Travel Infos

Marketers should consider employment status when allocating resources for targeting consumers. Full time employees make as many daily contacts as part time employees and stay-at-homers combined! A consumer package goods manufacturer might consider sampling its products in or near their targeted consumers’ workplace rather than, or in addition to, traditional in-home sampling. For purposes of the study, “contact” was defined as “any type of direct communication a person has with another person including spoken to in-person, by phone, or written via email, or instant/text message.” Stay-at-homers tend to make more daily visits to chat rooms, message boards, free email services, forums, and any information station they can easily find. Including web site addresses and promotion codes in marketing efforts, making it easy to pass this information along online, is a tactic that works well with this group of people provided there is perceived value. Marketers often use household income of $75,000 as an affluence threshold but there was no apparent increase in word of mouth or (WOM) activity for people with incomes from $75,000 to $90,000. The results showed acceleration in WOM likelihood for households earning $100,000 or more. As expected, technology has a significant influence on how different generations foster WOM. Here’s a glimpse into the future, as well as today. Younger generations are creating personal online media to a greater extent, with nearly half (49%) of Gen Y having built a website and one quarter having their own blog. When reaching out to their peers, one-quarter visit chat rooms or message boards daily and 17% of their contact activity is done through instant or text messaging. Gen X and Boomers tend to use email more often and are more likely to spread positive WOM. These groups are ripe for viral email campaigns. An overlooked and interesting area for marketers is reaching Silver Birds through message boards and chat rooms. They have more activity in those areas than Boomers and nearly equal activity to Gen X. This is likely due to their desire to reconnect with family and friends, and to discuss health, medical, and other issues of aging with peers and professionals. At this time of their life they tend to go on cruises, flights, and lots
of different locations all over the world, since most of them worked all their life and now have the time and most have the cash to do these types of travel.

Duty-Free Travel Information

The European Union, Iceland, Norway, Japan, Singapore, Australia and other countries have implemented new regulations regarding liquids in carry on bags. As a result, there are potential implications for passengers who purchase liquid duty-free items (e.g. perfume and liquor) while traveling to and from international destinations. Because many duty-free shops in other countries are located before the security checkpoint, all liquid duty-free items purchased in those airports will be placed in special sealed tamper-evident bags in order to be permitted through those countries security checkpoints. The tamper-evident bag is not currently accepted through U.S. checkpoints. To avoid the risk of having to abandon your liquid duty free items in the U.S. and abroad, please follow the guidelines below. Please note: these security measures only apply to liquid, gel, and aerosol duty free items. For passengers traveling to an international destination from the United States: Duty-free purchases of liquids of any size from shops in the US are permitted if you have a nonstop flight to an international destination. If you have a connecting flight in Europe, Japan or another international destination, US duty-free liquid purchases in containers larger than three ounces will not be permitted through security checkpoints because they will not be in the an approved tamper-evident bag.
Note: If you purchase a liquid duty-free item in the US you will not be able to get a tamper evident bag for it before going through international checkpoints. For passengers returning to the United States from an international destination: On nonstop flights bound for the US, duty free liquids purchased at an international airport will only be permitted it they are delivered to the aircraft for passenger pickup, bought on the plane or purchased after the security checkpoint. If you are flying to the US and have a connecting flight, duty-free liquids that meet US requirements will NOT be permitted through US security checkpoints. If you have a connecting flight, liquid duty free purchases must be placed in your checked baggage. Since you will be required to reclaim your checked bags prior to passing through customs inspection, you can place duty-free liquids into your bags and recheck them for your connection. This information will help you as you go from place to place around the world. Some countries will not allow any sort of sprays, fruits, nuts, or liquors so be aware of the laws of the land to which you are going to so you will be able to bring your purchase into that country. When traveling to an international destination with a connection, buy your duty-free liquid items on the last leg of your trip. In Europe, Japan and other countries that use the tamper-evident bag, passengers should not open the bag before the security checkpoint or else the duty free contents may be seized. When returning from an international destination on a connecting flight in the US, use your time in customs to place any duty-free liquid items in your checked bags. Here are a few guidelines for carry-on luggage dimensions. Please keep in mind that you should verify with the specific airline you are using for carry-on sizes and rules. U.S. – Most U.S. domestic, non commuter airlines dimensions are 22″x14″x9″. Many allow a second smaller item as well such as a tote, cosmetic bag, briefcase, etc. International dimensions are 18″x14″x9″. This is a recommended carry-on size and will very from airline to airline.

General Luggage Policies

Note that when maximum size measurements are shown as a total number of inches (e.g. 45″) this is the total of the length, width and height of the piece. There are standard sets of dimensions that go to make up these totals (for example, 22 x 14 x 9 is the standard for 45″) and if you have a bag that is an unusual shape but still within the total number of inches, you may find it being rejected. Many luggage stores sell suitcases described as ‘carry-on’, but these suitcases are sometimes larger than the size most airlines will accept. The safe maximum size is 45″, in the form of a 22″ x 14″ x 9″ bag. Some airlines allow up to as much as 55″, but most do not. Not only do luggage stores and manufacturers not always tell you if their bag is legally sized or not, but they also frequently miss-measure their bag. Their measurements generally are for the inside of the main compartment, and assume that any external pockets are of zero thickness, rather than stuffed full of things (which can easily add another inch or more) and ignore any external framing such as wheels and carry handle (which can also add another couple of inches). If you should be very unlucky and find yourself forced to try and squeeze your carry-on into an unforgiving luggage template by the gate, even one extra inch – if your bag is already at the maximum – will be enough to mean it doesn’t fit and you have to check the bag. So you get on board with your large but legal sized carry on item. However, what happens if there is no space remaining in any of the overhead bins, and you’re forced to place it under the seat in front of you? Although your carry on item might be within the size guidelines issued by the airline, that does not guarantee it will fit under the seat in front of you! It seems that the space under the seat in front of you is getting smaller and smaller, particularly with some airlines (most notably on international flights) adding bulky electronic boxes under each seat to control the at-seat video entertainment systems, and with more closely spaced seats that are, themselves, thinner than before. Even if there isn’t a blocking box, due to the design of the seat frame and supports, you’ll find there might be the least amount of space under the aisle seat, a bit more space under the wing seat, and most space underneath the center seat. At last – something good to say about getting stuck in a middle seat! Even if, in theory, your bag could fit under the seat in front, you might find the geometry of the space and angles is such that you can’t manage to fit the bag into the space. For many reasons – your own convenience, and courtesy to fellow passengers, you should focus more on bringing the smallest carry-on you truly need rather than the largest carry-on you think you need! All airlines place limits on the number, the size, and the weight of what you can carry on to a flight with you. Generally US domestic airlines are fairly liberal with these limits, and rarely choose to enforce them.

Travelers survey

In a June 04 survey of Travel Insider Newsletter readers, 80% of readers who admitted exceeding the official carry-on allowances said they did so with no problems. Of course, ‘no problems’ is a relative term, and if you’re honestly abiding by the airline requirements and unable to fit your own smaller carry-on into an overhead bin due to the presence of massive outsized bags filling up all the space, you might have a different perspective on this! 94.5% of Travel Insider readers say they do not exceed carry-on limits. Personal Items such as a Briefcase, Camera, Handbag/Purse, Laptop (in carry bag), and other items not exceeding 36″ in total dimension, Reading Matter, Small book-bag style backpack, and an Umbrella. In addition to generally allowing you to carry on one bag plus one personal item, many airlines may also allow you to carry on other items such as coats, hats and other ‘outer clothing’ items, ‘assistive devices’ such as crutches/canes and wheelchairs, diaper bags and approved child safety seats. Unlike checked luggage, where you can pay extra to carry heavier or bigger or more items, with carry on, there are no extra charges. If the airline enforces its carry-on rules, then your only option is to have the disallowed items checked. International flights often have much stricter carry-on policies, particularly with regard to the weight of carry-on bags. Although most domestic airlines have no limit on carry-on bag weight, internationally, you will find that some airlines set such ridiculously low carry-on weight limits (sometimes as little as 11 lbs) that the weight of an empty carry-on bag is more than the total weight you’re allowed to take with you! You need to be aware of these rules, or else the next time you see someone desperately unpacking and repacking their luggage on the floor by the check in counter, that person might be you! International airlines may have smaller size limits on your carry on bags, too. If you want a bag that is always accepted on both domestic and international flights, you’ll need to choose a size or two smaller than the maximum allowable domestic sizes. If your flight is on a really small plane, you might find that your luggage allowances for both checked and carry-on items are substantially reduced.

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It’s grey and chilly. Throngs of thirty and forty somethings lumber through the drizzle to an agricultural hall outside Coventry. I pay the 11 entrance fee and once through the door everything changes. Sunny optimism illumines the interior. Maple-leaf flags hang like bunting while red, white and blue balloons jostle for attention with inflatable kangaroos and surfboards. This is Emigrate, the largest migration exhibition in Britain, at which financial advisers, estate agents and lawyers from more than 60 organisations offer advice to 7,000 visitors on how to gain entry to new lands of opportunity.

I join the queue of visitors who are eager to discover how to clinch the golden ticket: an Australian visa. We take our seats and the game-show begins. On the stage, a smiling Australian migration lawyer talks up the prize of a one-way ticket to the land of surf, sun and beer. “Once you get a visa you can sit on the beach for the rest of your life. You don’t need to work if you don’t want to.”

At Emigrate, points win prizes. Later in the day, at stalls dotted around the fair, there are talks on how to gain the differing number of points required for entry by Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Each country has its own list of desired skills and professions and the fair’s walls are pasted with posters cataloguing each nation’s sought-after occupations. Are you a bee-keeper? A civil servant? Welcome to New Zealand. Hairdresser? Last year Australia was desperate for you.

Now, after admitting large numbers of Chinese and Indian scissor-hands, hairdressers are no longer required. Qualification for permanent residence can be a lottery but there are some certainties. All countries allocate more points for youth, English-language fluency and education. And if you are an entrepreneur with thousands to invest in your new country, Australia, New Zealand and America all want you.

Myths about points swirl around the show. To demonstrate the abundant migration misinformation, the presenter, Ben Willis, a migration agent and lawyer, asks, Paul McKenna-style, for a guinea pig who believes he or she has the 120 points to qualify for permanent Australian residency.

The victim says confidently that he is an engineer, aware Australia is desperate for them. “Do you have a BSc in engineering?” the presenter asks. “No. I switched careers later and took an MSc in engineering,” he replies. It is not enough. The BSc would have given him the necessary points but the MSc counts for less.

The volunteer’s face falls. The presenter looks vindicated: “My main message is: don’t assume you will manage to get 120 points,” he says.

Registering the wavering mood in the audience, he attempts to gee them up: “It’s worth going through the hurdles or else you’ll be stuck on the M1 thinking, ‘what am I doing here?’ Australia is the best place to be. Once you’ve made a decision to come, just do it.”

To keep wannabe migrants’ eyes fixed on the prize, we are introduced by video link-ups to Brits who have leapt through the migration hoops to settle in new countries. At one talk, entitled “Chat with Brits in Canada”, we’re presented to Maxine, a migratory role model who moved from London to Ontario two years ago: “She got a whopping 79 points! She only needed 67 to qualify!”. Canada’s craving for her postgraduate social work qualifications ratcheted up her score.

It’s a gold rush for the emigration industry. The Office for National Statistics’ figures show more British citizens left the UK in 2006 – 207,000 – than in any year since records began in 1991: 49,000 for new lives in Australia, 71,000 upped sticks for EU countries, mainly Spain and France, and 16,000 to the US.

More and more people hanker to move abroad. A 2006 BBC survey found that 13 per cent of 1,000 people asked were planning to emigrate in the near future, twice the number who wanted to leave when the same question was asked three years before.

Yet the British press and politicians have been so mesmerised by the rising number of non-British nationals arriving – which the ONS recently showed had swelled to 510,000 immigrants in 2006, double the number a decade ago – that the British exodus has been ignored.

Of course, emigrating Brits are nothing new. At the height of its imperial power in the 19th century, Britain experienced mass migration not only to colonies and dominions such as India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa but also to countries with colonial connections, such as the US.

Professor Tim Hatton, a labour market economist from Essex University, estimates the annual emigration rate in the years before the first world war at around 5.3 UK citizens out of every 1,000, though this included a disproportionately high share of Irish emigrants when Ireland was part of the UK.

Even today, according to Jim Hammerton, emeritus professor at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, who has written extensively on the history of migration, Brits are cashing in on the “colonial dividend”, empire having established “common language and family ties to countries”.

A couple at the Emigrate fair support Professor Hammerton’s observation. The woman, in her late 30s, pacifying her toddler with an apple, tells me her parents came to Britain from India in the 1960s, and her husband had lived in Australia as a child for 10 years before they met: “I know it’s possible to uproot a family and be happy.”

Brits are departing their home country in greater numbers than the French or Americans.

The Institute for Public Policy Research estimated that 5.5m British nationals, or just over 9 per cent of the UK population, were living overseas permanently in 2006. It dwarfs the number of French living overseas, which is only about 1.2m, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Yet even the French eclipse the Americans: the OECD finds 1.2m US-born citizens, out of a population of 300m, live overseas, making the US diaspora proportionally much smaller than the French or British.

While the legacy of empire has provided Brits with some choice destinations, this alone can’t explain the difference. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, IPPR’s director of research strategy, suggests the British are more outward-facing than other nationalities: “Brits care about international issues – it’s in British newspapers. Whereas American and French societies are more insular.” This, he says, helps explain why Britain has, in relative terms, one of the largest diasporas in the world.

If Brits, as Sriskandarajah says, do have a wider view of the world, then cheap travel and improved communications make abroad not as foreign as it used to be and emigrating less daunting.

In fact, for many middle-class families across the world, living abroad is a rite of passage, whether it is gap-year students digging wells in African villages, high-flyers studying for MBAs or investment bankers accepting foreign postings.

Dr Sam Scott, a lecturer in social geography at Liverpool University who has researched European migration, suggests the experience of foreign living and culture is a social aspiration and may be a way some families give themselves a mark of cultural sophistication. He says: “People’s social and cultural experiences abroad are useful as a form of class ‘capital’. It’s about how you change as a person and the networks you enter that set you out as different.”

The pursuit of this badge of distinction increases the likelihood of accidental migration, which takes place when the intention to return home is re-routed by, say, romance. Prof Hammerton suggests growing numbers of accidental migrants are making redundant the distinction of permanent migrants and short-term expats living overseas on a work posting.

How, for example, to define Ian Corfield? He is a 35-year-old chief executive of Bank West’s retail division, who moved with his wife and two young children from central London to Perth after HBOS, which owns Bank West, offered him the post. “We always wanted to live and work abroad. We weren’t sick of Britain; we just wanted to experience a different environment and culture,” he says.

For the moment they’re keeping their London house but think they might sell up and make Australia their permanent home, thereby blurring the demarcation between expat and migrant.

I ask Paul Beasley, editor of Emigrate, a magazine offering migration news and advice, why so many Britons want to leave. He says unemployment is not an issue but taxes and house prices motivate people to up sticks. “The property market is a big factor; they want their children to be able to get a foot on the property ladder. There is a dream, buoyed by the strong pound, that people can buy their houses outright abroad and have a nest egg.”

Indeed, everyone I speak to at the fair raises the issue. At one stand, I ask what I could buy if I sold my one-bed London flat. “You could get a 3,000 square feet, four-bedroom house on an acre of land and three-car garage – a mini-mansion if you moved to Saskatoon,” the Canadian consultant enthuses proudly.

Foreign homes allow us to experiment with migration. A survey by Barclays bank showed that 35 per cent of people buying a holiday home planned to relocate or retire there. David Bloor, a 49-year-old maths teacher from east Yorkshire, says that buying a property in Turkey has given him a taste for life abroad and now he hopes to settle farther away. Some commentators dub the fashion for buying overseas homes “pre-emigrating”.

Professionals on overseas postings and Brits in possession of foreign properties are making British migration more middle class than it used to be, according to Prof Hammerton. He says traditional “migrations of austerity”, when people felt driven out of Britain by hardship, notably in the postwar years and high unemployment in the 1980s, have given way to “migrations of prosperity” as people quit a Britain that is relatively affluent with high employment.

Prof Hammerton also says that migrants are both more wealthy and skilled than was the case in the 1950s. In part this reflects the fact that the middle class is bigger than it used to be and that tougher immigration policies in settler countries weed out lesser-skilled potential migrants, consigning the “Ten Pound Poms”, British migrants who received financial assistance from the Australian government, to the history books.

However, if some Brits are migrating by accident after relaxing in their Provence holiday home or putting down family or work roots abroad, most people I meet at the Emigrate fair just want to leave Britain. There is something rather melancholy in visiting a fair with hundreds of people who want to leave the country.

Some of the would-be emigrants say they are fed up with Britain’s “uncontrolled immigration”.

The Elstons, a couple in their 30s from Nottingham, have been thinking of moving to Australia for the past 18 months. At first it was Canada, but then they changed their minds. “Canada and Australia are very different,” I suggest. They shrug their shoulders. “It’s more that we want to leave this country than go to another country. I pay too much tax. There are too many foreigners coming to this country due to EU restrictions being lifted,” Mr Elston explains. I ask him if he doesn’t see the irony that he will be an immigrant in Australia – the kind of person he is complaining about. He shakes his head: “I prefer other countries’ immigration policies. They’re controlled.”

According to Paul Beasley, Gordon Brown’s decision not to call an election until 2009 might exacerbate the exodus, not because of the prime minister himself, but because “when a political party has been in power for a number of years, people start to become disillusioned; they begin to feel that politics is a dead game”.

But talk around the fair isn’t just of policy and property. People at Emigrate speak of their motives for migration in therapeutic and emotional language. They want “space to breathe” to “get away from stress”.

Beasley sums it up: “People just feel that life in Britain is becoming more stressful, more difficult. They believe that moving overseas will balance their lives and they will have much less stress.”

I talk to Paul, a 43-year-old graphic designer who is planning to move to Australia with his wife and four children: “We want a better quality of life. I don’t like Britain. My spare time is pressured. You live for your holiday. I want to be in an environment where the lifestyle is slowed down and you can take advantage of time to be with your family.”

Paul’s remarks appear to confirm Prof Hammerton’s verdict that the “migration of prosperity” has replaced the “migration of austerity”. Aspiration for a better quality of life these days need not be a hankering for increased riches but a reaction against the perceived stress of modern life.

Stress has become a “virulent epidemic” in British society, according to David Wainwright and Michael Calnan, authors of a study entitled Work Stress, published in 2002. The idea of being “stressed out” grips the nation. It radically alters how people look at work and the world around them. Work in pressurised Britain seems undesirable, and countries that appear to offer a more relaxed lifestyle are attractive.

Some people I met at the fair lusted for adventure but most were fed up and desperate for sunnier climes and eager to escape the stresses of life in Britain. So much unhappiness made me desperate to get away and I plonked myself in a mini-cab. It wasn’t just me that felt infected by the visitors’ discontent. “Everyone’s been so miserable,” my cab driver remarked. “I’ll tell you what, we’re better off without that whingeing lot. Give me the immigrants any day.”