Earlier this month, bmi regional, a subsidiary of bmi, announced its intention to introduce a third return flights between Edinburgh and Copenhagen.

From the 21st July, the new service will mean there are now 18 return flights between the two cities operated by bmi regional.

This new additional flight will also provide access to transfers from bmi’s Star Alliance partners to other great city destinations such as Helsinki, Finland and Tokyo.  Travellers from many other locations, such as as Oslo and Istanbul will be able to travel through Copenhagen to Edinburgh, bring more business and tourism to the Scottish city.

Peter Kenworthy, bmi regional commercial director, said:

“By adding an extra service to our Edinburgh-Copenhagen route we are able to open up connections to many additional international destinations for our Scotland-based business and leisure customers.  Together with our all-jet fleet, convenient flight schedules and low fares we have a market leading product.”

Recently, bmi had announced it was trialling paperless boarding procedures on some routes through London Heathrow, which we covered in an earlier article.

According to the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA), it will be a long time before people let the credit crunch stop them from taking holidays, although they may look for more bargain holidays and flights.

A spokewoman for ABTA, Frances Tuke, said that the range of holidays now available plus the importance people assign to being able to get away on their annual break means that they will do anything they can to make sure they get a holiday.  She also said that ABTA was not surprised to find that people are still finding the money they need to go away on holiday this year.  Ms Tuke also added:

“‘We know from previous recessions and difficult times that holidays are the last things that people are prepared to give up and nowadays, with the huge range of choices when it comes to holidays, people can pick ones that will suit their pocket.”

In terms of particular destinations, Spain is apparently “holding up very well”, in spite of some expectations that the eurozone would be unpopular this year.

American Express conducted a survey of over 2,000 people and found that 80 per cent of Brits were unwilling to sacrifice their holiday to save money.

Around 50,000 tourists are expected to take flights to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.

For those who have been before, they may be relieved to hear that many of their city restaurants are changing their menus to remove the strange and sometimes off-putting meal names.

For example, one delicacy was called ‘husband and wife’s lung slice’!  This meal will now be renamed to the slightly more aptly named ‘beef and ox tripe in chilli sauce’.  Similarly, ‘bean curd made by a pock-marked woman’ will be changed to ‘mapo tofu’ and ‘chicken without sexual life’ to ’steam pullet’.

Although these names, which amount to around 2,000 different meals, are being renamed, some fear the changes are removing some of the individuality of the city.  The names have been published in a book that is being passed around between the Beijing hotel chains and restaurants.

One hotel manager said:

“Thanks to the pamphlet, we do not have to struggle to come up with the English translations of dishes any more, which is usually time consuming.”

The Chinese meal names were often based on the appearance of food and were intended to have an element of fun.  In comparison, our western names are based purely on ingredients and the way in which they have been cooked.

The 2008 Olympics will commence in Beijing on the 8th August.

A new campaign has been launched to help attract tourists and Brits to enjoy holidays in England.

Enjoy England is the company responsible for marketing England and they have chosen to promote our comedy connections. A map has been created that tourists can download. Over 150 locations with a comedy significance appear on the map.

The locations include places like the birthplace of different comedians, places that inspired famous jokes, venues for comedy festivals and more.

Some examples include the location of the infamous hotel in Fawlty Towers (Torquay); the home of Alan Partridge (Norwich) and the Last of the Summer Wine film location (Holmfirth, Yorkshire).

Enjoy England’s Marketing Manager, Laurence Bresh, said:

“England is renowned for producing some of the best comedy in the world and our sense of humour is a trait that the English are famous for. Comedy is an integral part of our heritage and culture and the Comedy England campaign will encourage visitors to explore some of the regions, locations and attractions which have contributed to this and further increase the 100m trips that Brits take in their own country every year.”

When holidaymakers go searching for their bargain holidays, they don’t always search for bargain luggage to match.  Indeed, suitcases are pretty important and many people like to differentiate theirs so they can spot it easily when they come to pick it up and like to have wheels to make moving the luggage easier.

Now, moving your luggage could be easier than ever!

British company, Live Luggage, has designed and launched a motorised suitcase to remove much of the effort from carrying your suitcase.

It has powered wheels that automatically start at certain times to help users pulling their suitcase.  The motors kick in when the wheels experience an increase in angle or a difficult surface. It also has an ‘anti-gravity’ handle, to shift the case’s weight to the wheels.

Marketing manager for Live Luggage, Clive Hemsley, said:

“Wheelie cases were a great step forward, but they came out 25 years ago, and this is the first real innovation since then.  Power assistance means no more struggling with heavy cases and no more neck, back or shoulder aches.”

Apparently, this new suitcase makes 30kg of contents feel like just 3kg.  Be warned though, you’ll be looking for cheap holidays when you fork out the rather expensive price tag of £700 per suitcase.

Europe has an extensive rail network and according to Virgin Trains, more and more tourists are beginning to use it over the more conventional transport methods such as cars and planes, in particular when travelling to Europe.

They also said that travellers are starting to consider cheap holidays in Europe, which often involves visiting destinations via train.

Communications Manager at Virgin Trains, Philippa Richardson, said:

“Rail networks around Europe are well-used and I think people are thinking about it more and more as a viable destination.  More and more people are choosing [the Eurostar> as a means to get to destinations they might have previously gone to by car or plane.”

Eurostar has had a positive effect on rail travel with many Brits choosing to cross the English Channel via rail instead of sea or air.  Now that high speed rail connects London with other UK destinations for Eurostar and connects the Brussels and Paris stations to other continental cities, Virgin Trains suggest consumers will be considering train travel even more now.

Ms Richardson commented:

“I think that people will certainly look at the option of going by rail in a more favourable light.”

Members of the London Assembly also voted in favour of banning its members from using air travel to Paris or Brussels and replacing short-haul flights by train.

Travel insurance company InsureandGo has released new figures showing that August is apparently the month when more passengers are likely to lose their luggage through the airport or airlines.

In the past two years, on average around 200,000 UK flights passengers have had their luggage lost.  August is an especially busy summer month when more bags are likely to go missing.  This August, around 250,000 holidaymakers are expected to lose their luggage.  This is an increase of about 25 per cent compared to any other month in the year.

January is apparently the safest month to travel without losing your luggage.  June, July, September and October each have average lose luggage figures of more than 200,000 items of luggage.

Apparently, this increase in the volume of lost luggage items has meant that many Brits do take safety issues and precautions when packing for trips abroad.  The study found that around a third of UK holidaymakers pack lighter so that they can take their luggage into the cabin and avoid any risk of their luggage being stolen or lost en route to the hold.

A spokeperson for BAA, Perry Wilson, said:

“BAA has come in for a lot of criticism over the last week or two over the problems at Terminal 5, but people have to realise that baggage delays and lost luggage have been a big problem at many airports in recent times, as our research shows.”

When passengers take flights with American Airlines (AA), they will soon be able to access inflight broadband internet.

American Airlines has announced that it will launch the broadband inflight internet access on a trial basis and has already complete the installation of its Aircell connectivity system on the first aircraft.

This is the first time a US airline will offer this particular internet solution.  If the trial is successful, AA intends to install the technology on its 15 Boeing 767-200 aircraft, the majority of which operate primarily on transcontinential flight routes.

The broadband will be available to passengers if they have a wi-fi enabled laptop, portable gaming device or digital assistant with them in-flight.  They will be able to access email accounts, web pages and virtual private networks (VPN’s) such as corporate intranets, ideal for business users.

There will be a small charge for the internet access, however, some web pages, such as the American Airlines website, will be free of charge so passengers can check flight times and gate information.  According to AA, the system is able to handle the whole planeload of passengers accessing the internet.

Many travellers will be wanting to take flights to Dubai or Moscow to see this - moving buildings!

This week, a new concept in buildings was announced in New York, by architect Dr David Fisher.  The world’s first moving buildings will be built in the cities of Moscow and Dubai.

These new state of the art attractions are to be called ‘Dynamic Towers’ and the first one will be in Dubai, and is set to complete in 2010.  This particular tower will be 420 metres tall with 80 floors and is in the advanced design stage at the moment.  The second tower will be in Moscow and Dr Fisher said that the third moving skyscraper is planned for New York.  The company behind the idea is called Dynamic Architecture.

Dr Fisher said:

“Additional Dynamic Towers will be built around the world, following an expression of interest from developers, governments and public officials to construct a Dynamic Tower in Canada, Germany, Italy, Korea and Switzerland.”

The floors of each skyscraper will each rotate independently, so the buildings will constantly change their shape and appearance.  In addition, they will be environmentally friendly as a wind turbine between each individual floor will make the towers the first ever buildings to be self-powered entirely.

Many consumers spend ages looking for cheap holidays, but then incur unnecessary costs when withdrawing their own money from foreign cash machines.

According to MoneyExpert.com, this year British holidaymakers will probably withdraw approximately £7 billion from foreign cash machines.  This figure is likely to cost them somewhere in the region of £284 million in fees.

Many of these costs are unnecessary if Brits take heed and do something about it.

The study showed the average withdrawal is about £103 but the sum the account holder will see on their statement is highly likely to be higher than that.

An average debt card withdrawal will cost about £4.12 on an overseas cash machine and credit cards are slightly higher at around £4.33.

MoneyExpert representative, Sean Gardner, said:

“Withdrawing cash from an ATM or over the counter whilst abroad can be the most convenient way of getting hold of your money. It’s also safe and simple.  However, most people will have to pay for the privilege and some will pay considerably more than others. With the pound currently very weak against the euro, unnecessary fees are the last thing holidaymakers need.”

Gardner also noted that there are cards available to consumers that do not charge any commission fees and only have a low handling cost.