Going to Holiday World Show today Sunday in the RDS, here’s a selection of deals I found there.
http://holidayworldshow.com
The Inn at Dromoland will be reopening at the end of February and an overnight stay with dinner, bed and breakfast will cost €130 for two, theinnatdromoland.ie

Come Down From Your Tower at the McWilliam Park Hotel in Claremorris, Co Mayo, Valentine’s special offer of 2 nights B&B and one dinner for €129pps, mcwilliampark.ie

History buffs will love exploring Berlin, Dresden and Colditz for a week with pabtours.com, from €899pps. Available July, Aug. and Sept.

Cut price Turkey with wingsabroad.ie, 2 adults 2 children in the Pine Club Apartments, Kusadasi, from €1,235 and all inclusive luxury for couples from €659pps at Venosa Beach Resort, Altinkum.

Orlando for families seven nights before Easter from €499pp based on 4 sharing, americanholidays.ie. New York and Orlando from €799pps.

Top destination this year Canada is on sale with canadianaffair.ie with €40 disount on flights, 15% off hotels.  Airtransat.ie have Toronto from €432 from DUB and €462 from Shannon.

My favourite hotel in New York, the Beacon is on offer for three nights with flights from €599pps with touramierica.ie.

The fabulous Princess Yaiza five star hotel in Playa Blanca in Lanzarote is on sale with sunway.ie from €899pps, great price.

Discover the mystery of China with sinoirishtravel.ie where a 12 day tour of China costs from €2,100pps, all flights and accommodation and tours.

Ten per cent discount with originalcamping.com, a beautiful new campsite with tipis, mobiles homes and chalets near St. Nazaire in France, team it with new ferry service from Ireland to St. Nazaire, ldlines.com

“The only thing you buy that makes you richer is travel,” said the Lord Mayor Oisin Quinn at the opening of the 25th Holiday World Show in Dublin yesterday. The wet weather encouraged thousands of bargain hunters into the RDS in search of the sun, sand and sea.

Happy smiles began appearing on the faces of travel agents and representatives of the 50 countries exhibiting at the shows as people booked holidays and expressed strong interest in destinations. New exhibitors included Czech Republic, Ionian Islands, Jordan, Korea, Oman, Sri Lanka, Flanders and Kusadasi.

The stand for Newfoundland and St. Johns soon ran out of brochures and stocks had to be replenished as people flocked to hear about the new daily service with Westjet to the Canadian maritime province.

This new service is part of 26 weekly flights to Canada this summer operated by four airlines.  Aer Lingus’s service to Toronto begins in April, Air Canada Rouge in June and Air Transat will operate their usual summer services from Dublin and Shannon to Toronto and Montreal.

Transatlantic holidays are high on the wish lists of visitors and all the US and Canadian stands experienced queues of people wanting to get information and find deals.  The knock on effect of the Gathering means that this year there are more than two million flights to the USA and Canada.

Sun destinations are just as popular with Spain topping the list as usual, last year we made 1,270,000 trips there.  Portugal, Italy and France were all happy with the day but it is in the long haul market where people are showing interest.  Malaysia saw number rising last year and Mexico had increases of 18.6 per cent. 

Clare Dunne, President of the Irish Travel Agents Association said “while people really enjoyed the summer last year, they still want to get off the island. The ending of the Bailout has also made people more optimistic and prepared to spend money on holidays.”

Travel agents have been reporting a very strong start to the year with figures well up on last January.  Some agents are already seeing increases of more than 30 per cent.  Part of this is as a result of the withdrawal from the Irish charter market of the Thomas Cook Group.

The timing of the news last week in the busiest period of the year caused some upset with travel agents.  Thousands of customers had to be found new holidays and rebooked on different itineraries. 

In the home market, the big draw this year will be the Garnde Partenza of the Giro D’Italia which will begin in Belfast on May 9 ending in Dublin on May 11.

Both cities and towns along the route are planning to make the most of the famous cycling race.

Exhibitors for Irish hotels are feeling optimistic for the year and David McGlynn of the McWilliam Park Hotel in Claremorris said they have more bookings in January for the upcoming year than ever before.  Dromoland Castle and refurbished Inn at Dromoland are feeling the benefits of the extra Transatlantic flights with strong bookings. 

The Holiday World Show is on in the RDS today and tomorrow from 11am – 5.30pm.

Basque in the luxury
Food heaven in Spain is in the Basque country, around San Sebastian. The city has the highest concentration of Michelin stars in a small city with three three-star premises. Every bar deserves a star too, as the quality of pintxos on offer is fantastic. Join San Sebastian Food for four days of tantalising cooking and tastings including in a Sociedad, a private gastronomic club,€525pp.
sansebastianfood.com


Grape expectations
France, home of food and wine, is the ultimate gourmet destination and the six-day Bordeaux Wine Experience is the tops. Visit in autumn, the most important time of the year, to enjoy premier cru wine chateaux in Medoc, Saint Emilion, Graves and Sauternes. Combined with three days of French culinary arts, this holiday is foodie heaven. Price from €3,995pps includes accommodation in a private chateau.
bxwinex.com.


Souk up the atmosphere
Morocco appears on the departure board from April with Ryanair, and how better to experience it than through its cuisine. Gourmet on Tour will take you from the private luxury riad in the Medina to experience the souks, desert oases, snowy Atlas mountains, Berber kitchens and cedar forests through its culinary traditions. Prices for three days tours from €890pps.
gourmetontour.com.

• 10 romantic holidays
• 10 sporting breaks
• 10 city breaks
• 10 far-flung trips

Down at heel
Explore the very heel of Italy through its architecture and wine, see villages with extraordinary Trullis and towns with stunning Baroque confections. Accessing through Bari, a suggested itinerary from Discovery Puglia includes visits to Lecce, Gallipoli by the Ionian Sea, Otranto for St Peter’s Byzantine Basilica and Nardo. Visit wineries in Leverano and Salento and enjoy food of the region. A five-day itinerary with traditional accommodation, wine museum tour and two cellar tours with food and wine tastings will cost from €450pps.
discoverypuglia.com.

Welsh rarebit
Who would think that there would be a vineyard in Wales teaching culinary courses? Angela Gray, chef and TV presenter, returned to her native Glamorganshire to set up Llanerch Vineyard and cookery school. Here you can delve into the intricacies of cooking skills, ethnic cooking, special and seasonal menus or just come to enjoy staying at a vineyard 15 kms from Cardiff. Cooking classes from £60 (€72) and overnight stays from £110 (€132) per night for two.
llanerch-vineyard.co.uk


Cannes do
How better to learn how to cook then at the beginning, in the market, choosing ingredients with the experts. Where better than in a French market, one that is famous the world over, Cannes. One of the Travel Department’s food trips this year will be from June 10th to Nice and will also include visits to an olive oil mill, touring the markets, a city tour and lots of French cuisine, from €550 for three nights including flights, four-star accommodation, tours and cooking class.
traveldepartment.ie.

Click on the link below to hear me talking about new destinations for holidays this year. Canada, USA, Pula, Bari and more.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/marian-finucane/programmes/2014/0104/495760-marian-finucane-saturday-4-january-2014/?clipid=1387760

Listen to the interview to get a worldwide view of where to go on holidays and lots of really good tips. January 2, 2014

My top five travel news items for this year are: 

1.      Pula –on the lovely Istrian Peninsula in Northern Croatia will be a popular destination this year.  We did have flights here with Ryanair some years ago, but now Aer Lingus are going into Pula, gateway to the Adriatic.  The only drawback of the Istrian peninsula is its popularity and getting accommodation could be a problem. It is very popular with other Europeans.  From Ireland clickandgo.com have already put some packages together to places like Rovinj, Rabac, Porec, with flights, hotels and transfers from €409. Deposits are only €1.

2.     Transatlantic – the Gathering may be over but the number of Transatlantic flights is set to rise again this year.  We may have had 1.8 million US visitors last year but this year seats available will top 2 million. The big news is San Francisco, five times a week from Dublin from April but Canada is going from 12 flights a week to 26 this summer.  Charlotte in South Carolina is also coming back from summer. Customs and Border Patrols at Dublin Airport will increase staffing to cope with the extra traffic and a lot more passengers are expected to travel from the UK and Europe to transit though Ireland. Airlines sales began this week.

3.      Hopping back to Europe the region of Italy that has always been a bit harder to reach is Puglia, the heel, so to speak.  Ryanair are beginning flights to Bari on the Adriatic coast, and from here you can easily explore one of Italy’s most interesting and less touristy regions. The town of Lecce is often described as the Florence of the south due to its lovely Baroque buildings and Alberobello is where you will see a collection of the unique beehive houses, Trullis.

4.     The increase in ferry services from Ireland is in a lot of ways a good indicator or how business is going.  Ferry companies depend on freight traffic for business and the growth this year is also going to make taking your car, and pet!! To UK and Europe cheaper.  Irish Ferries have begun a new service from Dublin to Cherbourg on Mondays, which will be very handy for people and save the trek to Rosslare or Cork for the Metropolitan area. The Epsilon will also do rotations to Holyhead when not going to France.  Stena have increased the size of the Adventure by 25 per cent up from 1,200 to 1,500 passenger capacity. But big news is the new service to Spain from Ireland.  Announced just a few weeks ago and beginning this week LD Lines will operate from Rosslare to St. Nazaire, at the head of the Loire Valley and from there to Gijon in Northern Spain, half way between Santandar and San Sebastian.  It may take you two days to get to Spain, but it will be cheap around €500 return for a car and two passengers.

5.     Sports – the big events for this year are t he World Cup in Brazil and you will need to win the Lotto to go there.  I have seen lots of complaints about pricing. As Brazil is such a big country and with games in a dozen  different locations just getting around is going to be a big hassle.  Easier to get to will be the Ryder Cup in Gleneagles in Scotland, though prices for the Ryder Cup can be expensive. The other big world sports event this year is the winter Olympics in Sochi in Russia.  Ireland will hope to have five young Olympians in the various events.  If you intend going to the winter Olympcis, you need to apply for a visa now, if you haven’t done so.

Bad news from Berlin for visitors where the ban on holiday apartment rentals came into effect yesterday, January 1st. 

It will be illegal for owners of an estimated 12,000 properties to rent to holidaymakers and they  could be fined up to €50,000.  
The past twenty years have seen Berlin climb the totem of coolest and cheapest European city break destinations with ten million visitors last year.  

The Ryanair and easyjet effect of bringing thousands of weekenders to the city to enjoy the all night clubs, pubs and cheap grub has Berliners at their wits ends.   The new legislation is in response to what is perceived as a decrease in affordable  long term rental accommodation and complaints by residents to the influx. 

However, a quick check of the top four holiday rentals sites shows that owners are still listing their properties in Berlin, Housetrip tops the list with 1,298, followed by Homeaway (1,046), Holidaylettings (957), and Flipkey (332).  Airbnb are showing 647 properties to rent with a mixture of stays in people's homes and standalone rentals. 

I hear from a colleague in Berlin that the ban is due to be phased in next year over a two year transitional period and will probably be subject to legal challenges.  In the meantime, you can still party in Berlin.

The short term holiday rental market has been taking a battering in New York, where there have been some prosecutions for violations of building regulations. In Paris the city council is considering one year as the minimum rental period and Spain is also making sounds about short term rentals.