• The Move Towards Regional Luxury Travel

    Jan 29, 2021

    The latest in a long line of luxury regional resorts to open within Australia brings about an unexpected beach vibe to it. Accor Hotels, last month, opened the latest addition to its luxury marquee, The Sebel Hotels and Resorts, in the Victorian border town of Yarrawonga. The resort features full 360-degree water views of the Murray River and is located just out of Yarrawonga on the new nationally renowned Black Bull championship golf course. Now, this resort does something very surprising which I personally did not expect at all. When you travel into regional Victoria and you are staying at… Read more »

  • Emirates Resuming International Flights To Australia Less Than A Week After Suspending Them

    Jan 29, 2021

    During late December and early January, multiple outbreaks of COVID19 and one specific scare with an outbreak potentially related to the highly infectious UK strain of COVID19 meant many states within Australia reduced their international arrival flight caps. Those caps had been in place since the travel bans which were enacted at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. The result was on January 15th, QANTAS partner, Emirates had announced that flights to Australian capital cities would be indefinitely suspended until those flight caps could be lifted again with filling flights and running them becoming increasingly challenging. For the past… Read more »

  • Cathay Pacific Gearing New Boeing 777-9s For Luxury Travellers

    Jan 29, 2021

    There was a time in the past when airlines were looking to bit by bit increase mass payloads of their planes. This push for bigger planes spawned planes such as the Boeing 747 and the Airbus A380 which both experienced long shelf-lives and at different points in history were the most flown planes on the planet. But as airlines shift their ideals from that of volume to social responsibility many aircraft manufacturers have gone from offering bigger planes to offering smaller, more efficient, and longer distance planes. This has caused airline operators to rethink how they are treating international travel… Read more »

  • US To Enforce 14 Day Quarantine On All Incoming Passengers

    Jan 29, 2021

    Joe Biden’s first full day as president brought about a plethora of surprises. One thing that wasn’t surprise was the administration’s newfound commitment to fighting COVID19. One of Biden’s initial announcements on Thursday (the first full day Joe Biden spent as president of the United States) was that the US would now be enforcing a 14-day quarantine program on all new arrivals to the country to stem the spread of COVID19. The president claimed that this breaker was in place in an attempt to help US authorities get on top of the new highly infectious UK strain of COVID19 which… Read more »

  • Norway designed a new passport, and it’s making the rest of the world jealous

    Nov 19, 2020

    On a far more positive note, I thought I’d tout the horn of Europe’s Norway who has, in the past week, revealed a refreshed design for their ID and passport system. Norway’s passports moving forward will be some of the only ones on earth to feature multiple different colours (white, blue and red) and be professionally designed by a world-renowned graphics studio. Neue Design Studio (who are based in Oslo) won the contract after presenting a concept to the Norwegian Government featuring Norway’s sweeping landscapes. This has flowed through to the final design which features illustrations of the country’s landscape… Read more »

  • Hong Kong and Singapore agree on travel bubble, Australia may be next inline

    Nov 19, 2020

    There’s been chatter about travel bubbles between various nations since May this year. Most of it was bluster and speculation up until Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a travel bubble with New Zealand months back. Then the prospect of international travel in a post-COVID19 world became much more real. More recently and internationally Hong Kong and Singapore have agreed to their own travel bubble. The two city-based nations are re-establishing travel links as of November 22 and visitors from either nation will not require quarantine when visiting each other. But that isn’t the first time we’ve heard of Singapore talking… Read more »

  • Why the Wellness Travel trend will be a key asset to the corporate world’s COVID19 recovery

    Nov 19, 2020

    Wellness travel was recognised as the fastest-growing luxury travel trend in 2019 according to Knight Frank’s “The Wealth Report” which is conducted annually. And that looks to be a trend which continues in the final quarter of 2020 and will into 2021 research is finding. Travellers are looking more and more to relax in a carefree environment and to travel to a destination which is not just good for their physical wellbeing, but there is also a renewed interest in wellbeing travel that benefits mental wellbeing as well. This is reflected in the hospitality market with wilderness cabin operators, Unyoked,… Read more »

  • COVID19 vaccinations may be mandatory for international visitors to Australia from 2021

    Nov 19, 2020

    Pfizer (multi-national private pharmaceutical group), last Monday, revealed that their COVID19 vaccination in development has an effectiveness rate of well over 90%. This became a welcome surprise for many worldwide analysts and sceptics who were convinced that a COVID19 vaccine wouldn’t garner effectiveness of higher than 70%. None the less, the announcement was celebrated as a success with hundreds of millions of vaccine doses estimated to be ready to be made available to the public in America by April of 2021. Back in Australia though, the Federal Government’s new National Vaccine Policy may require visitors to Australia to show proof… Read more »

  • Victorians embrace newfound freedom in the regions. But what does the future bring for corporate travel?

    Nov 19, 2020

    It was apparent over the previous weekend that Melbournians were keen to reinvigorate the flailing Victorian regional economy. With beach towns very quickly becoming full to the brim as of Friday the 13th of November. It was also good to see that the majority of those visitors took the still current COVID19 restrictions seriously as well. But Victoria hasn’t totally recovered yet, there is one sector of tourism and travel that’s still yet to get a fast start back into recovery. Corporate travel was one of the last forms of travel to go at the start of the COVID19 pandemic… Read more »

  • It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

    Nov 19, 2020

    Just as it was looking like Australian borders were never going to open, states last week began making announcements about the easing of border restrictions with Victoria. Interstate travel is predicted to be far more fluid prior to the Christmas period with all states bar Western Australia making a verbal commitment on Friday’s national cabinet meeting to open state borders come December 25th. This change in heart comes has Victoria extends its lack of recorded COVID19 cases daily. As of Monday, the 16th, Victoria had gone 17 days without recording any cases of COVID19. An effort that is only surpassed… Read more »