Afaranwide

NEWSLETTER 47: March 28, 2020

Hi, and thanks you for your interest in the Afaranwide travel blog!

Social Distancing Travel Guide

Self-isolating? Bored? Missing travel? Then check out our virtual guide to the world’s 10 most popular tourist attractions. Explore the Colosseum, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower and other iconic sites – all from the comfort of your sofa!⁠ We’ve gathered together details of virtual reality tours, webcams, videos and more for the 10 top sites, based on Tripadvisor booking data. READ MORE

Online Visitors Only, Please

One of the places featured in our virtual guide can ONLY be visited online. The house in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family lived before going into hiding in a building in another part of the city is a private home, and does not receive visitors. It is let each year to a foreign “refugee writer” who cannot work freely in his or her own country – but a 360-degree tour is available. The place where the Frank family hid from the Nazis for 761 days is now a museum (pictured) that’s ranked eighth in the top 10.

Famous Sites, Famous Films

We were struck by how many of the places in the list had appeared in movies, and we’ve included a few video clips to jog your memory. The Statue of Liberty – ranked fourth – has been seen in many films, most memorably during the great reveal at the end of the original Planet of the Apes, one of the clips we’ve selected. Our favourite clip, however, shows Chicago’s Willis Tower – its observation platform is number nine in the list – falling over in the bonkers 2018 monster film Rampage, starring Dwayne Johnson. Alfred Hitchcock pioneered the use of monuments and landmarks in the movies, shooting dramatic scenes at Mount Rushmore, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Forth Bridge, the British Museum and many others. We visited a location used in one of his scariest films – READ MORE

Hotels Help Heroes of the Hour

Hotels are stepping up to support those fighting the coronavirus. The Four Seasons in Manhattan, NYC, budget brand Oyo, and AccorHotels in France (among others) are offering free rooms to medical staff dealing with the pandemic. And, bless him, former Man U. and England defender Gary Neville has handed over all the rooms in the two Manchester, England, hotels he co-owns with his former team-mate Ryan Giggs for free to National Health Service employees separated from their families.

Upturn 'Unlikely Until 2021'

International travel and tourism is unlikely to recover from the shock of the coronavirus pandemic until next year, according to analysts at investment research company Morningstar. “We continue to believe that once coronavirus fears fade, air traffic will improve and could overshoot normalized demand for a period as pent-up demand (for example, postponed family vacations or business conferences) is released,” Dan Wasiolek and Ivan Su write in a report. They say that over the past decades the aviation industry has been resilient to shocks, including pandemics. “We anticipate the travel downturn to be short-lived and companies with strong balance sheets to be able to weather the storm.”

Industry's Virtual Get Together

The prospects for an eventual recovery will be discussed by leading industry figures on April 7. Appropriately in the current circumstances, they’ll be taking part in a virtual conference. Speakers at the Hospitality Tomorrow event, organised by Bench Events, include Stephen Sackur, presenter of the BBC’s HARDtalk show, and US Travel Association CEO Roger Dow.

Bowing to the Inevitable

In last week’s newsletter we, like many others, said the idea that the Tokyo Olympics could go ahead as planned was implausible. Reality prevailed on Tuesday when the event was postponed until next year. One odd point is that the official name will still include the year 2020, even though the Games will take place in 2021. Perhaps all the merchandise has already been manufactured.

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