Sunny Stanley - Sunday 15th Jan

A few days into our Antarctic cruise, it seemed odd to see classic English phone-booths and red letter boxes as we walked ashore at Stanley this morning. Before exploring the town, we rambled to Gypsy Cove and clambered over the dunes – avoiding the land mines – to find a group of pink-faced magellanic penguins and a lone king penguin waddling around in the silicon-like sand and surfing the shore break. The king had apparently come ashore to malt – a rather uncomfortable time for a penguin, when its sheds its worn-out coat for an entire new plumage on an annual basis.

White sands and megellanic penguins at Gypsy Cove

Stanley itself is a peaceful town of colourful, corrugated iron houses and welcoming inhabitants - known as ‘kelpers’ - who are keen to chat about the history and daily life of their island. Stanley has roads but no traffic lights and no native trees. The gardens here are dressed in colourful flowers and organic vegetable patches burst with green leaves; “we grow these out of necessity – we need to eat,” one elderly resident informed me; “gardening in Stanley is not just for fun!”. After we'd hiked across the island, perused the gift shops and sunk a few beers in The Globe, the Gadventures team shuttled us back to the ship to continue our Antarctic cruise.

Stanley's colourful houses

Beers at the Globe in Stanley

Now back onboard the M/S Expedition, we enter the next chapter of our Spirit of Shackleton adventure and face two days at sea, on our voyage southwards to South Georgia. Sea-sickness tablets in our stomachs and sick-buckets on standby, we’re all hoping that the Antarctic weather will stay calm for the crossing…

This blog-post forms part of a series of adventures experienced on-board the M/S Expedition in January 2012, whilst on an Antarctic Cruise - The Spirit of Shackleton - courtesy of Gadventures

Chinese Tourists Put off Visiting the UK

This week, BBC program ‘Fast Track’ raised concerns over the UK’s lack of tourists, and suggests why we’re falling behind our European neighbours.

Highlighting China as a key source of overseas visitors, last August, David Cameron expressed his disappointment that, whilst England was China’s 22^nd favourite country to visit, Germany was close to breaking into their top ten, “why can’t we do that?” he asked.  

Today, Germany receives six times the number of Chinese tourists than the UK does, and France welcomes even more. So why, when English is the second language of the Chinese, and they express a clear interest in our culture and landmarks, aren’t they visiting the UK?

Fast Track suggests that the reason is visas and stringent immigration laws. Chinese nationals are required to fill in their UK visa applications in English – no mean feat, when their native Mandarin is communicated in a series of intricate symbols. With forms filled in, a long process of fingerprinting and eye scanning can ensue, deterring many applicants.

And it’s not just the Chinese that are being put off. With over 100 countries requiring visas to visit the UK, it’s estimated by the ETOA that one in four applicants give up before attempting to process their visas, complaining of the long, arduous and expensive application system.

But why do we need more tourists? Our tourism industry is already worth over $1050bn, and creates around two million jobs in the UK. Sounds impressive, but being easily trumped by Germany, France and the USA, there’s work to be done.

Tourism is big business, and is an industry our economy relies on heavily. Visit Britain estimates that tourists spend more than £90bn a year in the UK and that one in twelve UK jobs directly or indirectly depend on tourism to some extent.

Patricia Yeates, of Visit Britain, expressed her frustration that Britain’s tourism is being driven away from this country and towards our rivals. She suggests that we need to be attracting more overseas tourists than ever, particularly with this year’s Royal Wedding hype and the lead up to the 2012 Olympics; ‘This is our moment to showcase Britain’, she urges.

To watch the documentary, see BBC Fast Track

This article was also published on Responsible Travel News

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