I usually get contacted rather often with promoting emails of all kind of services, sites or apps. Not every one makes it through to my writing, but Pablo Grandinetti’s (co-founder of Urbita/Travel Videos) email did. Read why below…

Being the first search engine for travel videos organized using Urbita’s database of around 180,000 cities/towns, it sure did catch my attention fast. On top of that they also categorize the videos by location and add other information of interest like available tours, music festivals or sports events.

This approach is of course very useful for us travelers, gathering much of the info we want for our research for any city we plan to visit. Not only that, but the info we get is like insider-info, local knowledge of a place which is essential for any traveler that wish to plan the best holiday at that particular place.

I like the fact that I can get a search result with better videos than just searching for videos generally in different common video sites. Travideos.com is after all, specialized in travel videos, making it more suitable as a travel planning tool. Try it out!

©Lifecruiser Love Travel Videos
 

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Lifecruiser Love Flights
 

This number was about: London, New York, Mediterranean, Crete, Majorca, Italy, Turkey, France and Greece – all very popular travel destinations among Swedes.

©Lifecruiser Love Travel Magazines

Other travel news related posts by Lifecruiser:

11 Top Travel Magazine Blogs
Random Lifecruiser Travel News
 

British Airways has tested this new environment-friendly paint for a year now on an airplane with a flight route between London and New York. The new paint is not only better looking, but also improving the aerodynamic of the airplane, making it less fuel consuming and saving millions for BA.

I have no idea why the airplanes can’t be bare naked, why must there be paint at all?

There are many other ways to strip an airplane obviously, British Airways let all their employees come with suggestions and they came up with enough alternatives that made BA save enough fuel to power 550 flights from Heathrow to New York last year… and they continues with other projects in 2012.

I was just thinking: think if every airline (and other transportation related companies) would adopt this, making all kind of savings – what an impact it would have on the environment!

©Lifecruiser Love Airplanes

Other flight related posts by Lifecruiser:

EU Airports facing capacity crunch
Travel Tools: Flight Tracking
Google flight search engine – new useful travel tool
How to find the cheapest flights – the ultimate flights guide
Flight Stockholm – Palma, Thomas Cook Airlines
Budget flight Ryanair-Skavsta – Bratislava
Mark green approach to travel
 

The amount of foreign travelers at Sweden’s airports has increased tremendously during just the last couple of years and now even more is expected during 2012.

Sweden may be a small country way up in the north, but we do have lots of things that may interest lots of different types of tourists, as well as a diverse and unique climate throughout the country. Sweden are also known for innovations, design, fashion, music and lots of high quality restaurants!

I don’t find it particularly odd that the Swedish tourism is increasing, since we have been very bad at marketing our noble country before and just recent years stepped up the efforts to be seen around the world.

There have also been formed new partnerships and cooperation between different companies and organizations working within the tourist and transport sector – even concentrating on special destination connections, making the marketing more effective.

There is a lot of big investments going on at several of Sweden’s airports the upcoming years and the capital city of Stockholm’s closest international airport Arlanda, will be extended to become Arlanda City – a big built up business center.

Sweden is increasing it’s efforts to welcome many more tourists than it has ever. As a traveler I’m happy for that, but at the same time I am a wee bit concerned too: will our little country be able to take the hit of the tourist masses without changing too much?

That is a question that have to be answered in the future…

©Lifecruiser Love Sweden
 

• The tourism in Sweden is increasing further, as it has the past eight years, despite the economical crises around in the world. Last year the tourists spent 87 billions Swedish crowns – which is more than double the amount Sweden did earn on the Swedish car export…
• In the last quarter of 2011, Sweden had the most expensive hotel rates of the whole European Union, with a average of 1180 Swedish crowns/night. Denmark came in on the second place, UK at third place. Though I must say to Sweden’s defense that the hotels in Sweden generally keep an high standard.
• The most visited Museum in Sweden is the old and famous outdoor museum out on the Djurgården island, neighbor to the only amusement park in Stockholm, Gröna Lund. After that it’s the Vasa Museum with the old Vasa ship and then the Museum of Modern Art.
• Flybe starts a new flight route Bromma (Stockholm) and Oslo in the beginning of May with 22 departures per week. Already today you can take a flight to Copenhagen, Tallinn of Helsinki with Flybe.

We were just looking around a bit… and we were VERY tempted to book two other trips, because we found awesome bargain prices for flights to both Palma de Mallorca and Venedig with another airline.

I tell you: we were soooo close to book since the weather is really boring here in Stockholm right now and we had booked them for sure – if it were not for the fact that we need to save for our long Europe trip later this year… *sigh*

©Lifecruiser Love Travel
 

The Spanish flight company Vueling even decided to start their flight route between Stockholm – Barcelona today – much earlier than planned (March) – because of the Spanair bankruptcy. Tickets can be bought through their mobile site too: m.vueling.com.

So if you are a Spanair.com lockout victim, you can hopefully get this special flight rate by Vueling at: http://www.vueling.com/spanair/ or read more in their blog post about the Spanair passengers options.

I can imagine what a chaos, since Spain is such a huge European tourist destination, when all those stranded passengers are going to try to get tickets with other flight companies like Iberia, Air Europa and Ryanair (49 Euro rescue fare) etc.

Having an owner of ownership in Spanair of 10,9 percent, the Scandinavian Airlines SAS reports that their loss will be possible to handle for them and that they will be involved as a creditor in the upcoming bankruptcy process. The event will have a limited effect on SAS liquidity.

Let’s face it: It could have been you or me. It’s never fun – to not get that well deserved getaway that you may have saved up for in months. What a nightmare.

To be stranded somewhere without a flight you’ve counted on if you really have to return at a specific date could cost you more than you can afford, both money wise and perhaps work wise. Your boss might not be pleased if you can’t get home in time.

Me? I would LOVE to be stranded in Spain right now… he he…

©Lifecruiser Love Spain
 

All I can say though: it was not us! We did travel way too little in 2011, but planning to change that in 2012 for sure! Both within Sweden and in Europe this year. (Will tell you more later).

Some favorite travel destinations among the Swedes are: Antalya/Southeast Turkey, Gran Canaria, Mallorca, London, New York, Crete, Tenerife, Phuket, Cyprus and Rhodes. London and NY kicked out holiday places like Phuket and Crete.

Spain is still a top country for Swedes, but also Turkey, United States, Greece, Thailand, Great Britain, Italy, Cyprus, France, Egypt and many others. Greece and Egypt has fallen back a little because of the political problems.

Obviously Swedes has not stopped their travel because of the financial crises or political activity, maybe it’s the Viking travel blood, what do you think…?

©Lifecruiser Love Travel
 

70% of all delays to flights are already caused by problems on the ground not in the air. On present trends, nineteen of European airports will be unable to accommodate any more flights by 2030. Source: EU Commission

The legislative proposals are to be approved by the EU Parliament and then become Community law. Hopefully this won’t take too long. We all know how it is when so many people are involved in a discussion…

…and when it comes to the airports I really think there is a lot to be improved – not only when it comes to the traffic, or what do you say…? Any suggestions?

©Lifecruiser Love Airports Improvements
 

ITA Software

ITA Software’s flight planning tool can simultaneously search over 500 airlines to come up with the cheapest airfare for you. ITA search engine is used by most major airlines, such as US Airways and airline fare sites such as Kayak.com or Bing Travel.

It’s rather easy to use, you enter your dates and start the search. If you’re flexible with dates, select “See calendar of lowest fares” and ITA will display the cheapest fares over a 30-day period for the major airlines. To purchase the ticket you have to go to the airline’s website.

There are also tabs with tips about events, tours, attractions, and dining at the selected destination, presented below the calendar results with flights, which needs to be developed further.

There is even a mobile app for buying flight tickets: OnTheFly, for both iPhones and Android phones. I haven’t tested any of them yet. If you have, tell us what you think about them.

Google flight search engine

Google bought ITA Software months earlier than the launch of the Google flight search feature and have worked on it since then to make it even better than before by combining ITA’s knowledge and Google’s technology.

As they say themselves, you will now get super-fast results, see a simple list of the most relevant flights, be able to figure out when to travel and consider your destination options.

Read more about it in the related post at Google Inside Search Blog: Early look at our flight search feature – especially watch the explaining video.

Bear in mind though that this is just the beginning. I’m hoping for much more in this flight search engines development, though I already love some features in this early version.

I really like how easy it is to search for alternative airports and change the dates. You get the results at once – even the airline names. I LOVE the interactive map which can show you prices around the destinations directly at the map, making the results much more visual.

Compare it to the original ITA Software I’ve linked above, then you more clearly can see the improvments done and perhaps also what is still missing.

Google are on the right track here and it will be very interesting to see how this develop during time and if there are any others who will follow their example…

Check it out yourself at google.com/flights and feel free to come back and tell us what you think about it!

©Lifecruiser Love Useful Travel Tools

Related Google travel posts by Lifecruiser:

Google Earth as a travel tool
Ving Charter shows destination hotels with Google Maps