It’s bargain-bados
SAVE £1,219 on a spring trip to the Caribbean if you book within two weeks. Blue Bay Travel has seven nights’ all-inclusive in a Garden View Room at adultsonly Club Barbados from £1,229. Deal includes return flights from London on selected dates in May and June – but must be booked by January 15. Subject to availability. Call 08444 997 645 or see caribbeanwarehouse.co.uk. IT’S the time of year for travel industry navel-gazing, when we all try to predict the trends and hot destinations for the months ahead. So here are a few we think are going to be big in 2018... Low-cost used to be restricted to short-haul routes but now airlines including WOW and Norwegian are opening up new long-haul routes all the time.
With Norwegian (norwegian.com) you can fly to Las Vegas for £379 and Singapore for £419 – both nearly £200 cheaper than mainstream airlines. With WOW (wowair.co.uk) you can fly to New York for £279 (a £100 saving on full-service carriers), plus many other US destinations including Pittsburgh, Boston and St Louis. Tunisia makes a welcome return to the travel agenda in 2018. Before the terrorist attack of 2015, half-a-million British holidaymakers used to go there every year – and now, with the lifting of Foreign Office warnings, many will be heading back to resorts like Djerba, Sousse and Hammamet, cashing in on the country’s great mix of sunshine and low prices. Thomas Cook (thomascook.com) is offering an all-inclusive week in Hammamet from £459pp.
While on the subject of North Africa, Egypt (egypt.travel) is also staging a recovery. Big news here will be the opening of a massive new Egyptian Museum out by the pyramids in Giza, to replace the dusty warehouse in downtown Cairo. It will be the largest archaeological museum in the world when it opens in May. Malta will attract a lot of attention in the coming year. Main city Valletta is European Capital of Culture, so there’ll be lots of events with a mix of local and international artists (valletta2018.org). Expect film, opera, classical music, visual arts, performance and an emphasis on the Maltese identity. The city itself has some truly magnificent buildings, particularly the co-cathedral, with all its marble and gold. And several new boutique hotels have been created in the grand houses of the former aristocracy, including the Palazzo Prince d’Orange (palazzoprincemalta.com). Flights from £96 return with Air Malta (airmalta.com). It seems there’s a trend for stitching together scenic routes. A couple of years ago the Wild Atlantic Way was created all along Ireland’s west coast, followed by the North Coast 500, with its loop around the Highlands – supposedly Scotland’s answer to America’s Route 66.
We now also have the North-East 250 (northeast250.com), which subtitles itself “a road trip to the heart of Scotland” and which particularly celebrates Aberdeenshire, whiskydistilling Speyside and the fishing coast around Fraserburgh and Peterhead.
In England the Great West Way is in development. It’s a tourism route that follows the A4 from London to Bristol, through wonderfully bucolic countryside. There’s always something new on the high seas with cruise lines adding itineraries and vessels at a fast pace. But there’s also news about little ships for 2018. Le Boat, best known for its boat hire on European waterways, is introducing a similar service on the Rideau Canal in Canada, which links capital Ottawa with historic Kingston. Four nights on a boat that sleeps four costs co from £1,023 (leboat.co.uk). In the other direction entirely, G Adventures is the first operator to offer a mooch around the island of Sr Sri Lanka by boat, travelling along the southern sh shore on a catamaran that sleeps eight. Seven da days, meals included (but no flights) costs from £9 £934 (gadventures.co.uk). America’s most exciting city is never off the tr travel map but for 2018 there are several new at attractions in mid-town Manhattan, close to Ti Times Square – a district which features heavily in the new film The Greatest Showman.
Among the newcomers here are a miniature ci city called Gulliver’s Gate, National Geographic’s virtual-reality Ocean Odyssey, and th the NFL Experience for anyone into American fo football. In spring, the new musical of the Fr Frozen movie opens on Broadway and we’ll get