The Troy, Chopper and Munich star Eric Bana has taken on the role of ambassador for this month’s Melbourne International Film Festival. The Melburnian actor leads a list of celebrities being signed to glam up the festival, which has Oscar-, Golden Globe-, BAFTA- and Emmy-winning actor Geoffrey Rush as its patron.
Eric Bana has been reported to be thrilled about the honour as “it’s my home town’s film festival and it’s much closer than Cannes, Toronto or Sundance!”
The organisers describe the selection of the films featured in this year’s 400-movie marathon as “bold” and “audacious”. The festival, which takes place from 25 July – 10 August, will include 10 world premieres.
Last year, Melbourne International Film Festival drew more than 180,000 people.
Melbourne has to be one of my favourite cities in Australia and linking up with the film festival, grand prix and Gordon Ramsay’s new restaurant might well be worthwhile…...
Posted by Ruth Miller on Wed 6th August 2008 at 06:00 AM, Filed in Travel News
Hong Kong International Airport has been voted the world’s best airport in the annual Skytrax survey, which polled more than 8.2 million travellers of over 97 nationalities. Representing a notable achievement, this is the seventh time in eight years that the accolade has been won by Hong Kong International Airport.
The World Airport Survey rated more than 190 airports over a ten-month period (from August 2007 to May 2008) on 40 product and service categories including airport accessibility, terminal cleanliness, shopping and dining options, Internet services, staff efficiency, baggage delivery and wait times at security.
Annual UK visitors to Hong Kong in 2007 totalled a record 601,168, an increase of 16.4 per cent on 2006, which was itself a record-breaking year from the UK. Overall, Hong Kong received last year a record 28,169,293 visitors from all markets.
Simon Mills, Hong Kong Tourism Board’s Director for Northern Europe, said:
“Both in terms of business and leisure, Hong Kong is an increasingly popular destination for the UK market and it is a great honour to see Hong Kong airport repeatedly recognised as the world’s finest.
One of the key attractions for visitors is the ease and convenience of transferring into the very heart of the city - in less than 25 minutes with the Airport Express Link (AEL) service - enabling them to make the most of their time in Hong Kong.”
Posted by Ruth Miller on Fri 1st August 2008 at 06:00 AM, Filed in Travel News
I was surprised and saddened to hear that a foam party in Turkey resulted in the deaths of three tourists.
The three people, included two Israeli tourists, who were accidentally electrocuted at the foam party in a luxury hotel in southern Turkey, the Anatolian Agency reported on Wednesday.
Apparently, the power leak that caused the deaths occurred when the foam machine operator slid and fell, dropping the device, Mehmet Yilmaz, manager of the five-star hotel in the southern province of Antalya, the agency said.
I think this incident throws up an important point. Are safety standards the same at popular tourist destinations as they are at home. The answer is quite blatantly no. Although, poor safety regulations do not appear to have played a part in this incident, you do wonder if things would have been conducted differently elsewhere.
One of the saddest stories of recent years was a couple who lost there two children to carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty boiler. The boiler had not been serviced or checked for some time. Under UK regulations boilers in rented accommodation have to undergo regular safety certification.
I suppose the point here, is that you need to be vigilant to slack safety standards. In the case of carbon monoxide, you can buy testers for a few pounds. In as far as foam party’s, water skiing, jet skiing, para sailing, scuba diving etc - just be aware of potential dangers like no certification, poor equipment and such like.
Posted by Ruth Miller on Wed 30th July 2008 at 06:00 AM, Filed in Travel News
Montenegro’s tourism business is growing.
The Montenegrin Ministry of Tourism announced that tourist arrivals grew six percent on the same period last year. And according to estimates, 1.3 million tourists will visit Montenegro before the end of the year, a 13 percent increase on last year’s 1.15 million total. The number of visitors in 2007 was already up 20 percent on 2006.
Montenegro is not somewhere I have visited, but if anybody wants to tell us about their experiences - either leave a comment or send us an article via our contact page.
For someone who has spent a bit of time in England’s Northumberland and border country, I was intrigued by the recent media storm surrounding Judith O’Reilly and her Wife in the North blog - which has achieved the fastest blog to book deal to date. So when the opportunity to pose some questions to Judith presented itself, our editorial team scratched it’s collective heads and came up with some highly original and probing questions! Ok, they might not be original or probing but we hope you enjoy the responses.
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