Europe

2015 is off to a flying start for Caen Airport. The Caen-Carpiquet hub posted double-digit growth for the 1st quarter of 2015 (+17%) compared with the same period in 2014. A total of 23,500 additional passengers used the Normandy airport at the start of the year, thanks in particular to the...

What will this new status as a rail company change for Thalys? Agnès Ogier - Thalys will now have a product on which all its staff will focus. The new status means that resources will be pooled, with 100% of staff dedicated to Thalys. This will enable us to improve service quality. We will...

The City of Light, a sleeping beauty? It remains to be seen. Hotel inaugurations follow one another and the dance card looks like a Prévert inventory where you can find a little bit of everything, just like in the Samaritaine. Even a trendy youth hostel - the Generator - on the banks of the Canal St Martin!

AirBerlin, Germany's second-largest airline carrying almost 32 million passengers a year on a network of around a hundred routes, is still losing money. Stephan Pichler, the new CEO, wants to return to breakeven by 2016 with a two-pronged strategy: attractive prices and greater competitiveness with low-cost competitors...

The intense blue of an icy sea is reflected in a myriad of icebergs. The Ilulisat fjord conceals a beauty that is almost inaccessible, except to those who want to experience a unique journey to the Far North... Where, in the words of Baudelaire, "the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternations of light and night...

Five years after launching a free, unlimited WiFi connection - a first for a French airport at the time - Nice Côte d'Azur Airport is continuing its efforts to establish itself as a pioneer in aviation connectivity. Since 13 March, business travellers have been able to take advantage of a high-speed WiFi network...

"This is a year of achievement in the upmarket and luxury segments", explains Christophe Alaux, General Manager of HotelServices France for the hotel group. Until now, we haven't made any major announcements. First of all, we wanted to do all the work upstream to achieve consistency in these segments". This dynamic, which affects both the Pullman...

The Holiday Inn Express Paris - Aéroport Charles de Gaulle is set to be the first of three hotel projects recently announced by IHG to open in the French market. Opening in 2017, the hotel will have 305 rooms. Its strategic location should appeal to French and international business travellers, especially as the CDGVal...

In total, some six million tourists visited Lyon during 2014, according to figures published on Friday by ONLYLYON Tourisme et Congrès. Hotel establishments benefited from this influx, as shown by the increase in the number of overnight stays (+1.4% compared to 2013, to 4.2 million overnight stays). The...

How would you sum up the Business Travel Show 2015? David Chapple - It was the biggest edition since the event was created 21 years ago. We welcomed 256 exhibitors, compared with 220 last year. All the major brands are represented, from airlines, hotels and business travel agencies, as well as a wide range of travel agencies.

Donau City is a far cry from the imperial pomp of the Ring and the Finde-century arteries of central Vienna. With its high-tech skyscrapers, the Austrian capital's new business district presents a very contemporary vision of Mitteleuropa. It all started with the aborted 1995 Universal Exhibition, ultimately rejected by the...

A record-breaking BTS 2015 is about to get underway in London on Wednesday 25 February at the Olympia Grand Hall. More than 252 exhibitors are expected at the London show - there were 226 last year - and they will be coming to meet the 6,500 participants expected. On the eve of its 21st anniversary, the Business Travel Show confirms...

EasyJet is making its travel policy more flexible by targeting business travellers: from 19 March, members of the easyJet Plus frequent flyer programme will be able to board with a 2nd piece of cabin baggage. This new feature will also be available to holders of a "Flexi" ticket, an "Upfront" seat or the "Extra Legroom" option. "Certain customers...

A total of 10.4 million passengers travelled on the Eurostar network in 2014, according to the figures unveiled on 18 February by the rail company: a slight increase (+3%) on the 2013 financial year, during which Eurostar recorded traffic of 10.1 million. Business travellers contributed to these good results...

Slight growth in revenue per room for the mid-range (+0.1%), top-of-the-range (+1.5%) and luxury (+0.2%) segments, weakness in budget hotels (-2.0%) and a continued decline in super budget hotels (-3.5%): this is the overall picture of 2014 drawn by Deloitte. The Paris hotel industry, while continuing to record high levels of occupancy,...

We will have to wait until the end of the renovation work - directed from this year by architects Albert Constantin and Marie Courdouan, and which will affect a large part of the facilities (rooms, meeting spaces, fitness centre, restaurant...) - for the Marriott Lyon Cité Internationale hotel to give the full measure of its...

Business travel in Germany is likely to be disrupted at the end of the week: on Thursday at 0:00 and until Friday at 23:59, Germanwings pilots will begin strike action, called by the VC Cockpit union. The Lufthansa subsidiary will publish an alternative flight schedule on Wednesday afternoon, but is already inviting travellers to check...

A few days after the relatively discreet launch of its new mobile application, the SNCF has decided to make a big impact on the digital front. Supported by its Chairman Guillaumpe Pépy, SNCF Director of Digital and Communications Yves Tyrode presented the #digitalSNCF.... plan point by point.

A small revolution has just taken place in the world of mobility made in SNCF. The new application, soberly named "SNCF" and available since 27 January on iOS and Android, offers a unique interface for managing business and leisure travel. For complete information on timetables and disruptions to services,...

The new Marseille-Düsseldorf flights will be operated four times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) by Germanwings from 1 May. Marseille airport will become the sixth French destination for the airline, which already flies to Paris, Lyon, Montpellier, Nice and Toulouse. [gallery exclude="39935"]