Politics, Travel, Media, and occasionally the Politics of Travel Media

First there was Flashdance, then there were flash mobs, now there are flash sales, where goods are offered at massive discounts for a limited period. The concept began in the high-street stores in an effort to galvanise consumer spending, but it lends itself perfectly to travel, too, and companies are starting to offer their own flash sales, with special deals available for anything from 15 minutes to a fortnight. Some of this summer’s deals promise huge savings – but blink, or at least, go and make a cup of tea, and you could miss out.

Read the rest at Telegraph.co.uk

Up in Italy’s highlands they still know how to make their own fun. Last night’s local sports bulletin featuring fiolet, rebatta and tzan hinted at a taste for the bizarre. Not for Valdostans a convenience–sport diet of Monday night football or cricket on the green.

But then the people of the Valle d’Aosta are a parochial bunch: these 120,000 mountain–dwellers secured an autonomy agreement and live under their own government. Stop in for a bite and you’ll clock some very un–Italian dishes on the menu—does your local trattoria serve Fontina cheese and cabbage soup?

Read the rest at Perceptive Travel.

It’s more immediate than blogging, less frivolous than Facebook, more social than SMS or instant messaging – and suddenly it’s everywhere. Sometimes known as micro-blogging, Twitter is simple: write what you like in up to 140-character chunks, then send it to everyone in your network.

But it is far more than simply an outlet for those with a dubious compulsion to share. Twitter has already broken major news stories, for example. Indians caught up in November’s Mumbai attacks tweeted (that’s the verb) well ahead of news media.

Now it’s being taken up by business, and travel is in the vanguard.

Read the rest at Telegraph.co.uk.

Then ‘How to set up your Twitter account‘.

And if you’re interested in travel, try my recommended ‘50 great travel tweeters‘.

(Also ran in print in the Sunday Telegraph, 22 February.)

A year ago, I wrote a piece here about the great art of the Gothic and Renaissance periods, and how we owe its existence to the Dead Hand of the (Tuscan) State. But where should we look for actions of slightly more modern government working to enrich our lives? Certainly not in the unending flow of nutty, illiberal laws; nor in the insidious creep of compliance culture (subject of a memorable Stephen Fry podcast). So, here’s an idea: look to the British Library.

More specifically, their Turning the Pages project, 10 years in the developing, that put our national library in the very first rank of learning innovation worldwide. (See the video.) The project’s achievement has been to digitize 15 (so far) of the Library’s most valuable manuscripts, and deliver them inside an interactive online environment that re-creates the experience of handling them in the raw.
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Last November I wrote a piece outlining the worrying implications of the BBC’s acquisition of Lonely Planet for the Corporation’s non-commercial UK neutrality. I’m not the only travel journalist with these sorts of doubts. The BBC Royal Charter and Agreement, remember, is very clear on how the Beeb can and cannot interact with the UK media market:

The Agreement requires all commercial activities undertaken by the BBC to comply with four criteria. …

4. comply with BBC fair trading guidelines and in particular avoid distorting the market.

Of course, that begs a whole series of questions, but this much is plain: BBC Worldwide activities that distort a domestic market in which the corporation is a player are forbidden. This, essentially, was the basis for the decision to disallow BBC investment in ultra-local video last year. It’s the reason that the BBC’s acquisition (through BBC Worldwide) of Lonely Planet should be reversed at the first opportunity. [Read more →]

Gordon Ramsay’s York and Albany, 127–129 Parkway, Camden, London NW1

Tel. 020 7388 3344

Set lunch menu: £18

Main courses: £14–18

There are many Saturdays when I can’t afford to lunch at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, and last Saturday was yet another of those. Because, and let’s get this straight up-front, the York and Albany isn’t a Gordon Ramsay restaurant. Not really. The “Patron Chef” is Angela Hartnett, Ramsay’s talented right-hand-cook, but quite what an Executive/Patron Chef actually does isn’t always clear to me. I picture her getting a menu faxed through every now and then, scrawling “fine” on the bottom and faxing it back to Head Chef, Colin Buchan. But then I’m a cynic.

Chicken with foie gras and chicken liver parfait

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It was announced this week that my second guidebook, co-written with Stephen Keeling, has been judged Best Guidebook 2008 at the ENIT Travel Writing Awards. Obviously, we’re chuffed to bits to have impressed the panel of Italian tourism experts, and to have beaten so many other fantastic new guidebooks. The new goal is for my next book, due out next year, to win the 2009 prize.

There’s more on the announcement here:

The winning Frommer’s title written by authors Donald Strachan and Stephen Keeling was singled out for the quality of its research, writing and opening up a new area in Italian tourism.

It’s a commonplace on this site that one should “defend” the BBC from unceasing, unsubtle and rather tiresome attacks from trenchant right-wingers. Very little written about the organization by either the Daily Mail, or any of its apers on the Web, has any merit. That’s true. The Beeb is worth defending: there’s something enriching about our ad-free broadcaster. Something that serves the public, that stands above the commercial white noise of modern television. Of course, the organization isn’t entirely non-commercial: BBC Worldwide makes decent profits that, at least nominally, feed back into UK public service broadcasting. So far, so uncontroversial. However, BBC Worldwide’s 2007 acquisition of travel guidebook publisher Lonely Planet did raise objections, [Read more →]

It costs me about £25–30 in petrol to drive the 55 miles from my home in Hackney to Brighton, and the same 55 back again. First Capital Connect is asking north of £90 for a return ticket for our family this weekend, starting from London Bridge. So if there’s a traffic jam on the northbound M23 this Sunday evening (inevitable), you can blame me.

If I lived in Florence, a family return trip of similar length to Livorno (birthplace of the PCI, home of the cacciucco) comes to about €33. From Brussels, a weekend rail trip to Bruges, 90km away, would cost us just over €49. A slightly longer journey in France, from Lyon to Chambery and back, comes to €59. [Read more →]

So, you’re heading to the eurozone with sterling at a historic low; to Italy, where inflation is at a 12-year high; and to the country’s priciest region. Are you in for a cashflow nightmare? Not necessarily.

Booking value summer accommodation for families can be tricky [Read more →]