2009 Moto GP travel

You either like bikes or you don't, if you do like bikes then is it road bikes or dirt bikes, if it is road bikes you probably have a specific preference for a brand, a style, an era and so on. Bike people are pretty difficult to pin down. So for all my fellow bike fans out there this post is about travelling to the Moto GP. We send people to events all around the world on a request basis but in the case of Malaysia and Australia we organise the "full monty" an end to end package with; hotels, transfers, track access and a function ( Wayne Gardner at Phillip Island this year).

We do the Phillip Island bikes because it is in Australia, it is in our state and we love it. The Malaysian Moto GP we do because every year as we get more requests for this event than we do for Hungary or any of the big Spanish GP events.

The thing I think that makes the GP event so interesting for the traveller is that like the V8 Supercars you can get on a similar machine to the bikes you are following, you can ride the track at Phillip Island, buy the gear and have a real sense of the event or the race. With F1 and other events I dont get to feel so close to the actual event experience. You don't get to feel like Jesen Button on the street in your 2004 Celica but being on the open road on your Aprilla is another matter.

I am of course forgetting the fans you gotta love your Moto GP fan. The events have a sort of out door music festival buzz about them except that everyone is eyeing off everyone else's gear & bikes in the parking area.

Travel to South Africa for the World Cup

The challenge of booking travel to the World Cup in South Africa.

There are lots of sporting world cups and they usually include the name of the sport in the title however with soccer it is just “The World Cup”. I am assuming that this is because it was the first World Cup and is still the biggest of all of them all.

Travelling to the world cup or the soccer world cup (if you have a preference for another code) for most people is a once in a life time experience to be there. For Australians fans the Socceroos are enjoying a purple patch that may not last forever so going to the world cup has added importance as other nation’s wait decades or longer to re qualify and we have had two in row. The challenges for the soccer fanatic who is prepared to dig deep to see the green and gold army take on the world are many. It is in South Africa which is a new destination for most people, it is on a continent few of us have ever been to or thought we could afford to travel to. We don’t know a lot about South Africa, why do they have three capitals for instance I mean Canberra alone is enough for anyone what did those guys do so wrong they got three lots of politicians? So how do we make sure that when we try to book travel to South Africa we don’t get rolled like all those people who bought Olympic tickets off the net or people who got scalped in Germany!

So here are my ten tips for booking world cup travel.

· Firstly, look for companies that are MATCH appointed operators as they have been sanctioned to sell tickets. These sites usually have permission to use the official logos.
· Secondly, make sure the company is in Australia on New Zealand otherwise you will have no recourse to legal action.
· Thirdly, make sure they have a travel agents license on their web site, you can always phone consumer affairs to check or look on the official industry pages to make sure they are real.
· Fourthly, see if they are members of tour organizations like CATO (council of Australian Tour Operators) and the TCF (Travel Compensation Fund).
· Fifth, see if you can find them in white pages, normal companies that have a track record are in the phone book.
· Sixth, check they have a street address as real companies who are honest and up front declare who they are and where they are.
· Seventh, check them out on Google Maps or even Google Street view just to make sure.
· Eighth, give them a call, do they answer the phone in the name of the company they advertise the package as, if they don’t this could be just a side business’s and they aren’t experts.
· Ninth, read the small print of the offers to ensure it includes match tickets, hotels of the standard you want and access to travel arrangements between the grounds.
· Tenth, The World Cup is in Africa you need: a ticket to get there above all else, to get Jabs from your Doctor (its Africa) a good insurance policy (its Africa) and a passport (its Africa).

Don’t forget it suppose to be fun.