Best Holiday Lettings

Category: News

  • News: Silversea appoints new sales manager for Scotland, Northern Ireland and North East

    Silversea, the leading cruise operator renowned for its ultra-luxurious ships and exotic destinations, has announced a brand new appointment to its UK sales team. Amanda Middler, who has 11 years experience in sales has joined the Silversea team as Regional Sales Manager with responsibility for Northern Ireland, Scotland and the North East of britain, and may report back to Priti Mehta, Head of Sales UK & Ireland.

    Amanda joins from IHG Hotel Group, where for two years she was Position Cluster Sales Manager and successfully built strong relationships in the travel sector. Earlier than that Middler also worked for Monarch Airlines as Base Operations Manager and MyTravel Airways as Passenger Services Superintendent.

    Mike Bonner, Silversea’s General Manager for UK and Ireland, said: “We are excited to welcome Amanda to our sales team and believe her expertise might actually help us to develop and expand sales initiatives in these regions. Her addition to the team reinforces our commitment to providing an enhanced and highly personalised level of service to our travel agent partners.”

  • News: HRS and GetThere conform to strategic distribution collaboration

    HRS, the global leading hotel portal for corporate customers, has entered right into a distribution agreement with GetThere, a world technology company serving corporations and brand of Sabre.

    The 250,000 hotels affiliated to HRS could be available by the tip of April to GetThere’s global corporate customers it doesn’t matter what global distribution system they use. HRS offers detailed and positive hotel information in 32 languages in addition to flexible and customer friendly booking conditions.

    “Working with GetThere complements our systematic multi-channel strategy and should mean all GetThere corporate customers can get pleasure from our wide hotel portfolio instantly. From the hotel’s perspective, the relationship to GetThere, will allow another global distribution channel with extended coverage particularly within the huge US market, where Sabre is the undisputed market leader within the managed corporate segment. A win-win situation for all parties,” says HRS Chief Executive Officer Tobias Ragge.

    HRS and GetThere believe hoteliers will benefit as their properties will now have even greater exposure via GetThere’s thousands of corporate customers, including a majority of the Fortune 200, in 95 countries. Every month 5 million unique users visit the company travel reservation system to go looking and book a business journey. In 2012 GetThere managed greater than $9.5 billion in business travel spend.

    “HRS has any such vast and unique range of hotels that we all know can be of significant value to our customers,” says Suzanne Neufang, President of GetThere. “We watch for working with HRS to bring the handiest choice of hotels to corporations worldwide.”

  • Rezidor announces the Radisson Blu Hotel Port Harcourt Olympia in Nigeria

    The Rezidor Hotel Group, essentially the mostsome of the most dynamic hotel companies worldwide and a member of the Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, announces the Radisson Blu Hotel Port Harcourt Olympia in Nigeria. The valuables is being developed by Cenpropsaroten Hotel Management Limited; it should feature 206 keys and is scheduled to open in Q1 2016. It brings Rezidor’s Nigerian portfolio to one,100 rooms in operation and under development. At the African continent Rezidor now operates and develops 49 hotels with 11,000 rooms.

    “Rezidor has the most important pipeline of rooms under development in sub-Saharan Africa. This signing further strengthens our leading position and underlines the significance Nigeria has for our group”, said Wolfgang M. Neumann, President & CEO at Rezidor.

    The new Radisson Blu Hotel, Port Harcourt Olympia complements the prevailing Radisson Blu Anchorage Hotel, Lagos VI; the up and coming Radisson Blu Hotel, Abuja and the Park Inn by Radissons in Lagos, Apapa and Ikeja, Abeoukuta and Abuja. Nigeria is a key development marketplace for Rezidor – the gang is the primary international operator to supply world-class hotel standards within the three major financial hubs of Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

    The Radisson Blu hotel site is found within the southern a part of town within the less congested old Government Reserve Area directly opposite the Port Harcourt Club 1928 Golf course with spectacular views over the fairways and greens. Besides 206 guest rooms with Radisson Blu signature services corresponding to free high speed internet access the hotel will offer an all-day dining restaurant, a specialty restaurant & bar, and the most important conference facilities throughout the Niger Delta, with 2,100sqm of conference and meeting space. Additionally there’ll be a gym, spa, outdoor swimming pool, business centre and rooftop bar & terrace.

    Port Harcourt is the industrial hub of the Niger Delta and the capital of Rivers State, certainly one of Nigeria’s richest states due its large crude oil and natural gas deposits. It’s home to major oil companies, banking institutions and government agencies. Hotel room supply inside the city has not grown for several years, and the brand new built Radisson Blu business and conference hotel will have the benefit of being the foremost modern internationally branded property within the city.

  • News: Aer Lingus expands codeshare with United

    Aer Lingus and United Airlines have expanded their codeshare agreement. Aer Lingus will codeshare on United’s year-round non-stop service between Dublin and Washington/Dulles and seasonal non-stop service between Shannon and Chicago/O’Hare, with a purpose to operate between June 7 and August 27, 2013. United has also recently expanded codesharing with Aer Lingus to incorporate selected Aer Lingus-operated flights between Shannon and London Heathrow.

    Aer Lingus already codeshares on selected United-operated flights to 51 cities in the U.S. and Canada. United codeshares on Aer Lingus-operated flights from Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Shannon to London Heathrow, which give convenient connections to and from United-operated flights between Heathrow and its U.S. hubs: Chicago/O’Hare, Houston, L. a., Big apple/Newark, San Francisco and Washington/Dulles. The codeshare agreement has also been expanded to incorporate Aer Lingus-operated flights between Dublin and Manchester and Dublin and Birmingham.

    Aer Lingus and United have also signed an agreement on airport lounge access. Effective April 1st 2013, Aer Lingus business class customers travelling via Chicago and beyond on Aer Lingus codeshare flights could have access to 21 United Club lounges at airports including Seattle, L. a., San Francisco and Minneapolis.

    Also effective April 1st, United BusinessFirst customers departing on United flights from Dublin to Long island/Newark and Washington/Dulles can have access to Aer Lingus’ Gold Circle Lounge at Dublin Airport.

    Commenting at the announcement, Aer Lingus Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Kavanagh said: “Our partnership with United Airlines has gone from strength to strength during the last five years. As well as increased frequency on our services to Chicago and Boston, these enhancements add to the seamless travel options we will be able to now offer customers travelling to and from america and Canada.”

    Jim Compton, United’s Vice president and Chief Revenue Officer, said: “We are delighted to improve our relationship with Aer Lingus to create additional benefits for United customers traveling between Ireland and the U.S., from smoother connections to improved lounge facilities. Our 18 peak-season departures per day to the U.S. from London Heathrow, where the vast majority of our operations are co-located with Aer Lingus in Terminal 1, connect well with Aer Lingus flights from the island of eire.

  • News: Etihad announces strongest ever 1Q results

    Etihad Airways, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary of operations, has recorded its strongest ever passenger for a primary quarter.

    The Abu Dhabi-based airline posted Q1 2013 passenger revenues of US$900 million (2012: US$758 million), a rise of nineteen per cent.

    Passenger numbers in Q1 2013 grew by 18 per cent, rising from 2.3 million to a record 2.8 million.

    The average seat factor was 80.5 per cent, four percentage points higher than the former year (2012: 76.5 per cent), despite a 12 per cent increase in capacity. The seat factor is above IATA’s current global average of 77.1 per cent.

    Etihad Cargo also had its strongest first quarter, with tonnage up 20 per cent from 85,152 to 101,776 tonnes.

    James Hogan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Etihad Airways, said: “Our Q1 2013 results have again outstripped global trends, with our strongest ever first quarter results for passenger revenue.

    “This performance demonstrates that Etihad Airways’ process of organic growth, wide-ranging partnerships, and strategic equity investments is delivering for us and our partners,” he said.

    Revenue from codeshare and equity partners jumped by 34 per cent from US$136 million to US$182 million within the first three months of the year and represented 20 per cent of total revenue within the quarter.

    “As well as increasing top-line revenue, our equity partnerships will improve bottom-line results, through cost savings delivered by operational synergies,” Mr Hogan said.

    Etihad Airways’ equity alliance comprises airberlin, Air Seychelles, Virgin Australia, and Aer Lingus. Each airline announced profitable results in the course of the first quarter of 2013, which demonstrates the success of this new alliance model for all of the member airlines.

    In February 2013, Etihad Airways announced a US$42 million profit for 2012 with revenues of US$4.8 billion and passenger numbers breaking 10 million for the 1st time.

    Etihad Airways’ available seat kilometres (ASKs) rose 12 per cent in Q1 2013 to fifteen.9 billion, (2012: 14.3 billion) because the fleet grew to 73 passenger and load aircraft (2012: 66 aircraft). Revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) rose 17 per cent to twelve.9 billion (2012: 10.9 billion) sharply out performing capacity growth.

    Running counter to industry trends, Etihad Cargo posted new highs within the first quarter. Volumes were up 20 per cent (on capacity growth of nineteen per cent). This was driven by a robust performance in North East Asia, combined with good growth from the Indian Subcontinent from mid-February.

    The new twice-weekly freighter operation from Houston to Abu Dhabi enhanced the consequences.

    Etihad Cargo also took delivery of a brand new Boeing 777 Freighter, which was deployed on European and African routes throughout the quarter. A second Boeing 747 freighter entered the fleet on the end of March, taking the full cargo fleet to 8 aircraft.

    Strong charter cargo results also underpinned the potential and suppleness of the freighter operation.