A growing number of U.S. airlines and online travel companies are outsourcing customer service jobs overseas in a bid to reduce costs. United Airlines is about to source a customer call centre in Nova Scotia. Travelocity will outsource about 300 jobs to India over the next year and expects to save $10 million in 2004 as a result of the change. American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Continental Airlines and US Airways said they do not redirect any calls from U.S. customers to call centres outside the United States. Delta Air Lines, which outsourced nearly 1,000 jobs last year to three call centres in Bangalore, Bombay and New Delhi India, says it is aware of the potential pitfalls.

The Beetle’s own experience of speaking with e-bookers, a travel booking organisation that has been outsourced to India has not been good. The operatives are charming and polite, but pushy and lack in-depth travel knowledge. They also returned calls at 10pm!

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The Burmese government has given the go-ahead for the creation of the world’s largest tiger reserve. The reserve is planned to add to the existing Hukawng Valley reserve making the area some 30,000 sq km, which is about the same size as Belgium.

The news has pleased conservationists who were alarmed when a 2003 survey revealed only 150 to 200 tigers left. Conservationists say that work must be done to train rangers and stamp out the lucrative trade in tiger body parts and new avenues of income will have to be found for local people so they do not succumb to the temptation to profit from the growing regional demand for tiger products. At $200 per kilo, the profits from even a small tiger could be equivalent to 10 years of income for many in this area.

Tiger skins, heads and claws are often prized as trophies, while bones and internal organs are used in Asian medicines. China is the largest market for the trade.

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Holidaymakers are supporting the Travel Foundation, a new charity that is trying to help manage the travel industry more sustainably.

Since the charity’s launch in November 2003, more than three-quarters of holidaymakers who booked a winter or summer holiday with UK operator First Choice have agreed to pay a voluntary donation to the charity.

The Travel Foundation is aiming to raise £1 million a year by 2006, which it says it will spend on projects that help tourism make a positive contribution to holiday destinations.

First Choice is asking its customers to donate 10 pence per adult, and 5 pence per child per holiday booking. Other UK operators, including The Adventure Company (formerly Travelbag Adventures) and Hidden Greece, will soon be providing similar fundraising schemes. Sunvil Holidays is already asking its customers to match its own donation of 50 pence per booking.

The Travel Foundation has already supported sustainable tourism projects in The Gambia and in Cyprus, where all the main tour operators are now offering excursions to the less well-known rural areas to help contribute to the livelihoods of local people. It plans to support similar tourism-related projects in other popular holiday destinations, including Mexico and Tobago, to help tourism make a greater contribution to the local people, environment and economy.

Further information, see thetravelfoundation.org.uk or telephone 0117 9273049.

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Azores Express has announced expanded Spring and Summer service from Boston Logan Airport to Portugal beginning in June 2004. Azores Express will offer direct flights to São Miguel, the main island in the Azores archipelago, on Wednesdays (starts June 23rd), Tuesdays, and Fridays. A Saturday flight is offered from Providence, Rhode Island starting June 12, 2004.

The Azores Islands, an autonomous region of Portugal, are the closest point in Europe to the United States, just four hours east by plane from Boston.

Situated 2,000 nautical miles from New England, the archipelago of the Azores was discovered during the first half of the 15th-century by Portuguese navigators. Today, gothic churches and majestic baroque manor homes mingle with sapphire blue and emerald green lakes, rolling prairies, volcanic cones and craters, and colourful hydrangeas and azaleas to enchant visitors. This inviting land enjoys year-round mild temperatures (between 57°F and 71°F).

A direct service from Boston to the historic island of Terceira will be offered on Sundays starting June 13th with a return flight every Tuesday. Non-stop flights to Portugal’s capital of Lisbon will be available every Thursday (starts June 24) and Sunday (starts June 6). Connecting flights to Madeira, Lisbon and Porto are also available from São Miguel. Inter-island flights are offered to each of the nine islands in the Azores. Roundtrip airfares start at just $579. Upgrades to business-class are just $150 each way to the Azores, and $200 each way to Lisbon. For more information and reservations, contact your travel agent, or Azores Express at 800-762-9995, www.Azores-Express.com.

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Under 30? 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!!

Spotted by Bretislav in the Czech Republic, this is from the Canadian National Post: “A spelling error on several hundred government envelopes mailed from Nunavut’s capital last week added an extra ‘u’ to the spelling of Iqaluit, changing the meaning of the word from “the place of many fish” to “dirty bum.”.

”About 200 envelopes containing T4 income tax slips were marked with a stamp that mistakenly referred to Iqaluit as Iqualuit. [A linguist], who consulted with a fluent Inuktitut speaker … said whoever made the stamp appears to have used a prefix meaning faeces adhering to the anus. Seventy-one percent of Nunavut’s population speak Inuktitut… yet the public service does its work primarily in English because bureaucrats from outside the territory hold key positions in government. Government translators trying to turn English documents into Inuktitut reports, posters and street signs are overworked and the final products are often rife with spelling errors and literal translations that make no sense to the Inuit majority…”

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29 year old Nigel Ashcroft, a musician from Wales is setting off on a trip trying to busk his way around the world in 80 days. He plans to tour 18 countries without carrying any money at all. He’s in confident mood and said: “I’m going to have to sing, perform, charm and maybe blag my way around the world – but I think I can pull it off.” He is a full-time busker and one of the first to be licensed under a new scheme by London Underground. They are also making a documentary of their trip to raise money for a charity for the homeless.

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Take a look at Globetrotter Tom Freemantle’s website. He is a regular speaker at the London Globetrotters Club and has been on British TV talking about his recent exploits crossing the US to Mexico by mule.

His latest book, The Moonshine Mule, focuses on the 2,700 mile walk from Mexico to New York with Browny, a cynical but heroic pack-mule. He lives in Oxford, where he still rides a bicycle, but never a mule.

This site outlines Tom Fremantle’s’ extensive journey though West Africa, through bleak, pale deserts with scrub to lush, meandering swampland where monkeys screech from behind mangroves: from bustling, urban casbahs to tiny, mud-brick villages on the banks of the River Niger.

Tom hopes the expedition will raise £30,000 for Hope and Homes for Children, a charity which provides homes for orphans and abandoned children, particularly in war torn areas, including parts of West Africa. The journey will also raise money for The Ark Charity in Milton Keynes, which helps homeless teenagers to find lodgings and employment.

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Your chance to see Sri Lanka, get fit and help raise money for disadvantaged children.

Cycle Sri Lanka 2003 was a great success, raising over £80,000 for ICT and all of the participants considered it to be one of the most memorable experiences of their lives. As far as we know, ICT is the first charity to cycle up into this virtually unexplored part of the island! After our 5-day cycle, we will unwind by spending a well deserved day snorkelling or relaxing on Nilaveli beach, which is notorious for being one of the most beautiful beaches in the world!

The entry fee is £250 for the cycle and minimum sponsorship (which covers flight, hotel accommodation, provision of bike, etc) seems too good to be true.

The double challenge is: are you- or can you get- fit enough? And can you raise enough for ICT?

If you are interested, please visit: www.cyclesrilanka.com or contact us by email at cyclesrilanka@ict-uk.org or local rate phone call: 08453 300 533.

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National carrier Air New Zealand announced it would cut average airfares on routes to the Pacific Islands by up to 50 percent as it unveiled the final stage of its revamp of short-haul services.

Air NZ has already introduced a no-frills model on trans-Tasman and domestic flights, stimulating demand as it fends off competition from Virgin Blue and Qantas. The new Pacific Express service would see fares across both business and economy classes between New Zealand and Australia and the islands of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands reduced by up to 50 percent, the company said in a statement. The cheapest one-day flight between Auckland and Fiji, excluding taxes and levies, would cost NZD$229 and NZD$289 to the Cook Islands.

An airline pilot, reported by passengers for flying his Boeing 737 erratically, was fined 1,500 euros (USD$1,845) after a breath test showed he had been drinking, German police said. The pilot worked for a north African airline and was flying from Morocco to Düsseldorf in western Germany. Police declined to name his airline. Police launched an investigation against the pilot for “endangering air traffic” and the civil aviation authority had confiscated the plane’s flight recorder. “Several of the 108 passengers complained about the pilot’s ‘erratic’ flying style,” Düsseldorf police said in a statement.

New European low-cost airline WIZZ Air secured its third base in Gdansk, Poland. The airline plans to start operations from May to coincide with European Union enlargement. Low-budget airlines are emerging across Central Europe, where treaties protecting national carriers must be scrapped after several countries in the region join the EU.

WIZZ Air said it planned to become central Europe’s third-biggest airline this year after Poland’s LOT and Czech CSA

JetBlue has announced its intention to begin nonstop service from its hub in New York to Santiago and Santo Domingo, both in the Dominican Republic.

Privately owned Spirit Airlines, which currently flies to Mexico, recently won federal approval to fly to 11 countries: Aruba, the Bahamas, Canada, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Panama.

America West announced nonstop service from Los Angeles to four new international destinations in Canada and Mexico.

British Airways plans to introduce a new Russian regional route and increase the number of flights on its existing routes to Russia. BA franchisee British Mediterranean Airways will operate three flights a week from London to the Urals city of Yekaterinburg from May 10.

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This is what the Foreign and Commonwealth office of the UK says about visits to Thailand.

There is a general threat to British and other Western targets from terrorism in South East Asia including Thailand. You should be particularly vigilant in public places, including tourist resorts. Following a resurgence of violence in the far southern provinces the Government has implemented new security measures in Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani.

There was an explosion on 27 March 2004, outside a bar in the Thai-Malaysian border town of Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat Province in which 30 people were injured, some seriously.

Watch out for crimes of opportunity. Theft of passports and credit cards is a problem. Possession of even small quantities of drugs can lead to imprisonment or in serious cases the death penalty. The vast majority of visits are trouble-free.

The Beetle spent a few happy days in Bangkok in January of this year, and she thought it was a wonderful place, but as always, all travellers and tourists should be careful wherever they are.

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