Travel Niche Blog

Figures released by the Cape Town Routes Unlimited (CTRU) tourism agency suggest that South Africa had the largest growth of international tourism in the world during the 2005-2006 holiday season.

Of the 800 million international travelers world-wide, 7.4 million visited South Africa during 2005. This was an impovement of over 10% compared with 2004, which makes South Africa by far the fastest growing market in the world according to the CTRU. Most of the international visitors were from the UK, Germany and the US spending a total of 0.5 billion dollars during their stay.
People coming to South Africa didn’t just come for safari trips though; many tourists came seeking essential and cosmetic surgey. Such “scalpel safari” visitors are drawn by the avaliabilty of quality medical services at competitive prices. In fact the number of overseas scalpel safari patients has trebled in the last three years according to experts.

Most visitors were drawn to the Western Cape region of South Africa, leading Virgin Airways, BA, and Lufthansa to create additional long haul flights directly into Cape Town airport.

I’m not convinced that all of the international visitors were tourists though, and the CTRU doesn’t appear to give a breakdown of business and pleasure visits. Nonetheless, with such a boom occurring before the start of the FIFA Football World Cup in  2010, it looks like South Africa is a destination to watch.

For more details of tourism attractions and venues in the Western Cape, pop over to the CTRU website.

It seems UK Christmas shoppers are being lured by impending prospect of the British Pound reaching the two dollar level - an important psychological barrier for shoppers. According to reports the favourable exchange rates are driving a flood of visitors to the US by shoppers seeking bargains; especially from New York. Prices in the US are normally cheaper than in the UK anyway, but the factor of two in the exchange rate is especially important as it simplifies the currency conversion process for consumers.
Virgin Atlantic has announced that flight bookings to New York have increased by a fifth compared with this time last year, with many flyers opting to buy first-class or business seat tickets with the money they’ve saved.
The mos popular item on Brits’s shopping list is the iPod Video, which costs a third less in the US than it does in the UK. Other holiday shopping favourites include the the Playstation 2, wich is also thirty percent cheaper to buy in the US.

With the current problems in the US economy, analysts expect that the current favourable US/UK exchange rate for shopping tourism will continue for some time yet.

More tourists than ever visited the UK during 2005 despite the July London bombings according to figure recently released by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It appears that in 2005 a record total of 30 million tourists came to the UK, spending £14 billion pounds during their stay. This was despite the fact that a relatively small number of American’s stayed away, with a 3% drop in the number of visitors from the US during 2005. There were still some 4 million US visitors during 2005 though, and these were highest spending group, but visitors from America have not recovered since the bombing of the Twin Towers bombings in 2001.
It does seem that the July bombings did have an effect on visitor numbers though. If you analyse the visitor numbers in detail, there was a 13% increase in the number of visitors during 2005, but in the quarter from July to September the rise was lower at just over 4%.

London was the most popular destination for visitors to Great Britain, with over half of visits involving a stay in London. The next most popular cities were Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham.

Detailed statistics for tourism in the UK during 2005 are available from the ONS website.

Columbia has announced a $4 million ad campaign to lure back tourists.

Over the last few years President Alvaro Uribe has taken a hardline approach against Farc rebels and disarmed paramilitary groups. The result has been that kidnappings have fallen by 73%, and Columbia has launched the campaign to rebuild it’s image as a “safe” tourist destination.
I know tourists seem to have memories worse than goldfish, but it’s my feeling that Columbia have a lot of work to do to repair it’s battered image worldwide. Also $4 million dollars is a comparatively modest amount for a global advertising campaign.

In 2004, 10 tourists were captured by Farc rebels despite the deployment of 100,000 security guards in the National parks and tourist hotspots. Farc were kidnapping 100’s of people each year for ransom, and paramilitary groups were thought to be kiling 3,000 people a year.

Today, Columbians themselves feel safer than for decades, and are ready to try and lure back vacationers to see the Amazon rainforest, white sandy beaches and ancient monuments. Many visitors also come to take advantage of so-called “plastic surgery tourism”.

Many tourists are already chancing their luck, with nearly 1 million foreign visitors arriving in Columbia during 2005. In fact Columbia is again one of the top 10 holiday destinations according to the Lonely Planet.

However, there is still a US goverment travel advisory warning against travelling to Columbia at this time. It seems many tourists are ready to chance their luck!

The Observer online has been running a travelogue, “Travels through a midlife crisis”, written by Mike Carter, who is crossing Europe from west to east on his BMW motorbike.

The diary has been running since June and is now into its 11th entry.

Mike writes very well, and of course after two months and 9,000 miles on the road, he certainly has a lot of interesting anecdotes to tell.

He has encounters with prostitutes, run-ins with the local police in Transylvania - it’s all pretty absorbing stuff and well worth a read. Also if you register for the blog, you can suggest Mike’s next travel destination. Many of the commentators share their own experiences of a particular country too. Many recommend sighteeing venues and places to visit; it’s all interesting stuff like me you love motorbikes and traveling.
I must admit stuck here with a young baby, I’m a little jealous of his freedom. I’m looking forward to a midlife crisis motorcycle tour across europe of my own, but I guess that won’t be for a few years!

Mike Carter’s Uneasy Rider Travelogue