United Kingdom
United Kingdom blogs
Everybody loves a good pop-up shop, but the possibility of limited-edition goods gets even more tempting when we're talking about travel products. Very soon, as the shop is due to open yet this year, "Planeshop" will debut inside of Glasgow Airport as a rotating retail concept. The shop will be permanent, but the brands for sale inside of it will alternate every so often to constantly keep the airport concessions fresh and interesting.
We love love love stuff like this because it helps to make an airport a destination in itself, giving you something to look forward and possibly counteracting the frustration experienced during the rigamarole of air travel. In addition to the limited edition items, Planeshop will provide travelers with Planemix, "a downloadable selection of global digital music tracks that rotates each month," and Foodflight, "a selection of tapas and sangria for takeout or in-store dining."
Weve all been there, and we certainly have done our share of complaining about them: the dreaded delayed airplane. For the most part it has just become one of the many fun features that are now part of the travel experience. However, there are some researchers trying to crack the code behind these inconveniences, and the smartypants scientists feel that a little math might help everyone out. If academics can help aircraft land on time and leave on schedule, we just might head back to school.
Computer scientists at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland have created a system to use runways efficiently to reduce delays and to conserve fuel use. Their plan uses the size of aircraft, fuel efficiency of the plane, and number of passengers aboard to figure out the most effective way to move the birds around the airport. Their new math also looks at the amount of suitcases on the planes to ensure baggage handling delays are kept to a minimum. Unfortunately, theres no mention of preventing baggage losstoo bad.
Although the first Missoni Hotel has been open now in Edinburgh, Scotland for over two months, not many pictures or reviews have come out of it. We want to see every striped nook and polka-dotted cranny of that place, and especially what the staff is wearing.
Luckily Flickr yields a few tantalizing pictures, like this one of the dizzyingly patterned crockery in the Missoni Cucina. Still, this is a fashion hotel and its bartenders and room attendants and waiters have got to be wearing the chicest hotel duds this side of the Versace Resorts, right?
Where were you when the largest art festival in the world started this weekend? The 62nd annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival brings performers from all over the world to Scotland for two weeks of doing whatever their muses lead them to do, for lucky audiences who don't mind waiting in line and drinking many, many beers. With most shows under £10, it's a cheap way to catch a show which could one day be sitting pretty on the West End, also known as the Broadway of London.
Our picks among the thousands of offerings this year:
· "The B.F.G."
Honor the U.K.'s own Roald Dahl with this puppet masterpiece for all ages about a man of unusual size and his new best friend. At Augustine's, 41 George V Bridge. Tickets £7.
It's been almost two months since the Missoni Hotel Edinburgh debuted to the public as the first Missoni Hotel in the world, and it looks like we've still got another two months to go before it grand-opens with another restaurant.
Although there is already the Missoni Bar and Missoni Cucina, it's been announced that Roy Brett, chef-director of the Dakota Hotel Group, will get his own restaurant on the street-level of the hotel. It's to be called Ondine after a mythical sea nymph, and will focus on seafood. Brett himself describes the restaurant's concept: "Set against the backdrop of Edinburghs historic old town, Ondine will bring together my passion for fish, shellfish and local produce, which
We're now two weeks into the opening of the first of the Missoni Hotels in Edinburgh, Scotland, and already more news of future destinations have swamped us with surprise.
There's big plans in the works for this new fashion line of hotels; the Missoni Kuwait Hotel comes in early fall, followed by more hotels in South Africa and Oman, of all places. The latter will be a beachfront resort even!
Finally, we get another picture (the restaurant) from the interior of the Hotel Missoni which opened today in Edinburgh, Scotland. You'd think that during their recent visit to the property, the Guardian UK would have taken a few more shots, but instead they focused their energies on asking Missoni matriarch Rosita her reasons for choosing Edinburgh for the first hotel of her brand. Her response, after citing comfort over pretentiousness, is even-handed:
I admit that in the rain, Scotland can seem cold and dark and terrible, but in the sun you see its true beauty. I first came here 30 years ago for the festival, and went walking, out through the highlands, and I remember
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Where can we score a Missoni kilt for ourselves? Oh yes, perhaps at the almost-open Hotel Missoni Edinburgh! This first entry into what will be a series of Missoni HotelsKuwait's coming in fallis prepping their Italian espresso machines and straightening our the creases in the striped bedsheets with only a few until their June 8 opening to guests.
This past weekend however, the Missoni family themselves stopped in to survey how their fashion brand has translated into a physical hotel property. As you can see in the picture above, Scottish hospitality showed in spades as the family was welcomed by Missoni kilt-wearing waiters from the Cucina Missoni restaurant as well as a traditional bagpipe player.
Rooms for
Yes, we have a hard time believing the New Kids on the Block who, were they real kids on real blocks would be neither new nor kids nor living on any blocks of ours are still getting mobbed outside of their hotels these days. But apparently the boys are still being greeted with screaming fans wherever they go and to be fair, they warned us about all of this many years ago in their song "Hangin' Tough": "and if you try to keep us down were gonna come right back." Yes, they came right back.
No room to dream: Online vendors are freaking out after a Times Online report revealed internet searches for travel were down 42 percent after Christmas, when holiday-fattened bank accounts are traditionally emptied out for spring vacations.
Searches for travel to the US were one of the hardest hit segments of the British travel biz, as the pound falls against the dollar and Brits tighten their belts. The only segment that showed any improvement were searches for package holidays, but the interest didn't lead to a corresponding lift in bookings.
Online bookings were taking a hit back in October already, but the gap between booking a trip and not even looking for one is pretty enormous. So dear readers, are you still looking for travel online, even if you can't afford to go now?
Related Stories:
· Internet Travel Searches Drop 42 Percent [Times Online, via]
· Financial Fallout Travel: Online Booking Hurting, Too [Jaunted]
· Budget Travel coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo of an empty terminal at MAN: Jett Loe]
