Crok’s Shandon Travel and Athlone’s Grenham Travel were crowned ITAA Travel Agencies of the Year 2017 at the annual Irish Travel Industry Awards in Dublin last night.

You may noticed an unusual street performance if you were in Cork city this morning.

PARK PLEASURES

Cycling enthusiasts may be tempted by a week-long offering from a company recently set-up by Corkman Brian Canty in Girona, Spain. 

Thompson Holidays has the Greek destinations of Rhodes, Kos and Zakynthos on offer in August at decent prices.

Cork Airport receives unfair criticism because there are unrealistic expectations of the service it provides, according to travel agents in the city and county.

Click and Go has a number of special offers on the run to include a November deal to Maspalomas in Gran Canaria, prices starting from €349 for a week at the Vista Oasis Apartments.

A hospital fundraising charity is, for the first time, to host a glitzy ball which it hopes will raise enough money to provide a sensory area for children with special needs and sleeping facilities for parents.

An un-named Chinese investor has stitched up a deal on Fitzgerald House, an 11,600 sq ft property facing Cork city’s English Market and adjacent to the dramatically just-painted up Singers Corner, where - coincidentally - a commissioned mural by artist Johnny Bugler depicts a floral Chinese pattern, as seen on old Singer sewing machines.

When you’re in the travel business you have to get used to people moving about, but Cork city-based travel experts Shandon Travel are still getting a little excited about their switch to a new city centre location.

Travel agents are likely to cut back on their own holidays this year as they report a strong demand for foreign sun holidays from consumers.

COME summer time, there’s never a shortage of things to do around Ireland. Sometimes the best of festivals tended to go unnoticed but these days it’s easy to pick them on www.discoverireland.ie

THE Shandon Travel Group has recently launched a wedding gift registry website enabling guests to give couples the ‘gift of travel’ called www.myhoneymoon.ie.

BRITTANY Ferries commence the 2009 holiday season with departures from Ringaskiddy in Cork on April 4, running up to October 31.

CORK-based Shandon Travel has expanded its tailor-made worldwide travel offers with a huge increase in programmes to India and South America.

SAS has promised it won’t be swayed from the “old style” service it offers on routes out of Dublin.

PROJECT Travel has teamed up with Scandinavian Airlines to offer a special five-night Norwegian break from €769 per person sharing — three nights in Oslo and two in Bergen plus the special ‘Norway in a Nutshell’ journey between the two.

DUBAI continues to attract an increasing number of Irish holiday-makers and, indeed, property investors.