Heavy snow snarls travel in northern Europe

Swaths of northern Europe were in the grip of snow, ice and high winds Tuesday, causing serious disruption to road, rail and air travelers.High-speed train operator Eurostar, which runs services linking Paris, Brussels and London, among other destinations, has canceled the rest of its services Tuesday and told passengers to stay at home."Severe weather conditions overnight in Northern France and Belgium have led to the closure of the high speed line," a notice on the company's website said."Passengers will not be able to travel on Eurostar services today and should not come to our stations."About 10,000 passengers are likely to be affected as a result of the cancellation of around 24 out of 27 scheduled trains Tuesday, Eurostar spokeswoman Lucy Drake said.
The bad weather may also affect services Wednesday, she said,with further cancellations or extended journey times possible.Passengers affected by the disruption will be offered exchanges or refunds, Drake said, and are urged to consider traveling next week if possible.Air travel has also been hit, with Germany's Frankfurt airport -- a major European hub -- canceling all flights for several hours as it worked to clear its runways.Some 700 out of a total 1,238 flights have been canceled so far, affecting roughly 7,000 passengers, airport spokesman Christopher Holschier told CNN.Two of Frankfurt's four runways reopened for takeoff and landing as of 5 p.m. local time, Holschier said, but snow continues to fall.
Holschier said passengers were resigned to the situation as they were well aware of the adverse conditions. "Already, getting to the airport has been an ordeal," he said.Meanwhile, the official Twitter feed for the two main airports in Paris warned that travel disruptions in the French capital were making access to the airports difficult. However, train and bus services were starting to get back to normal in the afternoon, it said.A quarter of flights from Paris Charles de Gaulle and one in five flights from Paris-Orly were canceled Tuesday in anticipation of the heavy snowfall, the two airports said Monday. Travelers were advised to check on their flight's status before heading to the airport.London Heathrow and Amsterdam Schiphol airports have also reported snow in the past 24 hours.Late-winter blasts like these are nothing new for central Europe, according to CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller.

Duluth couple shares passion for wine, travel

This is a love story. David Devere and Sara Duke are world travelers from Duluth who fell in love with France after taking a canal boat trip there in 2011.On the way, the couple also fell in love with the world of wine.The result is a new business venture, Savvy Nomad Wine Tasting & Tours, which offers wine education and also guided tours in France for a close-up look at where that wine is made.Devere and Duke met in Antarctica working at the U.S. research station in the 1990s. Duke grew up near Two Harbors. Devere is from Arizona. They have since traveled all over the world. They called the France vacation the best they have ever taken. When they returned to Duluth, they decided they wanted to continue teaching people about wine as a business and to guide them on similar trips to France.
"We were driving across North Dakota," Devere said of the couple's first discussion about the new venture. They talked about educating people in Duluth about wine and then came up with the idea of actually taking people to the places it came from."It seemed like a natural progression," Devere said.The result has been several sets of wine classes at area businesses since last fall and a regular Wednesday night wine presentation at Chester Creek Cafe.The couple is going to France again this summer — leading two canal boat trips — and are taking reservations for more trips in September 2014.Persian Gulf is new international travel hub.The wine and travel guiding venture is added to the duties of running the small press publishing company On-Word Bound Books since 2003.
In early spring of 2010, Devere came across an article in a sailing magazine advertising a canal boat trip in France. He showed it to Duke, who agreed the trip sounded wonderful. They recruited a couple friends to join them for a fall of 2011 trip, and David set about making the plans. He reserved the boat, picked flights, bought train tickets in France, planned a few days in Paris, and found hotels for the beginning and end of the trip.And then there was the wine. Devere wanted to have a better grasp of the wine made in the regions they would visit in France, so he purchased a DVD set called "The Everyday Guide to Wine." It offered 24 lessons using six bottles of wine for each one.Knowing that going through the lessons would prove to be an expensive venture, the couple recruited friends into a wine group to help share the cost of the bottles they would try.The group met about every other week for almost a year before the trip to France.

How to Start a Home Based Travel Agency with Little Money

These days, unemployed people are seeking ways to work at home because of the unreliable job market. Starting a home based travel agency is a great low cost way to start a home business with little money, while making great commissions.Almost anyone with the determination can start up their very own (and very profitable) travel agency!Make Sure You Have the Necessary Skills!At minimum, travel agents must have a high school diploma and a good grasp of computer and internet skills. You should also a good telephone voice and manner since you will be talking to lots of people. (Even the occasional unsatisfied or hard to please customer!) Basic accounting and business skills will prove to be very useful, but some people prefer to learn these as they go along. You will need to also have some working knowledge of things like weather, currency exchange, passport/visa requirements, and customs laws for travelers. If you want to be able to purchase tickets for your customers, you'll need to get licensed by the American Society of Travel Agents.
Other than the license from the American Society of Travel Agents, you will need to check and see if any permits for operating a home business are needed for your city. Also check into what tax forms, if any, you need to file for your business - especially if you want to have employees at any point.Decide if you will specialize in travel to certain countries/areas, what methods of travel you will offer, and which hotels you will use. Will you offer your customers set travel packages, or handle each customer's arrangements in a more customized way? Research the destinations you wish to offer and find out their peak seasons, landmarks, sights, and other things customers will want to know.
Even if you don't plan to apply for a loan to start your business, creating a business plan is a great way to map out the first several years of your business so that you always know which direction you want to go and in what time frames your business needs to achieve certain financial goals.If you are a customer at a particular bank, then go there first to ask about getting a loan. Banks are more likely to give loans to long time customers that they trust. Make sure you take your business plan along with you!

Persian Gulf is new international travel hub

It's 1 a.m. and the sprawling airport in this desert city is bustling. Enough languages fill the air to make a United Nations translator's head spin.Thousands of fliers arrive every hour from China, Australia, India, and nearly everywhere else on the planet. Few venture outside the terminal, which spans the length of 24 football fields. They come instead to catch connecting flights to somewhere else.If it were not for three ambitious and rapidly expanding government-owned airlines — Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways, and Qatar Airways — they might have never come to the Middle East.For generations, international fliers have stopped over in London, Paris, and Amsterdam. Now, they increasingly switch planes in Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi, making this region a new crossroads of global travel. The switch is driven by both the airports and airlines, all backed by governments that see aviation as the way to make their countries bigger players in the global economy.
Passengers are won over by their fancy new planes and top-notch service. But the real key to the airlines' growth is geography. Their hubs in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are an eight-hour flight away from two-thirds of the world's population, including a growing middle class in India, China, and Southeast Asia that is eager to travel.In the past five years, the annual number of passengers traveling through Dubai International Airport — home to Emirates — has jumped from 28.8 million to 51 million, a 77 percent increase. The airport now sees more passengers than New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
''Everybody accepts that the balance of global economic power is shifting to the east. The geographic position of the gulf hubs makes them much more relevant today,'' said Willie Walsh, CEO of International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways and Iberia.Persian Gulf carriers are already chipping away at some US and European airlines' most lucrative business: long-haul international flights. But it is what's ahead that really has other airlines worried.Gulf carriers hold one-third of the orders for the Boeing 777 and Airbus A380 — two of the world's largest and farthest-flying jets. That is enough planes to put 70,000 passengers in the air at any given moment.''They're being very aggressive,'' said Adam Weissenberg, who heads the travel and hospitality consulting group at Deloitte. ''These airlines are not going away.''