Argentina unveils national tourism plan

THE PRESIDENT of #Argentina and the minister of tourism, Gustavo Santos, have presented a #Tourism National Plan for the next four years. It foresees an increase of up to 50 percent in international tourists to Argentina until 2020, reaching nine million foreign tourists a year. This would mean an income of almost US$1 billion a year.

The plan sees the US, Canada, Europe, China, Russia, and India as among the main source markets, with the aim of generating 300,000 additional jobs in the country’s tourist industry.

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Up in the air …

WIZZ AIR has launched direct flights from Aberdeen to Warsaw. The service will operate the year-round twice weekly service on Monday and Fridays. 

Wizz Air arrived at Aberdeen Airport last year when it launched a twice-weekly service to Gdansk, Poland, in June.

EASYJET has recorded the busiest ski season in its history this year. With a 40 percent share of the UK ski market, easyJet carried 1.3 million passengers to destinations across Europe, 90,000 more than last year. New routes, good ski conditions, and a strong consumer demand have fuelled the growth in customer numbers, the airline said. 

easyJet operates ski flights to Lyon, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Grenoble, Friedrichshafen, Turin, and its largest gateway, Geneva.

ICELANDAIR will take its Glasgow to Reykjavik service daily on September 7. Currently it runs six flights a week between the cities.

Icelandair now offer services to 16 North American gateways with connections from six UK airports: London Heathrow, Gatwick, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, and Aberdeen.

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Should we stay … or should we go?

Go Holiday editor David Kernek looks at the case for the UK staying in the EU, and finds it … underwhelming

WITH a Keep Britain in the European Union coalition that includes the President of the United States, the leading bigshots in the 28 member states of the EU, almost all of Britain’s mainstream political parties (Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Scottish and Welsh nationalists), a couple of ex-heads of MI5 and MI6, a former boss of Marks & Spencer, major players in the travel and tourism industries and not forgetting former prime minister Gordon Brown and Sir Richard Branson – no scrub that, let’s forget them – should those of us who had been intending to vote for a UK exit from the EU conclude that we are insane, exceedingly dense, or just in need of a cup of tea and a few hours of rest in a dark room, after which we’d realize that all of these eminent people really do know best?

There isn’t time or space enough here to highlight all of the deceptions, exaggerations, and absurd assumptions – and all of the examples of confused thinking – that characterize the Remain discourse, but I’ll have a go.

Never mind that the UK’s prime minister in his negotiation with the EU asked for a few slices of bread and came back with a handful of crumbs, or that in no meaningful sense do the new membership terms he finds acceptable leave us with a ‘reformed’ union.

No matter that British politicians have since 1973 deceived voters – and perhaps themselves – about the fundamental purpose of the Brussels project, which was and remains the creation of a continental superstate, the downsides of which have been inflicted so far chiefly on Greece (where the results of general elections now count for nothing), Italy (where an unelected cabinet was installed to head off a euro debt crisis), Spain, and Portugal.

Let’s not look at the way in which defence and security issues have been hauled in, as if the EU plays any useful part in the military and intelligence alliances that protect these islands … as if the open borders in the useless Schengen Zone have prevented terrorist murders in the capitals of Western Europe … as if a third continent-wide war might or could or possibly be the consequence of leaving what we were told was simply a free trade block, albeit one in which the laws of nation states are secondary to legislation approved by the EU’s Commission and so-called parliament – that’s the parliament that sits at enormous financial cost in both Brussels and Strasbourg. There are, believe it or not, defence experts in both the US and Britain who say a UK exit would have no adverse impact on the Anglo-American alliance.

Don’t give a second thought to the fact that many of the great and the good who are warning of the direst consequences of a British exit were the same great and the good who led the cheerleading for a UK entry into the financial and political swamp that is EU’s single currency zone … or that many of them have in one way or another had – or still have – a first class seat on the Brussels gravy train. When a university or research outfit sings the praises of the EU, ask how much folding money it gets from Brussels, and how much of it came in the first place from UK taxpayers.

Never mind that for every so-called expert who warns of chaos and failure for a Britain outside the EU, I could call in aid an economist, investment specialist, or defence expert to put the counter argument. Here are FIVE of them:

‘1.History amply demonstrates to us that when you impose artificial borders and artificial unity on a group of human beings, it tends to blow up nastily, and usually in your face.’ That was John Stepek, Editor, MoneyWeek

2.‘Contrary to the claims of many authors and commentators, it is probable that the impacts of Brexit on trade would be relatively small. Moreover, it is certainly possible that leaving the European Union would leave the external sector better off in the long run, if Britain could use its new found freedom to negotiate its own trading arrangements to good effect. It is plausible that Brexit could have a modest negative impact on growth and job creation. However it is slightly more plausible that the net impact would be modestly positive. There are potential net benefits in the areas of a more tailored immigration policy, the freedom to make trade deals, moderately lower levels of regulation, and savings to the public purse.’ That was Capital Economics.

3.‘The truth about Brexit from a national security perspective is that the cost to Britain would be low. Brexit would bring two potentially important security gains: the ability to dump the European Convention on Human Rights — remember the difficulty of extraditing the extremist Abu Hamza of the Finsbury Park Mosque – and, more importantly, greater control over immigration from the European Union. Britain is Europe’s leader in intelligence and security matters and gives much more than it gets in return. It is difficult to imagine any of the other EU members ending the relationships they already enjoy with the UK. Richard Dearlove, chief of MI6, 1999 -2004.

4.‘I don't mean to be arguing against the European Union, but with regards to these kinds of questions, the union is not a natural contributor to the national security of each of the entity states. In some ways it gets in the way of the state's providing security for its own citizens.’ General Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA.

5. ‘I am not saying for one moment that Britain couldn’t survive outside the European Union. Of course we could. We are a great country. The fifth largest economy in the world. The fastest growing economy in the G7 last year. The biggest destination for Foreign Direct Investment in the EU. Our capital city a global icon. The world, literally, speaks our language. No one doubts that Britain is a proud, successful thriving country. A nation that has turned round its fortunes though its own efforts. A far cry from the ‘sick man of Europe’ at the time we entered the European Economic Community four decades ago. Whether we could be successful outside the European Union is not the question.’ That, in November 2015, was none other Prime Minister David Cameron, attempting to argue not that Britain would be unsuccessful outside the EU but that it would be even more successful if it stayed in. He declined to offer a guess as to how much more successful – the Treasury has since cobbled up a calculation of how much worse off the average household would be in 2030 outside the Brussels Empire – and has since moved on to prophesying WW3. In doing so, he doesn’t seem to have noticed that the political, economic, and social fissures created by the drive to a United States of Europe has nourished the growth in France, Germany, Austria, Greece and elsewhere of parties at the very unpleasant end of the Right-wing spectrum. He’s now saying the economic consequences would be ‘terrible’; what does he know now that he didn’t in November last year?

Travel, tourism, and holiday companies, and their lobbying organizations, have been vocal in their opposition to the restoration of the UK as an independent, self-governing state. Richard Branson, the Association of British Travel Agents, easyJet, Ryanair have joined in the scaremongering, warning of the end of cheap travel and holidays, visa barriers, and a risk to jobs in the tourism industry. There has been talk of this island being isolated, cut off, and of ‘economic suicide’.

Some people of nervous disposition have been frightened by this tosh. Interviewed on BBC Radio 4 recently, an undergraduate with a nervous disposition said she wouldn’t be able to have inter-rail holidays in Europe. How on earth did she get into a university? My first trip to France was in the late 1960s which, history graduates might know, was when Britain was not a member of the then European Economic Community. I bought my ferry ticket, showed my passport … and I was in. Cheap package holidays in the Spanish Costas began some years before Britain made the mistake of joining the EEC. Visas weren’t needed then: why would they be required if the British vote for independence?

Are the governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the rest likely to put up British Tourists Not Welcome signs? I suspect that’s as improbable as a German chancellor wanting to start a tariff war that would make it much more difficult for the Bayerische Motoren Werke Company to sell its excellent cars in Britain. Now, all that really would be economic suicide. What’s the German – or French – for cutting off your nose to spite your face?

There’s no doubting the economic importance of in-bound tourism to all of the four nations of the UK. The UK tourism industry – accounting for 9.6% of total employment – keeps more than three million in work. What can be doubted are the assertions that a Britain outside the EU would have an adverse on the industry; that, simply, fewer people would want to visit, that airlines would take the country off their destination lists.

There’s no reason to believe that the current passport arrangements with our neighbours in Western Europe would change. The island’s tourism assets – history, heritage, landscapes, Shakespeare, Stonehenge and the rest – would continue to be a major draw, along with, for many, our funny habit of driving on the wrong side of the road and the country’s reluctance to ditch a currency, the roots of which can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon England. The pound sterling is the world's oldest currency still in use. The importance of tourism from EU states can also be exaggerated. VisitBritain reports that the top three markets which have recently shown the highest absolute growth in value (on average during the last five years) are all long haul to the UK: the US, China, and Australia. On what basis can it be feared that a Britain outside the European Union would be of diminishing interest to people in these markets? There isn’t one.

Many of the so-called arguments in favour of Britain’s participation in the dystopian Brussels project are not greatly unlike those heard more than half a century ago, when the original six-nation European Economic Community was created and when in the 1960s, one of the most useful contributions was made by General Charles de Gaulle who as France’s president twice vetoed UK applications to join.

‘Compared with the motives that led the Six to organize their unit,’ he explained, ‘we understand why Britain – who is not continental, who remains, because of the Commonwealth and because she is an island, committed far beyond the seas, who is tied to the United States by all kinds of special agreements – did not merge into a Community with set dimensions and strict rules. In short, the nature, the structure, the very situation that are England’s differ profoundly from those of the continentals.

‘England is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions. The question is whether Great Britain can now place herself like the Continent and with it inside a tariff which is genuinely common, to renounce all Commonwealth preferences, to cease any pretence that her agriculture be privileged, and, more than that, to treat her engagements with other countries of the free trade area as null and void — that question is the whole question.’

The general – whatever else he got wrong – knew it would never work. This referendum – something reckoned unthinkable for Britain’s political class a decade ago – is proof that he was right.
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Stay in a church; Holy heritage boosts local tourism

Peter Aiers, director of The Churches Conservation Trust in the south-east of England writes about #Champing and the UK’s heritage tourism offer . . . 

‘THE UK boasts around 400,000 listed buildings, and more than 16,000 churches. But as the organizations who look after our built heritage adjust to a new climate of fiscal restraint, we have had to think carefully about how to attract new visitors to these important places, in order to raise funds for their upkeep.

As a nation, we are less likely to visit our historic churches than our forefathers. So how can we make sure they are kept safe for generations to come? Heritage charities are a major contributor to tourism. It’s vital that we act not only to protect and conserve our historic buildings, but also generate interest in the buildings and their history, and encourage younger people to visit and enjoy them.

In 2015, The Churches Conservation Trust launched a new initiative: in-church camping adventures, or “Champing”. Champing is a new experience offering people the opportunity to absorb hundreds of years of history by staying overnight in some of the most beautiful and historic churches in England. The breaks make for a virtuous circle whereby people can have a real adventure staying in an historic church and by doing so, contribute to the upkeep of the building and prevent its possible closure. Equipment such as composting loos and beds is brought in and taken away with no permanent alterations made to the buildings which are so often highly protected.

It’s also a scheme designed to help the local tourism economy as we use local businesses to provide cleaning and catering for our guests. With links to other experiences such as canoeing, guests can choose to explore and enjoy more of the local surroundings and as a result, strengthen the local economy.

Our first year of operation was a great success with around 300 people Champing in four churches, and this year we have expanded Champing to ten sites across the south-east and East Anglia.

By innovating in this way, The Churches Conservation Trust has been able to reach new audiences while generating much-needed revenue to keep our collection of 349 historic churches across England in good repair.

There are further innovations to come from Champing as we seek to spread its appeal across the British Isles and Europe. It’s initiatives like these which will enable us to attract new visitors, boost tourism, and most importantly maintain our historical buildings and preserve our heritage for generations to come.

www.champing.co.uk

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DFDS reports record result on Newcastle-Amsterdam route

FERRY operator DFDS enjoyed a record year on its Newcastle to #Amsterdam service in 2015, carrying more than 580,000 passengers. The result was boosted by the company’s strongest ever May to September performance, during which the two ships on the route carried more than a quarter of a million people. Sister ships, the Princess Seaways and the King Seaways, provide daily sailings.

Max Foster, passenger director for DFDS said: ‘We’re excited to have set a new record on the Newcastle to Amsterdam service in 2015 and we’re looking forward to building on that with another record-breaking summer this year. The four-month summer period is a key time, and our teams at the port and onboard work hard to provide our guests with an enjoyable and relaxing start to their holidays.’

Passenger numbers hit record highs last summer, with almost 70,000 people using the service in August alone. The steady growth in the popularity of the route has provided a boost to tourism in the North-East of England, with more than 395,000 visitors from Europe and further afield using the ferry service to visit the region in 2015.

Foster added: ‘A key element of our success is our ability to attract a diverse group of passengers to visit the North-East, especially from Germany and the Netherlands. These visitors play an important role in boosting the contribution of tourism to the regional economy.’

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New angle on Battle of Hastings site

VISITORS to the site of the Battle of Hastings will be able to see the battlefield from above, thanks to a rooftop viewing area opening in the summer.

1066 Battle of Hastings, Abbey, and Battlefield in East Sussex will open the viewing area at the top of the gatehouse to the abbey founded by William the Conqueror. 

To mark the 950th anniversary of the Norman invasion, costumed re-enactors will bring the battle to life (October 15-16).

In the nearby town of Hastings, the battle is the inspiration for an arts festival, Root 1066 (September 9-October 2). It will offer audiences ‘new perspectives on the history and legacy of 1066 from the best local, national, and international contemporary artists’.

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They do like to be beside the seaside …

MORE than half (58%) of Britons are expected take a holiday or short break on the coast this summer, according to the annual Travelodge holiday index. The report also claims that Britons will spend more than ever on their UK holidays this year. 

It estimated they will spend an average of £729 on their breaks ‘to give the UK economy a welcome boost of almost £20 billion, up from £16.5 billion last year’.

The report – which has surveyed 3,000 British adults for the past six years – shows that 2016 is set to be the biggest year for seaside breaks since the study started.

Coastal locations dominate the list of most popular destinations, with Cornwall rated top for the second consecutive year, followed by Devon (3rd), Blackpool (5th), Brighton (8th), and Scarborough (10th).

After seaside holidays, the second most popular type of UK trip is the city break, with the top locations including London, Edinburgh, Manchester, York, and Liverpool.

The third most popular type of holiday is in the countryside. Among the rural holiday hotspots for 2016 are the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, Scottish Highlands, Norfolk Broads, and the Cotswolds.

The study claims more than two-thirds (67%) of Britons are taking a staycation break this year.

The average British family is taking a one-week holiday supplemented by four short breaks throughout the year.

A Travelodge spokeswoman said: ‘A new trend we are seeing is more Britons taking a three-in-one holiday. This includes taking a city, rural, and coastal break as part of a one-week holiday.’

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