Top Ten 2013 Summer Holiday Trends

Summer is starting to make its presence felt in the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in thousands of travel plans being dreamed up and made. We take a look at these Top Ten 2013 summer trends and how they will affect your plans, jazz up your holiday and improve your trip.

10. Airport Security

Getting on a jet-plane and flying off is made dramatically less exciting by having to do the airport security dance. If you’ve ever travelled by plane, you’ll know it. The coat-off, unlace/unbuckle shoe, whip-off-belt jiggle, which is then followed by the shuffle through and scramble to put it all back on. If you’re really lucky, you’ll set the detector off and have to add the full body feel up to the routine. However, now there is a way to escape having to even take you laptop out of its bag: join the TSA precheck club and frustrating security checks will become a thing of the past.

9. Luxury Contiki, without the price tag

Luxury and cheap and two very contrasting adjectives, but they go hand in hand when it comes to booking a luxury Contiki holiday this summer. Various Contiki tour operators, such as Abercrombie and Kent, have broadened their offering of activities and lodgings, so as to attract a wider range of travellers. This means you can taste the high-life, without forking out large sums of money. Just be aware that some tour operators will increase the size of the groups to lower the costs. For some, this just means more people to socialise with, but for other is can be a crowded nightmare. Make sure you check the max group capacity before you book if this is a concern.

8. Smartphone = Smart Traveller

Carrying fiddly bits of paper in the form of boarding passes and tickets is fast becoming a thing of the past. Especially with apps such as Passbook which is not free and ready to download, but comes standard with ios6. Passbook allows you to store your tickets for everything; from your boarding pass to your travel insurance to hotel bookings.

7. Online booking

Gone are the days when you needed someone else to book your flights and plan your trip. Online booking has been around for ages, but more and more people are relying on this method to not only get where they are going, but also ensure they get the best possible prices while doing so. And booking sites are encouraging this. There are a variety of accommodation and flight sites, such as Expedia.com and Travelocity.com, which allow travellers to find the best deals possible. These sites are not just promoting the cheap and nasty, but actual world-class airlines and hotels. You can also book your own travel insurance and rentals online, and usually for much less than what the travel agent is offering you.

6. House Swap

Accommodation can often take up a large portion of your holiday budget, and for some, staying in hotels even detracts from their holiday. So what to do? Well, just as Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet did in The Holiday, you can try a house swap.  It’s simple. You register on one of many house swap sites such as Lovehomeswap.com or homeswapper.co.uk, get vetted and then get choosing. You can find houses to swap locally and internationally, depending on your location. Just remember, while you may be living in a a wonderful new home for a week or two, a stranger will be living in yours.

5. Lying on the beach

According to Orbitz.com, three quarters of the US population is heading to the beach this summer, and Europe seems set to follow suit. The question is; which beach is everyone heading to? The Travel Channel seems to think its Australia’s Gold Coast. Famous for its perfect surf conditions, golden sands and warm water, the Gold Coast offers a variety of beaches for you to see, and be seen at. The most popular is Kirra Beach – so popular you’ll have to get there super-early to snag a spot, but you’ll only want to leave just after sunset.
Long-layovers and lengthy cramped flights can make travelling absolutely miserable, and unless you have cash to spare for an airport hotel, the best thing you can do is hope you’ll find a quiet corner in which you can doze. Or at least that’s what you had to do. Not anymore, at least not in Abu Dhabi’s International Airport. An introduction of sleeping pods will give you the full private-bed experience for as little as eight British Pounds an hour. Giving you the chance you need to shake off that jet lag and arrive at your destination refreshed and ready to start your vacation.

4. Sailing the Seven Seas

Cruising has always been popular, and why shouldn't it be? You get the full ride when stepping onto a cruise ship – comfortable to luxury accommodation, five-star dining, and world class entertainment. So why has there been a sudden burst of increased interest? Well it’s not really the actual cruise ships that are attracting all the attention, but rather where they are sailing to. The Western world has been thoroughly saturated with cruise ships, so now they are moving East. This means the chance to taste new cultures and explore different cities is easier than ever before. Liners cruising to the far end of the world include P&O, Crystal Cruises, and HollandAmerica.

3. Pop-up hotels

Festivals, retreats and random fields this summer are going to be able to offer you so much more in terms of accommodation. Pop-up hotels, in simple terms, are various forms of accommodation that can be set up practically anywhere and offer a full luxury hotel service. This idea has become very popular at festivals events around the UK. Glamping, which is luxury camping, has been taken to a whole new level at these events, and you know don’t only get the hotel-like surroundings but also the service that goes along with it. Or you can opt to stay in stacked hotel like the ones offered by snoozebox.com. You’ll have four solid walls, a full hotel service and a truly unique experience as no pop-up hotel is ever the same.

2. Self - Tours

Group tours can be great, you don’t have to organise anything, or consult chunky guidebooks to know what exactly it is you’re gazing at in awe. The problem is, they cost dollar and are limited to certain attractions. Enter the new almost-hands-free self-tour. Depending on the city you’re in, you can download a guide that uses geo-locators to pick up where you are and what attractions are surrounding you, playing audio information as you approach them. The best thing about these guides is that once they’re downloaded onto your smart phone they no longer need to use data and works completely off-line.  Download our Hummba City Guides today on Google Play and at the Apple app store.

 1. Sleeping Pods

Long-layovers and lengthy cramped flights can make travelling absolutely miserable, and unless you have cash to spare for an airport hotel, the best thing you can do is hope you’ll find a quiet corner in which you can doze. Or at least that’s what you had to do. Not anymore, at least not in Abu Dhabi’s International Airport. An introduction of sleeping pods will give you the full private-bed experience for as little as eight British Pounds an hour. Giving you the chance you need to shake off that jet lag and arrive at your destination refreshed and ready to start your vacation.

Travel smarter this year! Travel mobile!

There’s a well known saying that you don’t have to work harder, but rather work smarter. Here at Hummba, we believe that the same can be said when it comes to travelling.

Travel nowadays seems to be characterised by long queues at airports, bulky guide books, lost or damaged luggage and general annoyances that tend to mimic the reasons we took time off in the first place. Luckily, modern technology has come to the rescue and seems to be addressing at least a few of these problems.

Booking a flight or double checking your hotel reservations can now be done in a fraction of the time it used to online. Adding to that, there are numerous Android and iPhone applications that can help you plan your holiday and also get the most from your experience.

There are accommodation apps, restaurant apps, and weather apps in all shapes and sizes. But while it’s all well and good to organise the logistics before you set off, many people still rely on travel guide books to figure out what to do once they have arrived. These guide books are often bulky, easily damaged and more of a burden to carry around than they are worth. There’s also nothing more that screams “tourist” than someone pulling out a guide book in the middle of a busy sidewalk.

The Hummba application, which is available on both Android and iPhone, lets you download mobile audio guides directly onto your smartphone. These audio guides will give you information about things to do and places to see as you move around. The app is location aware and uses GPS technology to provide you with information about places of interest nearby. This means that going mobile really is the smarter way to travel.

Hummba has detailed guides to hundreds of popular tourist destinations all over the world. Discover the best museums in Paris, or explore the New York nightlife with a guide to the best bars and clubs.

Browse through our audio guides and find places of interest while you’re on the go.

Smartphones Under Threat

With all the buzz surrounding the Smartphones, it's no wonder that a warning has been issued and its a stern one. Smartphones are in danger of being hacked by cyber criminals. This may seem like yesterday's news but an announcement has been made at this years Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona. We've all heard time and again of the threat of hackers but I think few of us take it seriously, you'll think twice when something happens to you but for those of you willing to heed the warning, hold on to your chairs, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

The incredibly popular Smartphones could face an explosion of virus attacks in the coming years. The scary possibility is that a worm could infect a phone tomorrow and go around in the world in minutes. But it's not all doom and gloom, security companies, mobile operators and makers of operating systems have found solutions to limit the attacks so far and delay an onslaught of spam and viruses. But as much of a relief as this is, it won't last forever but delays can help the process of trying to figure out what can be done to prevent or at least limit the damage.

An interesting fact is that on any new platform, the first years, the viruses are done by hobbyists just showing off their technological abilities but later down the line more professional money-making criminals move in. It took hackers 20 years for computer viruses to become a money-making industry but they are estimating it to take a lot less time for mobiles.

Security companies have developed anti-spam and anti-virus software for mobile phones as well as anti-theft features that allow a phone's owner to remotely block the device and even map its location. But Smartphones, with their email and Internet capabilities, will invite more break-ins, especially with the growth of mobile banking. So be prepared and keep watching this space for updates....

Mobile Users to Reach 5 Billion

This article was supplied by News24.com:


The ranks of cellphone subscribers will swell to five billion people this year thanks to the growth of smartphones in developed nations and mobile services in poor nations, a UN agency said on Monday.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) also said the number of mobile broadband subscriptions would exceed one billion this year after reaching 600 million in 2009.

"Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services," ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure said in a statement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the industry's biggest trade show.

The number of mobile subscribers had reached 4.6 billion people last year.

"I am confident that we will continue to see a rapid uptake in mobile cellular services in particular in 2010, with many more people using their phones to access the Internet," Toure said

In the developing world, the growth has been driven by the use of phones for mobile banking and health services, the ITU said.

"Good examples include sending reminder messages to patient's phones when they have a medical appointment, or need a pre-natal check-up," Toure said.

"Or using SMS messages to deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines," he said, adding that such uses can save millions of dollars and lives.

People with no bank accounts but mobile subscriptions are also increasingly able to do financial transactions with their phones in developing countries, he said.