Holiday & Travel

Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said that Jamaica will later this month start receiving at least 16 flights per week from the United Kingdom, bringing the island back to approximately 100 percent airline seat capacity as the nation’s tourism numbers rebound.

Bartlett is currently in the United Kingdom (UK) with a high-level team from the Ministry of Tourism and the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) participating in the World Travel Market, one of the largest international tourism trade shows in the world.

Birmingham Airport today welcomed a new three times weekly service to Paris Orly with IAG member Airline, Vueling.

Flights will operate each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, offering direct connectivity to this central Paris airport. Flights arrive at Birmingham from Paris Orly at 0720 and depart Birmingham at 0805 using a 220 seat A321 aircraft. This is Vueling’s second destination from Birmingham, complementing its existing service to Barcelona which operates four times weekly.

Travel companies will start ramping up their technology spend next year, reveals research released by WTM and its sister-event Travel Forward.

Some 700 professionals from around the globe contributed to the WTM Industry Report. When asked about tech spending plans for 2022, the response was a net positive with nearly four-in-ten (39%) saying their budget would increase compared with three-in-ten (29%) who are planning to spend less.

The Belfry Hotel & Resort has had another outstanding result at the 28^th annual World Travel Awards after retaining its title as England’s Leading Resort for the 6th consecutive year. The World Travel Awards acknowledge, reward, and celebrate excellence across all key sectors of the travel, tourism and hospitality industries, and The Belfry Hotel & Resort excelled over some of the country’s finest hotels.

Birmingham Airport has welcomed back the British Airways tailfin as BA CityFlyer launches services to Belfast City.

The schedule provides ten flights a week up to the new year, increasing to 16-weekly in early January.

The remaining seven destinations on the UK red list - Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Peru and Venezuela - will be removed from Monday.

Passengers returning to England from these destinations will no longer be required to enter hotel quarantine. However, the government confirmed the red list and quarantine hotel policy “remains in place”.

Following a multi-million-dollar transformation, Sandals Resorts International (SRI) has unveiled plans for its completely reimagined all-inclusive resort in Nassau, Bahamas, the all-new Sandals Royal Bahamian.

Designed to celebrate the easy-going spirit of the Bahamas with locally inspired experiences and a thoughtful, modern approach to luxury, the company will reopen their award-winning hotel, spa and private island on January 27th.

The recently re-branded The QHotels Collection have announced the formation of a new Spa Academy which will see the creation of new positions across the group and training and qualifications for existing Spa, Beauty & Wellbeing practitioners.

Sarah Abercrombie is the inspiration behind this initiative.

Respected Caribbean hotelier Nicola Madden-Greig has been named the new president of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA).

The award-winning Jamaican businesswoman was elevated to the position during CHTA’s Annual General Meeting last week.

Summer may be over but the demand for a Staycation remains strong, with 44% of families from the Midlands saying they are taking a short break this October half term, as revealed in the autumn segment of the 2021 Travelodge Holiday Index.

A survey of 2,000 British families to discover their October school holiday travel plans was conducted by OnePoll on behalf of the UK’s leading budget hotel group, which operates over 578 hotels across the UK.

Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says the island nation has welcomed a total of 1,285,368 visitors since the reopening of the country’s borders in June 2020, with estimated earnings of US$1.7 billion.

He said that the figures, up to September 2021, comprise approximately 1,276,987 stopover visitors and 8,381 cruise passengers.

Qatar Airways Holidays has launched extensive travel packages for the inaugural FIFA Arab Cup Qatar 2021 welcoming global football fans to enjoy the finest Qatari hospitality and follow their favourite team in person. The region’s showpiece tournament will take place from 30 November to 18 December, 2021.

New research from national tourism agency VisitBritain demonstrates the increasing importance of football in driving inbound tourism to the UK and in boosting visitor spending. Its ‘Football Tourism in the UK’ report published today shows that overseas visitors who went to a football match spent £1.4 billion across the UK in total during their trip in 2019, up 84% on the £742 million spent in 2011 when the research was last conducted.

With the 2023 Luxury Yacht Cruise Collection second edition brochure release, Emerald Cruises has unveiled the details of its new destination – the Seychelles – on board the recently announced Emerald Sakara, joining Emerald Azzurra in 2023. This is the first time that details of Emerald Sakara’s inaugural season and itineraries have been revealed.

Emerald Sakara’s maiden voyage will be the 11-day Tropical Charms of the Seychelles itinerary, taking guests on a round-trip from Victoria, Mahé Island, the capital of the Seychelles.

The U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday travellers will be able to fly to the States if they’ve received shots of vaccines approved or recognized for emergency use by the World Health Organization or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It did not say whether that included people who had received a mixed-dose regimen of approved vaccines.

As Caribbean tourism destinations continue their journey towards some semblance of normality, preliminary data from member countries of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) reveal that the region outperformed the rest of the world in the first half of 2021.

During this period, international tourist arrivals to the Caribbean reached 6.6 million, representing a 12.0 per cent decline when compared to the same period last year.