- As Maldives politicians abuse India over PM Modi’s Lakshadweep visit, read how India had prevented a coup attempt by handful of militants in Maldives in 1988 OpIndia
- Maldives Ex-President Nasheed Condemns Official’s ‘Appalling’ Language For PM Modi India Today
- ‘Why should we tolerate hate?’: Akshay Kumar joins boycott Maldives tourism call Hindustan Times
- ‘A Poor Country’: Sachin Tendulkar Bats for Indian Islands, Venkatesh Prasad Slams Maldivian Minister for C News18
- Maldives Government Distances Itself From Controversial Social Media Comments India Today
Tag Archives: Maldives
Did PM Modi Just Checkmate An Increasingly Hostile Maldives? | PM Modi Latest Visit | News18 | N18V – CNN-News18
- Did PM Modi Just Checkmate An Increasingly Hostile Maldives? | PM Modi Latest Visit | News18 | N18V CNN-News18
- Maldives Minister’s Post On PM Modi’s Lakshadweep Visit Triggers Row On Social Media NDTV
- Maldives minister insults PM Modi with ‘clown’, ‘puppet of Israel’ barbs in a now-deleted post after he shares pictures from his Lakshadweep visit OpIndia
- Rahul jumped into deep sea without blinking…Modi wears life jacket on beach: Cong’s jibe at Lakshadweep photos Deccan Herald
- Did you search Lakshadweep this week? Thanks to PM Modi: How India’s smallest Union Territory topped the trend | Mint Mint
Maldives new president asks India to withdraw its military – Reuters
- Maldives new president asks India to withdraw its military Reuters
- After Maldives President Says ‘Withdraw Indian Troops’, Here’s How Modi Govt Plans To Pacify Him Hindustan Times
- Maldives China-friendly president Mohamed Muizzu makes official request to India to withdraw military personnel South China Morning Post
- Why Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu’s Hyperbolic ‘Anti-India’ Campaign Needs a Reality Check News18
- Maldives to Discuss Indian Troop Presence After Call for Removal Bloomberg
- View Full Coverage on Google News
After Maldives President Says ‘Withdraw Indian Troops’, Here’s How Modi Govt Plans To Pacify Him – Hindustan Times
- After Maldives President Says ‘Withdraw Indian Troops’, Here’s How Modi Govt Plans To Pacify Him Hindustan Times
- China Has A New Poster Boy In Maldives As Beijing ‘Quashes’ US-Led QUAD’s Indo-Pacific Strategy EurAsian Times
- Maldives’ ‘India Out’ Policy: China’s Designs In Indian Ocean? | Left, Right & Centre NDTV
- Why Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu’s Hyperbolic ‘Anti-India’ Campaign Needs a Reality Check News18
- Maldives to Discuss Indian Troop Presence After Call for Removal Bloomberg
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Ileana D’Cruz, In Maldives For Katrina Kaif’s Birthday, Is Reportedly Dating Actress’ Brother
Ileana D’Cruz shared this image. (courtesy: ileana_official)
New Delhi:
Actress Ileana D’Cruz, who is currently in the Maldives for Katrina Kaif’s birthday festivities, is reportedly dating the Zero actress’ brother and model Sebastian Laurent Michel. (Katrina Kaif celebrated her 39th birthday on Saturday) . Speaking of rumours of Ileana and Sebastian’s romance, a recent ETimes report stated, “Sebastian and Ileana are said to be in a relationship for about six months now. Sources have it that the couple chooses to hang out at Katrina’s old residence in Bandra, at Ileana’s pad around the same part of the suburb and in London, too.” Other than that, Ileana shared pictures from Katrina’s birthday bash, which also features Sebastian.
“Sunshine, cocktails, and a bit of birthday cake,” Ileana D’Cruz captioned this post.
See Ileana D’Cruz’s post here:
Here’s another post shared by Ileana D’Cruz.
On Monday, Katrina Kaif posted a video from Maldives, featuring husband Vicky Kaushal and other friends, including Ileana and she wrote: “Yeh dosti.” In the comments section, Ileana wrote: “This was epic.”
The actress was last seen in The Big Bull, co-starring Abhishek Bachchan. The film was directed by filmmaker Kookie Gulati and it was produced by Ajay Devgn. The actress has also signed Unfair And Lovely with Randeep Hooda. She has also signed a project with Vidya Balan, Prati Gandhi and Sendhil Ramamurthy.
Ileana D’Cruz is best-known for her performances in Bollywood films such as Barfi!, Phata Poster Nikla Hero, Rustom and Happy Ending, to name a few. She also featured in the 2019 comedy Pagalpanti, which starred Anil Kapoor, John Abraham, Urvashi Rautela, Arshad Warsi, Pulkit Samrat and Kriti Kharbanda in pivotal roles.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa leaves Maldives for Singapore after fleeing crisis back in Sri Lanka
He is expected to arrive at Singapore’s Changi Airport on Thursday night, the security source said. Rajapaksa had been waiting to secure a “private jet” from a close family member in Colombo, but that had “not materialized,” the source added.
Rajapaksa left the capital of the Maldives, Malé, on board a “Saudi flight,” the source said.
CNN believes the source was referring to Saudia flight 788, which left Malé at 11:30 a.m. local time Thursday.
Saudia is the flag carrier of Saudi Arabia.
CNN has reached out to the Foreign Ministry of Singapore and Saudia but has not heard back.
Rajapaksa had been in Maldives for one day after fleeing Sri Lanka in the early hours of Wednesday — the same day he had said he would resign.
But by Thursday, no formal resignation letter had been received by the Sri Lankan parliament’s speaker, raising questions about the intentions of an apparently self-exiled leader who appointed the prime minister as acting president during his absence from his island nation.
Shortly after Rajapaksa left the country, protesters stormed Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office to demand his removal. Wickremesinghe responded by calling a nationwide curfew overnight.
Many protesters have vowed to continue to demonstrate until both men step down.
A high-ranking military official told CNN Wickremesinghe had appointed a committee of senior armed forces commanders to “restore law and order” across the nation.
By Thursday morning, as questions swirled over Sri Lanka’s future, a calm had descended on the streets of the commercial capital Colombo, according to senior superintendent of police Nihal Thalduwa.
But everywhere there are signs that the country remains on a knife edge.
Amid crippling shortages of fuel, abandoned vehicles line the streets near gas stations. People are no longer able to drive to work, so they cycle instead. Some have taken to sleeping in their cars.
The Sri Lankan police force said one police officer had been seriously injured during the protests and was receiving treatment in hospital. An army sergeant had also been injured, it added.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres on Thursday said he was following the events in Sri Lanka “very closely” and called for a “peaceful and democratic transition.”
“It is important that the root causes of the conflict and protestors’ grievances are addressed,” he wrote on Twitter. “I urge all party leaders to embrace the spirit of compromise for a peaceful and democratic transition.”
Sri Lankan president flees to Maldives, protesters storm prime minister’s office
COLOMBO, July 13 (Reuters) – Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives on Wednesday,bringing to an apparent end his family’s near two-decade dominance of the country after a massive popular uprising brought on by an economic collapse.
But his decision to leave his ally Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in charge as acting president triggered more demonstrations, with protesters storming the premier’s office demanding that he go too.
Wickremesinghe’s office initially declared a state of emergency and a curfew with immediate effect, then cancelled them but said the measures would be announced again later.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Police stationed outside the prime minister’s office fired several rounds of tear gas and a military helicopter briefly circled overhead, but protesters appeared undeterred and finally surged into the compound. Wickremesinghe’s team declined to reveal his whereabouts.
“It feels pretty marvellous, people were trying to take this place for about three hours,” said college student Sanchuka Kavinda, 25, standing next to a mangled, open gate of the prime minister’s office. “No matter what, everyone in this crowd will be here until Ranil also steps down.”
In a statement, Wickremesinghe said the protesters “have no reason to storm the prime minister’s office”.
“They want to stop the parliamentary process. But we must respect the Constitution. So security forces have advised me to impose an emergency and a curfew. I’m working to do that.”
On the lower floor of the two-storied, whitewashed colonial-era building, dozens of protesters gathered to sing Sinhala pop songs. In a nearby air-conditioned room, sat a large group of security personnel armed with assault rifles.
Protest organisers and security personnel manned a central wooden staircase at the heart of the building, guiding sightseers to and from the upper floor where the prime minister’s room is located.
At an adjoining room on the top floor, where Reuters interviewed Wickremesinghe a few weeks ago, the plush furniture had been hastily pushed to the corners and a line of armed security personnel ushered visitors through.
NEW LEADER DUE NEXT WEEK
Parliament is expected to name a new full-time president next week, and a top ruling party source told Reuters Wickremesinghe was the party’s first choice, although no decision had been taken.
An attempt by Wickremesinghe to cling on would infuriate the protesters who say he is a close ally of the Rajapaksa family, which has dominated the country since Rajapaksa’s older brother Mahinda became president in 2005.
Demonstrators gather outside the office of Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, amid the country’s economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka July 13, 2022. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
“An MP with one seat is appointed as PM. Now the same person is appointed as acting President,” the opposition presidential nominee, Sajith Premadasa, said on Twitter. “This is the Rajapaksa style of democracy. What a farce. What a tragedy.”
The president, his wife and two bodyguards left the main international airport near Colombo aboard an air force plane early on Wednesday, the air force said in a statement.
The parliament speaker, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, said Rajapaksa had phoned him and told him his resignation letter would arrive later on Wednesday.
A government source and a person close to Rajapaksa said he was in Male, the capital of the Maldives. The president would most likely proceed to another Asian country from there, the government source said.
ECONOMIC CRISIS
Protests against the economic crisis have simmered for months and came to a head last weekend when hundreds of thousands of people took over key government buildings in Colombo, blaming the Rajapaksas and their allies for runaway inflation, shortages and corruption. read more
Government sources and aides said the president’s brothers, former president and prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and former finance minister Basil Rajapaksa, were still in Sri Lanka.
Wickremesinghe, whose private residence in Colombo was set ablaze on Saturday, had offered to resign as prime minister but did not repeat that offer after he became acting president on Wednesday. If he does go, the speaker would be acting president until a new president is elected on July 20 as scheduled.
Amid the economic and political chaos, Sri Lanka’s sovereign bond prices hit fresh record lows on Wednesday.
The U.S. Embassy in Colombo, which is in the central district of the city, said it was cancelling consular services for the afternoon and for Thursday as a precautionary measure.
The island nation’s tourism-dependent economy was hammered first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then a fall in remittances from overseas Sri Lankans. A ban on chemical fertilisers hit output although the ban was later reversed. read more
The Rajapaksas implemented populist tax cuts in 2019 that hurt government finances, while shrinking foreign reserves curtailed imports of fuel, food and medicines.
Petrol has been severely rationed and long lines have formed in front of shops selling cooking gas. Headline inflation hit 54.6% last month and the central bank has warned that it could rise to 70% in coming months.
Mahinda Rajapaksa, president from 2005-2015 and later prime minister under his brother, resigned in May after protests against the family turned violent. He remained in hiding at a military base in the east of the country for some days before returning to Colombo.
On Tuesday, Sri Lankan immigration officials prevented Basil Rajapaksa, who quit in April as finance minister, from flying out of the country. read more
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh and Alasdair Pal; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Krishna N. Das; Editing by Sam Holmes, Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
A floating city in the Maldives begins to take shape
A city is rising from the waters of the Indian Ocean. In a turquoise lagoon, just 10 minutes by boat from Male, the Maldivian capital, a floating city, big enough to house 20,000 people, is being constructed.
Designed in a pattern similar to brain coral, the city will consist of 5,000 floating units including houses, restaurants, shops and schools, with canals running in between. The first units will be unveiled this month, with residents starting to move in early 2024, and the whole city is due to be completed by 2027.
The project — a joint venture between property developer Dutch Docklands and the Government of the Maldives — is not meant as a wild experiment or a futuristic vision: it’s being built as a practical solution to the harsh reality of sea-level rise.
An archipelago of 1,190 low-lying islands, the Maldives is one of the world’s most vulnerable nations to climate change. Eighty percent of its land area is less than one meter above sea level, and with levels projected to rise up to a meter by the end of the century, almost the entire country could be submerged.
Want to future-proof your home from rising sea levels? Make it float
But if a city floats, it could rise with the sea. This is “new hope” for the more than half a million people of the Maldives, said Koen Olthuis, founder of Waterstudio, the architecture firm that designed the city. “It can prove that there is affordable housing, large communities, and normal towns on the water that are also safe. They (Maldivians) will go from climate refugees to climate innovators,” he told CNN.
Hub of floating architecture
Born and bred in the Netherlands — where about a third of the land sits below sea level — Olthuis has been close to water his whole life. His mother’s side of the family were shipbuilders and his father comes from a line of architects and engineers, so it seemed only natural to combine the two, he said. In 2003, Olthuis founded Waterstudio, an architecture firm dedicated entirely to building on water.
At that time signs of climate change were present, but it wasn’t considered a big enough issue that you could build a company around it, he said. The biggest problem then was space: cities were expanding, but suitable land for new urban development was running out.
1/8
The threat of rising seas is leading to a new form of architecture, one that floats. In the Maldives, a nation on the frontlines of climate change, the first blocks of a floating city are being towed into place. Once completed, it should look like this rendering and around 20,000 people will call it home. Credit: Waterstudio.NL/Dutch Docklands
However in recent years, climate change has become “a catalyst,” driving floating architecture towards the mainstream, he said. Over the last two decades, Waterstudio has designed more than 300 floating homes, offices, schools and health care centers around the world.
The Netherlands has become a center for the movement, home to floating parks, a floating dairy farm, and a floating office building, which serves as the headquarters for the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), an organization focused on scaling climate adaptation solutions.
Patrick Verkooijen, CEO of GCA, sees floating architecture as both a practical and economically smart solution for rising sea levels.
The Global Center on Adaptation head office is anchored in the Nieuwe Maas River in Rotterdam. Credit: Marcel IJzerman
“The cost of not adapting to these flood risks is extraordinary,” he told CNN. “We have a choice to make: we either delay and pay, or we plan and prosper. Floating offices and floating buildings are part of this planning against the climate of the future.”
Last year, flooding cost the global economy more than $82 billion, according to reinsurance agency Swiss Re, and as climate change triggers more extreme weather, costs are expected to rise. One report from the World Resources Institute predicts that by 2030, urban property worth more than $700 billion will be impacted annually by coastal and riverine flooding.
But despite momentum in recent years, floating architecture still has a long way to go in terms of scale and affordability, said Verkooijen. “That’s the next step in this journey: how can we scale up, and at the same time, how can we speed up? There’s an urgency for scale and speed.”
A normal city, just afloat
The Maldives project aims to achieve both, constructing a city for 20,000 people in less than five years. Other plans for floating cities have been launched, such as Oceanix City in Busan, South Korea, and a series of floating islands on the Baltic Sea developed by Dutch company Blue21, but none compete with this scale and timeframe.
Waterstudio’s city is designed to attract local people with its rainbow-colored homes, wide balconies and seafront views. Residents will get around on boats, or they can walk, cycle or drive electric scooters or buggies along the sandy streets.
The capital of the Maldives is hugely overcrowded, with no room to expand besides into the sea. Credit: Carl Court/Getty Images AsiaPac
It offers space that is hard to come by in the capital — Male is one of the most densely-populated cities in the world, with more than 200,000 people squeezed into an area of around eight square kilometers. And prices are competitive with those in the Hulhumalé (a manmade island built nearby to ease overcrowding) — starting at $150,000 for a studio or $250,000 for a family home, said Olthuis.
The modular units are constructed in a local shipyard, then towed to the floating city. Once in position, they are attached to a large underwater concrete hull, which is screwed to the seabed on telescopic steel stilts that let it gently fluctuate with the waves. Coral reefs that surround the city help to provide a natural wave breaker, stabilizing it and preventing inhabitants from feeling seasick.
Olthuis said that the potential environmental impact of the structure was rigorously assessed by local coral experts and approved by government authorities before construction began. To support marine life, artificial coral banks made from glass foam are connected to the underside of the city, which he said help stimulate coral to grow naturally.
The aim is for the city to be self-sufficient and have all the same functions as one on land. There will be electricity, powered predominantly by solar generated on site, and sewage will be treated locally and repurposed as manure for plants. As an alternative to air conditioning, the city will use deep water sea cooling, which involves pumping cold water from the deep sea into the lagoon, helping to save energy.
By developing a fully functioning floating city in the Maldives, Olthuis hopes this type of architecture will be propelled to the next level. It will no longer be “freak architecture” found in luxurious locations commissioned by the super-rich, but an answer to climate change and urbanization, that’s both practical and affordable, he said.
“If I, as an architect, want to make a difference, we have to scale up,” he said.
Russian oligarchs’ yachts seized in Europe, others harbouring in Maldives
PARIS, March 2 (Reuters) – France and Germany have seized two superyachts owned by Russian oligarchs, French authorities and Forbes magazine said, hitting Russia’s super-rich under sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
At least five other superyachts owned by Russian billionaires are anchored or cruising in the Maldives, an Indian Ocean island nation, ship tracking data showed. read more
The yachts arrived in the Maldives after the West imposed sanctions on Russia. Washington, the European Union and others have said they will target oligarchs who have amassed fortunes and political influence under Russian President Vladmir Putin.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
“Thanks to the French customs officers who are enforcing the European Union’s sanctions against those close to the Russian government,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Thursday after French customs seized the 88-metre “Amore Vero” (True Love).
The yacht had been about to flee, he said.
It was impounded in the French Riviera port of La Ciotat and belongs to a company whose main shareholder is Rosneft (ROSN.MM) chief Igor Sechin, a close ally of Putin, the finance ministry said. read more
In Germany, a nearly $600 million luxury yacht owned by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov was seized in the northern port of Hamburg, Forbes reported. read more
And in another sign of Russian oligarchs feeling the sanctions’ heat, billionaire Roman Abramovich said on Wednesday he would sell the Chelsea Football Club and promised to donate money from the sale to help victims of the war in Ukraine. read more
TRACKING ASSETS
The United States is preparing a sanctions package targeting more Russian oligarchs as well as their companies and assets, two sources said on Wednesday, after U.S. President Joe Biden said the United States would work to seize the yachts, luxury apartments and private jets of wealthy Russians.
The EU, the United States, Canada and Britain are pooling efforts to examine how oligarchs could find ways to bypass the sanctions and also nail down the role of trust companies in holding assets, an EU official said on Thursday.
This task force will aim to close loopholes as they become apparent, the official said.
The impact of the sanctions was being widely felt.
“There is a significant chilling effect on any new business with Russia,” said Matt Townsend, a sanctions partner at law firm Allen & Overy.
“People are concerned about credit risk exposure but are also worried about what’s coming next. Everyone’s eyes are on the next wave of significant sanctions.”
READY TO FLEE?
The Amore Vero seized in La Ciotat had arrived there on Jan. 3 and was due to stay until April 1 for repairs, the French finance ministry said.
On Wednesday, customs officers noted that the yacht was “taking steps to sail off urgently, without the repair works being over”, the statement said.
As it was subject to the new sanctions, the officers decided to seize it.
Rosneft, a Russian oil giant, did not respond to a request for comment over the seizure.
Monaco-based Imperial Yachts told Reuters the yacht was owned by a firm called Kazimo, which had appointed Imperial Yachts as managers of the boat in 2018.
“The individual you name is not connected with either Kazimo nor the yacht,” a representative for Imperial Yachts told Reuters when asked about Sechin. The French finance ministry did not immediately return a request for comment.
Spanish group MB92, which owns the Ciotat shipyard, said the company was cooperating with the French authorities.
In Germany, the 512-foot (156-metre) yacht Dilbar had been undergoing a refit in the shipyards of Blohm + Voss, Forbes said.
The German government had frozen the asset and employees working on the ship did not appear for work on Wednesday, Forbes said.
A representative of Usmanov said he had no confirmation of the yacht’s reported seizure. Germany’s General Customs office said details of operational measures cannot be made public.
A spokesperson for Blohm + Voss declined to comment on the Dilbar, saying only that all orders and projects of its owners, the Luerssen Group, and subsidiaries were treated in accordance with the legal situation.
MALDIVES HAVEN?
Meanwhile, at least five superyachts owned by Russian billionaires appeared to have found temporary haven in the Maldives, a luxury holiday destination.
The superyacht Clio, owned by Oleg Deripaska, the founder of aluminium giant Rusal who was sanctioned by the United States in 2018, was anchored off the capital Male on Wednesday, according to shipping database MarineTraffic.
The Titan, owned by Alexander Abramov, a co-founder of Russian steel producer Evraz, arrived on Monday.
Three more yachts owned by Russian oligarchs were seen cruising in Maldives waters on Wednesday, the data showed. They included the 88-metre (288-foot) Nirvana owned by Russia’s richest man, Vladimir Potanin.
Most of the vessels were last seen anchored in Middle Eastern ports. A spokesperson for the Maldives government did not respond to a request for comment.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Reporting by Reuters in New Delhi, Paris, Berlin, London, Moscow, Brussels and Barcelona, Writing by Ingrid Melander
Editing by Mark Heinrich and Angus MacSwan
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Go big, spend big on bucket list trips
‘New sense of urgency’ to hit the road
There’s a “new sense of urgency” to travel, said Stephanie Papaioannou, a vice president at the luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent.
“Guests feel they have lost two years, and older clients are concerned about having fewer healthy years left to travel,” she said.
A couple pose in front of Machu Picchu, a destination in Peru that tops many travelers’ bucket lists.
Marina Herrmann | Moment | Getty Images
Lee Thompson, co-founder of the adventure travel company Flash Pack, agreed.
“People are desperate to get away,” he said. “They’ve been waiting to get back out there and are not shying away from those international destinations and big, once-in-a-lifetime adventures.”
The year of the ‘GOAT’
Expedia is calling 2022 the year of the GOAT, or the “greatest of all trips.”
In a survey of 12,000 travelers in 12 countries, the company found that 65% of respondents are planning to “go big” on their next trip, according to a company representative. As a result, it named the desire for exciting and extravagant trips “the biggest travel trend” of the year.
A survey of 12,000 travelers by Expedia found that Singapore residents were the least likely to have traveled during the pandemic (59%) and the most likely to want to splurge (43%) on their next trip.
Roslan Rahman | AFP | Getty Images
Amadeus is seeing a jump in searches to “epic destinations,” according to a company report published in November. Searches to Tanzania (+36%), flights to Jordan’s Petra (+22%) and bookings to cities near Machu Picchu (nearly +50%) rose from 2020 to 2021, according to the report.
These trends are expected to grow this year, along with interest in islands in the Indian Ocean as well as Antarctica, according to the report.
The pandemic has changed the “mood of travelers,” said Decius Valmorbida, president of travel at Amadeus.
“We have people just say: “Look, what if another pandemic happens? What if I’m locked in again?'” he said. There’s “a psychological effect that now is the moment.”
Searches for stays in vacation homes abroad are now on pace with 2019 levels, according to HomeToGo’s travel trends report, released in late November.
The international destinations drawing the biggest search increases this year, compared with 2019, are Tuscany, Italy (+141%), the Bahamas (+129%), French Polynesia’s Bora Bora (+98%), the Maldives (+97%) and the south of France (+88%), according to the report.
The top-searched international destinations for Americans for 2022 travel are Rome, Bali, London, Paris and Mexico’s Riviera Maya — which includes Playa del Carmen and Tulum — according to Expedia.
Emily Deltetto / EyeEm | EyeEm | Getty Images
Research shows that those aged 18 to 34 are driving the trend, and families are also getting in on the act, said Abercrombie & Kent’s Papaioannou.
“Families are choosing destinations they have always dreamt of, especially those centered around outdoor experiences like Nile River cruises, Machu Picchu, safaris and barge cruises in Europe,” she said.
Loosening purse strings
While financially devastating for some, the pandemic has allowed others — namely, professionals who have been able to work from home — to sock away more savings.
Some 70% of leisure travelers in major countries — such as the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Japan and Spain — plan to spend more on travel in 2022 than they have in the past five years, according to a November joint report by the World Travel & Tourism Council and travel website Trip.com.
Travelers are “more willing than ever before” to splurge on future travels, according to Expedia.
James O’Neil | The Image Bank | Getty Images
Globally, HomeToGo’s average booking expenditures increased by 54% last year, compared with 2019, according to company data. But average nightly rates haven’t gone up nearly that much — around 10% — for bookings this year compared with before the pandemic, said the company’s co-founder and CEO Patrick Andrae.
“Pent-up demand for travel led to travelers taking longer vacations, many opting to do so in a spacious vacation rental versus a hotel,” he said.
U.S. travelers are also seeking quieter, more luxurious destinations this summer — Maui over Honolulu, Nantucket over Cape Cod — despite the higher costs, according to HomeToGo’s data.
Travelers may be willing to pay more to go to certain places, rather than to make the trip itself more luxurious. Twice as many U.S. respondents indicated they were willing to spend more to see “bucket list” destinations (32%) rather than book luxury experiences (15%) or room or flight upgrades (16%), according to Expedia.
The willingness and ability to spend more are likely a good thing, since travel costs have increased in some places. The U.S. Travel Association’s December Travel Price Index, which measures travel costs in the United States, shows that prices have increased for food (+10%), hotels (+13.3%) and motor fuel (+26.6%), compared with 2019.
Airfare, however, was lower than 2019 levels (-17%), according to the index — but that may soon change, partly because of rising jet fuel costs.
Family reunions and ‘friendcations’
People are celebrating missed milestones, often with extended family, said Papaioannou. Abercrombie & Kent’s data shows a 26% increase in future bookings of five or more guests as compared with 2019, she said.
Family reunion-style vacations will be popular this year, agreed Mark Hoenig, co-founder of the digital travel company VIP Traveler.
People are expected to travel more with friends and family this year.
Hinterhaus Productions | DigitalVision | Getty Images
“People are still catching up for lost time with family,” he said. “Destinations that provide for large multi-generation families, such as those with a high inventory of large villas — including the Caribbean, Mexico and Maldives — are seeing an uptick in bookings.”
The U.K. saw an explosion of bookings by large groups once restrictions eased, according to Amadeus. Bookings to party spots, such as Las Vegas; Cancun, Mexico; and the Spanish island of Ibiza, led the company to name “friendcations” a top travel trend for 2022.
Renewed demand for travel agents
Big trips often require big plans, which is resulting in a renewed demand for travel agents, said Elizabeth Gordon, co-founder of the tour and safari operator Extraordinary Journeys.
Professional planners can help travelers navigate “Covid-19 tests, restrictions, changes in entry requirements, visas, flights, accommodation, activities and backup plans,” she said.
Even “DIY travelers,” who normally plan their own trips, are nowadays seeking professional help to make sure their upcoming travels are seamless, said VIP Traveler’s Hoenig.