Category Archives: Travel & leisure

Eden Project creators tee up to open ‘edible’ and green golf course

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Team admit Gillyflower is not the first but hope it encourages a more sustainable approach to golfing

The views are spectacular, taking in a lovely Cornish river, a ruined castle and the rooftops of an ancient town while the golf is pleasantly challenging, with tight fairways and undulating greens.

But what makes Gillyflower golf course in Lostwithiel different is that every square metre of non-playing surface will be used to grow fruit and vegetables or encourage flora and fauna.

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Tui tells holidaymakers not to expect last-minute deals despite surge in bookings

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Losses halve as travel bounces back from pandemic with reservations reaching 85% of summer 2019 level

The travel company Tui Group more than halved its losses over the past six months and is predicting a “strong travel summer” as customers continue to book long-awaited holidays despite cost of living pressures.

Europe’s largest holiday company said future bookings remained “unabatedly high” as international travel bounced back from the coronavirus pandemic, but said there would not be many last-minute deals because it was facing rising costs.

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Replacements for P&O Ferries crew paid £1.80 an hour, unions say

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RMT says agency rates for seafarers are ‘gut-wrenching betrayal’ of 800 sacked British staff

Seafarers from abroad brought in to replace the 800 sacked British P&O Ferries crew are being paid as little as £1.80 an hour, unions have claimed.

The news emerged as Labour accused the government of doing “absolutely nothing” when it learned of the planned sackings, as a memorandum with the “game plan” of P&O was circulated on Wednesday evening.

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P&O Ferries scandal must be turning point for workers’ rights, says TUC

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Union leaders call for employment bill and accuse ministers of failing to challenge sacking of 800 staff

Ministers have serious questions to answer on the growing scandal at P&O Ferries and must make it a catalyst to improve workers’ rights, the Trades Union Congress said on Sunday.

The TUC accused the government of sitting on its hands and failing to protect workers after P&O sacked 800 staff on Thursday with a plan to replace them with cheaper agency workers. It has emerged that ministers were informed in advance about the mass redundancies.

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Germany investigates £1bn Tui share transfer by sanctioned Russian oligarch

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Alexei Mordashov sold most of 34% stake in world’s biggest tourism operator to entity controlled by his wife

Germany is investigating deals under which most of the stake in Tui held by the sanctioned Russian oligarch Alexei Mordashov was transferred to an entity controlled by his wife, Marina Mordashova, Tui said on Friday.

Tui, the world’s biggest holiday company, was informed this week that Mordashova controls Ondero Ltd, which bought stakes in Mordashov’s Unifirm Ltd, Tui’s top shareholder, from two of his subsidiaries on 28 February.

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Government knew of P&O Ferries sackings the day before, No 10 admits

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Labour and unions demand immediate action including suspending licences of parent company DP World

Unions and the Labour party have demanded immediate action over the sacking of 800 British crew by P&O Ferries, including suspending the licences of its parent company, DP World, as it emerged the government was made aware of the move the previous night.

Amid public calls for a boycott of P&O and protests at ports, unions demanded the government urge the firm to reverse its decision, and curb DP World’s involvement in planned freeports.

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‘Scandalous betrayal’: MPs condemn P&O Ferries for mass sacking of 800 staff

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Ministers and unions call for action against transport company’s Dubai owners

Ministers and trade unions have condemned P&O Ferries’ mass sacking of 800 British seafarers to replace them with agency crew as shameful and “completely unacceptable”, amid furious calls for action against the company’s Dubai owners.

P&O Ferries’ services could be suspended for up to 10 days, disrupting its cross-Channel and Irish Sea routes, after an extraordinary day in which the operator sacked its entire British seafaring staff without notice. They learned the news of their redundancy via a pre-recorded video message this morning.

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Wrongly built drainage system led to Stonehaven train crash, investigators find

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Network Rail failed to notice that works by Carillion on Aberdeen to Glasgow line did not match the design

A drainage system wrongly built by Carillion and unchecked by Network Rail led to the Stonehaven train crash, investigators have found, when a Scotrail train hit debris washed by rain on to the railway track.

Three people died on 12 August 2020 in the worst fatal event on the UK railways in 18 years, when the passenger train from Aberdeen to Glasgow derailed at Carmont, near Stonehaven, after heavy rainfall.

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Flight cancellations and delays as ‘tech issues’ hit British Airways

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Airline says cyber-attack is not responsible for problem affecting its website and airport operations

British Airways has said “significant technical issues” resulted in a number of flight cancellations and disruption across its operation on Friday.

The airline said the problem, which was affecting its website, app and airport operations, had not been caused by a cyber-attack.

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Remote Scottish island of Canna seeks ‘right fit’ to take over guesthouse

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Those shortlisted for job managing Tighard guesthouse warned that living on Canna can be testing

It is one of the most inaccessible guesthouses in Britain, on a tiny Hebridean island that is home to 15 people and a two-hour sail from the mainland. Undaunted, more than 100 people have inquired about running the place.

Interest about taking over Tighard guesthouse on Canna, an island south-west of Skye just 4.5 miles long and one mile wide, came from across the world. The island’s owners, the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), are now whittling those down to a shortlist of 10 applicants.

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Air travel in and out of UK slumps by 71% in 2021 amid pandemic

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Report from aviation analytics firm Cirium shows domestic flights were down by almost 60%

Air travel in and out of the UK slumped by 71% in 2021 as the second year of the Covid-19 crisis took its toll on international flying, according to a report.

Just over 406,000 international flights operated from the UK up to 22 December this year compared with almost 1.4m in 2019 before the pandemic struck and travel restrictions were imposed, the aviation analytics firm Cirium said. UK domestic flights were found to have declined by almost 60%.

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Palma to limit cruise ships after environmental concerns

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Spanish officials hail ‘historic’ deal to limit arrivals to maximum of three vessels a day at Mallorca port

Officials in the Balearic Islands will seek to limit cruise ships to a maximum of three vessels a day at its largest port, in a deal described as the first of its kind in Spain.

The regional government said in a statement that arrivals at Palma in Mallorca would be limited when possible to three cruise ships a day, one of the vessels allowed to be a mega-cruise liner carrying more than 5,000 people, starting in 2022.

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‘Almost unsaleable’: slump in school trips to UK blamed on Brexit

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Groups from the continent are going elsewhere, tour operators say, deterred more by passport and visa rules than the pandemic

Post-Brexit changes to Britain’s immigration rules have triggered an unprecedented collapse in bookings for school trips from the continent, organisers say, with countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands now more popular than the UK.

While the pandemic has depressed European school travel in general, the number of short-stay educational visits planned in 2022 to alternative EU destinations where English is widely spoken is significantly higher than inquiries for UK visits.

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UK travel firms call for state help after Omicron hits turnover

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Industry body warns that some operators won’t last the winter after return of strict Covid travel rules

Travel firms have called on the government to provide urgent financial help as fresh Covid-19 restrictions come in to force on Tuesday, hitting holiday travel just before the peak booking period.

Turnover has been at just 22% of normal levels for tour operators, according to figures from the travel association Abta.

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Travel firms scramble to rearrange holidays amid new Covid measures

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Swiss skiing holidays in doubt as country joins Spain in tightening travel rules to contain Omicron variant

Tour operators are scrambling to rearrange Swiss skiing holidays after the country joined Spain in tightening travel restrictions amid rising concerns about the spread of the new Omicron Covid variant.

From Saturday night, Switzerland mandated 10 days of quarantine for all new arrivals, in effect wrecking skiing holidays in the Swiss Alps until further notice. Travel firms are also wrestling with Spain’s ban on non-vaccinated arrivals that will affect British holidaymakers from Wednesday 1 December.

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Can the Gambia turn the tide to save its shrinking beaches?

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In a developing country reliant on its tourist industry, the rapidly eroding ‘smiling coast’ shows the urgent need for action on climate change

When Saikou Demba was a young man starting out in the hospitality business, he opened a little hotel on the Gambian coast called the Leybato and ran a beach bar on the wide expanse of golden sand. The hotel is still there, a relaxed spot where guests can lie in hammocks beneath swaying palm trees and stroll along shell-studded pathways. But the beach bar is not. At high tide, Demba reckons it would be about five or six metres into the sea.

“The first year the tide came in high but it was OK,” he says. “The second year, the tide came in high but it was OK. The third year, I came down one day and it [the bar] wasn’t there: half of it went into the sea.”

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How latest update to England’s travel red list will affect planned trips

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Six southern African countries added to list and temporary flight ban in place owing to new Covid-19 variant

The UK government has added six countries to the travel red list after the emergence of a new coronavirus variant. As of midday on Friday, South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Namibia are subject to restrictions and a temporary flight ban. Non-UK and Irish residents who have been in any of those countries in the previous 10 days will be refused entry into England. And the move will have an impact on anyone who has a trip planned.

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Almost 1m Tripadvisor reviews in 2020 found to be fraudulent

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In total Tripadvisor penalised 34,605 properties for fraudulent activity and banned 20,299 members

Almost 1m reviews submitted for inclusion on Tripadvisor – equivalent to 3.6% of the total – were determined to be fraudulent by the website last year.

In its second transparency report – the first was released in 2019 – the travel guidance platform said 67.1% of the fake reviews had been caught before making it on to the platform by its pre-posting moderation algorithm.

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Clubs face bouncer shortage as UK staffing squeeze hits nightlife

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Trade body says one in five businesses had to close or cut hours last month for lack of security staff

Nightclubs are suffering from a growing shortage of bouncers, in the latest staffing squeeze to hit the UK’s economic recovery, with some estimates suggesting venues are having to pay security staff as much as 25% more.

The lack of security personnel comes at a time when hospitality businesses are being hit by a cocktail of rising costs and are trying to rebound from months of closures during the pandemic.

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