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The Dutch Caribbean’s tourism sector is surging. Curaçao received 122,074 visitors in the first quarter of 2015, a 13 percent increase compared to the same period in 2014, the www.curacaochronicle.com reports.
That was a major shift compared to 2015, when the island reported a modest 2.5 percent increase in tourism.
The improvement was likely driven in large part by new JetBlue service between New York’s John F Kennedy Airport and Curaçao that launched late last year.
Additionally, the Dutch Caribbean island has seen new flights out of Canada, with more service set to launch this summer on Air Canada out of Toronto.
Last year, Curaçao welcomed a total of 450,953 stay over visitors.
Curaçao’s growth comes as its Dutch Caribbean neighbour, Aruba, reported a whopping 20.2 percent increase in arrivals in the first quarter.
Only Aruba and Cuba had higher rates of increase in the first quarter among destinations with complete reporting, according to data from the Caribbean Tourism Organization.
www.hovedsteder.blogg.no is a Norway-based blog about the capitals of the world, with a focus on tourism, travel, transport, the environment, diplomatic affairs, lifestyle, culture and entertainment, food and drink. Contact us at [email protected]
The caribbean airline LIAT, based in Antigua and Barbuda are set to restart a direct flight between Port-of-Spain, capital of Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados, four times a week.
www.hovedsteder.blogg.no is a Norway-based blog about the capitals of the world, with a focus on tourism, travel, transport, the environment, diplomatic affairs, lifestyle, culture and entertainment, food and drink. Contact us at [email protected]
Myndighetene i Tsjekkia vil forby røyking i barer og restauranter. Tsjekkia er det siste EU-landet uten noen form for restriksjoner på røyking på utesteder, skriver NRK / Reuters.
www.hovedsteder.blogg.no is a Norway-based blog about the capitals of the world, with a focus on tourism, travel, transport, the environment, diplomatic affairs, lifestyle, culture and entertainment, food and drink. Contact us at [email protected]
Tallinn
Hotels in Tallinn and elsewhere in Estonia are facing tough times as in addition to the government plan to increase VAT rate they are also accommodating fewer and fewer Russian and Finnish tourists, the two main tourist groups visiting Estonia, www.balticbusinessnews.com reports.
Statistics Estonia reported yesterday that the number of Russian tourists staying in hotels is down more than 40 percent in a year and also the number of Finnish tourists accommodated in Estonia is decreasing.
“The loss of Finns is the biggest blow to Tallinn hotels because they are such an important customer group,” says Ain Käpp, CEO of Tallinn Hotels, commenting the fact that in March, 11 percent fewer Finns stayed in hotels in Tallinn than a year earlier.
“The situation last year was notably better because Finns helped to offset the impact of the decrease in incoming tourism from Russia,” he added.
Käpp admitted that since it takes time under the number of Finnish tourists staying in Tallinn hotels will start increasing, hotels need to downsize and lay off employees.
“We are planning to stay in business, but if the share of Finns would fall by twenty percent, it would create a most difficult situation because hotels are operating with very low profit margins,” says Käpp who manages Palace, Savoy Boutique and Bern.
“Finnish travel agencies and tour operators say that their revenues are falling and they are very worried,” said Käpp, adding that the situation will not improve before the Finnish economy picks up again.
Although summer is traditionally a high tourist season in Estonia, Käpp says that he doubts whether it would solve problems facing accommodation establishments.
“Demand will be higher in the summer, but it will not offset the overall decrease in business volumes in rest of the year,” he said, adding that also the number of days that tourists spend in Estonia has been decreasing.
www.hovedsteder.blogg.no is a Norway-based blog about the capitals of the world, with a focus on tourism, travel, transport, the environment, diplomatic affairs, lifestyle, culture and entertainment, food and drink. Contact us at [email protected]
SJ avlyser den varslede satsingen på raske tog mellom Oslo og Stockholm. Årsaken er at Jernbaneverket fra sommeren 2016 skal starte utskifting av kontaktledningen på Kongsvingerbanen, skriver www.boarding.no
Bare drøye to måneder før SJ skulle kjøre første avgang med høyhastighetstoget X2000 mellom Oslo og Stockholm avlyser selskapet hele satsingen.
– Årsaken er at Jernbaneverket skal skifte ut kontaktledningen på Kongsvingerbanen og at banen derfor blir stengt for trafikk på dagtid mellom klokken 09 og 14 i to og halvt år fra sommeren 2016, sier administrerende direktør i SJ, Crister Fritzson på jernbaneverkets nettside.
Selskapet er kritiske til at Jernbaneverket først i mars ga SJ beskjed om dette og sier at SJ allerede har brukt store beløp på ruteplanlegging, opplæring av personale og ombygging av togsett.
Trafikkdirektør Bjørn Kristiansen i Jernbaneverket sier at utskiftingen av kontaktledningen på Kongsvingerbanen er sårt tiltrengt.
– Det nåværende anlegget er over 60 år gammelt og veldig slitent, sier Kristiansen.
– Det er klart vi ikke er glade for at dette må ramme noen togavganger, men vi har valgt å skjerme pendlertrafikken morgen og ettermiddag, samt den viktige godstrafikken som for en stor del går om kvelden og natten på Kongsvingerbanen, sier han.
– Vi er fortsatt i dialog med SJ om hvordan trafikkopplegget på strekningen kan bli, legger Bjørn Kristiansen til.
www.hovedsteder.blogg.no is a Norway-based blog about the capitals of the world, with a focus on tourism, travel, transport, the environment, diplomatic affairs, lifestyle, culture and entertainment, food and drink. Contact us at [email protected]
Adamstown, capital of Pitcairn Islands. Photo: www.pitcairn.pn
A tiny island set in the South Pacific is so keen to grow its population that land is being given away to those wishing to build a permanent home there, www.propertyshowrooms.com reports.
The Pitcairn Islands group is a British Overseas Territory comprised of Henderson, Ducie, Oeno and the only inhabited island of Pitcairn.
The island is roughly 2170 km from Tahiti and 6600 km from Panama with its administrative headquarters located 3300km away in Auckland, New Zealand.
The population of Pitcairn Island has gradually reduced from a peak level of over 200 people in the 1930s to the current count of 49 permanent residents, leading the government to seek a solution.
In 2014, the government implemented the Pitcairn Islands Repopulation Plan setting out to ‘attract and retain migrants to Pitcairn and address a number of key areas including housing, education and health to ensure the Plan is successful’.
The rugged, natural beauty of Pitcairn Island provides a comfortable albeit secluded lifestyle to its residents. There’s a store, warehouse, library and health centre open three days of the week, a reliable electricity supply, high-speed internet and free education available for school-age children.
People wishing to make a life on Pitcairn Island would have to be largely self-sufficient and probably self-employed as there are few jobs on offer.
However, the government are prepared to entice interested parties with the offer of a free land allocation for new permanent residents to build their homes.
Bounty Bay, landing place and only point of entry, and sole anchorage, at Pitcairn. HMS Bounty was burned and sunk here on 23 January 1790 by Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers. The wreck, discovered in 1957, is still visible underwater. Todays inhabitants at Pitcairn are the descendants of Fletcher Christian and other mutineers.
The 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty, starred Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian, With Trevor Howard and Richard Harris in other main roles.
HMS Bounty arrives in Tahiti 1788. Painting by John Clayton (1728-1800)
Fletcher Christian and the mutineers turn Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 others adrift; 1790 painting by Robert Dodd (1748-1815)
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Tourism plays a major role on Pitcairn, providing locals with 80% of their annual income. Occasionally, passengers from expedition-type cruise ships will go ashore for a few days, staying with local families and experiencing the island’s history while contributing to the local economy.
Each year around ten cruise ships stop at the island for a few hours, generating income for the locals from the sale of souvenirs, landing fees and the stamping of passports.
Providing accommodation for tourists is a growing source of revenue on Pitcairn and some families have invested in private, self-contained units adjacent to their homes for tourists to rent.
The government are actively promoting tourism on the Island and have secured EU funding to assist in the development of its infrastructure to support growth in the sector.
It’s an interesting although slightly unusual opportunity but ultimately, one that promises to transform lifestyles, offering true integration into the tight-knit community of the world’s least populated islands.
www.hovedsteder.blogg.no is a Norway-based blog about the capitals of the world, with a focus on tourism, travel, transport, the environment, diplomatic affairs, lifestyle, culture and entertainment, food and drink. Contact us at [email protected]
This picture shows a communist-era sitting room as part of the Warsaw Experience tour to provide visitors with a sense of life under Poland’s bygone communist system.
There is no love lost in Poland for the bygone communist system, but those who think they have missed something unusual still have a chance to experience the austerity and subdued atmosphere of life in those times, the Associated Press – Warszaw, reports (www.ap.org)
A life-under-communism museum in Warsaw offers tours of communist-era architecture, a look at a typical small apartment, a taste of cherry vodka and a ride in a militia van.
Foreign tourists come here out of curiosity, Polish schoolchildren come to learn about those not-so-distant times that their parents grew up in, and parents and grandparents come out of nostalgia for their youth.
The museum, called The Charm of PRL (the People?s Republic of Poland), offers “Warsaw Experience” guided tours, in English and in other languages.
Arranged in an old, bleak warehouse in a backstreet in Warsaw’s gritty Praga district, the tour offers a glimpse of more than four decades of life behind the Iron Curtain, under an oppressive system that was directed from Moscow.
After communism was imposed on Poland following World War II, the country experienced persecution, deprivation and bans, often bordering on the absurd.
The Poles, led by the massive Solidarity freedom movement, voted the system out in 1989 elections.
Inside the museum, visitors see a typical, modest one-bedroom apartment with simple, Polish- or East Bloc-made house appliances, a typical office of a local party secretary with the communist leaders’ portraits and a hot-line phone.
In another spot, bust figures of Lenin and Marx, and an old radio serve as reminders that the communists were jamming Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, which the Poles secretly tuned into for true news.
“We were there under communism for 45 years,” the museum’s driver-guide Mariusz Nurkiewicz said in English. “For example, my parents, they were young, they fall in love, I was born. … So this is that sentimental feel to youth, to the past, more than to communism, to system. Nothing was too good about the system, but about the life, we were still trying to be happy.”
For a moment of respite, the visitors are invited to a bar to sample simple biscuits or wafers, enhanced by a toast of cherry vodka. Nearby stands a phone booth, with no phone inside, just as it sometimes was in communist times.
Nathan Hanson, a U.S. tourist from Dubuque, Iowa, said he has “always regretted not seeing anything Soviet before the Soviet Union fell. And I know remnants of that are quickly disappearing and so I booked the communism tour today to see what I could, to see what?s left.”
His conclusion from the tour was that the society in Poland is “changing very quickly.”
“It’s just fascinating to look back in time,” Hanson said. “It’s a big part of my generation with the conflict with the U.S. and the Soviet Union, so it’s really neat to just get a peek of what it looked like.”
Palace of Culture and Science
The visitors can also take a ride in a no-comfort Polish-made van used by the militia in the 1960s and 70s to transport criminal and political detainees. For some 150 zlotys ($42 – ?36 ) per person, an English-speaking driver-guide will take them to see typical architecture of the time, including Poland’s tallest building, the Palace of Culture and Science, a 1955 gift from Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
It survived a cathartic push to have it torn down just after the ouster of communism, and celebrates its 60th birthday this year.
“We would see some of the architecture of that time which is called socialist realism [and] admire the figures of the working class, because all that system was built, was created, for the happiness of the working class,” Nurkiewicz said.
He jokingly said that he tries to get tourists to join the Communist party.
“No, I’m just kidding, of course. We are happy here in Poland that the communism is over,” he said.
Warsaw Experience: Guided tours offering a look at life under communism at The Charm of PRL museum, Minska street 25, Warsaw, entrance from Glucha street in front of Soho Factory.
The museum is open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission is 8 zlotys ($2.25 – ?2) Life under communism tour is 150 zlotys ($42-?36).
Booked tours starting daily at 10 a.m. Available in English and other languages.
www.hovedsteder.blogg.no is a Norway-based blog about the capitals of the world, with a focus on tourism, travel, transport, the environment, diplomatic affairs, lifestyle, culture and entertainment, food and drink. Contact us at [email protected]
Vilnius Airport is believed to be the first airport in Eastern and Northern Europe to open its own airside ‘cinema’, www.airport-world.com reported.
Located in the departure lounge and boasting just a few dozen seats, it may not be the fanciest cinema in the world, but the new addition to the airport’s facilities is expected to prove a big hit with passengers.
According to the airport, the FilmBox LT cinema will excluslvely show short movies, documentaries and cartoons by Lithuanian filmakers.
It says that the idea of an “unconventional passenger lounge” at Vilnius Airport was implemented in co-operation with the Lithuanian Film Centre and will remain on site until the end of the year.
Gediminas Almantas, CEO at SE Lithuanian Airports, says: “People spent a lot of time at Vilnius Airport. We care about our passengers and their good mood, therefore we have established the cinema, where passengers will have an opportunity to relax before the flight as well as to become familiar with the Lithuanian cinema.”
The first FilmBox LT ambassador – Nelë Savièenko, a film and theatre actress, winner of the National Culture and Art Prize – was introduced during the opening of the cinema hall.
She promised to spread the word about the unusual cinema at Vilnius Airport and the contemporary Lithuanian cinema in Lithuania and abroad.
“This is one of the finest examples in Lithuania and elsewhere of how business and cultural institutions can co-operate by focusing on feelings and experiences of people rather than profit”, notes Liana Ruokytë-Jonsson, one of the initiators of FilmBox LT, the Head of Film Distribution, Information and Heritage Division of the Lithuanian Film Centre.
The first visitors of the cinema hall watched the 11-minute film ‘Forest’, created by Ignas Meilûnas this year and premiered at the film festival ‘Kino Pavasaris’.
The film repertoire will be regularly changed to show as many works of our country’s cinema makers as possible.
All films are shown in Lithuanian with English subtitles.
The future plans of FilmBox LT include introducing full-length movies to Vilnius Airport passengers.
FilmBox LT cinema hall is located in the renewed departure area of Vilnius Airport next to the gate A2.
Its working hours are adapted to the flight schedule ? films are shown from the first to the last flight of the day.
www.hovedsteder.blogg.no is a Norway-based blog about the capitals of the world, with a focus on tourism, travel, transport, the environment, diplomatic affairs, lifestyle, culture and entertainment, food and drink. Contact us at [email protected]
The mayor of Tajikistan’s capital city of Dushanbe has ordered shops to stop selling black clothing for women, in the latest move against Islamic cultural influences in the country, the BBC.com reports.
The Mayor, Mahmadsaid Ubaydulloyev, wants existing stock to be removed from the shelves because he says it doesn’t fit with Tajikistan’s culture and traditions, the privately-owned Asia-Plus news agency reports.
He has also told officials to prevent women’s garments from being imported if they’re black. The move is being seen as part of a broader government campaign against the adoption of Islamic cultural practices in Tajik society, including women wearing black headscarves.
Dushanbe
In March, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon used a Mother’s Day speech to criticise women who wear “foreign” clothing. Mr Rahmon told a crowd of women’s activists that “strangers” were using the clothes “to create another new extremist trend” in Tajikistan.
While colourful headscarves are considered traditional in the country, black hijabs are frowned upon, according to the agency. Hijabs were banned in schools and universities in 2005. More than 90% of the Tajik population is Muslim, but atheism was officially encouraged during 70 years of Soviet rule.
It’s not just black clothing on officials’ minds, though. The justice ministry wants to amend the law to force parents into giving their children traditionally Tajik names.
“If the amendments get approved, our offices would refuse to register babies with names that are Arabic or foreign to our culture,” ministry official Jaloliddin Rahimov tells the Radio Free Europe website.
www.hovedsteder.blogg.no is a Norway-based blog about the capitals of the world, with a focus on tourism, travel, transport, the environment, diplomatic affairs, lifestyle, culture and entertainment, food and drink. Contact us at [email protected]
The ultra low cost Mexican airline with the most extensive route network servicing Mexico and the US, has announced their incursion into the Costa Rica market with the launch of two new flights from Cancun, Quintana Roo and Guadalajara, Jalisco to Costa Rica’s capital city, San Jose, starting on September 10 with flights two times per week.
Costa Rica becomes the second Central American destination for Volaris.
Volaris is expanding presence to Costa Rica as part of the carrier’s international growth plans, seeking to increase the country’s connectivity to Mexico’s most important cities as well the US market. Volaris CEO, Enrique Beltranena said: “We are extremely proud to announce flights to Costa Rica, a destination special not only as a natural and adventure tourism location, but also for their history and cultural heritage”.
“Two new services plus our innovative business framework make visiting Costa Rica easier than ever for our Customers in Mexico“, Beltranena added.
Separately, Costa Rica Minister of Tourism, Mauricio Ventura said, “Mexico is Latin America’s top issuing market for tourism by air, which is why Volaris’ bet strengthens the work we’ve done towards attracting more airlines and opening our markets by increasing the number of seats available to the destination and becoming a complement to traditional offerings with an option that provides good service at an affordable price,” the official said. “This also introduces an element of competitiveness in terms of fares to Costa Rica.”
To date, Volaris is the airline with the widest route network servicing Mexico and the US. The carrier has transported nearly 50 million passengers since it started operating in 2006, and this number continues on the rise as a result of more than 240 daily flights operated to 61 leading destinations, including 38 in Mexico and 23 internationally.
