TC hears that a certain upscale tour
operator, owned by a recently merged European travel
company, is looking to relaunch its Libya program.
Trouble is, not only was the operator (which plans on making the
official announcement sometime this week) still sorting out visa
requirements, but just last week Libya unexpectedly imposed a rule
that denied entry to visitors whose passports were not translated
into Arabic.
By week's end, Libya
was once again permitting Westerners to enter the country, sans
translated passports. And, unfortunately, sans much of an
explanation about the cursory and confusing policy change,
either.
TC hears that
Bill Smith, senior vice president of sales and marketing
for Crystal Cruises, is a good person to work for,
at least when it comes to traveling on the job. Smith has been
known to secretly arrange to transfer his cushy business-class
ticket to colleagues who don't make Crystal's business-class cut
and put himself in the back of the plane in economy.
TC has picked
up rumblings of a move afoot on the part of the
Caribbean Hotel Association to shift its
headquarters from San Juan, where the group has been based for
years, to the mainland U.S. In fact, the buzz is that Miami is the
chosen spot and that staff reorganization is in the
cards.
While the
news of a LibGo acquisition might have come as a surprise
to some, TC hears that the company has been on the block for a
while. One of TC's sources said that back in 1996, American
Express "went in and offered $442 million" for the
company, more than triple what Flight Centre is
paying. An agreement was never reached, and in the meantime, AmEx
turned its sights to Travel Impressions, which it acquired in
1998.