Fed up with London bias towards travel

Fed up with London bias towards travel

I FEEL compelled to write about the increasing and endemic bias towards London in the content of Travel Weekly. It is something I have noticed since my subscription started 18 months ago and which Ihoped might improve but if anything, it seems to have got worse.

On reading the Stateside feature by Alan Moore and the other reporters, I began to wonder if they have ever heard of anywhere in Britain outside London. Why always show sample itineraries from London? Do you not care about agents and the travelling public who exist outside the capital and somehow manage to leave the UK without using Gatwick or Heathrow?

This is merely an example from last week’s issue and is typical of the recent special reports/destination updates.

This summer there are daily scheduled flights from Manchester to Atlanta, Philadelphia, Toronto, Washington DC, Orlando, two to Chicago and three to New York. Many more US cities are served less frequently, not to mention daily schedules to the Far East. Manchester Airport recently won the title of European Airport of the Year, which seems not to be newsworthy to the trade.

Please spare a thought for us northerners, who find it much more difficult, costly and time consuming to travel via London than your reporters obviously do – even in opening a brochure or a timetable to search for an alternative. How on earth would they manage to sell a holiday? There is a lot of criticism about travel agents selling holidays and travel purely because of bonus and reward schemes – I wonder if the content of your newspaper is selected on a similar basis?

I have no connection with Manchester Airport other than as a traveller.

Michael Peers

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Editor’s note:point taken – no Southern Comfort for our reporters. See page 32 for our coverage of Manchester Airport’s latest success