Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson has signed a £14m agreement which will allow passengers to travel into space.  Branson has commissioned five “spaceliners” built in the US by the team behind the SpaceShipOne vehicle.  The rocket plane will became the first privately developed carrier to go above 100km in June 2005.  It will cost around £100,000 to go on a “Virgin Galactic” spaceliner, and the first flights should begin in about three years' time.

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Work on a tunnel and rail system under the Bosporus Strait connecting Europe and Asia in has just started in Istanbul.  The tunnel will be 13.7 kilometres long, (8.5 mile) tunnel and 1,400 meters of the tunnel will be underwater.  The Bosporus Strait, a 32 km waterway connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, separating European Turkey from Asian Turkey.  It bisects Istanbul as it flows by historic Ottoman castles, mosques and parkland.  The tunnel will become the third link between the city's European and Asian sides.

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Paperless and ticketless bookings made more attractive by incentives, discounts and offers of air miles are fast becoming the way to travel.  Airlines are planning to stop issuing paper tickets in the next three years, a move that could save the industry up to $3 billion a year in running costs, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).  Some carriers are already ahead of the game: In the past year, more than 18 million customers have used e-ticketing services on Continental Airlines.  The move isn’t limited to airlines, hotel chains such as the Hilton, InterContinental, Sheraton, and Hyatt, are starting to automate processes too.  In Malaysia, you can make air ticket enquiries by SMS to a travel agent and in the case of budget carrier AirAsia you can book tickets by SMS.

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France has been ranked as the place where British holidaymakers are most likely to become victims of credit card fraud.  Barclaycard’s annual world fraud index shows that France is the top credit card fraud hotspot, accounting for 43% of spending on stolen cards.  Second is the USA, 3^rd Spain, 4^th Ireland and 5^th Germany.

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Iran is to build a 1.7 billion euro ($2.0 billion) luxury tourism project on the Gulf island of Kish designed to rival nearby tourism hotspot Dubai.  Kish is a small island with relaxed rules on women's dress and mingling of the sexes although women are still required to wear headscarves and cover their bodies when swimming, and alcohol consumption is banned.

The “Flower of the East” project , Iran’s largest tourism project since the 1979 Islamic revolution is aimed at attracting foreign money and diversifying its economy away from oil.  A German company has won the bid to develop a tourism, recreational and residential complex in KishIsland which lies some 125 miles (200 km) away from Dubai to the south. 

The complex will include a 7-star hotel to rival Dubai's 7-star Burj al-Arab, a marina, 27-hole golf course, sports clubs, shopping malls and 4,700 luxury apartments.  The project is largely aimed at Iranian expatriates seeking a holiday home in their native land, will be completed by the end of 2009.

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Spain, which attracts 50 million tourists a year, is building its first private airport 200 km (125 miles) south of Madrid in a bid to lure budget airlines away from the capital and develop a deprived mining area.  The airport is expected to be operational from the second half of 2006, is being built on the plains of La Mancha, best known for Cervantes's Don Quixote and will be named after the windmill-tilting knight. 

The new airport has been nicknamed “Madrid's Luton” after the British airport outside London which challenges London's Heathrow and Gatwick, particularly in the budget flight market. The Don Quixote airport will try to woo low cost airlines with lower tariffs and flexible timetables. A high-speed train link connects Ciudad Real with central Madrid in 45 minutes, making it a viable alternative to the capital.

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Budding British travel operator Don Lucey is proposing to offer tours to Iraq.  Never mind the troops, killings and kidnappings, Don Lucey, a former soldier and policeman who worked in Iraq in 2003 has set up Bann Tours in Swindon, western England. “It has a lot to offer, a lot of history. It's not just all war and people killing each other. Obviously terrorists scare a lot of people, but people like myself want to prove that they are not in control,” he said in a telephone interview.

Lucey said tourism in Iraq had to start somewhere, and that he and his clients were determined to be the catalyst. The 10-day trip, which will take in some ancient sites, costs 1,200 pounds ($2,192) per person, not including insurance.

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The US government is dropping a plan to collect personal data on airline passengers to assess security risks because of privacy concerns.  Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said officials had all but scrapped plans for the controversial Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System, known as CAPPS II, which has come under criticism from privacy advocates and some members of the US Congress.  The program, which has never been tested fully, was launched after September 11 2001 to refine electronic techniques for using personal information to identify and rate potential threats.

Ridge said a new program with a different name might be developed to replace CAPPS II. It could be replaced by a new “registered traveller” program if enough people volunteer to provide personal information, the report said.

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A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested in a £1,000 travel award?

Know someone who is? We have £1,000 to award each year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan. Interested?

Then see our legacy page on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent travel trip and we'll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!

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According to the UK Foreign Office, there is a high threat to Western, including British, interests from terrorism in Somalia, as there is in a number of countries in East Africa and the Horn.  You should be aware that a number of British nationals and Westerners have been killed and injured in attacks in Somaliland. The Somaliland authorities believe these were terrorist inspired. Two British nationals were shot dead in Sheikh in Oct 2003. In the same month an Italian aid worker was murdered in Boroma near the border with Ethiopia. On 19 March 2004, a Kenyan woman working for a German Government aid organisation was shot dead in an ambush on the Hargeisa-Berbera road. Her German colleague was injured in the attack. Several suspects have been detained for this attack and for the two earlier similar incidents. This latter attack resulted in the temporary withdrawal of international aid personnel.

In May 2004, a remote-controlled landmine was found planted in a remote airstrip in the south of Somalia. UN and European Commission flights to Somalia are consequently now much restricted.

The Somaliland authorities have established a Special Protection Unit (SPU) which accompanies all UN missions outside Hargeisa. NGOs and individuals can also apply for an SPU escort at a cost of US$4.00 per day (or US$7.00 per 24 hours). British nationals who decide to stay in or visit Somaliland, despite our advice to the contrary, are urged to obtain details of the new system and to ensure that, when travelling, they take adequate security precautions.

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Want to check out how good the seat is on your next flight?  Take a look at this: http://www.seatguru.com/ which warns you of poor seats in the general seating arrangement of different types of aircraft operated by a wide range of airlines.

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The Burma Campaign UK has released its latest list of companies that invest in Burma, or Myanmar as it is called by the country’s military dictatorship.  You may be interested to know that high class UK travel company Abercrombie and Kent are on the “dirty” list.  For more info, see: Burma Campaign

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Spanish police are targeting tourist resorts in a crackdown on holidaymakers who drink and drive.  Until this summer, penalties for drink-driving applied only to full-time residents with tourists being let off with a caution and a small fine.  But now visitors who commit the offence will face fines of up to £5,000 and a three-year ban from driving in Spain.  Those involved in accidents resulting in the death or injury of others will be jailed.  Despite its modern road system, Spain has one of Europe's worst safety records, with one person killed or injured every 11 minutes.

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