will come 2016 is changing date as well as venue. Having is part of an overall reresource right across the to Ireland to meet key moved to New Orleans because of redeveloptrade people in Septem- shaping of the LCTG in- board to ensure we manment of Miami's convention centre, the new ternational team that age that growth in an efber. date is June 18-22 2016. The fast growing Irish manager and “will fective manner.” Clem says business in Lowcostbeds has ap- help us drive more focus TRAVELPORT reported in its Q2 pointed a new layer of in the areas that are es- the north of Ireland is results that 50 airlines have signed for Rich pecially affected by also enjoying significant management: Content & Branding in addition to their mergrowth over the last six Elodie Leunen has growth. chandising capabilities. It is purely to assist us months “so we'll more been promoted to ManTUI Germany's TUI said it had "no plan B" aging Director Lowcost- in managing the growth than likely have to look for merger with TUI Travel. TUI earnings we're enjoying and enfor some local resource beds Europe with surged 89pc on hotel, cruise price increases. sure we can continue to to support that market in Claudia Baino, and Paul Riches deal with the challenges the short term”. BOOKABED has signed a deal with

LOWCOST TO RECRUIT AGAIN

DON PLANS ‘GAME CHANGER’

orldchoice Iireland reland will host a series of Digital Strategy based workshops for members and trade partners over the coming weeks. Don Shearer of World-

choice says this will bring focus to Worldchoice’s new communication hub and consumer facing websites. Don Shearer said he took stock of all the comments from members and trade partners alike regarding the

endless events, conferences and awards ceremonies at this time of the year and decided to take a new approach which will culminate in a members gathering in late 2014 followed in early 2015.

He says this will be “a game changing event which will bring real engagement to our community of retail members and industry partners.”

the Freedom Travel Group and Co-operative Personal Travel Advisors, strengthening the company’s presence in the English market.

TRAVEL Department reported an increase of 12pc on solo friendly holiday bookings year on year since 2012 with 800 solo passengers travelling on 39 different departures to destinations such as the Venetian Riviera and the Lisbon Coast.

€

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 44

WINDOW SEAT

Can Picafor beach and the Gran Vista and Spa, which is a Thomson Platinum hotel

Busman’s holiday: Carol Anne O’Neill

Every month we ask a leading travel professional to write about their personal holiday experience. This month: Carol Anne O’Neill, Ireland manager of Falcon Holidays

have been very lucky as I had my very first holiday overseas at the age of three to Lloret De Mar. I can’ t say I remember it that well, but it was the start of many foreign holidays to come. Many of my childhood holidays were spent on the island of Majorca. I had been to the main resorts of Santa Ponsa and Magaluf and Palma Nova by the time I was 10, and then we progressed further afield to the Canary Islands. Travelling from this early age really

gave me the travel bug so I guess it is no coincidence I ended working for a Tour Operator.

While I actually dislike flying - believe it or not - I love my holidays, trying new destinations and going back to my old favourites. So in a way my holidays a lifetime later have not really changed that much in terms of destinations, but the resorts have. As I write this I am just back from a ten night holiday to Can Picafort in the north of Majorca. I stayed at the Gran Vista and Spa, which is a Thomson Platinum hotel. The majority of my time was spent on the beach and I have to say it was like being on a beach in the Caribbean but without the long haul

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

etting people to travel to Asia is easier than most of us ever imagined. The Ryanair maxim of putting on an extra flight and they will come does not always work (remember Dublin to Vittoria, and the huge amount of marketing and promotion that went into a route that lasted just eight weeks). But double daily to Abu Dhabi and Dubai is not going to fade away. With Glasgow already touted

for treble daily it is clear that the middle eastern airlines see the secondary hub airports of Europe as a prime target for expansion. That means Dublin in its new found guise as a hub,because many of the seats on those four flights to the Gulf each day are being filled by through passengers from our trans-Atlantic services and from the regional cities of England and mainland Europe. For anyone trying to sell a long

haul or medium haul holiday, thing shave never been better. It is not just the Gulf airlines, it is also Malaysia, selling at low prices in a bid to win back the allegiance of the travel public, and BA, Air France and others using ireland as a place to offload their unsold seats without damaging their core home markets. If Asia is not on your brochure shelves already, now is the time to move.

flight. Majorca has so much to offer so many, from sun, culture, shopping, nightlife to excellent cuisine and clean family friendly beaches. The variety of resorts also means you can have a different experience every visit. I also spend a lot of time on the Costa Del Sol, which has become a home from home. It is great to be able to get away for weekend breaks year round and escape the Irish weather. I am planning a trip further afield over the next few months to Toronto as my brother and his family have moved there. I do like to plan in advance, so I have my eyes on the new Sensatori in Ibiza for some luxury next summer.

IN YOUR NEXT TRAVEL EXTRA: Available to Travel Agents or online Oct 13 2014

CRUISE ISSUE The over crowded Caribbean WINTER CRUISE TRENDS

Page 045 pics 10/09/2014 09:12 Page 1

OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 45

MEETING PLACE

and erican Holidays SHGI John Devereux of Am sted ho re r America who we Mary McKenna of Tou ke Cro the at a Visit Florid by Virgin Atlantic and Football match can eri Am c ssi Park Cla

Trisha Dixon of Cassidy Travel, Fiona Reinhard t of Abbey Travel and Ao ife Brennan of Cassidy Travel Liffey Valley on board Thomson Spirit

rpoTrihy at The Travel Co Sue Power and Marie rk, Co rion Hotel in ration event in the Cla

Aisling Campbell and Bepi Gaidoni of BCD tra vel at the Croke Park Cla ssic American Football match

Out and about with the Travel Trade

Bronagh McNamara, Rachel McAnaspie of American Holidays, Gleeson Knox the waiter, Niki Stanford of Click and Go on board MSC Magnifica

Clive Field, Niamh Greg g, Orla Connolly, Sylvia Kane and Caroline Co ughlan all of Falcon He ad Office on board Thom son Spirit

an Yvonne Muldoon of United Airlines, John Cassidy Sinead Burke, Deirdre Lynch and Pam Noon n of Cassidy Travel and Tony Collins ofTopflight at at The Travel Corporation event in the Clario the presentation of prizes for the United Cup Hotel in Cork,

Bernie Fenton, Margaret Cullinane, Deirdre Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Mahony, Sue Power and Rachel Crowley at The Travel Corporation event in the Clarion

Michael Brady of Failte Ireland and Carolina Marcos of Google, who announced Google Month, a schedule of online events

Paul Dawson, Pat Daws on and Paul Sexton at The Travel Corporation event in the Clarion Ho tel in Cork

ie Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Leary and Siobhan John Paul Griffin, Debb Corporation event in the Devereux at The Travel Clarion Hotel in Cork

wley Yvonne Cronin, Paul Sexton, Ken Donnellan and Team Etihad, Aubrey Teidt, Karen Maloney, el Doorley, Rachel Cro Beatrice Cosgrove and Valer Yvonne Cronin, Micha Sean Healy at The Travel Corporation event in ie Murphy pictured in the e Travel CorporaTh at e an llin Cu Eti ret ha d Lounge in Terminal 2 and Marga the Clarion Hotel in Cork at Dublin Airport n Hotel in Cork tion event in the Clario

Kelly Henderson of Kin is, Rachel Shorten of Travel Solutions and Ro bert Newberry of Selec tive Tvl see the Aer LIn gus facilites in Heathrow

Darach Culligan of Darach Culligan Travel and Simon Daly of Topflight at the presentation of prizes for the United Cup,

at Jones and Sean Healy Dympna Crowley, Mary tel Ho n rio Cla the in nt eve The Travel Corporation rk Co in

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OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 46

MEETING PLACE

ret Shannon and Martin Enda Corneille, Marga event to highlight the Skelly at the Emirates services launch of double daily

Cynthia Fogarty of Sk ytours, Clive Field of Fa lcon Head Office and Or la Connolly of Falcon Head Office on board Thomson Spirit

y Experts and Rebecca Mike Shinnors of Holida MSC Magnifica in Cork Kelly of MSC on board

Caroline Coughlan of Falcon Head Office an d Cynthia Fogarty of Sk ytours on board Thom son Spirit

Out and about with the Travel Trade

Ivan Beacom of Aer Lingus and Mary Denton of Orla Connolly of Falcon Head Office an d Stacy Sunway hosted by Lee Osborne and Adam McK- Anderson of Falcon Travel Shop Clond alkin on bo ard Th omson Spirit night at the Croke Park Classic

Rebecca Kelly of MSC, Gemma Garrett and Astrid Johnston of American Holidays on board MSC Magnifica in Belfast

t dy Travel Talbot Stree Emma Hilliard of Cassi nDo Cassidy Travel and Suzanne Barry of son Spirit om Th ard bo aghmede on

Clare Dunne of Travel Broker and Carey Hewston of Cassidy Travel Swords on board Thomson Spirit,

Anita Thomas and Ge rry O'Reilly at the Emira tes event to highlight the lau nch of double daily ser vices between Dublin an d Dubai

Trisha Dixon and Aoife Brennan of Cassidy Travel Liffey Valley on board Thomson Spirit,

ents Rosie, Emma Hilliard, Suzanne Barry and t of the Irish Travel Ag Martin Skelly, presiden es Michelle Martin of Cassidy Travel on board rvic Se est Gu VP y Teidt Association and Aubre Thomson Spirit, nt three-class A330 eve of Etihad at the Etihad

Sylvia Kane of Falcon Head Office and Collet te Mary Murphy of Falco n Travel Shop Clare Ha ll on board Thomson Sp irit

Jonathan Shackleton. cousin of the explorer, and James Fennell of Burtown House Athy at the launch of the Explorerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Way Sth Kildare trail

of antic, Veronica Flood Holly Best of Virgin Atl d at be oka Bo of Fly h leig Tour Ameirca and Bever c the Croke Park Classi

Julia Power, John Wa lker and John Paul Gr iffin at The Travel Corporat ion event in the Clario n Hotel in Cork.

CurTwomey and Christine Marie Trihy, Rebecca rCla the in nt eve ration ran at The Travel Corpo ion Hotel in Cork

Page 046-047 pics 09/09/2014 21:08 Page 2

OCTOBER 2014 PAGE 47

MEETING PLACE

Out and about with the Travel Trade

Counsellors and Stacy Brian Rafferty of Travel vel Shop Clondalkin on Anderson of Falcon Tra board Thomson Spirit.

Mary Denton of Sunw Sylvia Kane of Falcon Head Office and Niamh ay and Ita Hendrick of Tra velworld who were ho Gregg of Falcon Head Office on board Thomson sted by Lee Osborne of Bookabed and Adam Spirit. McKnight of A2B Transf ers

Trisha Dixon of Cassidy Travel Liffey Valley an d Aoife Brennan of Cassi dy Travel Liffey Valley on board Thomson Spirit

Paula Coughlan, Judy Coughlan, Nicholas Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;SulReede Tour America and Pat livan and Sharon Jordan at The Travel Corpora- Veronica Flood of ssi Croke Park Cla c of United Airlines at the tion event in the Clarion Hotel in Cork

x of gus and John Devereu John Kehoe of Aer Lin c ssi Cla rk Pa ke Cro the American Holidays at

Carol Mullins of FCM, Noeleen Lynch of Atlas Travel and John Keog h of Aer Lingus on a vis it to the Aer Lingus facilities in Heathrow T2

Cynthia Fogarty of Skytours and Clare Dunne of Travel Broker on board Thomson Spirit,

Niamh Gregg and Clive Field of Falcon Head Office and Collette Mary Murphy of Falcon Travel Shop Clare Hall on bo ard Thomson Spirit,

Carole Carmody and Gerry McLoughlin at The Travel Corporation event in the Clarion Hotel in Cork,

d, Elissa Booth of HanValerie Murphy of Etiha at a Rossi of Abbey Travel non Travel and Monic Air blin Du at nt eve A330 the Etihad three-class

n Ugur Tok Project Manager of Turkish-Irish Assonna Leary, Bernie Fento Stephanie Finn, Rosea ciation in the north and Onur Gul Turkish Airlines ion rat rpo Co x at The Travel and Siobhan Devereu Marketing executive at the Belfast Mela festival rk tel in Co event in the Clarion Ho

Alison Miskimmon of Oa sis Travel and Alex Fa rquharson of Oceania Cruises on board The Marin in Belfast

Kerry McCarthy, Donna Gibbons and Donagh McCarthy at The Travel Corporation event in the Clarion Hotel in Cork

Ciara Foley of Platinu m Travel, Chair of the Visit USA committee in Dublin and Jeff Collins of Globe Hotels at the Cro ke Park Classic

Travel president of the Martin Skelly of Navan iation pictured in the soc As Irish Travel Agents al 2 in Dublin Airport at Etihad lounge at Termin A330 event the Etihad three-class

Page 048 09/09/2014 21:23 Page 1

Kings Hall Pavilion, Belfast BT9 6GW, Northern Ireland 16th/18th January 2015

The Belfast Telegraph 50+Show will be staged

alongside the highly successful Holiday World Show, entering its 23rd year and firmly established as one of the BIGGEST and BEST attended public exhibitions in Northern Ireland

Featuring: • • • • • •

Fashion & Beauty Food & Drink Genealogy Government Information Services Health & Wellbeing Holidays & Travel

• • • •

Home & Garden Hotels & Spas Personal Finance & Law Retirement Villages & Resorts • Technology

WHY YOU SHOULD EXHIBIT AT THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH 50+SHOW • Estimated 80% of the country’s wealth is held by people aged 50+ (The Henley Centre) • 31.7% (or 574,000) of the Northern Ireland population are 50+ (Northern Ireland population census) • 62% of Belfast Telegraph readers are 50+ • As a group they are more likely to have substantial assets, cash and the time to enjoy life. Whilst they are less likely to have any mortgages, school fees and 9 to 5 jobs. To exhibit please contact Maureen Ledwith Sales Director +353 (0)1 291 3700 e: maureen@bizex.ie

Paulette Moran Sales Manager +353 (0)1 291 3702 e: paulette@bizex.ie