WTTC asks for Government Action

We see the The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) is wading in and demanding action to safeguard the health of the travel and tourism economy in light of continued travel disruption caused by volcanic ash.

“While public safety must be paramount, decisions must not be made lightly as they can have serious impact on the $5.75 trillion travel and tourism economy,” said Jean-Claude Baumgarten, WTTC’s president and CEO. “Although it represents 9.2 percent of world GDP and employs 235 million people worldwide, its influence on nearly every facet of our lives is rarely appreciated by governments until a crisis occurs. A coordinated approach to assessing the situation and implementing recovery measures is crucial for the sake of travelers and business alike.”

Baumgarten called for more attention to aviation, which is just beginning to recover from 9/11 and the global recession. Airlines face the double whammy of loss of business coupled with compensation costs for stranded passengers. Baumgarten said it is too early to know the full extent of economic damage the volcano has caused airlines. He said that a series of events -- 9/11, SARS, swine and avian flu, tsunamis, earthquakes and now a volcano -- have affected travel in the past decade. And legislation that could help the industry recover its losses is controlled through many different places and sometimes restricts trade rather than benefits it.

Governments must now intervene as the financial burden of the current crisis is too great for the private sector to bear, Baumgarten said. “It is time for governments and organizations such as the United Nations, European Commission, G8 and G20 to re-examine the way policies that affect global travel and tourism are coordinated and implemented,” he said. An important step forward, said Baumgarten, would be the introduction of centralized air traffic control for the whole of Europe, which could reduce the need for blanket bans on flights in the future.

Now the bankers are sitting pretty again and rebuilding their balance sheets, it's time to help the travel business which has for too long been ignored by the EU and Governments alike.

Train not plane...

Luck was certainly on our side last week when, unusually, we had decided to to take the train to our meeting in Glasgow rather than fly! This was initially an experiment, since our research suggested that it would actually only take an extra half an hour to take the train door to door.

Relief all round then when news emerged of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption and our sympathies to everyone caught up in the ensuing travel chaos.

Luckily we don't have any clients directly affected by the flight ban but the financial implications for the airlines and other operators really the last thing they need at the moment..

And the train? Perfect in every respect..just over four hours from London Euston to Glasgow central which gives plenty of time for work, a stroll to the buffet car and a cup of tea arriving in Glasgow fresh as a daisy!

TOP TEN CITIES FOR 2011

FES have been conducting our own research recently, with our clients, colleagues, associates and suppliers and we have identified our TOP TEN city-break predictions for 2011!

In no particular order then...

1. Chisinau (Moldova)
2. Minsk (Belarus)
3. Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
4. Skopje (Macedonia)
5. Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
6. Podgorica (Montenegro)
7. Kiev (Ukraine)
8. Zagreb (Croatia)
9. Belgrade (Serbia)
10. Tallinn (Estonia)

Increasingly, city breakers are looking for destinations that can still provide the charm of 'old Europe' yet with the an infrastructure to accommodate visitors on a short stay vacation - and our favourite, here? Probably Podgorica.

Arcelor Mittal Orbit Mistake?

We have our doubts about the economic benefits that the LONDON Olympics are supposed to bring in the form of tourism and certainly research by the ETOA (European Tour Operators Association) suggests that every city that has hosted the games has suffered a DOWNTURN in tourism as s result of the games rather than the opposite.

And now the new Arcelor Mittal Orbit Tower does seem to be a grand folly thrown atop. Dreamed up by the mayor of London this grand tower (or giant Mr Messy) will grace the Olympics and serve as a monument to a country 'coming out of recession' (Boris Johnson).

The name Arcelor is derived from a combination of letters from various steel companies: the first two letters come from Arbed, a Luxembourg steel company (Acieries Reunies Burbach-Esch-Dudelange) formed in 1911 from three smaller companies with origins in the late 19th century. The next three letters, c, e and l, are taken from Aceralia, a Spanish steel company which grew out of another early 20th-century amalgamation, this time of three blast furnace businesses in Bilbao. A hundred years ago it was Spain's biggest company; its later career is complicated by many takeovers and reorganisations and its acronym less easily explained than Arbed's, but by the year 2000 it was its country's leading steelmaker. The 'or' is from Usinor, the French steelmaker formed in 1948 by a merger of two old companies (the important one, acronym-wise, is Les Forges et Aciéries du Nord et de l'Est). In 2001, Arbed, Aceralia and Usinor came together to form the pan-European Arcelor.

And Lakshmi Mittal is the richest man in Europe and the fourth or fifth richest in the world, with personal wealth estimated at more than £19bn. After Mittal Steel bought out most of Arcelor's shareholders in 2006, he became chairman and chief executive of the world's biggest steel company. ArcelorMittal has 250,000 workers at plants in 60 countries that together produce 8% of global steel output and last year earned revenues of around £44bn.

Arcelor Mittal has no steel plants in Britain and so the tower, ostensibly built to symbolise the regeneration of Britain for the olympics, will be made from steel imported from abroad where cheaper manufacturing processes have been sought.

Not quite right is it?