IAN STALKER
Pictured above: Luis Miguel Labrada is bucking the pink trend.
Do the rugged American-made vehicles that have been rolling along Havana streets for over half a century look pretty in pink?
Apparently many of those who chauffeur foreign tourists around the Cuban capital think that’s the case, as do plenty of visitors.
Havana-based GranCar, which has had a large fleet of...
IAN STALKER
Tour operator Silk Holidays says the current dispute between Ottawa and Beijing is already cutting into Canadian visitations to China and warns that other Asian destinations’ tourist trades could suffer as well if those tensions drag on.
Silk Holidays’ Ricky Poon told Canadian Travel Press that the company has seen fewer inquiries for China since the start of the dispute,...
MIKE DUNBAR
North America’s airlines are set to rake in fully half of the world’s civil aviation profits this year, underlining a distinct regional disparity in financial performance. That was the good news for this part of the world delivered by IATA chief economist Brian Pearce (pictured above) at a recent Geneva press briefing.
Pearce told reporters, “The industry as a whole is...
BOB MOWAT
There’s no doubt that 2018 was a spectacular year for Irish tourism (see sidebar story), the question is – with the March 29 deadline for a Brexit deal looming large – whether the destination can expect the same kind of head-turning results in 2019.
“Brexit is a concern, there’s no question about that. It’s probably the biggest concern facing the Irish tourism...
IAN STALKER
Austrian Airlines reports its aircraft will continue to be visible in Canadian airspace this summer, even as codeshare partner Air Canada’s planes will be the ones physically linking Toronto and Vienna.
Sherif Sedhom of the Lufthansa Group’s Toronto office told a recent Toronto gathering that plans call for Air Canada aircraft to be carrying passengers between the cities as...
IAN STALKER
Pictured above: The Presidential Suite at the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski offers an extremely upscale stay.
Those staying in Old Havana’s Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski will have no trouble following in some of Ernest Hemingway’s storied footsteps.
The author, a longtime Havana resident who penned his famed novel The Old Man and the Sea in Cuba, was a regular at El...
IAN STALKER
(Photo above: Cesar Mendoza (2nd from l) is now overseeing the Toronto office.)
A former director of the Mexico Tourism Board’s Toronto office says he has no doubt that the apparently imminent closing of that office will be damaging to Mexico’s efforts to attract Canadian tourists.
Jorge Solana, who oversaw the office for years, says he’s convinced the office and its...
MIKE DUNBAR
Pictured above: Tim Colehan, IATA’s assistant director of external affairs
Those one, two or more for-the-road drinks consumed at a British airport bar could wind up getting a tipsy traveller into a world of grief. That’s because a UK air navigation order deems it illegal to board an aircraft when drunk or to be drunk on board, with penalties ranging from a five-thousand...
ANN RUPPENSTEIN
During Jamaica’s golden era, actress Katharine Hepburn was captured in iconic photographs zipping around Montego Bay in a stylish convertible. A blast from this past – in the form of a sister car to the 1953 Singer convertible – is now welcoming guests upon arrival at the newly opened S Hotel located on the Hip Strip.
“We have a picture of Katharine Hepburn, who was...
ANN RUPPENSTEIN
Although over 75% of the Caribbean “didn’t even have a breeze” from the devastating hurricanes of 2017, the CEO of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association said the impact of Irma and Maria were widespread across the region.
“The perception that’s out there is that the Caribbean is one place,” said Frank Comito, on location in Montego Bay, Jamaica for the 37th...
