Corporate Travel e-Newsletter Jan 2008

Congratulations to Fiona Blench of Etrials Worldwide Ltd, Sittingbourne,, who won our eNews subscribers' prize in our 2007 4th Quarter draw. Every quarter we draw a winning name. The odds are much better than winning the lottery, so anyone who has not subscribed to our free eNews, now is the time to be in with a chance of winning the subscribers' prize draw for the 1st Quarter 2008

The voucher certificate will have a value of £100, redeemable against any form of holiday (combination of travel and accommodation) booking made through us to the value of £500 or more, and will be valid for a period of 18 months from the date of issue. It will be transferable, providing the winner advises Medway Travel of the name of the eventual recipient.

From a City break to a Cruise, from an all-inclusive package to a tailored holiday, the choice is yours. We have a massive range of outstanding holidays to offer and a team of consultants highly qualified to research and advise on all aspects of your trip. The chances of your being the lucky winner in the next 12 months are better than 1 in 500, so the very best of luck!

Staff News

Many readers will remember that Katherine Gambell left us towards the end of 2006, after having established a great reputation for herself, as a thoroughly professional, helpful and friendly consultant. We are therefore really delighted that, following a change in her circumstances, she was able to rejoin us again on 2nd of January, as a Senior Business Travel consultant.

Also on January 2nd, Angela Smith has joined Medway Travel as our Client Account Manager.
Angela has many years’ experience with large Travel Management Companies, recently in Customer Service and in Sales Support. Her role will include the responsibilities recently fulfilled by David Pickard, until his retirement from the role of Client Care Executive.

Technology update

Many readers will know that Medway Travel is determined to use the best available technology for the benefit of our clients. To this end, we have several times in the past changed our Global Distribution Supplier (GDS) as one leapfrogs the other in exploiting software developments. We are pleased to advise that we are doing this again on February 11th, for the same reason.

Whilst everything possible is being done to try to ensure the process is seamless, we would ask for your understanding, should any unforeseen problem arise during that week, and that, where possible, you send us your enquiries and place bookings in the previous week, so as to lighten the pressure on our consultants for the few days immediately following the change.

The immediately obvious difference from your point of view will be that your “Virtually There” link will change to a “View Trip” link, but the process and data provided will be almost identical.

Following the change-over, travellers who have received itineraries from us, will nevertheless still be able to use the Virtually There link to access details of those trips booked prior to February 11th.

Eurostar high speed trains to the Continent are now available with through tickets from UK regions, withThe Channel Tunnel passenger service offering through rail fares from 68 locations across the UK.

One can now, for example, buy a ticket, which start at £67 return, from Luton to Brussels or Paris, now that Eurostar trains departure from St Pancras, close to both Euston and King's Cross stations.

Eurostar has struck deals with East Midlands Trains, First Capital Connect, GNER and Virgin Trains to sell return fares to Paris, Brussels, Lille, Disneyland Resort Paris, 75 connecting destinations across France and to any station in Belgium.

A range of through fares has also been unveiled with Chiltern Railways and London Midland, the operator of new West Midlands rail franchise.

Eurostar believes the new fares will further boost the growing number of Channel Tunnel journeys made by travellers living in UK regions and offer competition to regional airlines.

Travellers are now able to buy tickets at prices that are as attractive as those offered by airlines, Eurostar claims, and there are up to 17 connecting rail services a day to Paris and up to 10 a day to Brussels. City centre-to-city centre journey times by train match or even beat those of flying.

Standard class, return leisure fares to Paris, Brussels and Disneyland Resort Paris start from between £67 and £92, for travel from major stations across Britain such as Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Nottingham.

Our consultants will be pleased to offer you this service as an alternative to flights and we are sure you will enjoy the more relaxing means of city to city travel it can offer.

 

Tel Aviv flights from Heathrow - by BMI

Bmi will launch a daily non-stop service from Heathrow to Tel Aviv on March 13.

The launch comes after the successful conclusion of bilateral talks between the UK and Israeli governments.

The route will be operated by an Airbus A320 in a two-class configuration, with 20 seats in business and 108 in economy.

Tickets are now on sale and start at £243.60 in economy and £881.60 in business, including taxes and charges.

The schedule has been designed to offer passengers well-timed connections to bmi services to and from regional airports, including those in Scotland, Manchester, Leeds Bradford, Durham Tees Valley and Belfast as well as Dublin in the Republic of Ireland

Continental to make Heathrow debut

Subject to government and slot approval, Continental Airlines plans to start US flights from Heathrow for the first time , on March 31st, under new US-European open skies rules.

Continental aims to offer twice-daily flights to both destinations and will continue to offer non-stop services from Gatwick to both Newark twice daily, Houston daily and a seasonal daily service to Cleveland.

Continental has acquired the necessary slots at Heathrow to operate the new  schedule and joins Delta as the second new US carrier to enter the London hub from next year.

The airline will operate from Terminal 4, which will be the future base for all SkyTeam group carriers operating at the airport. 

The airline had been prevented from operating from Heathrow by the restrictive US-UK bilateral air services agreement. Continental has served Gatwick since 1985.

A Continental spokesman said "At last we will be able to give our customers something they have long requested – the opportunity to fly to both London's main airports with their preferred airline. At the same time, we will be able to show transatlantic travellers already using Heathrow what they have been missing.  We look forward to the chance to compete at Europe's most important business airport."

Heathrow will be the eighth UK airport to be served.  The airline already operates transatlantic services from Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London/Gatwick and Manchester, as well as Dublin and Shannon.

Continental and Virgin Atlantic codeshare on several Virgin Atlantic-operated flights from Heathrow and Gatwick, as well as selected Continental-operated flights from Gatwick.

The new Open skies rules are resulting in ever wider choice of routes and flights, and our consultants are pleased to give you all the logical options when you consult them about your trips.  

Chinese carriers join Star Alliance

Two of mainland China’s main carriers, Air China and Shanghai Airlines, have officially joined Star Alliance.
This latest expansion increases the number of members in Star Alliance to 19 airlines serving 160 countries and 897 destinations. At both Beijing and Shanghai, all Star carriers will be accommodated under one roof. In Beijing the airlines will be consolidated in Terminal 3 in the first quarter of 2008, while in Shanghai the amalgamation will be completed later in the year at Terminal 2.

Star Alliance, stressed that both Shanghai Airlines and Air China had achieved the 57 joining criteria for membership of Star Alliance. These criteria are never published but are known to include areas such as safety, frequent-flyer programmes, service standards and data links. One benefit much quoted is the ability to through-check baggage when travelling with a combination of carriers belonging to the Star Alliance.

Future growth of Star Alliance is expected in 2008 with Turkish Airlines apparently on track to join in the first quarter this year followed by Egypt Air in the summer to coincide with the opening of T3 in Cairo. Future expansion is planned to focus on India, Russia and Brazil.

Air India to join Star Alliance

Air India is to become a member of the 19-strong Star Alliance global group of airlines.

Glenn Tilton, chairman and CEO of leading member United Airlines, said: "India has long been on the radar of Star Alliance; after all it is one of the world's fastest growing economies and aviation markets.

The agreement with Air India makes it the first airline alliance to secure a member in India, which will enable its customers to receive more benefits when travelling to, from and within India in the future.

This comes in the wake of Air India's merger with India's leading domestic carrier Indian Airlines, which it claims, makes Air India the prime player in the Indian subcontinent.

In addition, the recently announced fleet expansion of over 100 aircraft will help Air India service its expanding global reach and services.

We understand it may be two years before Air India is confirmed as a full member of the Alliance.

Our grateful thanks to all those readers who kindly responded to our November survey (see  Medway Travel Limited survey for details) in which we asked our clients to mark the quality of various aspects of our service, out of 10.

The results were very helpful - and gratifying:

Corporate Travel

In our previous survey covering a very wide spectrum of both specific and subjective issues, the overall average score was over 9.0.

This time, with almost identical questions, the average in the business travel section across all questions was 8.90 - a welcome confirmation that we continue to give a much more than satisfactory service to all our corporate clients.

On this occasion there were 4, out of the 13 elements in the questionnaire, for which on average we were marked at 9.0 or higher. These were "Our response is friendly and cheerful", "Our staff are knowledgeable and friendly", "The timing of fulfillment service is reliable" and “We answer the phone promptly”

At the other end of the scale, the lowest average score for a specific question was 8.52. This was for the question "our quotes are competitive and good value”.

Considering the score scale we asked responders to use was 1= unacceptable, 5 = good and 10 = excellent, we think you will agree it is not unreasonable to assume that our lowest achieved score was indicating a verdict of marginally better than a “very good”. It also shows that the service you may expect, is of a uniformly high standard, since the spread of average scores for all the elements of our travel service, are within a very narrow range, at the top end of the scale.

A number of responders also volunteered some very welcome comments. The following are representative:

"Staff at Medway are helpful, efficient and extremely friendly - a good team." (Tina at National Maritime Museum)

"Excellent service, keep it up."             (Jody at Grenco Refrigeration Ltd)

Leisure Travel

The questionnaire asked all responders to score a similar set of 12 questions relating to our leisure travel and holiday department.

It was reassuring to find that the 29% of responders who had used the service, found it to be somewhat better than “very good”, in that the overall average score was 8.06 (on the same scale as above – ie. 5 = good 10 = excellent).

The least good aspect was shown to be the point “our quotes are competitive and good value for money”, which received an average score of 7.43. This is just half way between good and excellent, and (at least on school reports!), could usually be equated to “very good”! This is in spite of the background of a highly competitive market and suggests that whilst we are not necessarily the cheapest, the quality of our advice and service results in very good overall value.

We have no hesitation therefore in encouraging all our readers to contact our leisure consultants (who work from the same office as their business travel colleagues) to discuss your holiday plans. We are sure you will be pleased that you do!

Whilst we are pleased with these results, as a reward for the sustained effort the Medway Travel team makes to provide an exceptional service, we will be continuing to strive for an even higher result next time!

Prize winner 

We congratulate Denise Cummins of the Freight Transport Association, on being the winner of a £100 holiday voucher in the responders’ prize draw, and, again, we thank all those who kindly gave us valuable feed-back in this survey.

If you or your colleagues have plans to visit any overseas trade fair in the future, please contact us as soon as possible about your arrangements for travel and accommodation, as the earlier we can make the bookings for you, the lower will be the cost of the airfares, and the greater the selection of hotel accommodation.
We would also suggest you take a look at our  website Trade Fairs page from time to time, to help with your forward planning.

Algeria - Algiers - PLASTICS:                                         3rd - 6th May, 2008
Australia - Sydney - HOSPIMEDICA:                               13th - 15th May, 2008

Australia - Melbourne - AUSPLAS:                                  6th - 9th October 2008
Bahrain-FOODTEC 2008                                               19th - 21st October 2008

Germany-Dusseldorf-INTERPLASTICA                             29th January - 1st February 2008
Germany - Cologne - DOMOTECHNICA:                          18th - 21st February, 2008
Germany-Dusseldorf-EUROSHOP                                   23rd - 27th February 2008
Germany-Dusseldorf-WIRE                                           31st March - 4th April 2008
Germany-Dusseldorf-INTERPACK                                   24th - 30th April 2008
Germany-Dusseldorf NEFTEGAZ2008                              23rd -27th June 2008  
Germany-Dusselforf-COMPAMED                                   19th - 23rd November 2008

India - New Delhi - TUBE INTERNATIONAL:                      14th - 16th February, 2008

Singapore - IDEM:                                                       4th - 8th April, 2008
Singapore - ASEANPLAS:                                               26th - 29th May, 2008
Singapore-HOSPIMEDICA ASIA 2008                              17th - 19th September 2008

Turkey - FOODTECH:                                                    24th - 27th October, 2008

Also, don't forget, if there are a number of you travelling together, there are major savings possible for groups of 9 or more, when we negotiate group rates with the airlines. Click here to see more about our Group travel

 

Our readers may recollect that Maxjet went into Chapter 11 protection from their creditors some weeks ago.

Whilst we sympathise with the shareholders, we are pleased to report that none of our travelers suffered any loss as a result of the airline not being able to fulfill its obligations to fly them on the tickets they had in hand at the time.

This is another example (following that of the demise of EuJet) of the benefit of the airline insurance we provide on every air ticket we sell. We know of one Travel Management Company which had issued over 100 Maxjet tickets, against which the passengers were unable to recover any value in either the travel they had paid for or a refund from the airline.

We were fortunate enough not to have anyone booked on a Maxjet flight: but it does, once again (thinking EUJET), emphasise the importance and benefit of having the AFI insurance.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts is to open a new hotel in Washington, under its trendy “W” brand.

W Washington DC is due to open its doors in 2009, and will be located in a 19th-century building on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 15th Street, until the end of 2007, occupied by Hotel Washington. It is only a stone’s throw from the White House.
 
The Italian Renaissance revival property was originally built as a retail store and apartment building in 1888, before being converted into an hotel by the Hotel Washington in 1917.  The 11-storey W Washington will have 317 rooms (including 32 suites) as well as a rooftop bar with views of the city and the White House.
 
Starwood will operate the hotel under its W brand for owners Istithmar Hotels, which already owns three W-branded properties – W Bangkok, W Samui and W Union Square in New York.
Starwood currently has five other properties in Washington: The Four Points by Sheraton Washington DC Downtown, the Westin Washington DC City Centre, the Westin Grand Washington DC, the Westin Embassy Row Washington DC, and the St Regis Washington DC (opening as we write).

In other news, W will also open its first property in Japan in 2010. The W Yokohama will be located 18 miles to the west of Tokyo (around 30 minutes’ drive from Haneda airport, the country’s main domestic hub) and will feature 245 rooms and 930 sqm of meeting space.

 

Holiday Taxis has added Russia to its portfolio of destinations, giving us, or readers themselves if they prefer, the chance to pre-book private transfers in Moscow and St Petersburg for your trips in future.

In Moscow transfers are available to and from all three of the city's airports and from the railway stations into the city centre.

In St Petersburg transfers are available to and from Pulkovo Airport, the major train stations and the city's bus station.

Sales and marketing director Russell Parr is reported recently as saying: "We believe that city breaks in Moscow and St Petersburg are going to grow in popularity in the coming years. These cities are on many people's 'must see' lists.”

This additional service will make it easier for travellers, both on holiday or on business, to find their feet in these cities, even if they have no Russian and are unfamiliar with the topography. Contact our consultants if you are planning to visit Moscow or St Petersburg, and they will be pleased to make all the arrangements for a really interesting and comfortable stay.

Passengers travelling within the US will no longer be able to carry spare lithium batteries in checked luggage on domestic flights, following a ruling from the US Transportation Dept.

The ban was introduced to reduce the chances of an overheated battery catching fire. Lithium batteries are commonly used in lap-top computers, digital cameras and mobile phones.

The rule does however provide some flexibility, with passengers being allowed to carry up to two spare batteries in sealable plastic bags or original packaging as part of their carry-on luggage.

The new condition came into effect from 1st January 2008.

Marriott International has opened its fifth property in China’s capital, the JW Marriott Hotel, Beijing.

The 588-room hotel is located within China Central Place, a 230,000 sqm complex comprising office space, designer shops such as Gucci and Ferragamo, residential towers and a sports centre. It will also house the forthcoming Ritz Carlton Beijing (Marriott’s luxury brand).
The JW Marriott Beijing has 549 guest rooms and 39 suites, with either south-facing garden views or north-facing vistas of the complex and Chaoyang Park.

Décor in the rooms includes ivory leather sofas, contemporary Chinese artwork, hand-embroidered quilts and glass-panelled bathrooms. Each room also has a 42-inch LCD TV, and a DVD player with USB socket.

Leisure and meetings facilities include a 1,294 sqm Grand Ballroom, a steakhouse, two restaurants serving French and Asian cuisine, and the Quan Spa, offering ten treatment rooms and therapies designed to “harness the natural healing powers of water”.

The hotel’s exterior has been designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects (responsible for the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo and the Four Seasons Philadelphia), while the interior has been created by Hirsch Bedner Associates (whose other projects have included the St Regis Grand Hotel in Rome and the Taj Palace Dubai).

The JW Marriott Beijing is the fifth Marriott-branded property in the city, after the Beijing Marriott Hotel West, the Renaissance Beijing Hotel, the Courtyard Beijing and the Palm Springs Beijing (Marriott Executive Apartments).

We are always pleased to advise on your selection of the most appropriate hotel and make your hotel bookings for your trips. This is a free of charge service when you are booking your flights for the trip at the same time, so pease do contact us for your accommodation requirements.

M edway Travel has access to one of the largest portfolios of specially negotiated contract fares open to any travel agent in the country. This means we can - subject to availability at the time of booking - offer unusually low prices for many long-haul and certain European routes.

This month's examples are:

If all goes according to plan we could soon be crossing the Atlantic supersonically for the first time since Concorde retired in 2003.

US engineering firm Aerion wants to develop a supersonic business jet capable of carrying between eight and 12 passengers at speeds of up to Mach 1.6. An Aerion has claimed “The market tells us it wants and needs supersonic transport. Such a plane isn’t a luxury. It’s an efficient tool to make senior executives more productive.”

At the recent Dubai Airshow, Aerion says it received letters of intent for the US$80 million jet from 20 customers. These range from corporations to wealthy individuals. Aerion declined to name them although the firm didn’t deny that one customer is a UAE Sheikh.

The jet would have a range of 4000 miles, which would enable it to connect major cities in Europe with those on the US east coast, cutting hours off the schedule. The plane could therefore fly Paris-New York in just over four hours, which would provide a time saving of 40 per cent. It could do Paris-Tokyo in seven and a half hours, which is a three-hour saving even when you include a one-hour stopover on the ground.

It could also fly non-stop between Europe and the Gulf. But the plane won’t have the range for key business routes across the Pacific linking the US with mainland China. A Los Angeles to Shanghai flight would need to take the ‘great circle’ route (because the trip is largely over water) which would apparently require a refuelling stop in the Aleutians.

Aerion has deliberately opted for a simple design to keep costs low and to allow for reliable operation. It’s also the reason why the top speed of Mach 1.6 is less than Concorde’s Mach 2, which will allow it to fly at a lower speed of Mach 1.15 over ground without creating a boom. Today there are areas of northern Canada, Russia (Siberia), mainland China and Australia where it’s permissible to fly supersonically overland.

Barents believes there’s a market for 300 of the jets over the next 10 years. The firm believes the design could be the beginning of a family of supersonic aircraft, which would be “scaleable up or down”. The development costs are thought to be US$2.3 billion. Aerion is looking to finalise a deal with a manufacturing partner by the end of next year. If all goes well, the first flight could be in 2012 with certification and delivery to the customer in 2014.

All those readers with a budget of £40 million or more, are welcome to make direct contact with the Swiss-based Execujet, sales agent for Aerion’s proposed jet for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Australia, but please don’t ask Medway Travel for details!!. Meanwhile we will be delighted to handle your travel requirements - including private charters!