Indian tourists travel longer, in larger groups and have a high repeat visitation rate. Indian tourists may be badly behaved according to a recent survey, but they are also the ones who spend the most while on holiday in Asia-Pacific countries.
The Pacific Asia Tourism Association (PATA) report on Indian tourists says they often travel for longer periods, in larger (often family) groups, have a high repeat visitation rate to preferred destinations and have a good revenue yield.
Indians are especially popular at the Singapore Shopping Festival, which is usually kicked off in late May and goes on till July. The eight-week long shopathon attracts hordes of tourists and Indians lead the pack with an average spending of around $904 per person.
The Singapore Tourism Board has also tied up with ICICI bank --India’s largest private sector bank-- to offer additional discounts. Siew-Kheng Kang, regional director (South Asia, Middle East and Africa) said, “Shopping is one of the most favored activities of Indian visitors, and electronics and fashion are among their top buys. As such, we are making the shopping experience even sweeter this year by co-partnering with an Indian bank. This is our way of further enhancing Singapore’s value as a preferred shopping destination.“
The tourism board is also organizing a Singapore Food Festival and Singapore Art Festival till July 24. This year around 7, 51,270 Indian tourists are expected in Singapore and the forecasts predict that this figure to rise to 8, 42,960 by 2008.

The number of tourists in the first four months of 2007 dropped about 30 percent from the same period last year.

Bombings in Beirut and violence in north Lebanon are jeopardizing Lebanon’s tourism industry, just as the normally lucrative summer season approaches, the country’s tourism minister said.
“It will be a disaster for Lebanon,“ if the instability continues, Joseph Sarkis told Reuters at the government’s headquarters in central Beirut.
Almost a year after Lebanon’s economy was hit by war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas, fighting erupted between jihadists and Lebanese troops in the Nahr Al-Bared camp, in Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Bomb blasts also rocked some of Beirut’s popular nightspots, leaving the tourism industry, which had hoped to regain momentum after last year’s war, braced for the worst again.
Sarkis said if the violence did not stop, the summer would be dominated by “a declared war against terrorism“.
The industry was already struggling to cope with a political crisis between rival Lebanese factions, which led to the opposition erecting hundreds of tents in the commercial hub of central Beirut and forced several cafes and boutiques to shut.
Sarkis said the number of tourists in the first four months of 2007 dropped about 30 percent from the same period last year.
Lebanon is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Middle East for Arabs, because of its mild weather, sandy beaches, vibrant nightlife, and liberal and relaxed atmosphere compared to more conservative Arab countries.
Sarkis said if the violence stopped, it was still likely that Arabs, who make up 40 percent of Lebanon’s tourists, would not cancel their plans to visit this summer.
Not so with the Europeans, who account for 25 percent of tourists. Sarkis said Lebanon was losing European tourists who tend to plan their holidays earlier.
Before the Nahr Al-Bared clashes erupted on May 20, business leaders in Lebanon called for a “100 day truce“--to cover the height of the summer tourism season--starting from June 1.
But with no end in sight to the fighting, which has so far claimed 79 lives and Beirutis refraining from going to bars and restaurants, because they fear more bombs, the mood is bleak.
One of Lebanon’s biggest tourism attractions are its four summer festivals which feature international and regional artists, but which were cancelled last year due to the war.

The number of people traveling to Poland from Western Europe for cheap but very good private medical care is likely to rise up to 20 percent per year.
Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary have been leading the list of private medical care tourism since the three countries joined the European Union in 2004, Polish Radio reported, wrote Upi.com.
Lukasz Liese of the Internet medicare tourism company StatMedica said patients from Western countries are surging into these three countries because of prices and quality being offered at private hospitals.
Visitors can get good work done for up to 60 percent less for some medical treatments in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, Liese said. The low cost of budget airlines also has added to making Poland an attractive country for Western patients.

This shadowy something is what someone says is a photo of the Loch Ness monster.

An amateur scientist has captured what Loch Ness Monster watchers say is among the finest footage ever taken of the elusive mythical creature reputed to swim beneath the waters of Scotland’s most mysterious lake.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45-feet (15 meters) long, moving fairly fast in the water,“ said Gordon Holmes, the 55-year-old a lab technician from Shipley, Yorkshire, who took the video this past Saturday, reported AP.
He said it moved at about 6 mph (10 kph) and kept a fairly straight course.
“My initial thought is it could be a very big eel, they have serpent-like features and they may explain all the sightings in Loch Ness over the years.“
Loch Ness is surrounded by myth and mystery, as it is the largest and deepest inland expanse of water in Britain.
About 750 feet (230 meters) to the bottom, it’s even deeper than the North Sea.
Nessie watcher and marine biologist Adrian Shine of the Loch Ness 2000 center in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the lake, viewed the video and hopes to properly analyze it in the coming months.
“I see myself as a skeptical interpreter of what happens in the loch, but I do keep an open mind about these things and there is no doubt this is some of the best footage I have seen,“ Shine said.
He said the video is particularly useful because Holmes panned back to get the background shore into the shot. That means it was less likely to be a fake and provided geographical bearings allowing one to calculate how big the creature was and how fast it was traveling.
Legends of Scottish monsters date back to one of the founders of the Christian church in Scotland, St. Columba, who wrote of them in about 565 A.D.
More recently, there have been more than 4,000 purported Nessie sightings since she was first caught on camera by a surgeon on vacation in the 1930s.
Since then, the faithful have speculated whether it is a completely unknown species, a sturgeon--even though they have not been native to Scotland’s waters for many years-- or even a last surviving dinosaur.
“There are a number of possible explanations to the sightings in the loch. It could be some biological creature, it could just be the waves of the loch or it could some psychological phenomenon in as much as we see what we want to see,“ he said.
But Nessie isn’t just an icon of the paranormal--she’s also an emblem of Scottish tourism. She has been the muse for cuddly toys and immortalized on T-shirts and posters showing her classic three-humped image.

Alamut Valley in IranÕs Qazvin province

Sri Lanka’s tourism industry aims to attract more women visitors under its efforts to revive faltering arrivals as an escalating internal conflict harms the island’s image, a top official said.
The industry is working on several special holiday packages targeting niche markets like professional women and retired people in a campaign to fill empty hotel rooms, the island’s tourism chief said.
One such package aims to take advantage of Sri Lanka being the host country for this year’s World Tourism Day on 27 September, Sri Lanka Tourist Board chairman Renton de Alwis said, wrote Lankabusinessonline.com.
“We hope to bring in women leaders and develop business opportunities around the event,“ he told LBO. “We aim to offer holiday packages under the theme ’Men don’t get it’.“
World Tourism Day is organized by the World Tourism Organization this year as an occasion to celebrate women’s achievements in the tourism sector.
It aims to stimulate support for the UN’s 3rd Millennium Development Goal of promoting gender equality and women empowerment.
De Alwis said the industry is looking at opportunities in the entire women fraternity such as organizations of women in media, fashion, architecture, and women writers.
The industry hopes to entice around 900 professional women from various fields.
“They are women leaders. We’ll identify them through professional associations,“ de Alwis said.
The island’s hotel and travel trade are looking for innovative ways to attract more visitors after tourist arrivals fell sharply with the intensification of the ethnic war.
The number of holidaymakers visiting Sri Lanka fell by nearly 20 percent in the first four months of this year to 167,674, compared with the corresponding period of last year.
Arrivals from the key markets of Germany and India declined sharply.
Sri Lanka had already lowered its forecast for tourism arrivals by 20 percent to 543,877 for the calendar year 2007.

Speaking to reporters about the recent Global Ecotourism conference in Norway (May 14-16, 2007), the head of an international development agency confirmed his call for the Nobel Peace Prize to recognize the linkages between sustainable tourism and peace.
Noting “tourism is the only real peace dividend“, Lelei LeLaulu, president of the non-profit Counterpart International called on the Nobel Peace Prize committee, which convenes in Norway, to seriously look at how tourism prevents conflict and maintains peace, reported News.bn.gs.
“Look at what happens when fighting stops--people want to stream across borders to see their former enemies and where they live,“ he said, adding “tourism of the sustainable variety is the only real peace dividend.“
He urged Norway to focus its development priorities onto helping poorer countries build tourism infrastructures which enable visitor revenues to enhance the health, wealth, culture and environment of destinations--“the essential elements of peace.“
“Norway is already a major player in peace talks in the Middle East, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Perhaps it is time for their excellent aid agencies to harmonize their work with their peace-makers,“ LeLaulu asserted.
Noting the UN World Tourism Organization was forecasting a billion annual arrivals in just four years, LeLaulu said poorer countries “had the most desirable destinations but needed help to ensure tourism revenues could benefit local people.“
The best way to ensure visitor income went to the local people, he added, “was to help communities at destinations develop the skills and capacity needed to attract tourists.“
Norway and the richer countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are home to the world’s richest travelers.

Tourist arrivals to Cambodia rose 20 percent in the first four months compared to the same period last year, Tourism Minister Thong Kong said.
Some 710,000 arrivals were recorded between January and April, he said, boosted by an increase in travelers from neighbors Thailand and Vietnam.
Vietnamese arrivals jumped 70 percent, while the number of Thais visiting Cambodia went up 38 percent, he told AFP.
Thailand and Vietnam “are among the top 10 countries“ for arrivals, Thong Khon said.
“Tourists from Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and other countries...increase every year,“ he said, adding that visitors from South Korea and Japan still make up the largest number of foreign tourists.
Tourism is one of the few money-spinners in Cambodia, one of the world’s poorest countries, and the government hopes to attract three million visitors by 2010.
Cambodia has recently increased the number of direct flights to the country and last week inked a deal with Yangon to begin air links from Bagan and Mandalay, Myanmar’s top tourist stops, to Cambodia’s Angkor temple town, Siem Reap Cambodia recorded about 1.7 million arrivals in 2006, bringing 1.4 billion dollars in revenue.
“We have peace, good security...and our tourist destination is safe,“ Thong Khon said.