Sabre Pacific Sydney volunteers

Sabre Pacific employees have donated in excess of 100 hours to local community projects as part of its National Volunteer Week last week.

Gai Tyrrell, CEO at Sabre Pacific, said the event was aligned to Sabre’s global Give Time Together campaign, which sees staff encouraged to get out of the office for a day to make a difference in their local communities.

“Give Time Together is one of the many ways Sabre gives back to our local communities. I’m proud to be part of such a charitable company and it’s very nice to know we are making a difference in people’s lives,” said Tyrrell.

Felician Mariani, ATEC managing director, said the tourism industry in Tasmania had done a great job of engaging with the state’s new advertising campaign, but without continued support, the campaign will fail to reach its full potential.

“ATEC is very concerned by the short-sighted budget handed down [yesterday], which fails to recognise the significance of the tourism industry and the need to invest in its growth as a large contributor to the state’s overall economy,” Ms Mariani said.

The annual reader survey by The Telegraph’s Ultratravel magazine has named Australia as the ‘best country in the world’.

Tourism Australia managing director Andrew McEvoy said Australia had finished ahead of Italy, New Zealand, Thailand and the United States and confirmed the country’s continued desirability among the Brits as a preferred holiday destination.

The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) today announced the speakers for the ‘Luminaries of Travel CEO Panel’ to be held on 6 August 2013, during the GBTA Convention 2013 in San Diego, California.

Philip Wolf, founder and retired chairman, PhoCusWright, will moderate the panel with leaders of major travel suppliers including David Kong, president and CEO, Best Western; Michael Batt, founder and chairman, Travel Leaders Group; and Steve Singh, CEO and chairman of the board of directors, Concur.

The Luminaries of Travel CEO Panel brings together industry leaders who demonstrate the power of value creation through branding and technology to challenge traditional business travel approaches. These luminaries will tackle tough questions and discuss the risks and opportunities facing the future of business travel.

Nigel Huddleston, Google’s industry head of travel, said the number of people searching for travel videos doubled in the last year despite most companies continuing to populate the content of their websites with still photography, which has less dynamic appeal to young, internet-savvy travellers.

Huddleston believes hotel groups can increase revenue simply by augmenting static images with video.

The Australian Federation of Travel Agents (AFTA) launched its Twitter account yesterday in a move to increase the organisation’s social media profile ahead of the National Travel Industry Awards (NTIA), which takes place in July. According to AFTA chief, Jayson Westbury, Twitter is the “ideal channel” to showcase the benefits of dealing with AFTA members.

Using the @AFTAOfficial handle, AFTA’s first – and so far only tweet – said “Hello Twittersphere! The Australian Federation of Travel Agents is now on Twitter. #AusTravel”

Jeremy Clarkson is famous for forgetting to engage his brain before putting his tongue in gear, and he’s done it again on Twitter.

After a flight to Scotland a couple of weeks ago he tweeted: “When will British Airways realise that babies belong in the hold?”

‘Happy End’ is a project by photographer Dietmar Eckell about miracles in aviation history, showing images of fifteen aircraft that had forced landings but happy endings, with all on board surviving the various crashes and being rescued.

Forget postcards – as most of us know by now, social media has replaced the postcard as the most popular way for travellers to communicate with family and friends back home. In fact, Facebook is regularly used by 59% of travellers and is the most popular social medium with only 3% still putting pen to paper to send a traditional postcard.

Surprisingly, the Topdeck Travel survey, which studied more than 1300 travellers aged 18 to 39, found the humble postcard still trumps Twitter and Instagram for staying in touch with just 1% of respondents posting updates while abroad.

HolidayPhone is now live in Australia, enabling travellers going out of Australia to use low-cost voice, text and roaming-free mobile internet. With HolidayPhone’s SIM card solution, travellers benefit from local rates in the countries they visit, while keeping their Australian number – without paying overseas fees.

With a prepaid SIM card from HolidayPhone, travellers can be reached on their Australian mobile phone number and can make cheap calls to Australia when visiting Spain, UK, USA, Italy and twenty four other destinations.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) has released a warning to consumers to be wary when looking to score a cheap deal online. TM thinks that a bit of common sense goes a long way and that if a deal looks too good to be true, then it probably is. Another good reason to use a reputable travel agency, we’d say!

The ACCC has already received more than 100 complaints about travel-related scams, at a cost of more than $250,000.