Travel fairs 2009: Brussels/Antwerp

A brandnew touristic season and year starts in January! Not only a brandnew year with good intentions ( Intentions we all want to fulfil of course ;)), but a year which starts with several travel fairs, in Belgium known as Brussels and Antwerp. Now, what may we expect of these fairs?

Antwerp: The travel fair in Antwerp will take place at 23th January until 29th January, mostly from 10 til 18 h. The guest country will be Tunesia. One of the biggest fairs of Belgium will this year attract many customers as well, although, let's hope so. There will be more then 600 exhibitors, and neighbouring countries as well as far away destinations are represented on this meeting of salesmen- and women, and potential buyers.

Brussels: Travel fair Brussels, a magnificent spot to see the destinations/touroperators/airlines... who offer interresting actions and show their new brochures. Italy is the guest country of this year, it opens at 5 and ends at 9 February. Every day from 10 until 18 h. For a client it really is worth to see, or just to walk around.

Now, will these fairs attract a lot of people? Probably they will attract at least the number of visitors they had last year. But why, we are in a crisis?! Because people don't buy that fast on these fairs, most of the time, they don't buy at all. Visitors don't feel obliged to buy. They come to watch, and for many of them it just is an argument to be already in the holidayatmosphere. So that's why they come and feel good when walking through the aisles. Representatives have the oppurtunity to attract those visitors with interestingprices, actions and reductions.

Let us hope this will be a good announcement of a good year for the touristic industry in general !

How to change a jumbo jet into a hostel ?!

We can find hostels all over the world. Sometimes they can be found in prisons, castles, farms... But have you ever heard of a hostel in a jumbo jet?






In Arlanda, Sweden they managed to change a jumbo jet into a hostel. Arlanda is one of Sweden's mayor airports, and is to be found close to Stockholm. The Boeing 747-200 is situated at the entrance of Arlanda, and you can see the plane off the road.



The hostel has got 85 beds spread over 25 rooms. The rooms aren't big at all, only 6 m², and a height of 3 m. Most rooms have 3 beds, and are equipped with TV, wireless Internet free of charge. You have to share bathroom and toilet with other rooms. Only in the suite ( situated in the cockpit! ), which is much bigger than other rooms, sanitary can be found. You don't have to sleep in the hostel, if you want to visit the airplane. You can go on an excursion with your family if you want and you can visit the cafe to have a snack or a coffee.

The prices differ:

For a dorm (man and female are separated), you pay about € 31,5.

For a three-bedded room the price is : € 123,06.

The next time you visit Sweden, make sure this attraction is on your must-see list!

Gatwick and Stansted for sale

The airports of Gatwick and Stansted are being sold, because of the monopoly BAA has in the share of UK-airports. BAA possesses seven airports, which, according to the government is against the competition-policy.

The competition commission concluded that BAA should two of its three London airports. It better does, otherwise will this Spanish-owned company lose control of its flagship airport Heathrow. BAA got heavily criticised over delays and poor service, Heathrow included. That's one of the main reasons why the commission asks BAA to sell, another one is the lack of initiative in planning capacity.

BAA has got seven airports: Gatwick, stansted, heathrow, Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. There are, according to the chairman of the Competition Commission's BAA, several competition issues arising. There also is a difference between the airports controlled by other companies than BAA and the airports controlled by BAA.

Another serious accuse is described as a serious shortage of capacity, in particular runway capacity. The Competition Commission says that there should be much more runways around London. New airport owners would be more active than BAA in exploiting existing opportunities, other than creating them, to increase flight numbers. BAA focuses too much on the expansion of Heathrow.

Potential Buyers of the airports are:

• Canadian pension Plan, Ontario Teachers Plan and 3i


• Babcock & Brown and Deutsche Bank and Rreef, the infrastructure investment arm of Deutsche Bank


• Borealis and Manchester airport group


• Citygroup, John Hancock and Vancouver Airport

Those are the four main players on the sale.

But off course, first BAA has to agree in selling their airports and destroying its monopoly...

BTExpo shows off !?

The annual trade fair dedicated to tourism professionals, this year had it's 5Th edition. XIOS hogeschool Limburg, Tourism- and Recreation management was there! Walking down the aisles of tour operators, hotel representatives, airlines, tourist boards, associations..., we saw enthusiastic pros selling themselves, sometimes recognising each other, and having a good chat.

There were not that many exhibitors, but that's not that remarkable, knowing this was for professionals only. And it's definitely not a problem at all. You maybe ask yourself, if that's boring then, when there are only a few exhibitors? Not at all! For us, it's the opportunity to see them all, and have a good impression of all of them.

We also saw a press conference (exciting!) of Travelcoop. Travelcoop is an overarching company for travel agents. On this press conference, Jan Peeters, today officially launched as spokesman of Travelcoop, gave the press and other professionals information about the opportunities & challenges, seen in the future for the independent travel agent. Afterwards, there was the release of the first official "Travelcoop-brochure". The brochure maintains the most important products, Travelcoop offers. I'm curious what the press now is going to write!

In general, it was a little bit different from other expositions, but let's say it was worth to see.

Ryanair's second bid on Aer Lingus

Today, Ryanair has done a second bid on Aer Lingus, an other Irish Airline company. They offered € 784 mio, approximately half the value of its first bid Ryanair already owns almost 30 percent of the Aer Lingus shares. ReachCapital Management (a stakeholders who owns 2 %) recommended Aer Lingus to seriously consider the offer of Ryanair.

Ryanair assured Aer Lingus that they can retain it's brand name, and the government may keep her shares in Aer Lingus. It's interesting to know that Ryanair withdrew the first bid, after the European Union started a competition investigation, because both carriers are based in Dublin and after a fusion, they would control more than 80 % of all European flights to and from Dublin.

But why have they done a second offer then? Because they think that after the merger of European Airlines like KLM an AirFrance, which has taken place after they've done the first bid, the climate of regulatory climate may have changed.

CEO Michael O’Leary said: “This proposed merger of Ryanair and Aer Lingus will form one Irish airline group with the financial strength to compete with Europe’s three major airline groups - Air France, British Airways and Lufthansa".

He says a lot, but is this really going to happen? We have to wait until we see the result of this. But probably there is some truth in his vision, because after the merging, it will form hell of an airline.

The Low Cost Airline with the cheapest fares (I'm talking about Ryanair), has plans to enlarge the fleet up to 66 planes, and create up to 1.000 jobs.

Ryanair needs to find a strong partner to secure its future! That's a long term vision, and a pretty good one too! Gogo Ryanair!

Ryanair announces winterbreak Maastricht

It has begun. Ryanair began punishing the Netherlands, by stopping their flights already from one destination: Maastricht. The Taxes who are too high with our Northern neighbours, are the cause of this retrieve. It's their own fault.



The "ecotax", how it is called, killed MAA.nl, including the jobs of 110 people. The tourism to and from Maastricht, will definitely be reduced. Ryanair has put Maastricht and Aachen on the map, but with this initiative it's going to be forgotten again. People won't go to MAA anymore, they have to go to Charleroi or Eindhoven (Eindhoven, for the time being...).



Painfull detail: Last year, Maastricht spoke with Ryanair about a possible extending from 3 to 10 destinations! The NBTC (Nederlands Bureau voor Toerisme en Congressen) valued the expenditure per tourist on € 330, and thought there would be 150.000 tourists a year more in Maastricht. That would be 150.000 x 330 = € 49,5 mio !!! Byebye, that futuremoney! Byebye, that futureplan!



However, no worries for us Belgians! As a gift that we didn't rise our taxes, Charleroi gets three more destinations: Reus, Trieste and Bratislava. Go go Charleroi! Become the Ryanairhub of middle Benelux! Oh that's right, you already are!