Once you come here, you can’t bear to leave,” warned Margaret Wilson, a Geordie expat who runs Olveston House in Montserrat, a six kilometre-long island in the Leeward chain and just a 20-minute plane hop from Antigua.

Music fans may also recognise Montserrat as being where former Beatles producer Sir George Martin built AIR Studios in 1979, bringing superstars such as Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder to the island.

That was before Hurricane Hugo struck in 1989, forcing the studios to close, and the Soufrière Hills volcano that in 1995 began erupting sufficiently to render more than half the southern part of the island uninhabitable.

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Cyprus has a well-established tourism industry with a healthy dusting of new purpose built resorts as well as traditional fishing villages and bustling towns that cater to the hordes of tourists flocking to the island every year. The reason they all come? The sun-drenched beaches, ancient history, rich cultural mix, delicious food and an established party scene are good places to start. However, if you have never been before, choosing where to stay can be rather tricky. So here is a run down of the main accommodation bases in Cyprus. If you want more information and the opportunity to book Cyprus holidays visit Thomas Cook online.

Larnaca

Larnaca is home to the island’s biggest airport. M

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The first formal pan-European consultation group for travel buyers with large budgets has been formed by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA).

Membership of the Strategic Benchmark Group is reserved for European-based companies who spend more than €200 million a year on travel and entertainment.

The group, which to date has 18 members, will hold its first meeting at the GBTA European conference in Holland.

Current members of the benchmarking group include buyers for Astra Zeneca, Siemens, ABB, Google, Microsoft and Nestlé.

Bernd Schulz, head of global commodity travel for Siemens, will head up the group, with Caroline Strachan, Astra Zeneca’s global procurement leader – business travel.

Schulz said: “To date the opportunity to share strategies for the biggest programmes has mainly been restricted to a local level. I am del

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Blues traveler: JetBlue is adding new flights and amenities. Credit: Michael Gray.

JetBlue Airways may be known for its in-flight entertainment, clever ads and low fares for Florida vacations and Caribbean vacations, but the New York-based airline is also building a case for why business travelers should come aboard as well.

In June, the airline introduced the first of its Even More group of products and services: Even More Space and Even More Speed. An extension of the company’s existing Even More Legroom product, the Even More Space feature includes early boarding and early access to overhead bin space, in addition to extra legroom. T

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When Robert Hillestad tried to withdraw 200 pounds from an automated teller machine in London last April, he got a bait-and-switch. Almost literally.

“While waiting for the machine to reel off my receipt, the bills that had been dispensed were pulled back into the machine,” he says.

Hillestad was in the British capital for a quick vacation and to see the royal wedding, but the prospect of losing about $320 USD cast a long shadow across the experience. “Using an Internet cafe nearby, I verified that the amount had, in fact, been debited from my account,” he says.

And so began a long journey to retrieve his money.

It turns out ATMs can inflict a lot of unnecessary pain on travelers.

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