World Tourism Blog

Spain’s sunny costas have reported an upsurge in tourist numbers this summer as its key source markets of the UK and Germany begin to travel again following the downturn.

Overnight stays by foreign tourists in Spain rose by 11 per cent in July this year, compared to the same time in 2009, according to official figures from Spain’s National Statistics Institute.

The figures are the first sign of a break with the staycation trend which led to UK sales of foreign holidays falling 15 per cent last year, according to Britain’s Office of National Statistics.

The poor British summer, on top of last year’s wash-out, coupled with a strengthen of the pound have rekindled in Spain’s costas. Aggressive cost cutting by tour operators of up to 40 percent have helped to the rebound.

However 30 million foreign tourists arrived in Spain in the first seven months, down 0.4 percent on the same period in 2009.

Spain is the world’s third most visited country, after France and the United States, and tourism accounts for nearly 10 percent of its GDP.

But Spain has been one of the hardest hit European Union countries during the downturn, especially its tourism sector. The country’s unemployment rate hit 20.05 percent in the first quarter, the highest level in the eurozone, and its highest reading since 1997 as the collapse of a property bubble continued to take its toll.

By Breakingtravelnews

Spain Beach

THE scene was straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. A line of workers in black rubber boots struggled up a steep trail that emerged from the volcanic crater of Mount Ijen on the Indonesian island of Java. On their shoulders, each carried a pole with two baskets of bright yellow chunks of sulfur that had been hacked out of a rock wall near the crater lake.

Step by step, the laborers, some carrying 200 pounds, trudged up to a point directly below the 7,769-foot summit. Other workers would soon take the loads and walk two miles down the slope. Eventually the sulfur would be sold to Indonesian companies that use it to make medicine and other products. For their efforts, the 400 or so workers are paid 14 cents per pound of sulfur. Day after day they do this, inhaling sulfur fumes, the stench of rotten eggs clinging to them.

My wife, Tini, and I started down the trail toward the crater, along with a few other travelers who had come with us to this plateau in eastern Java. “The workers start at dawn and have to stop by 1 p.m.,” said Alim, our guide, who chose to wait at the top. “The fumes get to be too much, even for them.” His warning to us: Be aware of the fumes and climb back up soon, or feel the wrath of the volcano.

Flirting with the fury of a volcano may not sound like the usual tourist fare, but in recent years, these imperious volcanoes have become an increasingly popular draw that is away from the crowded resorts of Bali, which lies just east of Java. Last year, more than 93,000 people visited Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park, Indonesia’s most famous volcano preserve, up 78 percent from the previous year, according to the park’s main ranger station. (Numbers had fallen earlier this decade after terrorist bombings in Bali.) Several high-end hotels have opened in recent years, catering to volcano tourism, including Ijen Resort and Villas, which lies among verdant rice fields to the east of Mount Ijen.

Exploring Mount Ijen and the other volcanoes that form the spine of Java offers travelers a chance to understand how geology has so deeply influenced the lives and culture of the people who reside in the highlands. Over the centuries, eruptions have buried villages, destroyed farmland and filled the air with black haze, contributing to the ancient belief that the volcanic gods must be appeased.

Watching the sulfur workers toil on Mount Ijen is one way for visitors to experience the role Java’s volcanic landscape plays in the modern day-to-day lives of locals. Across Java, there are opportunities to appreciate the sheer physical beauty of the volcanoes: spectacular vantage points from which to watch the sun rise above the lava-spewing peaks, and trails where hardy travelers can lace up their hiking boots and trek across the lunar-like terrain or right up to the maw of some of the most active cones.

To properly explore the volcanic landscape, a west-to-east traverse of the island made sense to us, starting at the ancient temple of Borobudur, which lies in the shadow of two volcanoes, and ending on the far side of Java in the crater of Mount Ijen.

Borobudur, the sprawling stone monument that was completed by Mahayana Buddhists in the ninth century, is ringed by rice fields where people farm as they did centuries ago. The monument, said to have been built from two million stones, is a mandala made to reflect the order of the cosmos.

The nearby volcanoes have shown little mercy to Borobudur. After nearby Mount Merapi erupted centuries ago, the temple lay beneath ash until it was cleared in 1815, when Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles governed Java for the British Empire.

At dawn, we walked from our simple guesthouse in the rice fields to the base of Borobudur. The monument has five square platforms topped by three circular ones, each adorned with bas-reliefs depicting religious episodes and scenes from the Buddha’s life. The statues of Buddha at the top gaze out serenely at the perfect cones of the two nearby volcanoes, Merapi and Mount Merbabu.

Smoke trailed from the cone of Merapi, signaling that it was still active. Among the Javanese, it is widely feared — having erupted dozens of times in the last century — and guidebooks advise travelers to check with local authorities before trying to climb to its 9,550-foot summit. Early the next morning, Golan, a worker at our guesthouse, took us to a point atop a hill where we could see the sun rise over Mount Merapi. The jungle lay before us, the mandala of Borobudur in the center. A thick mist rose skyward from the trees, the moisture of night burning off. We had considered hiking up Merapi overnight, but were warned that the trail could be treacherous in the rainy season.

The drive to Mount Bromo, the most-visited volcano on Java, took a full day. Our driver took us along the west slope of Mount Lawu, an inactive volcano, and we stopped at Candi Sukuh, a temple that seemed to have been the house of worship for a fertility cult — stone statues with gargantuan genitalia stood on the grounds. In the afternoon it stormed, and rain was still falling by the time we arrived at Cemoro Lawang, the gateway village to Mount Bromo.

By EDWARD WONG

Exploring Java’s volcanoes offers travelers a chance to understand the influence of geology on the lives and culture of the people who live in the highlands.

Tourist arrivals to Asia are expected to shrink as much as 5 percent this year before rebounding modestly next year, but full recovery will only set in by 2011, a travel group said Tuesday.

The region’s performance has been mixed this year with countries such as China and South Korea showing resilience but others like Thailand and Vietnam still in the doldrums, said Greg Duffell, president of the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association.

The industry has experienced a slight upturn amid new hopes of a global economic recovery, but visitor arrivals to the region are still down by 5 percent from a year ago and likely to shrink between 4 percent and 5 percent this year, he said. Next year could bring a rebound of between 2 percent and 3 percent growth.

Travel within Asia is largely driving the industry, he added, with long-haul tourism from the U.S., Europe and other distant locations lagging.

“We will see full recovery only from late next year or by 2011,” Duffell told The Associated Press on the sidelines of an airports conference.

Duffel said China’s tourism market has been buoyed by government stimulus and 20 million Chinese were expected to travel out of the country this year. In South Korea, the won’s depreciation has helped spur tourism while Indonesia and Malaysia are both showing robust growth, he said.

But Vietnam, which used to be a tourism hotspot a few years ago, is losing its shine as it has became vastly overpriced, he said. Thailand’s tourism industry is also in the blues, hurt by political instability that has kept holiday travelers away. Because the country serves as a major aviation hub, Thailand’s problems have weighed on regional tourism as well, he said.

With its growing affluence and huge population, “China is shaping globally to be a leading destination and source market for the world” amid further economic liberalization, Duffell said. China is building 92 new airports and accounts for 13 percent of all new aircraft order in the next 20 years, he added. Hard money training