Hosted by Marriott International Lodging and British Airways, the sixth annual Global Pursuits travel trade show is to take place at the Renaissance London Heathrow Hotel on September 4 and 5.
For the first time, Global Pursuits has a dedicated website - which for the UK trade includes the option of online registration. The website also features full details of the event, hyper-links to all exhibiting hotels on marriott.com, and to all co-sponsor websites. The website can be found at www.matinet.net/globalpursuits. This year, both show days are open to UK visitors - allowing greater flexibility for visitors. Buyers from the rest of Europe will also attend on both days, and visitors from the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will attend on September 5. ¤¤¤¤¤ KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' UK operation, KLM uk and its low-cost sister airline, buzz, have announced network changes which will take effect in October. The changes will see KLM uk's feeder operation to Amsterdam increase capacity from its central London and UK regional airports whilst buzz will take over the operation of the London Stansted to Amsterdam route. The network restructure comes as KLM uk seeks to optimise its regional network into Amsterdam and concentrate on the high yielding point to point business traffic from the central London area whilst buzz expands its European network from Stansted. KLM uk currently flies six times daily from London Stansted Airport to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. From October 27, this aircraft capacity will be deployed to increase frequencies to Amsterdam from London City Airport, Newcastle and Manchester and to double capacity from Teesside. buzz will operate five times daily service from Stansted to Amsterdam with prices beginning at £21 one way including all taxes and insurance. ¤¤¤¤¤ Orient Lines has announced its advance cruise programme for Summer 2003. A choice of 17 great-value itineraries of seven to 19 nights to the Mediterranean and Greek Isles, Scandinavia, Russia and Northern Europe, North Africa and the Canaries is offered on the 826-passenger Marco Polo and the 1,026-passenger Crown Odyssey. The programme, which runs from April 19 to November 14, 2003, features a return to the Eastern Med for the 34,250-ton Crown Odyssey, with new seven- and 14-night cruises to Venice and the Aegean. Ports of call include Istanbul and Kusadasi (for tours to Ephesus) and Piraeus (Athens), which returns to the programme as a turn-round port. New for 2003 are two 14-night ex-UK round-trip cruises from Southampton, taking the 22,080-ton Marco Polo to Casablanca and the Canary Islands. Marco Polo also offers six ex-UK fly-cruises to/from Dover to the Baltic capitals, Iberia and the Mediterranean. ¤¤¤¤¤ Captain Paul Richards, the inventor of the Airogym DVT cushion, and Dr Ian Perry, an aviation medical expert, have called on airlines and authorities to ban all unsafe neck cushions, until further testing by the authorities has been carried out to determine the risks involved should the plane suffer a loss of cabin pressure. "There is potentially a serious problem with the neck cushions many passengers take on flights and some airlines give away to passengers in first class," said Richards. "If there was a cabin decompression, due to a computer glitch or pump failure, which has happened more than once in my flying career, this could be fairly unnoticeable in the cabin. "Pressure loss could be sufficient for the trapped air inside a neck cushion to greatly expand as the pressure outside the neck cushion, i.e. in the cabin, decreases. It is a scary sight to behold, and the wearer would find it very difficult to remove the neck cushion. "A large explosive decompression, such as a window blowing out, would cause the neck cushion to expand rapidly and explode at high volume." An Airogym statement said Richards has also recently invented a solution, the GraceFail - a simple burst disk which relieves the pressure gently and quietly before expansion of the neck cushion could cause damage.