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WTTC Launches Lastest Statistics from the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Monitor

Hotel Booking The latest statistics from the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Monitor, released by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) in Paphos, Cyprus earlier today, reveals that Luxembourg, Maldives and Aruba are overall leaders in providing an open and liberal framework helping to attract foreign, direct investment to the Global Travel & Tourism industry. The Monitor also revealed that the top three most competitive nations in terms of social development are Norway, Bermuda and the USA.

"Groople and Avis Budget Group continue to lead innovation in the industry with the launch of our group rental car product. The rapid growth in booking travel online and the size of the group travel segment is driving demand for group based travel tools, " said Mike Stacy, chief executive officer of Groople. "We have demonstrated our leadership in group hotels, breaking tool for cars, which will make their travel planning and booking much easier."

Travel Agency The World Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Monitor tracks a wide range of information, which indicates to what extent a country offers a competitive environment for travel & Tourism development. Supported by the Christel de Haan Tourism & Travel Research Institute at the University of Nottingham, the World Travel & Tourism Councils updated and expanded Monitor aims to highlight the importance of long-term planning and the need to factor Travel & Tourism into all government policy developments and decisions.

hotel.de launches its partner program for travel agents. 2003 The results of a Nielsen study show that hotel.de is, for the first time, the German online hotel reservation service with the most page impressions ( 2003). 2004 hotel.de counts 500, 000 booking customers and launches the "Freenights" bonus program. speaking markets, with the domains hotel.ch and hotel.at.

Cheap Hotel The significance of the Monitor is that Travel & Tourism is one of the largest sectors of the world economy, responsible for over 10 per cent of global GDP and 200 million jobs worldwide. The industry is strategically important to virtually every country as it is growing and incoming visitors bring precious foreign currency.

While there are some below par travel agents out there, sources such as Tripology are great outlets to go to find reliable specialized travel agents that will match your needs. 10. Travel Agents Can Only Book My Flight and Hotel Travel agents can arrange car service, personalized tours and activities, in addition to all the basic travel services they provide. They are also excellent sources of information concerning good restaurants, good sites to see, and tips on what to pack.

Flight Booking Ufi Ibrahim, WTTC Vice President, Development, said: WTTCs competitiveness data will help governments benchmark themselves against other countries. Compelling economic data such as this will assist the more dynamic nations to take positive action, stimulating their tourism economies. Only two weeks ago, Maison de la France, Frances national tourism organisation, was allocated a 30 per cent increase in funding following an in-depth WTTC report predicting that China would overtake France as the worlds top tourism destination.

Groople, the leading online group travel planning and booking site, announces the launch of an exciting travel and social networking tool, offering an integrated solution for the challenges of planning and booking group travel. GroopVine will allow users to create their own personalized trip page to plan, create, share, shop and buy travel with their entire group's input every step of the way. Providing helpful tools from event schedules and suggested itineraries to RSS feeds and online surveys, GroopVine makes group travel planning fun, collaborative and easy.

Travel Agent The monitor can be accessed by visiting the World Travel & Tourism Councils web site, www.wttc.org/NU_compmon/Monitor.htm . Its functionality has recently been upgraded to allow the user to make an unlimited selection of countries and to compare results instantly.

Although travel agents have access to all of the same outlets you would use when looking to book travel, they also have access to exclusive pricing and package deals that are most times not available to the public. Your travel agent also has more leverage in helping out in situations such as hotels claiming to be booked, when in fact they may still have rooms available that are on hold for travel agents reservations. So when everyone else is telling you “No” your travel agent can help turn that to a “Yes.”

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