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Lack of Heathrow flights 'damaging trade'

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

The boss of Heathrow airport warned yesterday that capacity constraints were "damaging the UK economy when the country can least afford it", after the number of passengers flying between the UK and China fell for a fourth consecutive month.

Tignes and toddlers go well in the spring

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:47 GMT

Sometimes, the fantasy of what constitutes a good family ski holiday seems to have come straight from the Wham! video for “Last Christmas”: big jumpers and playful snowball fights. However, the reality for those with pre-school children tends to involve snotty noses and screaming tantrums on the nursery slopes. (And that’s just from the parents.)

Juliet Kinsman: Ambience is everything for a Valentine's getaway

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Valentine's Day is looming.

Tips and deals of the week: Insight Guides, Milli Millu and Radisson Edwardian

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

The Guidebook

Insight Guides' Select series has four new editions: Marrakech, Paris, Chicago and Shanghai, all bound in patterned linen. £9.99 each.

Go to Insightguides.com

Great Getaways: Sorrento, Ski France, California and Mauritius

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Sorrento

Citalia has a week-long break just outside this pretty Italian town for £395 per person. Departing on 27 April with easyJet flights from Gatwick to Naples, it includes B&B accommodation at the Hotel Girasole, which boasts an outdoor pool, with views towards Mount Vesuvius. (Citalia.com)

From Vikings to spiders...some cheap, cheerful half-term ideas

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

It's day two of half term.

Seeking the girl from Ipanema, in Ipanema

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Two songs wrestle for domination in my head as I step out into the morning heat to walk the beachfront of Rio's Zona Sul.

Stay The Night: Castaway Cottage, Whitstable

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Castaway Cottage, a terraced house in the heart of Whitstable on the north Kent coast, doesn't exactly grab your immediate attention. But open the door and you are presented with a stylish seaside aesthetic straight out of the pages of The White Company's catalogue.

You have to get up early to do the Cambodia temple run

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

It's 4am and the rush-hour trail of tuk-tuks is already snaking through the dark towards the sprawling Angkor complex, illuminated only by the roadside bonfires lit by hawkers and itinerant families.

Something to declare: South America, via Canada; The Maldives; Morocco in style; longer check-in at Heathrow

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Destination of the week: South America, via Canada

Travel Agenda: Animated Exeter Festival; W Hotels; Melbourne in full festival swing

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Today: The Animated Exeter Festival gets started, with more than 100 films, by novice and established comics, showing at venues across the city. During half term there are six free exhibitions and educational workshops for children , which include model making and how to create 3D characters (animatedexeter.co.uk).

Traveller's Guide: Great Barrier Reef

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

There's a reason that it's called the Great Barrier Reef. With a surface area larger than the British Isles, the most extensive reef system in the world is 2,000km long: the only living structure visible from the International Space Station. It's made up of more than 3,000 separate fringing reefs that lie between Australia's Queensland coast and the edge of the continental shelf. All exist thanks to colonies of tiny polyps, the "architects" of the reef, whose outer skeletons form intricate multicoloured coral metropolises.

Le Roi des Belges: Set sail for the Southbank

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Painfully slowly, really excruciatingly so, the external lift climbs a sheer concrete cliff face. Even my companion, an experienced global traveller accustomed to brain-warping delays, begins to look twitchy. The speed restriction is because the concrete belongs to the Queen Elizabeth Hall and bad vibrations might interfere with Janacek. Most auditoriums have an insulating double shell structure, but not here. By the lights of 1967, when the QEH was built, concrete was a material with peerless functional, aesthetic and acoustic properties. So, no twanging cables or rattling cars, but a solid rack-and-pinion drive delivers you, eventually, to this bleak Southbank roof.

Travel Challenge: Hiking in Nepal

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Each week we invite three companies to offer us their best deal for a specific holiday. Today: a two-week hiking holiday in Nepal.

My Life In Travel: Judge Jules, DJ and music producer

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

First holiday memory?

Widescreen wonders: Arizona’s 100 years of statehood

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

The Arizona Capitol knows its place in the world. Poised 17 blocks west of downtown Phoenix, it might be an extra from a cowboy film. Just outside its main entrance, a huge cactus – 15ft high, torso a muscular green – lifts arms in salute. And the building seems to respond, nodding back via a dome that, unlike those of its colleagues in New England, with their sleek marble masonry, is forged of copper – a metal that has long been cut from the ground of this rugged region. The only way to make the structure look any more in tune with the American West would be to drop a giant stetson on to its gleaming head.

48 Hours: Venice

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Click here for the 48Hours In...Venice map

Something to declare:

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Destination of the week: South America, via Canada

Simon Calder: Stansted stands still as snow stumps security

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

You probably don't live at an airport. But after the extraordinary scenes at Stansted last Sunday morning, you may consider moving.

The Big Six: Luxury lakeside retreats

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Lake Placid Lodge, New York State

Travel Agenda

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Today: The Animated Exeter Festival gets started, with more than 100 films, by novice and established comics, showing at venues across the city. During half term there are six free exhibitions and educational workshops for children , which include model making and how to create 3D characters (animatedexeter.co.uk).

Off piste and into the spa: Austria's Bad Hofgastein offers far more than skiing

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Past the town's cross-country skiing track, a little further on from an icy-looking pond peppered with hardy ducks, steam was rising from the valley floor. A series of low-rise modern buildings, large windows brightly lit against the surrounding mountains, awaited me, grouped around a striking dome and a simple glass box.

Thomas Cook looks at disposals as losses mount

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Losses have trebled at Thomas Cook, the struggling travel icon that has been around since 1841.

First-class flights... on a higher plane

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Air travel – it's stressful, whether there's a plane-stopping inch of snow on the ground or not. So how about a spot of yoga before you fly?

Airbus to check all A380s amid safety fears

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:01 GMT

Fresh safety concerns emerged yesterday about tiny cracks in the British-made wings of the world's largest airliner, the Airbus A380.