Category Archives: Travel & leisure

European cities hope jet-setting Taylor Swift fans will splash the cash for Eras tour

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The superstar arrives in Europe next month – and Swifties, tourist boards and venues are already preparing

Tim Brown, 44, and his wife, Marcella, 34, may not consider themselves bona fide “Swifties”, but when it was announced last June that Taylor Swift would be visiting their corner of the globe this summer they could not resist joining the scramble for a pair of tickets.

A post-pandemic appetite for live music events has fuelled huge worldwide interest in the American singer-songwriter’s Eras tour, which surpassed in $1bn sales in November to become the highest-grossing series of concerts in history.

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Liquid restrictions at UK airports to remain in place until June 2025

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Travellers will have to wait another year for 100ml limit to be lifted after government extends deadline for new scanners

Holidaymakers will continue to face limits on the amount of liquid they can carry on flights out of the UK this summer after the government extended the deadline for airports to install new security scanners by a year.

The Department for Transport had previously set a target for the introduction of 3D scanners in all UK airports by 1 June, but this has now been extended by 12 months because some major airports will not be ready in time.

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Network Rail to spend £2.8bn to cope with effects of climate crisis

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Funding for drains, embankments and other measures is part £45.4bn five-year investment plan

Network Rail is to spend nearly £3bn to protect the railway from the effects of the climate crisis and extreme weather, as it warned that the country’s network was having to contend with hotter summers and increased winter floods.

As part of its new £45.4bn five-year investment plan, the body in charge of Great Britain’s rail network will spend £2.8bn over the next five years on activities and technology to help it cope with the impact of climate change.

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Tui investors vote to leave London Stock Exchange amid record results

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More than 98% of shareholders in Europe’s biggest travel operator vote to delist in favour of Germany

Tui, Europe’s biggest travel company, is abandoning the London Stock Exchange in favour of listing its shares solely in Germany.

A vote on Tuesday resulted in 98.35% of shareholders backing a company proposal to drop its UK listing, in what will be seen as the latest blow to London’s standing in international finance.

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EasyJet announces ‘grans go free’ deal on holidays to Europe

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Offer comes as research shows half of families in UK have never holidayed abroad with grandparents

EasyJet’s holiday wing is offering “grans go free” places on trips to Europe, after research found half of families had never holidayed abroad with their grandparents.

Under the offer, one grandparent on the trip can travel free of charge to countries including Spain, Greece and Italy. The tour operator said it hoped the deal would encourage Britons to take a holiday with three generations of their family or more.

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Britons cut back on dining out and buying clothes, Barclays reveals

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Annual card spending report says consumers are prioritising travel and nights out and buying value-range groceries amid cost of living crisis

Hard-pressed consumers cut back on eating out and buying new clothes to prioritise spending on travel, entertainment and a visit to the pub over the past year, as soaring inflation and rising bills sharply curtailed the rate of spending growth.

Consumer card spending increased by 4.1% year-on-year in 2023, almost two-thirds lower than the 10.6% rise in 2022, as the sharp increase in the cost of living took its toll on households.

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‘Dangerous precedent’: fears over plans for Calanais stones access fee

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Land access groups worry it will lead to charges at other sites, while pagans are alarmed about restrictions on worship

For generations walkers, pagans and artists have freely roamed around the standing stones at Calanais on Lewis, drawn by the site’s monumental scale, its coastal views and the spiritual impact of the rising sun and moon there.

But there are growing fears that proposals by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) to introduce an admissions charge and control access to the neolithic site for the first time, could have a significant impact on those freedoms.

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Travel firms urged to halt trips to Uyghur region over China rights abuses

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Exclusive: Report says optics of western firms organising Xinjiang tours amid ‘crimes against humanity are disastrous’

Uyghur advocates have called on western tourism companies to stop selling package holidays that take visitors through Xinjiang, where human rights abuses by authorities have been called a genocide by some governments.

The request comes as China reopens to foreign visitors after the pandemic, and as its leader, Xi Jinping, calls for more tourism to the region.

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Rhodes wildfires are climate wake-up call, says UK minister

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Patrick Courtown sounds warning as evacuation flights head to Greek island to rescue stranded Britons

Wildfires in Rhodes are a “wake-up call” on the effects of the climate crisis, a UK government minister has said, as empty planes were sent to the Greek island to help bring home stranded Britons.

After a mass evacuation from parts of Rhodes, members of the House of Lords were told the situation was “stabilising” and there was no immediate need for the government to advise people to stop travelling there.

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Three-hour delays at Dover as bad weather and train strikes hit summer getaway

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Saturday expected to be busiest day for travel this year as millions take to UK’s roads, airports and ports

Holidaymakers face delays of up to three hours at the Port of Dover as poor weather and train strikes hit Britain’s summer getaway.

Saturday is predicted to be the year’s busiest day for travel after schools in England and Wales broke up for the six-week summer holiday. Abta, the travel association, said more than 2 million UK holidaymakers will head overseas this weekend.

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Europe heatwave fails to deter holidaymakers as easyJet demand booms

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No-frills carrier reports record quarterly £200m profit as rebound in travel industry gathers pace

Holidaymakers are not being deterred by the ongoing heatwave in Europe, as travellers continue to jet off on their summer vacations amid booming demand for travel, according to easyJet.

The airline reported a record pretax profit of £203m for the three months to the end of June, surpassing analysts’ forecasts, as the demand for summer travel rebounds.

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‘A huge market going untapped’: lack of visitors worries Wales

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Country does not seem to get its fair share of tourists or money, despite so much spectacular mountain scenery and coastline

Any summer’s day on top of Yr Wyddfa you may be forgiven for thinking all is well with Welsh tourism. People are queuing to touch the summit cairn, the cafe is rammed and the railway fully booked.

But the Welsh affairs committee at Westminster this week voiced serious concerns. It pointed out that in 2019, international visitors spent about £515m in Wales, less than 2% of the £28bn they spent in the UK overall. Closer scrutiny revealed other worrying signs: in 2022, there were almost 2.8bn day trips taken by British residents but only 6% happened in Wales, and on those visits people spent less than elsewhere in Britain.

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Agency behind ‘Love the Philippines’ tourism video sorry for using shots of other countries

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Agency DDB Philippines apologises for using ‘highly inappropriate’ images that stock footage providers offer from Brazil and Indonesia

A tourism campaign for the Philippines backfired after the creators of a video promoting the archipelago nation as a holiday destination said it had used stock shots from other countries.

Advertising agency DDB Philippines apologised on Sunday for the “highly inappropriate” images, which included rice terraces in Indonesia and sand dunes in Brazil.

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From Brexit to Beyoncé: why UK inflation is still so painfully high

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The cost of living is falling in Europe and the US but is still rising in Britain. We look at the major culprits

The Bank of England has struggled to understand why inflation remains high in the UK. It has fallen in France, Germany, the US and especially Spain, where inflation dropped to 2.9% in May compared with the UK figure of 8.7%. Here we look at the many reasons for the current crisis.

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Missing Titanic submarine: US and Canadian teams search for tourist vessel

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Race against time to find craft that went missing on Sunday with five people onboard, including British billionaire

US and Canadian rescue teams are scrambling to search for a tourist submarine that went missing during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck with a British billionaire among the five people onboard.

Hamish Harding is the chair of the private plane firm Action Aviation, which said he was one of the mission specialists on the OceanGate Expeditions vessel reported overdue on Sunday evening about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland.

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BA, Boots and BBC staff details targeted in Russia-linked cyber-attack

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Hack attributed to criminal gang hit MOVEit software used by third-party payroll provider Zellis

British Airways, Boots and the BBC are investigating the potential theft of personal details of staff after the companies were hit by a cyber-attack attributed to a Russia-linked criminal gang.

BA confirmed it was one of the companies affected by the hack, which targeted software called MOVEit used by Zellis, a payroll provider.

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BA owner raises profit forecast as travel demand rebounds

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IAG expects to fly almost the same passenger numbers this year as before Covid pandemic

The owner of British Airways has upgraded its full-year profit expectations thanks to strong demand for holiday travel, as the airline group said it expected to fly almost the same number of passengers this year as it did before the coronavirus pandemic.

International Airlines Group (IAG) reported a first-quarter profit for the first time since 2019, before the travel industry was plunged into chaos by Covid lockdowns. It made an operating profit of €9m (£7.9m) in the first three months of the year.

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Cheap flights, Brexit, now Dover chaos – is this the end of the road for continental coach tours?

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While many operators still ply the cross-Channel route, some businesses are focusing instead on domestic trips

It was once the staple for group travel abroad, favoured by school trips and touring retirees alike, but it now looks like Britain could be falling out of love with the continental coach journey.

Many are likely to have been put off for life by chaos at Dover, as people try to get away for the Easter holiday. An estimated 20,000 people got caught up in gridlock last weekend alone after delays in border processing that forced vehicles to queue for up to 14 hours.

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Plans for rail pass for UK staycationers axed over cost concerns

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Exclusive: extensive consultations since idea was proposed 18 months ago have found it would not be commercially viable

Plans to boost domestic tourism by introducing a rail pass for British staycationers have been axed, the Guardian can reveal.

The idea was initially heralded by the government as a way to help struggling businesses get back on their feet as the final Covid restrictions were being lifted in the summer of 2021, but extensive consultations since have found that the plan would not be commercially viable.

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British Airways cancels 300 flights during Heathrow staff’s Easter strikes

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Airport security staff due to hold 10 days of strikes over pay, forcing airline to axe 5% of its schedule

British Airways is to cancel more than 300 flights to and from Heathrow over the Easter holiday period due to strikes by airport security staff.

The airline is axing about 5% of its schedule, with 16 return short-haul flights cancelled daily. It said the majority of affected customers would be booked on to alternative flights within 24 hours, or could be fully refunded.

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