Feed: Earth Connect News » Travel - AggScore: 45.1

Japan’s Travel Not Fully Restored

As the world watched the triple devastation in Japan brought by the 8.9 magnitude earthquake, tsunami and an ongoing nuclear power threat, Japan’s travel within the country and towards the country cannot be fully restored just yet.

There are some airports such as Narita airport and Haneda airport, both in Tokyo have resumed normal operations since Saturday but have cancelled around 400 flights going in and out of the country due to the difficulties with the connecting flights at airports that were affected by the earthquake. There are a lot of airlines that have allowed travellers to postpone or extend their flights without any penalties. Delta has extended their travel waiver up to March 20, United to March 18 and American’s to March 18 as well. However, the U.S. State Department has still advised Americans to avoid travelling to Japan until April 1.

All ports, on the other hand, still remain closed in the mean-time.

On the ground, major highways in the North are still closed which makes land transportation difficult but most of the country’s public transportation such as subways and trains are now operating but these will adjust given that there would be rolling power interruptions throughout the country.

As Japan is picking up the pieces of the tragedy dubbed as one of the worst since the 2nd World War, most of the travels into Japan are search and rescue teams and aids coming from more than 70 countries that have offered their help.

Another Increase in American Airlines’ Airfares

American Airlines announces yet another increase for its airfares.

The said airline has increased its domestic round-trip fares by dollarsignr10 and round-trip fares to both Hawaii and Canada by dollarsignr20.

Due to the continued increase in fuel costs, airlines have been either increasing their airfares or have been cutting down on various perks to keep up with the burden of high fuel costs.

With American Airlines’ latest increase in airfares, the industry is still watching if other airlines will follow suit. If other airlines follow, this would be the 7th increase in airfares in the United States just within this year. If other airlines do not follow, it is most likely that American Airlines will rollback the increase.

Although the travel rate is going up again due to the return of business and related flights, airlines find themselves in a tight situation because of higher fuel costs. It’s almost the same scenario which happened in 2008 wherein fuel cost more than dollarsignr100 per barrel.

Spring Break in Mexico: Safe Enough?

As spring break is upon us, the main question is, is the popular spring break destination safe for students?

There seems to some confusion from two sides. On one side, the Texas Department of Public Safety released a warning that discourages students from spending their spring break in Mexico due to issues for safety. On another side, Mexico says that tourism has actually increased in their country.

According to the numbers released by Funjet Vacations, travels going to the coveted spring break destination did actually increase. Just this December, Mexico had its most number of tourists in over a decade. These tourists travelled from Texas. The numbers proves this as well as in December, there had been 253,000 travellers from Texas to Mexico and in January it was at 210,000 travellers which both indicated a 12% increase from last year’s 224,000 travellers and 196,000 travellers, respectively.

The main worry is the drug-cartel which is known for its violence against cops. Popular destinations in Mexico such as Acapulco have been a witness to such violence. Mexico officials continue to defend the spring break destination that this violence does not affect the most popular destinations in the country. More than that, they have increased security and surveillance cameras in tourist areas.

Currently, the U.S. State Department has a travel warning declared for the popular spring break destination.

Continental Takes Out Free Pretzels to Cut Costs

With rising fuel prices, various airlines are facing the problem of high costs. Continental Airlines, in the hopes of cutting down costs has decided to remove the free pretzel snacks for it economy class passengers.

As Continental joins a long list of airlines removing free snacks, the airline states that with this new policy, they will be saving around dollarsignr2.5 million a year. This will take effect on economy class passengers or coach passengers for domestic flights, transcon, Hawaii, Canada, Latin and Caribbean leisure flights.

This new policy aligns Continental with United Airlines which bought Continental in the previous year. This also puts Continental in alignment with its other competitors such as Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest, Frontier and AirTan which also removed snacks for economy passengers in order to cut costs.

Passengers, on the other hand, did not seem to have any violent reactions with the new policy. Clearly, snacks, for passengers are something that will not make them change their choice of airlines and flights.

As of now, Delta remains as the airline that still serves snacks to its coach passengers and according to the airline, they do not have any plans to change this.

Mexico’s New Goal: To Be The World’s No. 5 Tourist Destination

The famous country for holiday getaways has set a new goal to move the No. 10 rank in the world tourist destinations to No. 5.

The Mexican president Felipe Calderon has already signed a pact with the tourism industry to take necessary measures needed to have the country move from No. 10 to No. 5. According to the Mexican president, an increase in their country’s tourism would help or gain around 4 million new jobs and maybe even 12 million indirect new jobs.

More than these, the increase of tourism in the country would also bolster the country’s income to an estimated dollarsignr40 billion.

The Mexican president admits to the fact that his country has problems and troubles within such as the notorious drug cartel that has been gaining strength and in the last 4 years is responsible for over 30,000 deaths. Nevertheless, he sees that tourism with their great numbers of accommodating around 22.3 million tourists last year would be a good way to improve Mexico’s economy.

Projects that Calderon would focus on are: to improve tourist’s arrivals and departures easier, improve major roads and highways, various tourist infrastructures and strengthening promotions of the country.

To get to the No. 5, Mexico is facing tough competition as it needs to beat the tourism industries of Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Vegas Mob Exhibit Sued by one of the Gangster’s Daughter

The new attraction, Las Vegas Mob Experience, set to open on Tuesday finds itself in a conflict with one of the Mob’s daughter featured in the attraction.

Sam Giancana’s daughter, Antoinette Giancana McDonnell has filed a complaint against the Las Vegas Mob Experience which features various personalities that helped build the famous Sin City. According to Antoinette Giancana McDonnell, the said attraction has failed to pay her the amount of dollarsignr70,000 as promised by the management.

According to the Mob Experience’s spokesman, Spence Johnston that McDonnell was already paid dollarsignr332,000 in the last 5 years as agreed upon but it is McDonnell who failed to complete what she was supposed to do. In addition, she has been fired and is even banned from their office.

The Las Vegas Mob Experience features great names such as Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Al Sachs, Allen Smiley, Meyer Lansky, Tony “The Ant” Spilotro, Jimmy “Blue Eyes” Alo and Sam Giancana.

Mr. Mano, McDonnell’s son apologizes for his mother’s behavior and has stated that the entire family is more than glad and honored to be part of such a great exhibit.

Cruise Lines to Libya: Still Assessing the Situation

With the growing unrest in the North African region, particularly Libya, cruise lines are again in the face of deciding whether to cancel trips to the entire region.

While other cruise lines are still weighing down the unrest in Libya, several companies have already cancelled trips going to Libya and other North African regions under unrest.

Crystal Cruises and Azamara Club Cruises which have just added Libya to one of the stops in their cruise destinations, set to start on November will gauge the situation as it approaches November of this year. So far, if the unrest in Libya would still be present by the said month, the companies’ have stated that they plan to substitute Koper, Slovenia to Libya.

Another company, Voyages to Antiquity completely shut down trips for March and April going to North Africa. According to their vice president, Mitchell Schlesinger, it was too late for them to have another itinerary made up. To cover for these cancellations, the company is offering rebooking for 2011 and discounts for 2012 trips.

Some of the companies or cruise line that have not yet released decisions are Swan Hellenic and Compagnie du Ponant.

Airlines Take Back the Recent Airfare Hike

Business travelers can now enjoy lower airfares as major airlines implement a roll back for their recent airfare hike.

The hike started when Delta Airlines increased their last-minute airfares and premier class fares amounting to around dollarsignr120 for 1 round-trip ticket. Other airlines then followed suit increasing their fares for first class, business class and 7-day advance-purchase tickets. These can cost to up to dollarsignr900 just for a domestic round-trip flight.

However, on Wednesday, things tuck a turn as US Airways took their airfare increase back. Again, all the other airlines followed suit.

According to FareCompare.com CEO Rick Seaney, airlines always closely monitor each other and try to match each others’ rates as having a much higher rate than another could cause them to lose passengers. Of course, travelers would most likely prefer airlines with the lower rates. Most often fare hikes such as these fail as soon as 1 airline does not follow. Airlines probe each other and their passengers and with the recent uptake on the economy and the resurgence of business flights, it is expected that airlines will keep on probing.

Airlines have been increasing airfares since last year blaming the rising fuel prices for the increase. With the rise of fuel prices and if airlines can’t raise their airfares, airlines would be forced to look into other considerations such as cutting flights and seating capacity.

Airlines Expect Growth in US Air Travel in 2011

U.S. Air Travel expects a 3% growth on U.S. domestic flights and a 7% growth for international flights despite shares dropping to dollarsignr46.23 per share from dollarsignr50.00 per due to high fuel prices. This drop is just for the last 3 months.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, their forecast sees growth on airline travel for 2011 as the overall economic situation of the country starts to rise again. This is connected to the resurgent of businesses which would translate to numerous business travel. Business travel is the airline’s primary and major source of revenue and income.

Last year, U.S. airlines carried over 635 million domestic passengers and 77 million international or overseas passengers. This produced over dollarsignr4 billion in terms of profits and revenue for the airline industry.

For overseas travel, forecasts for the majority of overseas flights will be to Asia and Latin America. The International Air Transport Association is expecting a strong growth of about 32% for global travel in China by 2014.

Egypt’s Tourism Begins to Normalize

After their long fight in protest, Egypt has finally ended its recent turmoil as Mubarak steps down.

During the escalating turmoil, most of the trips into Egypt, especially tourist companies, have cancelled and postponed trips to the said country. But today, tour groups are starting to put trip to Egypt back into business.

One of the first companies to announce its trips to Egypt to resume are Thomas Cook with TCG.L and TUI Travel with TTL. Both companies have suspended trips going to both Egypt and Tunisia until the end of this month, when the unrest broke out. The German group of TUI, TUIGn.DE estimates around 37 million euros or dollarsignr50 million as the amount of damage the unrest has cost them while Thomas Cook expects around 20 million pounds or dollarsignr32 million.

These two companies are resuming all trips to both Egypt and Tunisia by March 2011 as the German foreign office has already given the travel advice for the said countries.