Business travel

Iberia is preparing to launch a new low-cost airline in summer 2012: Iberia Express will focus on the Spanish and European networks.

A big crowd turned out on 1 July at the La Défense car park for the inauguration of Avis on Demand, the new 24/7 self-service car hire service.

With six million visitors a year and a 11% increase in the number of hotels between 2003 and 2010, Lyon is keen to consolidate its image as an international tourist and business destination.

The strike action by SNCF train controllers, which began late on Thursday after an agent was attacked, should be over by early afternoon.

"2 million visitors by the end of the year". This is the record figure forecast by the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA) for the 2011 tourism year.

Gone are the days when travelling to Vietnam meant, at best, staying in a legendary hotel with ageing plumbing, or at worst in a place that was not fit for human habitation. "unclassifiable.

The concept of hotel residences is booming on the Indian subcontinent. The Citadines Richmond Bangalore opened last August in the heart of the city's business district.

"95 % of our establishments are independent... "

Just a few months after buying information software ITA, Google is clarifying its ambitions in the travel industry with the launch of Hotel Finder. The idea is to use the power of Google Maps to find hotels.

At the end of June, Accor launched a shared knowledge platform on social and environmental issues in the hotel industry. Called Earth Guest Research, this initiative aims to "to make studies and methodologies on sustainable development available to the whole sector and to the general public in order to contribute to the knowledge and progress of the tourism industry"..

Business travellers in South America are benefiting from new benchmarks. Brazil has just adopted a hotel classification system called SB Class. By adopting the international "1 to 5 starsThis new system should give Brazilian hotels a higher profile on foreign markets. But this compliance does not exclude a certain originality in the method.

60% of people in couples lose between 15 minutes and 5 hours of sleep a night because of their partner's snoring: this is the finding that led the Crowne Plaza chain to test its new room "anti-snoring in a large number of establishments.

A Mandarin-speaking host, in-room tea kettles and instant noodles, translated information leaflets and "congee" at breakfast: Chinese guests at Starwood Group hotels will receive special attention thanks to the new Starwood Personalized Travel programme.

"There's a shortage of rooms in Paris". This is not news, but it is one of the findings of the report on "Business tourism in Greater Paris submitted last June to the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industry by Gilles Pélisson, former CEO of the Accor group.

International rail business is back on track in 2011. In the first half of the year, Thalys reported a 4.6 % increase in traffic between Paris and Brussels and a 15.6 % increase to the Netherlands, both of which were driven by shorter journey times.

"Europe's most punctual airline... "