Europe a la Carte Blog

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This post is brought to you by Europe a la Carte, adviser to English tourism.

England have taken Europe a la Carte’s advice and jazzed up the border crossing into England on the A1. Entry to England was very low key with a tiny sign and no flags compared to the Scottish side which has an enormous sign and three flags. However now England have erected three St George Cross flags. I suppose it had to be three because it couldn’t be fewer than Scotland and more than three would have seemed like one-upmanship.

After Europe a la Carte’s advice

Before Europe a la Carte’s advice

Call me biased but I still that the Scottish entry is better. There is a large Welcome sign, also the blue flags with white crosses are more eye catching than white flags with a red cross and there’s no large Welcome to England sign. Now this is said as an objective observation as although I’m Scottish I currently live in England and drive up and down the A1 regularly.

The Scottish Border on the A1

So England you’ve gone part of the way, how about a nice big Welcome sign too?

I received an email this morning from Kango informing me that they are changing their name to Uptake. The new name is deemed to be more relevant to the business’ aim of gathering, organising and delivering the collective travel wisdom from the internet.

It’s a big step to change your name and I’m sure that Kango must have thought carefully about this. Personally I don’t like the new name as Uptake could be the uptake of absolutely anything. I thought Kango had a lot more relevance to travel and encouraged you to travel in positive ” can go” way.

This all made my think about my own business name “Europe a la Carte“. Does it say what my business does? I chose the name when I started my travel business in 2002. The name was to indicate that you could see Europe on an independent “a la carte” basis rather than the “set menu” approach of a package holiday.

However my business name could be understood as being the name of a catering business as travel is not mentioned. Also “a la carte” does have some connotations of being more expensive which is contrary to my strapline of “authentic travel in Europe on a modest budget”.

I’ve toyed with the idea of changing my business name but haven’t been able to come up with a better replacement. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s difficult to encompass everything in a business name. Some have achieved this, one of the best examples I can think of in the travel industry is TravelRants. the UK travel consumer blog, where you can let off steam about travel related issues.

What’s your opinion on the importance of a travel business name? Do you think Kango is right to change their name to Uptake?

On the day when the predicted house price crash appears to be materialising in the UK with house prices dropping 2.5% in March 2008, Channel 4 Television screens their new series of Property Ladder, along the lines “How to make a quick buck in the housing market”.

Property Ladder I thought more like Property Snake, where you could lose rather than gain your fortune. Speculating on the property market could now entail slithering down more snakes than fortuitous ascents of ladders.

by zoonie

What about second home owners who may have funded their purchase through re-mortgage of their main residence. They may be forced to sell up as their mortgage costs increase and the value of their investment falls. Cheap access to second homes abroad may disappear as flight ticket prices increase. Airlines may decide to cut routes if demand falls, making it more difficult and expensive to make frequent visits to a holiday home.

Never mind property speculators and those with a second home, all property owners and borrowers could be affected. The Daily Mail states that 60% of UK adults plan sweeping economies in the next 12 moths. The Telegraph reports that three our of four families with incomes over £30,000 per annum plan to cut back on spending this year. This is due to increases in credit, housing, fuel and food prices. Expenditure on travel is an obvious target for trimming the household budget.

So is the Property Snake poisoning your travel plans?

When I was reading the Twitter updates of my friends in the travel sector I came across a link to Travel Alltop a collection of stories from all the top travel sites and blogs in the web.  Well imagine my delight when I spotted the Europe a la Carte blog near the top of the page, in the left hand position of the second row.

What I really like about the site, apart from the fact that my blog is prominently listed in a collection of around 60 travel blogs and sites, is that I can click on the headline of the feed headlines and read the first few sentences of the post and then click if I want to read the whole post.  I think that this is great, as it means I can skim through all the latest travel content on a daily basis.

There are loads of other categories too such as wine, food and photography. So if you want to have a single source to the top stories on your favourite topic Alltop.com is for you.

It’s official the UK has the most expensive hotel rates in the whole of Europe. The highest increase in rates were both in Scotland, with an average annual increase of hotel prices in Aberdeen of 34% and 21% in Inverness. The average nightly price of a hotel room in the UK now stands at £106.

All the more reason to find value for money accommodation by looking at budget hotel chains with Travelodge rates as low as £19 a night for a family room on their advance booking, non refundable Saver rate. You can find the best deal with more than 30 accommodation suppliers on your preferred hotel with the price comparison site HotelsCombined. It’s always worth checking the price on the hotels own website too.

After all, if you are planning to get out and about and see as much as possible during your stay in the UK, you don’t want to be paying through the nose for a bed for the night.

I was certainly aware of rising prices in the last week,  Diesel had gone up another one pence a litre to £1.07 when I filled my car, I read that British Gas were increasing their prices by 15% and in the supermarket a 4 pint container of milk costing around £1 a few months ago now costs around £1.45.

The World Travel and Tourism Council is predicting that globally travel will continue to increase but probably at lower rate than in recent years. They do acknowledge that high energy prices reduce households disposable income and increase fuel costs for carriers.

I’m not sure, it could go either way in the UK.  People could think that they going to have their holidays come hell or high water, even if it means putting on the credit card and/or reducing spending in other leisure activities.  Or all the inflationary pressures plus the anticipated fall in the value of UK property could all prove too much and travel could have to be curtailed.

There are different ways to cut travel expenditure.  If you take several holidays a year, you can reduce the number of trips.  You could go for a shorter holiday or downscale your accommodation grade to cut costs. You could take more holidays in the UK or stick to Europe to trim transportation costs.

What do you think?  Are you reviewing your travel plans as part of a household budget review?

I read about one of the wackiest stabs at authentic travel experiences today, a cruise ship with a real grass lawn. Celebrity Cruises decided that having a grassy area would add to cruise passengers enjoyment and that artificial grass would not sit well with the company’s mantra of providing “authentic experiences”, so it had to be the real thing. The lawn weighs 50 metric tons and there’s an additional 50 metrics tons of fresh water to maintain the grass. Certainly not the greenest of moves.

QM2 - on the grass by planetina

Would this feature attract you? I’ve never been on a cruise but it isn’t lack of grass that has deterred me.

I now a expert on the Worldreviewer website. I read that Worldreviewer was tipped to one of the travel websites to watch in 2008 and were looking for travel experts with detailed knowledge in specific areas so I thought I’d have a closer look at the site. It’s aimed at the “lifestyle” or “experience” traveller and I thought that I could offer some expert insight into getting off the beaten track in Europe.

The site aims to be “the ultimate travel planning tool”, assisting you in making the best holiday choice and giving you the opportunity to help others find their ideal holiday based on collective knowledge. You can search by type of experience for which you are looking and/or location. You can rate and comment on the experiences and attractions, upload images and add your own reviews.

If you want to become an expert you need to demonstrate your specialist knowledge by submitting 5 - 10 experiences to the editor.

This post was featured on the Travel Blogs Carnival of 27 January 2007.

Evidently UK residents are willing to spend more time researching their holiday than their mortgage. While 36% of Brits spend more than 10 hours researching a leisure trip, only 22% would be wiling to spend this amount of time on finding the best mortgage deal.

Is this a rational use of time? I don’t think so. Finding a good mortgage deal could save you thousands of pounds a year. You may have to change mortgage every two to three years to ensure you find the most competitive product but think of all the extra holidays you could afford with the savings in interest repayments. I do appreciate that it’s probably more fun to do travel than financial research but doing thorough financial research and yes that does mean reading through the small print. is a good investment of your time.

John o’Groats, erroneously known as the most northerly point of the UK,  may be about to receive a much needed makeover.

I’ve only been to John o’Groats once, almost 30 years ago and I have to agree with Lonely Planet’s assessment that it’s “worst and most embarrassing tourist attraction in Scotland”, really just a car park, some tourist tat shops and a run down hotel. At present the average visitor only spends 10 minutes there. Let’s hope that there is investment to turn it into something worth visiting.

John o’Groats Last House by auz