E-Travel Store

In 2010, holidaymakers were left confused due to the collapse of major travel companies such as ‘Goldtrail,’ ‘XL’, and ‘Kiss Flights.

The ‘Red Flag Alert’ report, that the economic downturn is ruining holiday bookings and enhancing the risk of failure within travel and tourism operators.

A new report claims that the huge drop in people booking holidays will shortly lead to a new wave of company failure. The report has revealed that the number of businesses affected by this financial downturn has rose by a massive 49% in the last year. The report stresses the amount of companies under pressure exclaiming that the amount of struggling companies have risen by 3 per cent year on year and have risen by 29% in just the last three months alone.

‘Consumers are reining in their spending. Sectors reliant on discretionary spending are bearing the brunt.’

One business specialist claimed: “The months leading up to Christmas could either make or break high street names.”

The awareness over the extent of travel companies struggles came as famous tourism company, Thomas Cook announced that they had just taken a new short-term loan with its banks for due to its seasonal low points coming up in the next couple of months. The loan comes after three profit warnings throughout the year and the departure of the companies’ chief executive, which is believed to have caused an 80% drop in share price.

Cancelled flights

Picture courtesy of comedy_nose

When marking their gender on passports Australian citizens can now choose between male, female or indeterminate. This means that Transgender people can pick whether they are male or female if their choice is supported by a doctor and those who are intersex (biologically not entirely male or female can now mark their sex as X rather than being forced to choose male or female.

Previous to this decision, those applying for Australian passports could only alter their sex on their passport if they had, had surgery. Many countries still follow this rule however any nation under the International Civil Aviation Organization’s authority is eligible to introduce category ‘x’ option on their passports. In the UK you can change the sex on your passport without having a sex change operation as long as you provide evidence that you are permanently living in a new gender role.

One of the reasons for changing the choice on Australians passports was highlighted by Australian Senator Louise Pratt and she said that the change was needed for people who have trouble when going abroad because their appearance does not match their gender. Senator Pratt’s partner was born female and now lives as a man. There is also support for the changes from Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd who said the change would ‘make life easier’.

Senator Louise Pratt said: “’X’ is really quite important, because there are people who are indeed genetically ambiguous and were probably arbitrarily assigned as one sex or the other at birth. ’It’s a really important recognition of people’s human rights that if they choose to have their sex as ‘indeterminate’, they can.”

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s foreign minister, said: “This amendment makes life easier and significantly reduces the administrative burden for sex and gender diverse people who want a passport that reflects their gender and physical appearance.”

The reforms were negotiated with the Australian Government by Peter Hyndal, on behalf of human rights advocacy group A Gender Agenda; he explained that the new guidelines were in line with more flexible approaches to gender in U.S. and British passports. He also said: “It’s amazingly positive,’ he said. ‘It’s the biggest single piece of law reform related to transgender and intersex issues at a commonwealth level ever in this country – mind-blowing.”

In the future it may be possible to keep tabs on your luggage after two IT companies have developed new technology that is able to track your baggage with a mobile phone and social media. The two companies IT firm Amadeus and airline technology company SITA joined forces to create this new technology which will be very handy for travellers.

The technology could be with us as early as next year and would put an end to the fear many travellers have about losing their luggage on holiday. The new technology uses a sophisticated tagging method and will use travellers own handheld devices to track luggage from the minute a bag is checked in to when it arrives on the conveyor belt at the other end.

According to Amadeus the partnership aims to reduce the loss or delayed arrival of suitcases, in 2010 29 million cases were lost around the world the company will be launching the luggage tracker in 54 airports worldwide. At the moment SITA’s BagMessage system is used by air carriers and airports globally however in the near future the service is expected to be rolled out to enable passengers to personally keep a close track on their luggage.

A SITA Airport Solutions spokesman said: “In the future, passengers will get real-time updates on their luggage when SITA’s technology is used.”

Many travellers fear that their luggage will be lost when they travel in fact a survey by JD Power found that over 34 per cent of passengers had experienced baggage issues on recent flights and 37 per cent of travellers said they would like to use their mobile phone to receive real-time baggage arrival updates.

Lost luggage is also a continuing problem for airlines and airports, many are working on streamlining the collection experience, some airlines such as KLM and Qantas have implemented baggage-drop schemes in which passengers can tag and drop their own baggage. The first airport in the world, to introduce a computer to deal with lost luggage enquiries instead of a human was Bermuda’s LF Wade International airport.

A £0.75billion savings target for 2012 has been outlined by IATA, using self-service baggage tagging and the development of baggage tracking solutions to achieve it.