Martin Randall Travel is a cultural tour operator in Britain. It specialises in tours for small groups and classical music festivals.
Martin Randall Travel was founded by a former art history student in 1988. [1] Its primary focus is the organisation of tours for small groups, led by a lecturer who is an expert in their field. In 1994, the company expanded into producing music festivals to complement their small group tours. The company has four festivals confirmed for 2024 including the Salzburg String Quartet Festival, Mozart Along the Danube, The Divine Office: Choral Music in Oxford, and Opera in Sicily. [2] Their programme for 2024 contains one hundred and seventy tours and events in more than forty different countries. [3]
Martin Randall Travel focuses on a small clientele and has received favourable reviews. Ian Irvine in The Independent said, "All three... highlights from my life as a cultural tourist were part of the remarkable series of music festivals run by Martin Randall." [4] Christine Headley praised Martin Randall Travel's handling of money – covering most costs and distributing local currency - on the festival she attended. [5] Kenneth Asch wrote in the Travellers' Handbook, "Of all the travel services I have researched, Martin Randall Travel is perhaps the most comprehensive, culturally speaking." [6]
Martin Randall Travel won the British Travel Awards: Best Special Interest Holiday Company (Small) award in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 & 2019. [7]
Tourism is travel for pleasure, and the commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be domestic or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments.
Swan Hellenic is a British cruise line specialising in expedition tours of historical or cultural interest aimed at the upper end of the cruise market. Swan Hellenic was first established as Swan's Tours in the 1950s as a tour operator carrying guests to historic sites, providing enrichment throughout their trips. In 1983, Swan Hellenic was acquired by P&O and became a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & plc in 2003, but it ended operations in 2007 after Carnival discontinued the brand. Shortly after, All Leisure Holidays Group purchased and revived Swan Hellenic, but ended its operations in 2017. G Adventures acquired the brand later that year and planned to revive it for a second time in 2018, but sold the brand to a private group in 2020, which plans to resume Swan Hellenic's operations with its first-ever new-build ship in 2021.
Founded in 1982, Rough Guides Ltd is a British publisher of print and digital guide book, phrasebooks and inspirational travel reference books, and a provider of personalised trips. Since November 2017, Rough Guides has been owned by APA Publications UK Ltd, the parent company of Insight Guides.
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Holiday on Ice is an ice show currently owned by Medusa Music Group GmbH, a subsidiary of CTS EVENTIM, Europe's largest ticket distributor, with its headquarters in Bremen, Germany.
Woolacombe is a seaside resort on the coast of North Devon, England, which lies at the mouth of a valley in the parish of Mortehoe. The beach is 2 miles (3.2 km) long, sandy, gently sloping and faces the Atlantic Ocean near the western limit of the Bristol Channel.
Romanichals are a Romani subgroup within the United Kingdom and other parts of the English-speaking world. Most Romanichal speak Angloromani, a mixed language that blends Romani vocabulary with English syntax. Romanichals resident in England, Scotland, and Wales are part of the Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller community.
Pontins is a British company operating holiday parks in the UK, founded in 1946 by Fred Pontin. It was acquired by Britannia Hotels in 2011.
The Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus (PGMC) is a choral organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1981, it is one of the oldest gay men's choruses in the United States, and is a cultural fixture in Philadelphia. The Chorus is affiliated with the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA). The Chorus has performed with the Rainbow Chorale of Delaware and the Anna Crusis Women's Choir, and has participated in several GALA festivals. The chorus is currently under the artistic direction of Joseph J. Buches.
Trailfinders is a British travel company in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
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Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, donated the entire Folkways Records label to the Smithsonian. The donation was made on the condition that the Institution continue Asch's policy that each of the more than 2,000 albums of Folkways Records remain in print forever, regardless of sales. Since then, the label has expanded on Asch's vision of documenting the sounds of the world, adding six other record labels to the collection, as well as releasing over 300 new recordings. Some well-known artists have contributed to the Smithsonian Folkways collection, including Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, Woody Guthrie, and Lead Belly. Famous songs include "This Land Is Your Land", "Goodnight, Irene", and "Midnight Special". Due to the unique nature of its recordings, which include an extensive collection of traditional American music, children's music, and international music, Smithsonian Folkways has become an important collection to the musical community, especially to ethnomusicologists, who utilize the recordings of "people's music" from all over the world.
Thomas Cook & Son, originally simply Thomas Cook, was a company founded by Thomas Cook, a cabinet-maker, in 1841 to carry temperance supporters by railway between the cities of Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Birmingham. In 1851, Cook arranged transport to the Great Exhibition of 1851. He organised his first tours to Europe in 1855 and to the United States in 1866.
Scottish Travellers, or the people in Scotland loosely termed Romani persons or travellers, consist of a number of diverse, unrelated communities that speak a variety of different languages and dialects that pertain to distinct customs, histories, and traditions.
ACE Cultural Tours is an operator of educational and cultural travel tours. Specialising in small group tours with expert leaders such as Humphrey Burton, Andrew Wilson, Colin Bailey, Michael Nicholson and Julian Richards, the organisation provides tours in the UK, Europe and across the globe. The tours cover a variety of subjects and include cultural cruises as well as natural history courses and music festivals. In 2009, a series of European tours was devised in partnership with English Heritage.
A motorhome hire agency is a company which hires privately owned motorhomes to customers. This practice is common in the UK, where several agencies dominate the market. Motorhome hire is a type of vacation rental. More recently, campervan rentals have become more popular in the U.S. Campervan hire is a category of vacation rental.
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Thomas de Mallet Burgess is a theatre, musical theatre, and opera director from the United Kingdom. He founded the Perth opera company Lost & Found, and was General Director of New Zealand Opera from 2018 to 2023 before selected as artistic director of Finnish National Opera.
Tanaka Farms is a family-owned and operated farm and produce market in Irvine, California. Its focus is not wholesale goods production but agritourism, mainly focused towards school-age children on field trips. It grows over sixty varieties of fruits and vegetables and does not use GMO seeds or unapproved pesticides. The organization also operates a sunflower field in Costa Mesa. Agritourism makes up about a third of the farm's income, with their produce stand and CSA program making up the rest.