Beach Holidays tips

TUI-owned FirstChoice.co.uk has relaunched as a vibrant new travel and experiences booking platform as the brand looks to strengthen its position with the flexible, independent traveler.

Think of Goa and what comes to mind? Beaches, nightlife, and parties. Goa’s Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte welcomes this image, but he wants travelers to see beyond it.

While metropolises like New Delhi and Mumbai continue to be on the travel list, leisure destinations like Udaipur, Puri, Goa, Jaipur and Munnar are some of the top searched domestic destinations during the festive season (between November 10-14), according to Booking.com.

Saint-Tropez may be known for glitz, but a few miles along the coast, the very ground beneath my feet glitters like a jet-setter hotel. I’m in the Var department in south-eastern France, where the Maures massif meets the Mediterranean and the bedrock is mica schist, a flaky stone that sparkles in the Provençal sunshine (and also makes for great wine).

Whether they are naturally formed, cast in concrete on a rock shelf or hewn from the rock itself, tidal pools solve a problem by providing safe access to the sea. Plunging into rich saltwater in a sheltered area protected from the turbulent waves, yet still refreshed by the tide twice a day, is an unfettered joy.

The UK’s On the Beach Group has now said chief financial officer Shaun Morton will take up his new position as CEO on June 30.

On Greece’s popular island of Paros, a protest by residents demanding space and free access to its sandy beaches has led to a growing nationwide movement against the expansion of pricey sunbeds rented out by private companies.

If there was ever a tale of two cities it has to be Kaş and Kalkan. Both picturebook pretty, with cobbled streets and bougainvillea-draped old stone houses, the two became hugely popular with holidaying Britons in Antalya when mainstream tourism began to gather pace there in the early 1990s.

The fortunes of this estuary island are linked to the tides

Heading for the seafront from Blackpool North station, I passed gleaming new tramlines. Blackpool’s famous trams – confined to the promenade since the early 1960s – will soon be running inland again, and nearby hoardings boasted: “The renaissance of Blackpool is gathering pace.”