Travel Cruncher

By Alissa de Carbonnel

MOSCOW |
Fri May 4, 2012 6:52am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian billionaires are famous for being big buyers of contemporary art, bolstering sales in capitals across the West, but at home it’s a different story.

Dejected by Vladimir Putin’s return to power, many of Russia’s glitterati have left, turning their backs on a fledgling modern art market that may now have to seek help from the state – the people who scared off its potential patrons.

“These collectors who left en masse, they are people who saw that not only is there a suffocating situation but that it will continue for a minimum of six years,” gallery owner Marat Gelman said, referring to Putin’s return to the Kremlin for a third term. “They are not seeing their future in Russia.”

Gelman was at the forefront of a movement to pioneer Moscow’s first contemporary galleries in the 1990s, setting up his Gelman gallery alongside the Aidan and XL galleries to cater to the rich and famous seeking trophies of their wealth.

But those trailblazers now say their regulars have largely left Russia, leaving their luxury market in the hands of rich bureaucrats, who neither want to draw attention to their wealth or spend on art that is often critical of the Kremlin.

“When the richest people are bureaucrats – deputy ministers, the children of governors, the wives of mayors – then these people are ashamed of their wealth,” Gelman said. “They would rather buy some expensive yacht far from everyone.”

Each of the three trendsetting galleries is changing in its own way to respond to plummeting

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Tags: country, cruises, locations, travel, world

By Simon Akam

FREETOWN |
Thu May 3, 2012 10:31pm EDT

FREETOWN (Reuters) – Scattered across Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown stand ageing wooden houses, some of which look more like they belong on the east coast of 18th century America than in a steamy West African city.

Others look like they may have been built hundreds of years ago in the islands of the Caribbean, another reflection of Sierra Leone’s history as a colony established for freed slaves.

For Lucy Senessie, a 24-year-old who lives in one of the West Indies-influenced board houses in Freetown – known as ‘bode ose’ in the krio vernacular – the city’s unique architecture is a living link to its past.

“It is very important for people to see what has been there before,” she said, standing outside her wooden house in Freetown’s Murray Town neighbourhood. “The time when they colonise this country, there is only board houses in this country, but now things have changed.”

Isa Blyden, a documentary producer who has researched Freetown architecture, sees the origin of the houses in the arrival of the ‘Nova Scotians’ to Sierra Leone.

These former American slaves and free blacks sought refuge with the British during the American Revolutionary War. After the British defeat they were evacuated to Nova Scotia in Eastern Canada, and in 1792 a contingent came to Sierra Leone.

Blyden sees the original single-storey Freetown Board House as a reconstruction of the cabin-like structures built a little earlier on the American eastern seaboard.

“The style of house was being built in America in 1776,” Blyden said.

There were some modifications though, notably a three-foot base

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By Avril Ormsby

LONDON |
Wed May 2, 2012 12:52pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) – Fighter jets flew into a base in northwest London on Wednesday, the first time they will be stationed in the capital since World War Two, at the start of a week of military exercises to test out security ahead of the Olympic Games in July.

Codenamed “Olympic Guardian” and involving airmen, soldiers and sailors, the exercises are aimed at reassuring Britons and foreign visitors that everything possible is being done to keep them safe during the games.

Military chiefs insist the manoeuvres, between May 2 and 10, are necessary contingency measures for what will be Britain’s biggest peacetime security operation.

But some have described the security, which includes a plan to place surface-to-air missiles on a residential block next to the Olympic Park in east London, as “Olympic madness”.

“Yet again there has been a complete overreaction which in fact will put ordinary people at greater risk than any extremely unlikely external attack,” one letter in the left-leaning Guardian newspaper said.

Anti-war protesters have accused the Ministry of Defence of creating a climate of fear.

Typhoon jets, stationed at the Royal Air Force’s RAF.L Northolt airbase in northwest London, will fly over London, and pilots will test procedures for intercepting any aircraft which breach the restricted airspace imposed around the Games.

Britain’s biggest helicopter carrier HMS Ocean will patrol the River Thames, while the warship HMS Bulwark, will be off Weymouth on the south coast, where the sailing events will be held. The Typhoon fighters will be joined by RAF Puma aircraft, Lynx helicopters carrying snipers,

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By Jason Subler

SHANGHAI |
Mon Apr 30, 2012 7:26am EDT

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Foreign companies doing business in China must navigate a business culture in which bribery is rife, finding ways to remove obstacles to expanding in the world’s second-largest economy without running afoul of local or home-country laws.

Especially in areas such as dealing with local officials in charge of permits, it is still common for bribes, whether cash or illegal gifts, to be expected in return for providing the necessary approvals, industry and legal experts say.

For U.S. companies in particular, that means they need to take pains not to run afoul of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act FCPA.L, which bars U.S. firms and others from paying bribes to officials of foreign governments.

“Any industry that you see that is heavily regulated typically is high-risk,” said Meg Utterback, a partner at the law firm King and Wood Mallesons in Shanghai who frequently deals with corporate investigations.

Utterback named health care, construction and energy as examples of industries that fall into that category in China.

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INSIDER: China’s bribery minefield reut.rs/JqKZ2H

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PERMIT PAYOFFS

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice have stepped up scrutiny into potential violations of the FCPA, especially in countries like China, where state-owned companies are a big force in the economy.

In the latest move, reported by Reuters last week, the SEC has started investigating major U.S. movie studios and their dealings in China, sending letters of inquiry to at least five studios in the past two months including News Corp’s 20th Century Fox (NWSA.O), Disney (DIS.N) and DreamWorks Animation (DWA.O).

The

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Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:22am EDT

(Reuters) – Online travel agency Expedia Inc topped estimates for quarterly profit growth as its worldwide hotel revenue increased, and its shares gained 16.5 percent.

“Overall (the report) looks pretty strong,” Morningstar analyst Dan Su said, noting a rise in domestic and international bookings.

“You probably would expect some headwinds in the Western economies would be pressuring growth” but there was no sign of that in the Expedia report, she said.

Expedia (EXPE.O), whose brands include Hotwire and Hotels.com, has been investing heavily in technology platforms and international expansion to position itself for growth. But the Expedia brand has been challenged as passenger airfares have risen.

“All of our major brands other than Expedia continued to perform well,” Expedia Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said during a conference call. He added the Expedia brand showed improvement, but results were still not where the company wanted them to be.

In the first quarter, airline tickets sold rose 5 percent but revenue per ticket fell 20 percent, contributing to a decrease in worldwide air revenue of 17 percent. Worldwide hotel revenue rose 18 percent.

The company had a net loss of $3.3 million, or 2 cents a share, in the first quarter, compared with earnings of $52 million, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier.

Earnings per share adjusted for account depreciation, interest expense and other items rose to 26 cents from 16 cents a year earlier. That was better than the 15 cents a share expected by analysts, on average, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Quarterly revenue rose 12 percent to $816.5 million, better than the $790.9 million expected by analysts.

Shares of Expedia rose to $38.02

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By Lin Noueihed and Tarek Amara

DJERBA, Tunisia |
Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:35pm EDT

DJERBA, Tunisia (Reuters) – Europeans in white bath robes saunter across the marble lobby of a luxury hotel on the Tunisian island of Djerba, heading for a spot of relaxation at the spa or a few hours’ soaking up the sun on the resort’s pristine beaches.

At breakfast, the waiters in the restaurant can barely keep up. All around French, German, English and Arabic spoken by Libyans escaping uncertainty in their own country, can be heard amid the chatter.

After a year of revolutionary turmoil that saw tourists flee the Mediterranean hotspot in droves, Tunisia hopes 2012 will mark the start of the recovery in a sector that used to account for almost 7 percent of gross domestic product and employs 500,000 people, second only to the farming sector.

“I heard a lot about the turmoil in the security situation but the reality is completely different because it is safe. We stay out late every night and nothing scares us,” said Monica, a French tourist, who has visited Tunisia many times before. She did not wish to give her full name.

“I’m here with my friend this time but in the summer I will come back with the family and I will tell everyone that Tunisia has not changed. It is even more charming than before.”

In 2011 fewer than 5 million people visited the country that witnessed the start of the Arab Spring, when a revolution ousted veteran dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, sparking a wave of uprisings across the

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Travelfish regulars will be familiar with the Thailand on 250B a day thread over on the messageboard — it’s the tale of a guy who spent 22,500B travelling in Thailand for three months. With independent travel, you can keep your costs down without needing to nick water out of bank water machines. One of the big hidden costs of longer-term travel is the cost of getting around, but by travelling slow you keep this down. Your bottomline won’t be blown out by tour group hotels, instead you’ll be able to take advantage of the cheap flophouses across the region. There are also lots of ways to save money while you travel .

Southeast Asia is FULL of independent travellers and if you’re travelling in the region you’ll have a great deal of trouble avoiding them! Traveller hubs like Khao San Road, Vang Vieng, Pai, Ko Pha Ngan, Hoi An and Sihanoukville draw them in like flies to sticky rice and as long as you’ve got some modicum of social skills, you’re likely to meet up with others. It can be a great experience hanging out with your peers from around the globe, and without wanting to sound like a great advocate of the Global Love In, it can break down a lot of prejudices and opinions you may have held before you met someone from ABC — hell they might even be fun to travel with.

There is more to travel than getting drunk around a beach bonfire with a bunch of foreigners — you’ll find locals to be just as eager to socialise. When travelling on an organised jaunt, you’re most likely going to be mainly dealing with the locals on a transactional basis — be it in a cafe, at a hotel or on a minibus, you’re going to be paying them money for stuff. As an independent traveller you’ll also have this, but because of your flexible timeframe you’ll have more opportunity to get to know locals and hang out with them to some degree. This can be fun — yes you may even need to go to karaoke — but it can also be an interesting learning experience in seeing what goes on in a local’s life outside of the guesthouse foyer.

Picked an adventure tour to Southeast Asia? Your planning is done. Independent travel on the other hand can be a bag of laughs to plan — especially if you’re underemployed at an office with a good high-speed internet connection and a screen nobody can see. Go surf the web, check out Travelfish (oh, you found us already), buy some guidebooks or better still go get some good travelling books. Watch some movies set in the region or sample some pho at your local Vietnamese joint.