HOTELS AND OTHER TOURIST ACCOMMODATION ESTABLISHMENTS BY CITIES UNDER STATE JURISDICTION AND COUNTIES BY QUARTER

While the overall Q1 figures look promising, overall hotel occupancy in Latvia was nothing to really brad about. According the the numbers even the highest registered room occupancy was only just over 44% in Riga. Elsewhere 35% occupancy was the pinnacle for the first quarter of this year.

In all Riga showed 445,165 overnight stays, while by comparison the Pieriga Region only had 110,398 and more remote regions like Amata County received 1,734. The chart above from CSB shows the relative Q1 figures over the last several years.

Bulgaria’s Varna Airport has been closed due to an incident that occurred sometime this morning. Varna Airport officials are extremely difficult to reach at this moment, but officials there have said the airport will now rep-open at 12 PM local time.

Courtesy Air Via

In the background during the phone call with Ms. Dimitrova, there seemed to be some excitement and confusion going on. The earlier talk with operations seemed to suggest a security situation, the officer having received orders not to disclose the nature of the incident as well.

We will update the story as we learn more, but it seems significant now that not one of the airlines operating from Varna Airport can be reached via phone. The airport’s press service, Fraport Twin Star Airport Management PR, was also unavailable for a statement.

BA A 318 - Courtesy British Airways

A British Airways plane was forced to make an emergency landing when the aircraft lost one of its engines, according to reports. Officials at Heathrow have suggested the engine loss was due to a flight of birds, apparently some of them fouling the engine. Passengers aboard the flight were reportedly offloaded without further incident, but the aircraft’s other engine may have actually caught fire as well.

This London Evening Standard report shows images of passengers aboard BA flight BA762 involving, an Airbus A319 aircraft, being evacuated down emergency chutes onto the tarmac. Video footage shows the plane seemingly with one engine on fire as it lands.

Travel green - courtesy © olhaafanasieva - Fotolia.com

Choose a Green Hotel

Green hotels incorporate environmentally friendly practices that can greatly lower their impact on the surrounding ecosystems. According to the Green Hotels Association, a good hotel recycling program can keep more than $1,000 worth of establishment-related items out of the waste stream every month. Other eco-friendly hotel practices include using low-energy lighting, encouraging the reuse of towels and other linens, and even installing new, more efficient HVAC equipment.

Discourage Illegal Trading

In some areas, locals may sell historic artifacts, endangered species or products made from these species. Help preserve the local area by refusing to buy these items. Sometimes, shady dealers are willing to sell even more than what is readily available around them— like your credit card information. Keep your personal information in a safe place in a hotel safe or money belt you wear. Travelers shouldn’t carry their Social Security cards, according to USA.gov. Also, be aware of “shoulder surfers” who could be spying on your passwords or other personal information. Learn more about ID theft facts before you go by visiting Lifelock.com. This company specializes in protecting users from the illegal trading of their personal data and the effects of such trading.

Volunteer on Vacation

Forget about joining throngs of tourists at all the popular sightseeing spots and instead experience a culture by helping it. Many people are taking volunteer vacations to spend time cleaning a community affected by a natural disaster, helping out in an orphanage or teaching language skills. Habitat for Humanity sponsors a Global Village volunteer program where teams together with community locals build or renovate homes around the world. Visit Habitat.org to learn more about joining or supporting the Global Village program.

Try Geotourism

Geotourism supports the sustaining or enhancing of the local environment at a tourist destination. According to National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, this practice isn’t just for the tourists. The governments of allied tourist destinations pledge to help prevent their areas from being “loved to death.” They place limits on the amount of tourists that are allowed, use sustainable practices and measure tourism success by things like length of stay and amount of money spent instead of merely recording how many people visit. To support geotourism, make a point of visiting places with a government that has signed on to these policies.

Take Your Junk Home with You

Since many locations don’t have recycling facilities, be prepared to take your waste home with you for proper disposal. This will ensure that your stay doesn’t result in more garbage for the local landfill. If you use bottled water, crush the bottles for easy transport back to your home for recycling.

About the author: Jennifer Craver loves the outdoors and sharing ideas with readers on the right car to get for the great outdoors and camping with the family.

If experience counts at all, hoteliers in the Budapest market in particular, have a lot to look forward to from the speakers and sponsors next week. Panel discussion and key presentations highlight what will be one this area of Eastern Europe’s “must attend” conferences for tourism. The special case Budapest and Hungary hospitality represents, is something of a model for other similar regions within this part of Europe. From the Baltics to Transcaucasia, emerging markets reflect vividly the need for “fast forwarding” hotel marketing, PR, and advertising efforts, on and offline.

Continental Hotel Budapest Pit Stop Bar in the lobby - in case you're bored

Drawing from the dotcomhotel Blog, here’s a taste of what attendees will get for two days next week. At the end of this article, readers interested in attending can see what booking for a long weekend in Budapest has to offer.

Today’s challenges in Search Engine Optimization (Excerpt from Christophe Tassi’s article)

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is widely recognized as the process of improving organic visibility of your website in a search engine SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Building a SEO strategy improves Brand positioning in the marketplace. Google greatly influences your consumers and buyers. Benefiting from high positioning improves your customer’s perception of your products and services….

Why some hotels are successful in selling online and some of them are struggling (An article by Agniezska Sapa)

Working with OTA’s means for all hoteliers cooperation. Cooperation is a process of working together. OTA’s and hoteliers have same aim. Both sides are aiming to stay in business and want to have healthy reservations….

Make More Profit from Direct Online Bookings (Paul Ponçon, FastBooking Vice President Sales, EMEA)

Recognize that the booking engine on your website is more than simply a way to a reserve room. Your booking engine is a merchandising opportunity for your hotel. Like the best online retailers, hoteliers need to make it as easy as possible for clients to “purchase your products and services”: to take advantage of special offers, purchase ancillary and complimentary hotel services. Your booking engine powers these opportunities and revenues…

Enabling hoteliers worldwide manage online distribution faster, smarter & easier (Rita Jusztina Varga from Availpro)

Availpro has greatly helped hotels save time, sell more and compete better. We can provide you with recommendations and examples on how to increase your revenues with direct and indirect sales.

With Availpro Smart Channel Manager, you keep one central inventory which can be distributed to all sales channels simultaneously. There is no need to split inventory between websites and guess which ones will sell it. This will increase your bookings because it will not matter which website someone is searching on – your available rooms will always be displayed in the results.

Other speakers to connect with during the conference include: Brendan May, Sales & business development CEE @ IDEAS Reveue Optimization; Kristof Roemer, VP Sales @ TrustYou Analytics; Darja Gogunova, Head of Consultancy @ hit-CONSULT; Ulruch Pillau, Managing Director @
Hetras GmbH; Daniele Di Bella, Regional Sales Manager EMEA @ Tripadvisor; Paul Poncon, ice President, Sales EMEA @ Fastbooking; Peter Gal, Hospitality Consultant @ BDO Hungary; Ivan Bilandzic, Head of Revenue Management @ Bluesun Hotels& Resorts; Gabor Faska, General Manager @ Garden Hotel; Jeff Down, Senior Director of Business Development @ Nor1; Ana Carmona (left), Communication & Marketing Director @ Affilired; and WIHP’s marketing guru Martin Soler (top left).

For hoteliers, marketers or other interested parties, there may still be a few spots left to register here. Our sister company, Pamil Visions PR is the AOR for the conference and here at Argo Travel News we will provide ensuing coverage.

The dotcomhotel conference series is organized by SMART HERO s.r.o. Readers interested in this or other regional conferences may also contact the organizers directly at: Cell: +420 604 402 585 or +49 152 385 380 85 E-mail: info@dotcomhotel.eu | www.smarthero.eu

Wizz Air taking off this year - Courtesy Wizz Air press office

With so-called “legacy” air carriers up to their necks in dept and restructuring, the two main budget carriers in Europe have thrived. Lesser publicized Wizz Air, while not growing as rapidly as Ryanair, has still managed to exceed most expectations in these tough economic times. The airline is expected to grow almost 10% this Summer, and the news they picked up an additional 60 routes in Central and Eastern Europe speaks well for the potential.

Recent deals for the acquisition of new Airbus capacity, a new Tuzla to Gothenburg route, the coming Budapest-Baku route, and other positioning moves seem to have fortified Wizz Air’s position as the biggest budget carrier in these regions of Europe. With Croatia Airlines and many other local players either in transition or flat out broke, the opportunities in Wizz Air’s wheelhouse are actually exceptional for growth. Just one example of Wizz Air’s opportunity, the imminent takeover of Serbia’s Jat Airways is indicative of the overall region’s upheaval where airline viability is concerned.

With stiffening competition from Wizz Air, airlines like Adria Airways, Blue Air, Cyprus Airways, Belle Air, Tarom, even Turkish Airlines, and not to mention a score of other small carriers appear as ripe pickings where passenger share is concerned. Of course, Ryanair is also a player along with Lufthansa’s German Wings.

“More than 100 theme lines and 80 logos were developed as part of the process,” according to Hoffman/Lewis Creative Director, Mark Manion. “In the end, research proved that the connection between ‘The Show-Me State’ and the invitation to ‘Enjoy the Show,’ is easy to understand and very motivating to travelers.”

It is important to say that tourism is in fact the second largest industry in Missouri, after agriculture. More than 36 million tourists visit Missouri annually and contribute over USD 11 billion to the state’s economy. And that is a really important figure, necessary to maintain and, if possible, to increase.

The new campaign includes seven television spots, five print advertisements, seven billboards, an updated online presence and a social media strategy. It was created as a complex campaign, with a powerful multi-media campaign.

“Missouri truly does have a lot to show, given two major cities on each side of the state, the unique entertainment offering of Branson, amazing outdoor escapes and even wine country,” said Mark Schaeffer, President of Hoffman/Lewis. “We’re excited about how this new campaign platform is able to serve up the diverse options Missouri offers to tourists.”

It will be really interesting to find out in the future the impact this campaign had on Missouri’s tourism.

An important thing to mention is that these special fares are available only if purchased by June 2, 2013 and they include all taxes and fees. As any other service from any carrier, they are subject to availability as well as changes without notice.

The first flight serviced by LOT will be on June 5, from Chicago to Warsaw and will be done with a Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. On June 7 will take place the first flight from Toronto to Warsaw, while New York City JFK -Warsaw flights will start on June 30.

Passengers using this new class provided by the Polish carrier will have some interesting benefits that will make their flight more pleasant. Customers will find 50cm wide seats in a three-row arrangement in this separate and quiet “Premium Club” cabin. Passengers choosing this class will also benefit from increased seat recline and will have at their disposal a 10.6 inch monitor for entertainment with USB and power outlet. Premium Club passengers have upgraded meal service and drink selections, a dedicated check-in desk, access to the priority lane at the airport security control.

What is also really important for anyone traveling so far, the passengers who will choose this new option will have the ability to bring one additional free piece of luggage with priority baggage handling on arrival.

Comfort is really important especially on such long trips, so such packages and offers can really be useful to customers.

With  a new collective agreement in the works, differences between Croatia Airlines’ pilots and the company seem to be over. Meanwhile, an ongoing strike of flight attendants continues. Stewards and stewardesses continue to be at odds with the airline over the company’s proposed restructuring, which basically hurts worker’s incomes. While some agencies are reporting flights may go aloft again, other sources suggest there simply are not enough support personnel to carry out airline services properly.

In other news, Croatia Airlines revealed the total cost of the strike so far at about $1.1 million US. The airlines’ website announced flights would go out on schedule starting today. There’s still no word on the flight attendant strike as of this writing. For all detailed information please call our Contact Center at + 385 1 6676 555.

“It is encouraging to see that the growth in international tourist arrivals was equalled by a comparable increase in spending in spite of continued economic challenges” said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai. “Considering that tourism is a key export for many economies around the world, this result is good news as it provides foreign reserves to destinations, and contributes to job creation in tourism as well as in related economic sectors” he added.

United States, Spain, France, China and Italy leading, followed by Macau (China), Germany, United Kingdom, Hong Kong (China) and Australia were the top ten destinations from the receipts point of view. This top is virtually the same as the one in 2011, with minor changes such as Macao switching place with Germany from the 2011 situation and Hong Kong with Australia.

Fuels, chemicals, food, automotive products and international tourism are top five export categories, with international tourism (travel and passenger transport) accounting for 30% of the world’s exports of services and 6% of overall exports of goods and services.

Since I mentioned this report is about positive numbers and good news in time of crisis, it is worth mentioning that the Americas recorded the largest increase in receipts (+7% from 2011). Significant increases were registered also by Asia and the Pacific (+6%), Africa (+5%) and Europe (2%). Receipts in the Middle East were down in 2012 (-2%), but this decrease wasn’t as dramatic as the one recorded a year before.

It will be really interesting to see the situation for 2013, but we still have some time to wait for that and, in the meanwhile, many places to discover and enjoy.