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  • Alta Vista Suites, a new hotel on Santorini

    Alta Vista suites (altavistasuites.com), the beautiful new addition to Santorini’s hotel scene, opens its doors on 1st May.

    The exclusive three suite property is the most recent within the Aqua Vista portfolio (www.aquavistahotels.com), a set of outstanding accommodations in great locations across Santorini and Crete.

    Perched high at the cliffs of Imerovigli, 3km from the island’s capital Fira, the hotel has glorious views of the Aegean and the volcano and belongs to Greek pop star and one time Eurovision song contest entrant Michalis Hatzigiannis.

    The styling and layout are strongly focused towards romance and Alta Vista is predicted to prove very talked-about with honeymooners. The 3 suites, Passion, Senses and Love, each sit all alone level, giving guests complete privacy and seclusion. They’re individually designed and furnished in an effortless, elegant, Cycladic style and decorated with contemporary artefacts by prominent designers consisting of Jaime Hayon and Patricia Urquiola. All have expansive outdoor space with views out over the Caldera and there’s also a stunning pool and cave style eating area.

    Continuing the romance theme, Alta Vista’s 200sq metre patio is an excellent spot for a marriage ceremony and reception, allowing couples to tie the knot in spectacular style. It might host as much as 50 guests and is a really rare space inside the often cramped and impossibly steep caldera cliff edge.

    Alta Vista’s location at one end of Imerovigli means at night there’s also a lovely illuminated view of the village along the cliff edge.

    Room rates start at 180 euros per night including champagne breakfast.

    Recommended

  • News: Abu Dhabi plans major tourism push in Saudi Arabia

    Abu Dhabi’s tourism industry is planning every week-long promotion of the destination and its expanding offering in Saudi Arabia later this month with a high profile participation at Riyadh Travel Fair to be followed by a 3-city road show.

    The promotion, organised by Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority, is being supported by a number of industry stakeholders including hotels and resorts, Etihad Airways, headline attractions and a novel integrated wellness facility on Saadiyat Island.

    The destination sales blitz begins at Riyadh Travel Fair – the Kingdom’s leading tourism trade event, which runs on the Four Seasons Hotel – Kingdom Tower inside the Saudi capital from April 23rd-26th.

    The Abu Dhabi delegation will then move directly to road show presentations to the Saudi travel trade in Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah.

    “We have superb airlift from Saudi Arabia to Abu Dhabi with three providers – Etihad Airways, Saudi Arabian Airlines and NASAIR – now servicing a combined total of 68 scheduled non-stop flights per week from the dominion,” said Mubarak Al Nuami, director promotions & overseas offices, TCA Abu Dhabi.

    “This give us huge potential to draw Saudi visitors to our emirate where we believe our product mix will meet their specific needs – certainly one of our main focuses now could be to make this target market fully conscious about the truth that there’s now much more to work out and do in Abu Dhabi and to cajole them to stick with us longer than they currently do on average.”

    Saudi Arabia is currently Abu Dhabi’s sixth largest overseas source marketplace for hotel guests.

    In the primary two months of this year some 12,322 Saudis stayed within the emirate’s 141 hotels and hotel apartments and delivered 27,256 guest nights. They stayed, on average, 2.25 nights.

  • News: Norwegian launches Fort Lauderdale flights out of Oslo

    Norwegian has launched Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as a brand new destination from Oslo. 

    This is the airline’s third long-haul destination from Oslo Gardermoen (OSL), making Norwegian the most important operator of direct long-haul routes from Norway’s main airport.

    “Long-haul flying has too long been characterized by high fares and restricted flexibility.

    “The great reception Norwegian has received after launching low-fare tickets to Manhattan and Bangkok shows that there’s a need for competitive fares from Scandinavia to the u. s. and Asia,” said chief executive Bjørn Kjos.

    “We’re planning several new direct long-haul routes, enabling not just Scandinavians to experience all of the world, but in addition giving foreign visitors easy and affordable access to the Nordic region,” Kjos said.

    Norwegian launched Bangkok and Manhattan in November 2012; moreover the corporate flies to Dubai in the course of the winter season. 

    Norwegian will operate two weekly flights between Oslo Gardermoen (OSL) and Fort Lauderdale (FLL) – on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Departure from OSL is at 15:10, arriving FLL at 19:30 local time.

    Departure from FLL is on Mondays and Fridays at 21:30, arriving at OSL at 12:35 tomorrow.

    The inaugural flight is on November 30th.

    In addition to the direct routes from OSL to Fort Lauderdale, Bangkok and The big apple, Norwegian operates direct routes to Fort Lauderdale from Stockholm and Copenhagen and to Big apple and Bangkok from Stockholm.

    The company has a complete of six weekly flights from Scandinavia to Ny, Bangkok and Fort Lauderdale.

  • UNWTO welcomes Azerbaijan’s new e-visa system

    UNWTO welcomes Azerbaijan´s implementation of a brand new e-visa system streamlining visa applications into an electronic format, aimed to draw more international tourists into the rustic.

    The electronic visa system, operational since March 2013, was administered upon the decree of the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, to facilitate visa procedures for foreigners traveling to the rustic. The measure enables document facilitation and reduction of visa costs and processing times.

    “Azerbaijan’s decision is the popularity of the way visa facilitation is really a key measure to advertise tourism in a rustic. This new system encourages travel to Azerbaijan and can result in further development of the country´s tourism sector during the increase of international tourism flows,” said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai.

    Currently, there are 25 travel companies operating within the country which might be authorized to issue e-visas to international tourists, and initiatives are being undertaken to extend this number. Concurrent with the implementation of the system, border checkpoints can be improved consistent with the Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku to ease entrance of international tourists into Azerbaijan.

    Visa facilitation is proven to be a key measure to advertise tourism’s growth and its impact on economic growth and job creation. A UNWTO/WTTC report prepared for the G20 shows that the implementation of visa facilitation measures among the many G20 economies could generate up to an 5.1 million jobs and additional US$ 200 million extra in exports from international tourism between 2013 and 2015.

  • News: IATA reorganises regional structures

    The International Air Transport Association has announced an organisational restructuring of its main divisions and regional operations to even better address the wishes of its 240 member airlines.

    Senior management changes were also announced to support the hot structure.

    All changes will take effect from July 1st 2013.

    A key tenet of the restructuring is the idea of ‘Global Development, Regional Delivery’.

    “IATA is changing to deliver even greater value to its members.

    “Strengthening our regional structures where we’re closest to our members may help us to realize and meet their needs better. 

    “We have also regrouped activities that experience grown organically through the years with the goal of being more intuitive to these we tackle.

    “This will optimize our ability to develop, modernize and deliver the worldwide standards that are the inspiration of aviation-enabled global connectivity,” said Tony Tyler, IATA director general.

    IATA’s regional operations would be consolidated from seven regional structures into five.

    These can be based across the five hubs (Amman, Beijing, Madrid, Miami and Singapore) where IATA has already been amalgamating activities linked to its industry financial systems.

    Each region remains to be led by a regional vp who’s accountable for driving all activities within their region, while maintaining the consistency of IATA’s global standards and positions.

    To ensure effective regional input to IATA’s leadership, RVPs will report back to the director general. 

    Under the plans North and South America should be consolidated into an Americas region and based in Miami.

    The combined region may be led by Peter Cerda who’s promoted from regional director for safety, operations and infrastructure for the Americas to RVP for the Americas.

    Africa and Middle East North Africa would be combined into one region to be called Africa and Middle East.

    Hussein Dabbas, from IATA’s Amman regional office, will lead the region as RVP.

    Asia-Pacific, North Asia and Europe will continue to serve members in those regions as inside the current structure with regional offices in Singapore, Beijing and Madrid.

    The RVPs leading these regions stay Maunu Von Lueders, Zhang Baojian and Rafael Schvartzman, respectively.