Asia Vacations - Travel, Tourism - Info & Review

March 31, 2016 By: Michelle Krol As one of the largest and most culturally diverse destinations on the planet, Asia continues to expand its travel and hospitality industries, offering a wide range of opportunities to travelers who are looking for unique experiences.  New Luxury Rail Trips to Asia From Zegrahm Expeditions  Zegrahm Expeditions is expanding its options for travelers looking to explore Asia in the coming months. Among three new rail itineraries scheduled for 2016-2017 is the "India by Rail with the Hornbill Festival" itinerary, taking place November 20 – December 4, 2017. Guests will board the luxury train Palace On Wheels for a 15 day journey making stops to explore local life, royal cities, national parks, art, and attend the Hornbill Festival in Nagaland.  Palace on Wheels has ensuite cabins with large picture windows, in-cabin air and heat control and music systems. Onboard amenities include two dining cars, fully stocked bar, a lounge, as

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Booking a trip using a website can be convenient, but going that route isn't likely to help find a seat for a cello. It's those types of situations, said one Wichita travel professional, that will likely keep the brick-and-mortar travel agency business model afloat. "Did you know you need to have a seat on a flight for a cello?" said Devin Hansen, president and co-owner of Sunflower Travel, which has locations in Wichita and Derby. "I booked a trip to Shanghai for a lady and her cello once. "This cello was built in 1875 – it's worth more than my house. Trust me, she wanted to make sure it was sitting beside her. Dealing with China, you have to have passports and names. We made up a name for the cello." While not everyone will want to lug around a large musical instrument on a trip to Asia, the idea is that a traditional travel agent can help with the many details that go along with a vacation, a weekend getaway, a destination wedding or a

Hallstatt The UNESCO-listed Austrian town of Hallstatt is the fastest-growing European destination for Asian travellers, according to a study by Agoda.com. The booking site revealed that it experienced a 101.4% jump in hotel bookings for Hallstatt among its Asian customers in 2015, compared to the previous year. Another scenic town, Füssen in the German region of Bavaria, was the second fastest-growing destination, with an 87.3% jump in bookings, followed by the UK cities of Glasgow (+85.1%) and Oxford (+78.3%) in third and fourth places respectively. Cesky Krumlov (+70.7%), in the Czech Republic's South Bohemia region, was fifth. Neuschwanstein Castle near Fussen "Our travellers from Asia are broadening their reach and we are seeing faster growth rates in the types of European destinations people visit after they've already been to the bigger cities," said John Brown, chief operating officer of Agoda. Hallstatt has become a popular destination for Chinese tourists i

Inaugural Air Asia X flight from Kuala Lumpur arrived in Auckland on March 23. The launch of the daily Air Asia X service from Auckland to Kuala Lumpur via the Gold Coast will boost travel options for Kiwis heading to Asia - and the New Zealand tourism dollar, industry pundits say. Auckland Airport's general manager, aeronautical commercial Norris Carter said the service would also bring fares to the Gold Coast down. Air Asia previously flew to Christchurch but terminated that service after the 2011 earthquakes.  Carter said New Zealand was delighted to have the award-winning budget carrier back. READ MORE: * AirAsia confirms Auckland to Gold Coast route* Kiwis snapping up return Air New Zealand flights to the US for under $800* Qantas responds to Singapore Airlines' Wellington route with sharp pricing "Malaysia, India and Indonesia are AirAsia X's key markets. Over the last three years the numbers of annual international arrivals from t

US luxury house St. John has appointed Alice Woo as its lead consultant for Travel Retail and Duty Free. Woo will be responsible for building the travel-retail business in Asia/Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, as well as selected cities in the US and Italy, and will expand St. John's presence in travel-retail and duty-free markets throughout the regions. Woo is also currently the Retail DreamWorks 360 Management Consultancy Company president, specialising in travel-retail consultation services. Growth throughout the Asian markets is also a key component to St. John's strategy. In 2015, the company took back its business in China from Hemian, which had operated seven St. John boutiques under a ten-year license, and in November 2015, St. John opened a boutique in Shanghai. She brings with her over 20 years' travel-retail and duty-free work experience, most recently as general manager (Hong Kong, China, Macau) of the Nuance Group (HK) Ltd., managed multiple categories

Tahiti, the home of blue lagoons, misty green mountains and golden sunsets, has scored a win as one of the world's most popular cruise ports. The French Polynesian island, along with Amsterdam and Cozumel, Mexico, was among the top three destinations in a survey by CruiseCompete, an online travel company. Tahiti is part of the Society Islands, which include Bora-Bora, Moorea and scores of other islands and atolls spread out across the South Pacific. The island's capital, Papeete, is an eight-hour flight from Los Angeles, making interisland cruising aboard the ship Paul Gauguin easier to access than some dream destinations that are more distant. Tahiti and its islands are increasingly being added to itineraries of cruise lines sailing out of U.S. ports, including Princess, Crystal, Celebrity and Holland America. Some lines package it with port calls in Hawaii. "Papeete is a small, walkable city with a lively night life and restaurants,&

Tourico Travel Academy Tourico Holidays is ramping up its recruitment efforts in Asia through its Tourico Travel Academy. The global travel wholesaler has revealed that the number of Asia-based applicants to its academy has tripled in the last year, outpacing all other regions. More than 50 Asian students are due to attend the company's next two academy sessions, representing 41% of total attendees. "Over a quarter of our total Travel Academy graduates thus far have been students hailing from Asia, and they have all gone on to be vital employees within the company," said Kieran Le-Petit, Tourico's director of global recruitment. "For example, Xinxin Ou and Jiarui Li, graduates from our second session, are now leading key-account teams." The Tourico Travel Academy, which launched in January of 2014, is taught by company executives, including a two-week lesson from the CEO of Tourico, Uri Argov. In the first two years the academy received more than 7,200 a

The salt pyramids of Bonaire Bonaire is a tiny 112 square mile island in the Leeward Antilles of the central Caribbean. It lies about 60 miles off the coast of Venezuela. Along with its neighbors Curaçao and Aruba, it forms the "ABC" islands. Formerly part of the Netherland Antilles, it became a legal "municipality" of the Netherlands in 2010, when the Netherland Antilles was dissolved and Curaçao and Aruba became autonomous countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Two other uninhabited islands of the Leeward Antilles, Klein Bonaire (Little Bonaire) and Klein Curaçao (Little Curaçao), make up the rest of the island grouping. Bonaire and its region The island of Bonaire consists of a core of volcanic rocks overlain by a mix of largely carbonate rocks and associated fringing coral reefs. The entire structure was uplifted approximately 90 million years ago, along with the rest of the Leeward Antilles and the Venezuelan Antilles, when volcanic ac

The first Shinkansen bullet train line directly linking Japan's northernmost island Hokkaido with Tokyo opened on Saturday, promising shorter travel times and introducing slick new cars. The first train on a section of the Hokkaido Shinkansen Line left Shin-Aomori Station in Aomori Prefecture, at the tip of Japan's main Honshu Island at 6.32am, bound for Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto terminal in Hokkaido. According to operators Hokkaido Railway Co. and East Japan Railway Co., the high-speed trains will run from Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto to the capital in as little as four hours and two minutes. This cuts the current shortest travel time from the port city of Hakodate to Tokyo by 53 minutes, when including a local line train required to get from Hakodate Station to the Shinkansen terminal. The "Hakodate Liner" local line train can shuttle passengers between Hakodate and Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto stations in as little as 15 minutes. We have been using planes until now, but we

ARCASIA Travel Prize 2016 The ARCASIA Travel Prize in Architecture is the travel and research scholarship given annually to Young Architects of ARCASIA (40 years and under) and member of the institute of their country. The emphasis of the traveling scholarship is not only to promote research in the selected fields of study, but also to encourage cross border education as well as to foster cultural exchange between nations and institutes. Sponsored by NS Bluescope (Thailand), this year is the second year of the ARCASIA Travel Prize. For 2016, the ARCASIA Travel Prize aims to enable Young Architects to travel and to conduct design research in Thailand on the topic of humanitarian architecture. For more information about ARCASIA, please visit www.arcasia.org AWARD: There will be three (3) prizes awarded, one for each of three ARCASIA zones: Zone A, Zone B, and Zone C. Please refer to ARCASIA website for more information on the country zones.The monetary amount for the award sha

Singapore is one of the warmest hotplates for technology in Asia as the government has pumped $1.3 billion into the city's startup ecosystem and transformed it into Southeast Asia's Silicon Valley. But Singapore's cosmopolitan allure and culture of efficiency comes with a price: It has one of the highest costs of living in Asia and, for that matter, the world. Although dozens of travel startups have launched in Singapore in the past five years as its economy became more powerful these rising costs have frustrated founders and forced them to get creative with talent recruitment. Skift met with two Singapore-based travel entrepreneurs on a recent trip to the city and they talked of how exorbitant costs have made Singapore both a blessing and a curse for startups. Fazal Bahardeen, CEO and founder of Halaltrip, a site helping Muslim travelers book hotels and discover Muslim-friendly destinations, has most of his team based outside of Singapore with his technology team i

Seve Gat wanted to visit China, so she Photoshopped herself there. Now, she gets to go for real. The Kenyan woman achieved sweet, sweet Internet notoriety with her delightful travel-themed photo series, which chronicles her very beautiful, very fake Asian vacation. "I have left the country to China" The photos have been shared on Facebook hundreds of times, ostensibly because the Photoshop work isn't that great. Well, laugh all you want, haters. Gat probably won't hear you — she'll be busy hopping on a jet to Beijing. "woow enjoying everything here" Businessman Sam Gichuru came across Gat's photos online — and was so struck by them, he raised enough money to send Gat to China IRL. Gat hasn't gone on her trip yet (she's still applying for a passport), but we hope she takes lots of photos. "Last day of visit. Bye China." In the meantime, Twitter is sending her on even more vacations. Have

Singapore is one of the warmest hotplates for technology in Asia as the government has pumped $1.3 billion into the city's startup ecosystem and transformed it into Southeast Asia's Silicon Valley. But Singapore's cosmopolitan allure and culture of efficiency comes with a price: It has one of the highest costs of living in Asia and, for that matter, the world. Although dozens of travel startups have launched in Singapore in the past five years as its economy became more powerful these rising costs have frustrated founders and forced them to get creative with talent recruitment. Skift met with two Singapore-based travel entrepreneurs on a recent trip to the city and they talked of how exorbitant costs have made Singapore both a blessing and a curse for startups. Fazal Bahardeen, CEO and founder of Halaltrip, a site helping Muslim travelers book hotels and discover Muslim-friendly destinations, has most of his team based outside of Singapore with his technology team i

People walk around Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar. In 1927, Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda feared he had come to Rangoon too late. "Everything was already there - a city of blood, dreams and gold, a river that flowed from the savage jungle into the stifling city," he wrote. Almost a century later, a traveller might be tempted to feel the same sense of coming late to the party, but as Myanmar begins to open up to tourists once more and greater parts of the country become accessible, that fear should dissipate. For several years now, Myanmar has been a country on the cusp, as the military begins to release its choke-hold and democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi steps in to turn the country back towards the rest of the world. But even as the country seeks to modernise - with high-rise developments, new freeways and wi-fi hot spots popping up with incredible speed - it is still possible to see the romantic crossroads of Asia that so captivated

Tourico Holidays Recruits Top-End Talent in Asia to Fuel Next Generation of Leadership Tourico Holidays, a global leader in wholesale travel brokerage, today announced that the number of applicants from Asia for the Tourico Holidays Travel Academy have tripled in the last year, outpacing all other places of origin. Over the next two Academy sessions, more than 50 students of Asian origin – totaling more than 41% of the entire student population – will attend, including many recent college graduates. Tourico Holidays, a global leader in wholesale travel brokerage, today announced that the number of applicants from Asia for the Tourico Holidays Travel Academy have tripled in the last year, outpacing all other places of origin. Over the next two Academy sessions, more than 50 students of Asian origin – totaling more than 41% of the entire student population – will attend, including many recent college graduates. The Tourico Travel Academy, which launched in January of 2014, provides c

NEW YORK: Petroleum-linked stocks led the broader US stock market lower on Wednesday (Mar 23), while airlines and most travel stocks fell again one day after the deadly Brussels attacks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 79.98 points (0.45 per cent) to 17,502.59. The broad-based S&P 500 shed 13.09 points (0.64 per cent) to 2,036.71, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell 52.80 points (1.10 per cent) to 4,768.86. Dow member Chevron fell 1.8 per cent, while ConocoPhillips tumbled 4.8 per cent as US oil prices fell below US$40 a barrel. The bombings in Brussels on Tuesday that killed 31 people and wounded some 270 continued to reverberate through the market, hitting especially shares of companies tied to travel and tourism as security tightened across Europe. United Airlines lost 1.2 per cent and hotel chain Hilton Worldwide shed 1.5 per cent. Online travel stocks TripAdvisor and Priceline also fell. Dow member Nike fell 3.8 per cent after reporting that th

Banks and gold stocks are among the leading decliners. In neighboring Australia, futures foreshadowed a 0.2 per cent gain in local stocks. Iluka Resources said it will consider internal and external candidates to replace its chief executive David Robb, who plans to step down in the second half of 2016. Major Japanese carrier ANA fell 0.5 per cent, while Australia's flagship carrier Qantas Airways was down almost 0.3 per cent. HIS Co., a major Japanese travel company, slipped 2.3 per cent. FTSE China A50 index futures advanced 0.2 per cent following a seventh day of gains in the Shanghai Composite Index. KEEPING SCORE: The Dow Jones industrial average fell 46 points, or 0.3 percent, to 17,577 as of 10:05 a.m. Eastern Time. The company's shares are down 0.4 percent. It was last at 1.9421 percent. Kathmandu Holdings reported a turnaround to profit in the six months to January 31, reflecting strong sales of outdoor clothing and camping gear. Wall Street was poised for

PHOTO: Delhi. (photo courtesy of Thinkstock) Just two weeks after announcing an agreement with Orion Hotels to expand across South Africa, Best Western Hotels & Resorts has signed a master franchise agreement with India's Sorrel Hospitality in an effort to grow its brand in India and neighboring countries. Under terms of the agreement, Delhi-based Sorrel will be in charge of positioning Best Western for future growth and development across India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. READ MORE: Best Western Eyes Significant Expansion in South Africa Best Western said Sorrel's team of experts will be responsible for executing "a multi-pronged, multi-year development initiative."  "We see tremendous potential right now in India and we are delighted to have aligned with a company like Sorrel Hospitality, which has an outstanding track record of success, as we work to expand our footprint in India," Ron Pohl, Best Western's senior vice president of bra