The Black Country’s reputation as a visitor and inward investment destination is on the up, according to new figures released by local marketing partnership Marketing Birmingham.

Murcia welcomed 342,054 foreign tourists in the first seven months of 2013, up 8.1% on the same period last year.  25,589 more visitors have so far selected the region for their holidays in 2013, with the French and British leading the charge.

The growing trend for the ‘Staycation’ has been successfully marketed through Visit Devon’s online Active Devon Campaign, encouraging people to holiday at home and experience all that Devon has to offer, all year round.

The latest Which? airport passenger survey reveals smaller airports are, on average, outperforming larger ones. We also reveal that queues at bag-drop desks often cancel out any benefits of using online check-in.

Global leisure daily hotel rates achieved a new growth record of +5.1% over prior year in June, according to second quarter data released today by Pegasus Solutions in The Pegasus View. The single largest processor of electronic hotel transactions reported that along with solid performance for holiday travel, business travel maintained prior year levels for both bookings and rates during the off-season.

A survey conducted by travel insurance specialist Columbus Direct has found some surprising statistics on which item Brits cannot do without on holiday. The top three items that Britons insist on taking with them on holiday are smartphones (33%), books or an ebook reader (22%) and sunglasses (16%). Surprisingly, only 6% said that expensive gadgets such as tablets or an iPad was their essential holiday companion and only .5% said they couldn’t do without their camera.