On June 7th this year, the newest and largest national park in Europe will be opening. The Vatnajokull national park in Iceland measures 13,000 square kilometres and is 13% of the landmass of the country. The new park includes the most powerful waterfall in Europe, as well as volcanoes, glaciers, canyons, calderas, rivers and lakes. Olof Yrr Atladottir, director general of the Icelandic Tourist Board, sees “a myriad of possibilities for all sorts of activities opening up such as action tours, eco-recreation, study visits and learning experiences as well as the chance to experience the nurturing silence of Iceland’s highlands”. It is hoped that the opening of the park will lead to an increase in visitor numbers to Iceland by 30,000 or 42,000 people a year. From what I can see on the website, the park looks amazing and should be well worth a trip to Iceland! Plus, you can never have too many national parks!!
Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
Europe’s largest national park to open
April 29th, 2008Virtual St. Patrick’s Day parade
March 9th, 2008On Sunday 16th March, Tourism Ireland will be hosting the worlds first virtual St. Patrick’s Day parade on the internet in the virtual world of ‘Second Life’. There will be 20 Irish and Celtic themed virtual floats and it will be the centrepiece of the three-day Discover Ireland Festival in ‘Second Life’. ‘Second Life’ has over 12 million users and is one of the biggest virtual worlds. Sixty percent of the users are from the 4 largest of Ireland’s tourist markets: the UK, USA, Germany and France. Tourism Ireland hope that those users of ‘Second Life’ who visit the virtual “Dublin” will then want to visit the real one too. This year Tourism Ireland are planning on spending almost a quarter of their €10 million (£6.7 million) marketing budget online, which I think is a good idea as many other big brands such as Coca Cola and IBM are doing the same. Also if the users of ‘Second Life’ see what the amazing festivities are like in the virtual “Dublin”, next year they may want to visit the real parade like me!
New VisitScotland.com website
March 3rd, 2008Yesterday VisitScotland.com launched their new website which, according to their press release, was “the most significant change to the UK’s most popular tourism destination website in six years”. In 2007, VisitScotland.com had 11 million visitors which they hope to increase to 12.9 million in 2009. Having previously visited the VisitScotland.com website before it was updated, I can say that the new site is much better than the old one! I like the fact that the site is split into 2 separate areas; Scotland’s Ultimate Visitor’s Guide and the Online Travel Shop. This change makes the site appear easier to navigate and clearly separates those who want to plan their trip and those who want to find accommodation. They also cater for many different languages with their choice from a drop-down list. Basically the site is just a whole lot better than it used to be!
Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink
November 20th, 2007Last Wednesday, it was WTM World Responsible Tourism Day and to mark the event the WTM (World Travel Market) released a report entitled ‘No Water, No Future’. In it the WTM addresses the issue of sharing water in towns and villages between the tourism industry and hotels, and the local needs of farmers and the communities. This is increasingly becoming a problem in areas with large resorts, who have the resources to pay more for their water than the local communities. Therefore it is not the resorts who have a shortage of water, it is the villagers. It is especially true in areas such as the Maldives, where water has to be treated and as a result is incredibly expensive. This is an important issue in the world today, where climate change will most likely make the situation even worse. So as tourists or workers in the tourism industry, we all need to do our bit to save water and not to waste it.
What is the impact of tourism on global warming?
September 29th, 2007Between October 1st and 3rd, the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) together with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Swiss Government will be holding the Second International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism in Davos, Switzerland to address “the global challenge of climate change and action by the tourism sector in both adaptation of destinations and mitigation of its own impacts”. As the travel and tourism industry totaled 846 million international arrivals and 4 billion domestic trips in 2006, it is important that the people in charge are responsible and aware of the damage they are causing to the environment. Although the travel and tourism industry does contribute a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, it is also highly susceptible to the effects of climate change. These two contrasting problems are central to the issue of climate change with the carbon dioxide emissions of the travel and tourism sector accounting for between 4 and 6% of total emissions, yet “changing climate patterns might alter major tourism flows”. It is a thorny issue to tackle but at least there are people who are trying to make some change!
