Eight quirky museums around the world

Park your normal views of what constitutes a good museum.  If you really want to understand human culture, then as well as the Tate and the Louvre and the Museo del Prado there’s also the Spam Museum in Minnesota or the Museum of Broken Relationships in Croatia.  Here are eight of the strangest..

DEUTSCHES CURRYWURST MUSEUM (BERLIN, GERMANY)

At one of the quirkiest museums in Berlin, the currywurst is elevated to an art form. The museum includes a replica of the kitchen where the dish – which is a bratwurst on a bun topped with a mix of ketchup and curry powder – was created, a comprehensive map of all the currywurst shops in the city, and of course a gift shop full of currywurst merchandise.

RAMONES MUSEUM (BERLIN, GERMANY)

Another Berlin museum, this one is dedicated to the Ramones. Created by a fan of the band, the museum traces their history and showcases memorabilia and photos from throughout their career. The museum also hosts live music shows.

LEILA’S HAIR MUSEUM (INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI)

Not surprisingly proclaiming itself to be the only hair museum in the world, Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri displays everything from jewellery made of hair to hair wreaths and photos “painted” with pulverized hair mixed with dyes. Locks of hair from famous people throughout history, including Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe, are also exhibited.

PHALLOLOGICAL MUSEUM (REYKJAVIK, ICELAND)

Ok, so you want to know what the penis of a whale looks like?  Now you can find out at the Phallological Museum in Iceland. Formerly housed in the small northern town of Husavik, the museum recently moved to Reykjavik, where it displays more than 200 penis specimens mounted on the walls and encased in glass jars.

And, you can sign up to make your own contribution to the collection after your death.

THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS (ZAGREB, CROATIA)

In Zagreb’s Museum of Broken Relationships, you can relive breakups that are at times both heart-breaking and hilarious. Here the most mundane of objects are each displayed alongside sad stories of love lost. Many of the stories are quite moving; take a hankie!

SPAM MUSEUM (AUSTIN, MINNESOTA)

My personal favourite.  And as lovers of Spam and Monty Python would say, Spam, Spam, Spam!   At the Austin, Minnesota, store and museum, you can watch a short video on the history of SPAM, learn about the role Spam played in World War II, practice on a mock assembly line, and fill up on samples of the more than dozen varieties currently in production. Bloody Vikings!

BRITISH LAWNMOWER MUSEUM

Many people say my Lawnmower is an antique and should be in a museum. Well here it is,  The British Lawnmower Museum, which is also a shop, displays some of the first lawnmowers ever made, some of the most expensive mowing machines, and some of the fastest lawnmowers used throughout the years. While a visit sounds about as exciting as watching grass grow, there are those that will find this wonderful.

MUSEUM OF TOILETS (INDIA)

India’s Museum of Toilets actually has a greater purpose – to raise awareness of the health issues caused by improper sanitation, but it does displays toilets ranging from some of the earlier loos to the “thrones” used by royalty.

If anyone has any other quirky museums, please me know!

See the original article here

Es ist einer Wunderbar Welt!

So what's going on this Christmas at Thomas Cook?  The Germans are coming..

On the one hand,  Mike Hoban, Thomas Cook UK & Ireland’s new marketing director, says their 'turn-of-the-year campaign will be launching on Christmas Day' and it will be their 'biggest push for some time including TV, radio, online and press advertising'..

But, on the other hand, I also see that Thomas Cook's post-Christmas ad plans have been ditched, without a replacement lined up...??

It seems the ongoing shake-up in senior management has hit their 'biggest marketing push' 

Thomas Cook was expected to roll out the next iteration of its brand campaign using the strapline 'It's a wonderful world, explore it with us', which broke in March.

However, it's understood that those plans were abandoned following the arrival of Mike Hoban in September as director of marketing, brands and customer insight.

Following the appointment of Peter Fankhauser as its UK chief executive last month, TC may now 're-purpose' a TV ad created for the German market to ensure that it does not miss out on crucial bookings in the weeks after Christmas.

A spokesman for Thomas Cook said: 'We're excited about our plans for the important peak booking period, [but] naturally the detail is commercially sensitive. We are considering all options open to us - as you would expect when a new marketing director joins - but Thomas Cook will be on air.'

By the way...arch-rival TUI is expected to launch multimillion-pound campaigns next month for its Thomson and First Choice brands. In September, Thomson rolled out a £5.5m campaign promoting its new Dreamliner aircraft...

India - Powerhouse Economy for Growth

This is one of the World Travel Market breakout sessions on powerhouse economies, in this case, India.

The session was run by the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) and this panel  discusses outbound tourism, more specifically the huge potential for outbound tourism and the problems facing Europe in trying to attract some of that business.   

And, of course, it's that old nutshell again...visas.

New Exhibitors for WTM 2012

The World Travel Market is welcoming 157 new exhibitors at the event for WTM 2012 with some new interesting names (but sadly not Molvania just yet....)

Europe leads the way in new exhibitors with 41 exhibitors appearing for the first time as Main Stand Holders. They include tourism boards and offices as far apart as San Marino, Lille and Belarus as well as the Republic of Komi, in North Western Russia.

The Technology and Online Travel region has 36 technology companies taking their own stands from a wide range of disciplines including names such as Travel Republic and Online Travel Training. 

Software firms are represented by Hotelogix and Intuitive, while the rise of social media and mobile is reflected in the appearance of specialists in this area such as Revinate and Voiamo Group. Other suppliers exhibiting for the first time include Worldpay and technology services company Wizie.

The Global Village region sees 18 new exhibitors from all parts of the industry including the K+K hotels chain, wholesaler Adonis, Autorent Car Rental and Chic Outlet Shopping in Europe.

Asia has 13 first-time exhibitors (reflecting the growth in China’s travel industry) including China Southern Airlines and newer destinations such as Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, represented by Victoria Vietnam Group, Saigontourist, Uzbektourism and the Kyrgyz Association of Tour Operators.

India has its own dedicated stand-alone region with 12 new exhibitors including Brys Hotels, Inbound Tour Operator Council (ITOC), West Bengal, hotel company ITC Limited and Odisha Tourism.

The UK has 12 new exhibitors including English Heritage (for the first time??) and the National Trust, plus London attractions The View From the Shard and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.

A further ten new exhibitors will attend the show in the Africa region highlighting a continued development  in African tourism, as Africa emerges from last year’s Arab Spring. Notably these include the Libyan Export Promotion Center and Airkenya Express.

The BRICs or should that be the SKOCTs?

Over the past few years, the most talked-about trend in the global economy has been the so-called rise of the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The world was witnessing a paradigm shift  in which the major players in the developing world were catching up to or even surpassing  the developed world.  But is this really the case?

These were ‘straight-line’ projections that took the developing world's high growth rates from the middle of the last decade and extended them straight into the future, setting them against sluggish growth in the US and other advanced industrial countries. These projections showed, for example, that China was on the verge of overtaking the United States as the world's largest economy (even though the U.S. economy is still more than twice as large and with a per capita income seven times as high)

However, with the world economy heading for its worst year since 2009, Chinese growth is slowing sharply, from double digits down to seven percent (even less) and the rest of the BRICs are tumbling, too - Since 2008, Brazil's annual growth has dropped from 4.5 percent to two percent; Russia's, from seven percent to 3.5 percent; and India's, from nine percent to six percent.

None of this is really surprising, because it is hard to sustain rapid growth for more than a decade but the circumstances of the last decade made it look easy - coming out of the  crisis-ridden 1990s and supported by an abundant supply of credit, the emerging markets took off and by 2007, when only three countries in the world suffered negative growth, recessions had all but disappeared from the international scene.  But now, there is a lot less foreign money flowing into emerging markets and the global economy is returning to its normal state.

EMERGING MARKETS

The notion of a convergence between the developing and the developed world is a myth - of the roughly 180 countries in the world tracked by the International Monetary Fund, only 35 are developed. The markets of the rest are emerging-and most of them have been emerging for many decades and will continue to do so for many more. As of 2011, the difference in per capita incomes between the rich and the developing nations is the same as it was in the 1950s.

BRICs (or should that be BICS or VIPs)

Other than being the largest economies in their respective regions, the big four emerging markets have little in common. They generate growth in different and often competing ways-Brazil and Russia, for example, are major energy producers that benefit from high energy prices, whereas India, as a major energy consumer, suffers from them. Except in highly unusual circumstances (such as those of the last decade) they are unlikely to grow in unison. They have limited trade ties with one another, and they have few political or foreign policy interests in common.

Russia remains a member of the BRICs only because the term sounds better with an R. In recent years, Russia's economy and stock market have been among the weakest of the emerging markets, dominated by an oil-rich class of billionaires whose assets equal 20 percent of GDP

In fact, the longest period over which one can find clear patterns in the global economic cycle is around a decade. The typical business cycle lasts about five years, from the bottom of one downturn to the bottom of the next, and most practical investors limit their perspectives to one or two business cycles. Beyond that, forecasts are often rendered obsolete by the unanticipated appearance of new competitors, new political environments, or new technologies.

THE NEW ECONOMIC ORDER

In the next ten years, the United States, Europe, and Japan are likely to grow slowly as will China as the economy matures. As growth slows in China and in the advanced industrial world, these countries will buy less from their export-driven counterparts, such as Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, and Taiwan.

The economic role models of recent times will give way to new models as growth occurs elsewhere. In the past, Asian states tended to look to Japan as a model, nations from the Balkans looked to the European Union, and nearly all countries to some extent looked to the United States. But the crisis of 2008 has undermined the credibility of all these role models. Tokyo's recent mistakes have made South Korea, which is still rising as a manufacturing powerhouse, a much more appealing Asian model than Japan. Countries that once were eager to enter the eurozone, such as the Czech Republic, Poland, and Turkey, now wonder if they want to join a club with so many members on the verge of bankruptcy. And the US call for poor countries to restrain their spending and liberalize their economies is difficult to accept when  Washington can't agree to cut its own huge deficit.

Among countries with per capita incomes in the $20,000 to $25,000 range, only two have a good chance of matching or exceeding 3% growth over the next decade: the Czech Republic and South Korea. Among the large group with average incomes in the $10,000 to $15,000 range, only one country -- Turkey -- has a good shot at matching or exceeding four to five percent growth and  in the $5,000 to $10,000 income class, Thailand seems to be the only country with a real shot at outperforming significantly.

To the extent that there will be a new crop of emerging-market stars in the coming years, therefore, it is likely to feature countries whose per capita incomes are under $5,000, such as Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and various contenders in East Africa.

Although the world can expect more breakout nations to emerge from the bottom income tier, at the top and the middle, the new global economic order will probably look pretty much like the old one . 

Rowanberry

The new Rowanberry Products website is now live.

Rowanberry Products was created by Susie Rowan and Nicky Newberry and is a small company, based in Surbiton, Surrey, that makes soap and bath products for promotional, corporate and personal use. 

I first got involved with Rowanberry a year or so ago, when they were just getting their products together to help them identify a strategic direction for their business.  In a highly competitive market, they are now focussing on four key areas with some success:

Weddings
Corporate
Parties
Museums and Galleries (or specialist retail as I would call it)

Whilst the wedding and party business seems a natural outlet for them, the most interesting area, I believe, is the specialist retail and already they have distribution arrangements with a number of local galleries, museums and country houses supplying Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham; Kingston Museum, Kingston Upon Thames; Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham; KingstonFirst, Tourist Information Office, Kingston Upon Thames; Painshill Park, Cobham; Sir John Soane's Museum, London and Burgh House & Hampstead Museum, Hampstead.

Their website was designed to showcase their work in each area and there is still a lot of work to be done here but early signs are looking good.

They also have a blog where customers can post comments and make enquiries.

Have a look and give them your support

The Saviour of the British Pub - A Frenchman?

Ever heard of Jacques Borel?  No, neither have I, but this 85 year old Frenchman is on a mission – to breathe life back into British pubs by slashing the rate of VAT levied on food and drink.

He has a good track record so far - In Belgium, the Czech Republic, France and Germany, VAT on restaurant food has been cut to around 5%. Before the French parliament slashed VAT, Borel had four meetings with Nicolas Sarkozy.

Borel claims that his campaign has already created 650,000 new jobs and it is his ambition to have launched one and a half million new jobs in bars and restaurants throughout Britain and Europe before he finally calls it a day and retires

 “Before you meet a minister, you must convince junior ministers and their aides that you have a convincing argument,” he says. “If they agree to set up a meeting, they prepare a two-page briefing for the minister, with the key points highlighted, so he will have a summary of the case before he meets you.”

In Britain he is backed by 32 supporters from the food and drink industries (and me) including the Independent Family Brewers of Britain (IFBB), the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), and the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR).  The aim is to create 140,000 new jobs in Britain as a result of cutting VAT from 20% to 5%.

The facts are as follows - In Britain there is a 42% rate of tax on beer and Ireland and the UK are the only EU countries where supermarket food is zero rated for VAT. As a result, the supermarkets can subsidise alcohol by selling it at a loss while people who eat in pubs have to pay 20% VAT. 

“Cheap supermarket booze,” adds Jacques “is the cause of binge drinking. The medical profession says that 95% of people they treat for liver disease bought their alcohol from supermarkets. The best way to tackle binge drinking is to get people back into pubs.”

The brewing industry accounts for 1,300,000 jobs if you include pub and brewery workers, farmers that grow the raw materials needed to make beer, and transport companies that deliver the raw materials and the finished beer. Cutting VAT would not only create new jobs in pubs but there would be a knock-on effect in the supply chain. For every 100 new jobs in the pub trade, a further 70 would be added in brewing, farming and transport.

Jacques Borel has had success in in mainland Europe, where the Belgian, Czech, French and German governments have responded to his campaign by slashing VAT from 19% to 5 or 7%. In Finland, where VAT is an astonishing 23%, the rate has been cut to 13% for the restaurant industry. In France alone 21,700 jobs have been created since tax was reduced. 

Now the European Commission has adopted a unanimous decision by the 27 Ministers of Finance to allow each member state to apply a reduced rate of VAT to the restaurant industry instead of the standard rate.

Jacques Borel stresses the impact of a tax cut on trade by pointing to the effect on one French restaurant group. Flo runs steak houses and brasseries and is listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. The reduction in VAT in France enabled the chain to cut prices by 5.2%. As a result, the number of customers rose by 8.5% in just three weeks and the company’s share price rose from two euros before the cut to 4.16 today.

He fully expects a similar increase in trade for British pubs. The money created by a tax cut and increased trade would be used, Borel says, to not only cut prices but also create employment, raise wages, improve training, refurbish pubs and increase profits.

Of course it would! Listen to Jacques and read  Keynesian Pub Economics