The environmental debate, backed by a green advertising campaign from Virgin Trains has especially affected Manchester Airport where Manchester-London flights have fallen by 10% over the past year.

One airline group, Jet2, a low-cost airline, dropped its London-Manchester route recently due to poor demand.

It may not be totally the atmospheric concerns that may have led to the reduction of air travel; the recent Glasgow bombings has increased the security in airports thus delaying the process of checking in.

via Malaysia Sun

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Train Travel Up in UK to Protect Environment

World’s Best Awards 2007 presented a big surprise in the hotels section. An Indian hotel, Oberoi Udaivilas located in Udaipur, Rajasthan has bagged the top honor. Midwest Airlines in the US has been rated as the best domestic airline for the 8th time.

Cities in Europe has always been admired and dreamed of. Florence in Italy has been top notch for tourists this year and its highest rating comes as no surprise. Udaipur in India and Istanbul in Turkey are the new entrants in the top ten list.

Bali, Indonesia is the top island. It is surprising to see the Hawaiian Islands down at number 9.

These awards are extremely helpful for travelers who are looking for dream destinations around the world. Next time I am vacationing, I will be going through this list yet again.

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World’s Best Awards 2007

Last year, China accounted for 5.8 percent of the global tourism market, a growth of 0.3 percent compared with two years ago.

Twenty-nine percent of tourists who traveled to Asia and the Pacific last year also visited China.

As per the UNWTO forecasts, China will be the most popular destination before 2020. Although ruled by a communist Government, China offers great destinations for tourists all over. It’s low economy would translate into lesser costs for tourists coming from Western countries.

On the flip side, I don’t seem to understand the real reason for this popularity. There is absolutely no privacy in China, every bit of digital data going out and coming in is monitored by the Government. With the Westerners enjoying privacy as much as they do, it is a hard grind to be able to cope up with sacrificing it.

via China Daily

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China to Become 3rd Biggest Travel Destination

We are looking for the best new widgets that will be useful for travelers. Whether it’s travel for work, vacation, or something in between, we want widgets that are great tools for anyone traveling out of town–whether by car, plane, boat, train, or other means of conveyance. From widgets that help you keep track of travel expenses to widgets that pull useful information from travel-related sites to whatever else you can think of, we’d love to see it. (In the coming months, you can look forward to even more themed widget competitions.)

Mozilla Firefox, an open source web browser uses extensions which act as additional features to the basic web browser. Firefox boasts of many such extensions that help travelers find the cheapest rates and the best travel deals. While Internet Explorer stays stagnant with a lot of work going into rendering and security features.

It will be interesting to find out the trends after the emergence of traveler-friendly widgets from Opera. Will the Firefox travelers switch over to Opera?

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Opera Widget Contest to Woo Travelers

Yahoo launched a new personalized version of its travel planning website on Wednesday that merges online community, bargain hunting, and Internet mapping technology.

Yahoo Travel makes trip recommendations based on each person’s history of activity at the website and shares recommendations and detailed itineraries of users with similar interests.

This new feature started on 9th of May 2007.

A plug in has been developed by a third party vendor that enables users to book tickets and hotels from messenger in real time. A software that figures different intricate details like the terrain, ramps, streets, buildings etc which will be integrated with Yahoo maps is in the works.

Yahoo! Travel is heading towards monopolyzing online travel with the addition of addition of features that mean the most for travelers. I look forward to use it more to be able to review it comprehensively.

via Yahoo News

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Yahoo! Travel is Personalized Now