Intrepid Group, the world’s largest adventure company,  has announced its results for the first time, posting a $10.7m pre-tax profit on revenues of $341m for 2017. Revenue grew quickly year on year, up almost 15%, however pre-tax earnings growth was subdued at 1.7%, suggesting an increase in costs. More …

New Zealand is on the nose with Aussie tourists, who are shunning their trans-Tasman neighbour and heading elsewhere for their holidays. The downward trajectory in Australian tourism to New Zealand in 2018 accelerated during April with a -3.3% decrease in visitor numbers compared with last year, according to the latest Overseas Arrivals and Departures figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. More …

Tourism pioneer BridgeClimb has sensationally lost its contract to run climbing tours of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge to Hammons Holdings, which operates Scenic World Blue Mountains, it was revealed today.

BridgeClimb, which started operations in 1998,  was founded by Paul Cave after years of lobbying the NSW Government to allow commercial climbing of the Bridge. More …

Cruise giant Royal Caribbean has plugged a gap in its portfolio through the US$1 billion purchase of a 66.7% stake in luxury and expedition line, Silversea Cruises. “Ultraluxury and expedition cruises are gaps in our portfolio today,” Royal Caribbean Chief Executive Officer Richard Fain told analysts and media following the announcement. Not any more. See Reuters coverage.

Demand continues to outstrip supply in Sydney with the city recording an all-time performance high during May. Hotel analytics company STR reports that Sydney room numbers increased 3.3% over the previous year, customers demand was up 5.6% and occupancy grew 2.3% to 84.3%.

It’s great news for a number of new properties that opened over the past 12 months, including Paramount House Hotel in inner-city Surry Hills (pictured), recently named by Gourmet Traveller magazine as its ‘Hotel of the Year’. More …

It seemed like a good idea at the time, building an international airport in 2013 on the southern coast of Sri Lanka near  Hambantota, the home town of then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa.

But Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport has turned out to be a waste of an estimated $270 million, money the island nation cannot afford. More …

Virgin Australia Holdings today announced its CEO and Managing Director John Borghetti has resigned but will not be leaving the company until December 31, 2019 – more than 18 months from now – when his contract expires.

Borghetti started with Virgin in 2010 and his legacy is …. well, not great. More …

The Remarkables ski resort, tucked into a spectacular bowl high above Queenstown, New Zealand, today became the first ski resort in Australasia to fully open for business with an impressive cover for early June, as you can see from the image above. More …

The NSW government has finally made a decision on its regulation of short-term letting – and as expected it’s met with a mixed reaction: Airbnb is happy,  HomeAway thinks it is a retrograde step while the hotel lobby doesn’t like it at all.  In essence, the new rules place a cap of 180 rental days on renting out entire apartments or houses while there are tighter restrictions on what absent landlords can and can’t do. There is also scope for individual building managers to ban short-term rentals in their apartment block. See coverage on ABC and Domain.

Rising fuel and labour costs are the reasons behind a profit downgrade for global airlines from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which is forecasting a collective net profit of USD33.8 billion  for its members in 2018 . “This is a solid performance despite rising costs, primarily fuel and labor, but also the upturn in the interest rate cycle,” IATA said, lowering the previous forecast of USD38.4 billion. While operating profits for airlines have been trending downwards for the past four years, “the industry’s financial foundations are strong with a nine-year run in the black that began in 2010. At long last, normal profits are becoming normal for airlines.”

AccorHotels today completed the purchase of Mantra Group and its 138 properties in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Bali for $1.2 billion, a process that took much longer than originally expected when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission delayed its decision on the deal. More …

Jeff Cavins is something of an anomoly – a person who runs a ‘sharing economy’ business, Outdoorsy, and promotes the fact that  some people using his Recreational Vehicle and caravan marketplace are ‘power sellers’ he says can turn over millions of dollars a year through the site.

“Just like Airbnb, we’ve seen the emergence of power sellers on our platform – some members of our community own more than 100 RVs vehicles and are  doing millions and millions of dollars a year in business.” More …

For years the best advice to increase organic reach on Facebook was to publish video content. But since Facebook altered its Newsfeed algorithm in January to drive more meaningful social interactions, the platform’s love of video appears to be over. For tips on how to adapt your Facebook strategies to the new paradigm, check out this post from Nick Henderson, Tourism Australia’s Global Manager of Social Media, 

 What is Adventure Travel? Glad you asked because if ever the truth in travel marketing can be stretched it’s the definition of adventure – which these days can mean everything from eating (relatively) exotic food to touring bucolic Italy, where (ironically) over-tourism is a very real issue, or cruising the Greek Islands.  More …

The dramatic growth in Australian ocean cruise passenger numbers slowed dramatically during 2017, growing 4.4%, compared with compared with 21% in 2016, according to figures released today by Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) Australasia. More than 1.34 million Australians took an ocean cruise in 2017, said CLIA Australasia Managing Director Joel Katz. More …

Vivid Sydney – the world’s largest festival of light, music and ideas – starts this Friday. More …

MadeComfy, which manages and markets short-term rental properties in Australia, has raised $6m from Investec to fund further expansion.  MadeComfy currently manages around 600 properties in Sydney and Melbourne. Its goal is to have 3500 properties across Australia by 2020. More …

The Thai Government has announced Maya Bay in Koh Phi Phi will be off-limits to tourists from June 1 to September 30 so that a proper assessment of the impact heavy tourism has had on the iconic destination, famous as the setting of ‘The Beach‘, a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, can be carried out.  Boats will not be allowed to enter Maya Bay or drop anchor nearby in a move that follows the sensational closure of Boracay in the Philippines and signals a regional shift in attitude toward over-tourism and the potential damage it is  inflicting on destinations.

– Sydney, October 24, 2018 –

Travel IQ is a new one-day conference that celebrates the business of travel with the people who live it every day: entrepreneurs, owners, directors, investors and managers. More …

Airbnb’s regional boss Sam McDonagh read a well-written speech, packed with broad concepts and catchy phrases  but short on detail, to a gathering of industry leaders at the TTF Outlook conference in Sydney yesterday. 

In his address, McDonagh propagated the argument that industry commentators are promoting a “false choice between the sharing economy and traditional operators, between disruptors and the disrupted, and yes – between Airbnb and hotels.” More …

I love a good chart and this one tickled my fancy.  It shows international travel by Australians is flat-lining in much the same way it did during the Global Financial Crisis 10 years ago. More …

Agoda, the original Asian OTA,  has gone rogue on pricing. Multiple hoteliers say Agoda regularly sells unauthorized static wholesale rates through the site, undercutting them on price without any regard for contracts.

Other times the feeling is Agoda takes a contracted rate and shaves its margin to push the price below competitor and hotel pricing. More …

Iconic travel publisher Lonely Planet is on the market and CEO Daniel Houghton is leaving the company, Skift reports. Lonely Planet is owned by NC2 , which bought it from BBC Worldwide in March 2013 for GBP51.2 million. BBC lost a bundle on Lonely Planet, which it acquired from founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler back in 2007.  See Skift story.

A bullish Cebu Pacific Air,  the Philippines’  largest airline, is forecasting passenger growth of 12% for 2018 despite the controversial closure of key destination Boracay for  six months from April 26. Cebu says the dramatic increase – which compares to 3% total growth through 2017 – will be driven by its rapidly expanding international network with markets such as Sydney, Dubai, Hong Kong, Narita, Taipei and Incheon performing strongly and new routes planned.  More …

Losing Flight Centre as a client will cost the Travelport GDS around $US36 million a year based on its first quarter results, which revealed “Travel Commerce Platform revenue decreased in (i) Asia Pacific by $9 million, or 6%, primarily due to the loss of a large travel agency in the Pacific region.” That would be Flight Centre, which has shifted its airline business to the Sabre, which looks after the retail giant in Australasia and North America, Amadeus has picked up Europe.

Just 3% of commercial pilots are women but Virgin Australia is doing its bit to right the imbalance, aiming for an equal male/female intake in its 2018 Pilot Cadetship program. 

“In what’s typically a male dominated area of the industry, we’re encouraging more females to consider aviation as a career and apply for this program,” said Virgin Australia Group Executive People, Lucinda Gemmell.

“Globally, just 3%  per cent of pilots are women. More …

Visitors numbers to Antarctica, one of the world’s most desirable, remote and expensive destinations, have risen sharply with a 16% year on year increase for the 2017/18 cruising season when a total of 51,707 tourists made the long journey south.

Total visits have risen 38% since 2013/14. The United States remains by far the biggest market with 33% market share, followed by China 16%, Australia 11%, Germany/UK 7%. More …