St Helena

The tourism office for the (extremely) remote island of St Helena has launched a blog.

The St Helena Wirebird blog hopes to inspire travellers and showcase the diversity of this little-known island’s landscapes and experiences through amazing photography, top tips and rich content. It will also give readers a chance to engage with the blog and gain a deeper insight into what life is like on the island.

Cathy Alberts, Director of Tourism says: “We are thrilled to be launching our first blog. The blog gives St Helena a ‘global’ voice and expands on our current digital offering helping us put the destination firmly on the intrepid travellers map. It will also act as a great resource for travellers looking to come and experience St Helena for themselves.”

The blog, which is named after the island’s endemic bird, will be updated weekly. Its first post showcases some fantastic aerial shots of the island taken by photographer Marc Lavaud. It was published, appropriately, on St Helena Day – a national day, celebrating the discovery of the island over 500 years ago.

St Helena is an island of 47 square miles (122 sq.km) situated 1,200 miles off the west coast of Africa. It is an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom, with its own legislature and a high degree of internal self-government. Currently the only access to the Island is by sea, via the ship RMS St Helena, plus a number of cruise ships and yachts. However in Nov 2011 the UK government gave the go ahead for the construction of a new airport, scheduled to be completed and operational by early 2016.

St Helena Tourism is anticipating a significant growth in visitor numbers and plans to roll out additional social media channels including Google + and Flickr at a later date to complement the blog and an already successful Facebook page.

Posted in Social Media, Travel (Destinations) | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Museum ship Buffel in RotterdamI love technical museums, especially maritime museums so, with some free time to spend exploring Rotterdam before the Travel Bloggers Unite Europe conference started (today), it was no surprise where I ended up yesterday!

The Rotterdam Maritime Museum is not huge, but it does have some amazing stuff in there. For a start there’s a section on cartography, highlighting among other precious exhibits, the work of a local boy who ‘done well’(sic), Gerardus Mercator. In 1569 he worked out how to display a map of the 3-dimensional world on 2-dimensional paper so that sailors could use it to plot a true course.

Mercator atlas on display at Rotterdam Maritime MuseumThe museum actually owns one of the original three world maps he made.

There’s also a chronological display of maps from Claudius Ptolemaeus’ world map in 1486, demonstrating the growth of knowledge as explorers discovered new lands and cartographers refined existing data.

Pieter van Alphen world map, Rotterdam Maritime museumThere’s a good moment in 1606 when Australia is discovered. By 1660 the southwest corner of Australia around Perth is partially drawn on Pieter van Alphen’s world map.

It’s amazing to look at the detailed 16th & 17th charts and coastal drawings in this section and realise their significance. These were top secret documents of national and global importance. The Dutch became a huge maritime trading nation through the expansion of the Dutch East India Company and other Flemish traders, based on these maps and pilot books.

Painting of the Dutch whaling fleet off Spitzbergen (Abraham Stork 1670In another part of the museum dedicated to marine art, you can see the kind of colossal commercial enterprise these pioneering explorers and cartographers initiated. In 1612 The Northern Company was set up to harvest even arctic waters! In 1670 Abraham Storck painted the Dutch whaling fleet at work off Spitzbergen, plundering whales, seals, polar bears… pretty much anything they could lay their clubs on! Their most productive season was in 1697 when 129 ships caught 1,255 whales.

Model fishing boat used by painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag By the way, if you have ever wondered “how did artists paint maritime scenes that were always in motion?” a clue comes in the museum’s model ship section where there is a model of a Scheveningen fishing boat…. used by the painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831-1915) in his studio as a reference.

Mataro model shipThe museum has a small selection of models on display but most visitors walk straight past the most significant one. The ‘Mataró model’ from the 15th century is the oldest known model ship in Western Europe.

As a centre of maritime commerce, it’s not surprising that Rotterdam’s Maritime Museum should currently have an exhibition on piracy. It neatly balances the popular myth of pirates with the modern day reality (I quite like the way they use Lego pirate characters in and around the displays to lighten the approach). Visitors make their way through the exhibition through ‘yes’ and ‘no’ doors answering questions like: “Were pirates always keen to fight?”. Behind the ‘no’ door you learn that Dutch pirate, Claus Compaen’s strategy was to lure the captain & officers of ships onto his ship for a slap-up dinner… and then explain the cost of their liberty would be their ship!

The photos and video footage of modern day pirate activities highlight the disruption it can bring to shipping routes and the importance of maritime trade to every nation including the Dutch. Rotterdam’s role in that is demonstrated on the mezzanine floor in the museum where the walls are decorated with examples of the goods that pass through MainPort – from grain to metre-long aluminium ingots – and a dynamic representation of MainPort’s shipping activities in real time with a ‘live’ video link to the Port Authority Control room.

YouTube Preview Image

Nobody these days is exempt from European austerity. Sadly, as the museum’s Shaula Nuuts explained, one of their primary exhibits has had to be closed due to budget cuts.

The Buffel, built in Glasgow for the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1868, was, can you believe it, an ironclad ram ship! I thought ramming went out with the Greeks & Romans!

Anyway, until recently, museum visitors were able to go onboard and explore the officers’ quarters, the galley, engine room, and ship’s prison. That pleasure is denied visitors for the time being, but the museum is well worth a visit nevertheless.

Posted in Travel (Destinations) | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Statue of Liberty, headTravel writers and bloggers forget that they are not the only people to be hosted by tourism organisations and the travel industry.

I’m not sure how the numbers compare but there are probably just as many, if not more, ‘commercial’ fam trips as ‘media’ ones.

As if to make the point, Brand USA, the new tourism marketing entity responsible for promoting the United States to world visitors, is running its first-ever, multi-itinerary familiarisation trip for nearly 100 influential international travel agents, May 9-16.

The fam trip has seven simultaneous itineraries covering: the western wilds of Utah and Colorado; the urban playgrounds of the East Coast; the rich culture of Texas; the laidback lifestyle of California; the creole flavors of the Deep South; the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest; and the Great Lakes region. The MegaFam culminates in Miami, Florida for the grand finale where each of the participating agents will join together to celebrate and share their experiences with each other.

MegaFam participants from the UK & Ireland were selected from travel agents who booked trips to the USA from January 1 – April 5, 2013 via Brand USA’s partner airlines, British Airways and American Airlines, and ground transportation partner, Avis.

All participants have a passion for the USA and, just like bloggers, will be sharing their experiences and stories via social media throughout their journeys, on: www.twitter.com/USATravelTrade #usamegafam and www.facebook.com/DiscoverAmericaUKtrade and the new Brand USA blog at http://brandusa.tumblr.com.

Posted in Travel Industry | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Pickup & Airstream at gas station

Back around 2008-2010 when the sub-prime mortgage crisis was hitting Americans in a bad way, I noticed a new term cropping up in several U.S. travel publications (mostly the travel/lifestyle pages in local newspapers): the Tankaway.

Like Staycation (the word most travel writers & editors love to hate), Tankaway describes a type of holiday or short break.

A Tankaway is a destination that can be reached on a single tank of fuel – remember, most Americans take their holidays by road in the USA.

Fuel GuageSo, when everyone was budgeting carefully and ‘gas’ was nowhere near as cheap as it is now, travel editors were writing up destination suggestions for Tankaways.

I was reminded of it today when the Daily Telegraph wrote up a piece of holiday research that Post Office Travel Money has commissioned into the – heavy – costs of fuel in Europe and how they might affect British families motoring abroad this summer.

If Wallace & Grommit are being wheeled out in this time of austerity to encourage us all to… muhahaha… staycate (!), perhaps UK bloggers, travel editors and the marketing folk at Visit England, should be coming up with suggestions for Tankaways.

What do you think?

YouTube Preview Image

Images:
Flickr/NCReedPlayer (Top)
Flickr/RambergMediaImages

Posted in General, Travel (Destinations) | Tagged | Leave a comment

Tourists at Hatshepsut's Temple on the west bank, Luxor, in 2008

…Egypt certainly hopes so.

Delegates at this week’s WTM Vision Conference at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai heard that inbound trips to the Middle East region were down 5% last year mainly due to the decline of arrivals to those countries hit by the Arab Spring, which took place in 2011. I’m surprised it is down so little, and, with Syria engaged in civil war and tensions in surrounding countries high, the overall figures for the region don’t seem likely to improve any time soon.

For countries whose economy depends on tourism, the past few years have been really difficult, and one in particular, Egypt, now finds itself at something of a crossroads.

Egyptian Chamber of Commerce statistics show hotel & resort occupancy rates have fallen by 50% since the outbreak of the 25 January revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

This is jaw-dropping stuff when you consider that tourism reportedly accounts for upwards of 11.3% of Egypt’s GDP, generating 15.2% of its foreign currency reserves. Roughly 45% of Egypt’s service industry is geared towards tourism, so almost 12.6% of its population works either directly or indirectly for the tourism sector (1.8 million workers employed directly and 1.2 million workers employed indirectly).

With riots in the streets, and a political lurch from secularism to a regime dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, it’s not surprising that Egypt’s 14.7 million tourists in 2010, dropped to 9.8 million in 2011. The numbers recovered a little last year (11.5m) but it has left the country divided on how to entice tourists back, and more importantly, who to entice back.

Radical Salafi Muslim groups have been calling for a ban on alcohol and women wearing swimsuits in Egypt. However the Daily Telegraph quotes Egypt’s Minister of Tourism, Hisham Zaazou, also attending the Arab Travel Market in Dubai:

“Bikinis are welcome in Egypt and booze is still being served. We had talks with these Salafi groups and now they understand the importance of the tourism sector, but still you have some individuals that are not from the leadership saying these things.”

They are not just saying these things. Last week Les Rois hotel in Hurghada opened to the sound of breaking glass as bottles of alcohol were smashed in celebration.

The hotel does not serve alcohol, has separate male and female swimming pools, and will not be providing any services which violate Islamic Sharia law. eTurboNews reports that the hotel’s Executive Director, Abdel Baset Amr, hopes to attract “a new kind of tourist”, specifically those coming from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and other parts of Egypt. “As the number of tourists coming from Europe has dropped,we need to replace those numbers with tourists from other Arab countries.”

He’s not alone in thinking that. Where tourist numbers have begun to pick up again after the Arab Spring, the returning visitors have not been coming from the West, but from the Middle East itself. The UAE witnessed a substantial increase in 2012 with an estimated 11 million tourist arrivals. The UAE’s neighbour, Saudi Arabia, was the top source for inbound tourism, with 1,500,000 tourists, and according Euromonitor International’s Senior Research Analyst, Sana Toukanto, that number is predicated to double over the next five years.

Tourists at Hatshepsut's Temple on the west bank, Luxor, in December 2011Toukan explained that the UAE offers a culturally similar but more relaxed tourist destination for Saudis and is particularly popular amongst the growing young population: “The UAE promotes itself as a luxury shoppers’ paradise, with elaborate destination malls, shopping festivals, no sales tax and lower prices than in many surrounding countries.”

Meanwhile, Egypt’s Tourism Minister, not a member of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, is left dancing on the head of a pin as he tries to appease Islamic enthusiasts by enticing more visitors from Arab countries with Islamic tourism ‘products’ AND encourage tourists back from Europe and North America.

At the same time he was making the ‘Booze & Bikinis’ statement for Western ears and promoting a ministry plan to install cameras in popular tourism locations and provide live stream online showing the “calm and stable state they are in”, he was also announcing a range of incentives and offers that will be provided by the Egyptian tourism sector to Arab families during the upcoming summer season, the holy month of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr.

His goal is to restore visitor numbers to 2010 levels and the year has started well so far. Early stats for the first three months of 2013 saw a 14.6% increase on the first quarter of 2012. “We will be concentrating our efforts on various global markets”, he said, including new markets in South America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico) and Asia (Malaysia, China, India, Korea and Vietnam), “and in particular the Arab markets, as the number of Arab tourists amounted for 520,000 this year which reflects an increase of 7.5% compared to the first quarter of 2012.”

If he is to succeed in restoring 2010 levels, Egypt will need all those potential visitors because Western tourists may require more than the video live streams and expert opinion from the likes of Matthew Teller to entice them back.

What do you think? Will Western tourist flock back to Egypt? Will its tourism sector thrive? What about other North African countries like Tunisia or Libya (it has a vast tourism potential with its long Mediterranean coast and Roman antiquities)?

Oh, and… If you were a fundamentalist with terrorist intent, wouldn’t the site of a reassuring tourism webcam be a prime target??

Images:
Hatshepsut’s temple in 2008 (top) – Flickr/Malcolm_Sweeny
Hatshepsut’s temple in 2011 – Flickr/DeborahTurner

Posted in Travel (Destinations), Travel Industry | Tagged , , | Leave a comment