Tourism, what to remember from the summer of 2018

What happened between France’s World Cup victory and Aretha Franklin’s death? The Daily looks back on the highlights of this summer. The main tourist information of the summer that is coming to an end, classified by six major themes:  

Environment

– Floods and typhoons in Japan
– Fires in Greece, tourists lost their lives
– Several earthquakes on the Indonesian island of Lombok near Bali. Many people have died.
– Gigantic fires in California and surprising ones in Sweden.
– Drama in Italy with the collapse of a bridge in Genoa.

Tour operating

– Fram is having trouble keeping his general managers.
Since 2011, the company has seen Olivier de Nicola, Daniel Cohen, Thierry Mirmont, Marie-Laurence Vieuille-Féral and Isabelle Cordier pass by. Michel Quenot who had arrived in April 2017 left his post in July. Alain de Mendonça, owner of Promovacances and Fram is taking over for the moment.

Hotels

– Accorhotels drops the Air France-KLM share buyback.
– Accor takes over 21C Museum Hotels;
– Accor sets up a billion dollar fund in cooperation with the Qataris for investments in Africa;
– Significant Accor losses on non-hotel activities;
– HNA’s stake in NH Hoteles is taken over by the Thai group Minor.

Aircraft

– Level’s been through a lot. Between 200 and 300 passengers who were scheduled to travel to Paris were trapped in Montreal.
– Numerous flights cancelled at Ryanair due to strikes by pilots in several European countries.

– In early August, an Aeromexico plane carrying 103 people crashed on its way to Mexico City. Miraculously, he
there were no deaths.
– IAG could sell their investment in Norwegian following unsuccessful negotiations.
– Air France is negotiating with Air Europa to create a joint venture.
– Jet Airways, India’s second largest airline, is experiencing some financial problems. A new thorn in the side for Etihad who is still a shareholder of this company.
– An agreement was reached with Royal Air Maroc pilots on August 15 after strikes disrupted hundreds of passengers.
– Following Canada’s denunciation of the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia, Saudia Arabia Airlines cancels its flights to Canada.
– Benjamin Smith, currently number 2 with Air Canada, will head Air France-KLM.

Railway

– Serious traffic disturbances at Montparnasse station caused by a fire in an electrical relay

Technology

– Amadeus buys Travelclick.
– In partnership with Expedia, Thomas Cook has set up a new hotel booking and reservation platform.
– After Amex GBT and Carlson, American Airlines and BCD Travel join Amadeus’ NDC-X program.
– Expedia is now Thomas Cook’s preferred hotel provider for city stays. The online agency provides the booking platform in which TO and Webjet offers will be included.

Serge Fabre