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Aviation & Tourism

Friday, 03 February 2012

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UK's tourism industry losing billions due to Olympic Games
Britain's tourism industry is set to lose billions as organizers of the London 2012 Olympic Games have been accused of scaring off visitors through a damaging rise in hotel rates.
The organizing committee for the London 2012 Games, LOCOG, revealed yesterday that it had puffed up the number of rooms required by a quarter for media, officials and sponsors visiting the city during the games. LOCOG has now returned back 120,000 of the total 600,000 nights booked for the sporting event.
The extensive reservation of rooms in premature preparation for the Games has led to a rise in hotel rates across the capital, which is the major reason behind many regular tourists turning their head towards other cities.
The hotel rates have roughly tripled in London during the Olympics, The Independent reports.
Various tour operators last night cautioned that a sudden barrage of vacant rooms would be too late to increase the number of visitors.
An analysis puts forward that up to one million beds will now go unsold over the Olympic period, which would eventually hit hoteliers and others working in the tourism industry.
One of the trade associations has predicted that the income could slouch up to 3.5 billion pounds during July and August. Premium Tours, a leading sightseeing operator based in London, expects business to decline by one-third this year.
"Prices have been so high that tourists are moving elsewhere. Overseas wholesalers who traditionally push London have switched to other cities this year. If the Parisian and Italian hoteliers do their job then the tours may never return to London," said Neil Wootton, the managing director.
There is a strong likelihood that London's hotels will be less that eighty percent full and would leave around one million empty beds during the Olympic games.
Mostly in July and August of a regular year, the occupancy stays around 90 percent in London's hotels.
ANI

Thai-Japanese cooperation to launch mutual help plan
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), the City of Sendai and the Tohoku Tourism Promotion Organization are to sign a Letter of Intent (LOI) to use tourism as a means of helping to facilitate an economic and social recovery from the natural disasters that have recently struck both destinations.
The LOI will be signed on January 27, 2012 by Mr Yukimoto Ito, Deputy Mayor City of Sendai, Mr Kanji Saito, General Manager of the Tohoku Tourism Promotion Organization and Mr Sansern Ngaorungsi, Deputy Governor for International Marketing of Asia and the South Pacific.
The TAT and the City of Sendai have been working with each other on tourism promotion since August 2006. While those activities worked well under normal circumstances, today they have taken on a new role and importance in view of the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Sendai region on March 2011 and the massive flooding that affected many parts of Central Thailand in October-November 2011.
Many of the industrial zones and factories affected by the floods involved significant Japanese investment.Mr Sansern Ngaorungsi, TAT Deputy Governor said, “Both destinations are now working to rehabilitate and recover from the crisis. There are shared interests, and it is during times such as these that we really need to work together and learn from each other, especially as tourism is vital to both our economies.”
The LOI will commit both parties to undertake a number of projects and activities, such as exchange programmes, to promote tourism between now and March 2017.
Sendai is a city with a population of one million and is the political and economic centre of Japan's Tohoku (northeast) Region. At a broader level, Japan and Thailand have a very special relationship – at the Royal Family level, government level and people-to-people level.
The people of Thailand recognise the significant role of Japanese investment, aid and development co-operation funding in creating jobs and income in the Thai economy, as well as for the development of tourism infrastructure.
“Japanese funding also played a very important role in helping Thailand upgrade the quality of our many natural and cultural heritage sites, which are very popular among Japanese visitors,” Mr Sansern said.
“We are also proud that Thailand remains one of the world’s most popular destinations for Japanese visitors. In 2011, Thailand attracted 1.12 million Japanese visitors, up 13.34% over 2010,” Mr Sansern added. Through this LOI collaboration, it will promote two ways tourism traffic between Sendai City and Thailand.
TAT

HKIA reports strong traffic figures for December

In December 2011, Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) set a new monthly record for air traffic with 29,275 aircraft movements, exceeding the previous record of 28,951 in August 2011 and representing 5.5% year-on-year growth. During the month, passenger traffic increased 7.5% to 4.8 million, while cargo throughput saw a relatively smaller decline of 4.3% to 346,000 tonnes from a year earlier.
The rise in passenger traffic in December was mainly driven by visitor traffic, which registered 8% growth over the same month in 2010.
Passenger traffic to and from the Mainland and South East Asia performed particularly well.
The cargo decline in December was mainly attributed to the 7% year-on-year drop in exports. Imports decreased by 5% while transshipments registered 3% growth compared to the same month in 2010.
Europe and North America experienced double-digit year-on-year declines in overall cargo traffic as a result of the continued weak economic conditions in these two major markets.
For the year 2011, HKIA welcomed 53.9 million passengers and handled 333,760 aircraft movements, representing growth of 5.9% and 8.9% respectively as compared to 2010. Annual cargo performance decreased 4.6% to 3.9 million tonnes. Both passenger trips and aircraft movements set new records.
HKIA