Risks when booking a yoga holiday

Oh dear. Once again this morning I wake up to news of the demise of another airline. This time the Scotish based GlobeSpan (or FlyGlobespan as the airline is known). And once again we are told about passengers stuck overseas and not protected and having to pay extra to fly home.

This makes our industry look amatuer. There should be protection in place for every passenger who books and takes a holiday no matter what. There are to many loopholes and not enough enforcement of the law. Prosecuting companies and directors after the event is no good, enforcement of the regulations should be proactive. Prana is protected by our membership of the Travel Trust Association, where all customers money is kept in a trust account until they return from their holiday. We also hold an ATOL licence issued by the Civil Aviation Authority. This costs us money. Many of our competitors have no such protection in place - they will take your money and if something goes wrong - they will leave you stranded. As well as being illegal it is morally wrong. Claiming to be a 'booking agent' does not mean you are exempt from your obligations under the package tour regulations - if booking accommodation and one more service (transfers, lessons etc) then it is a package holiday and is covered by the regulations. I would like to think it is ignorance on behalf of a lot of companies but I suspect it is a blatent disregard for their customers and the law.


It wil take a lot more than a rant from me on a blog very few read to get the situation changed. It needs people in Government to understand the issues and the consequences of ignoring them. With a general election on the way it seems this will not be addressed in the considerable future, so I'm afraid we are likely to see repeats of the headlines that we see this morning.

The only thing people can do to protect themsleves is ask when making a holiday booking what protection you have in case of the failure of ANY of the parties involved (airlines, hotels, the agent, etc). Use a properly protected travel agent - it may seem old fashioned but despite the best efforts of some in our industry we are professionals who have our clients best interests at heart.

ok, rant over. time for a cup of green tea and some deep breathing ...........

Beginners Yoga Weekend

We still have places available on our yoga for beginners weekend being held at the end of Janaury. It's perfect for anyone interested in starting yoga or those of us who had let their practice slip.

Held at a wonderful location on the edge of Hadrians Wall the weekend includes 2 nights accommodation, all food and lesson. All this for just £245 per person - what a bargin!!!

Off topic now - I was very excited to be able to buy the Christmas edition of the Radio Times on my lunch! This means Christmas is nearly here.......hooray!

To book the yoga weekend just give us a call on 01670 828521

the monthly yoga newsletter

This morning it was time to write our monthly e-newsletter. We thought we would look at using another email distribution system rather than the one we use at present (1&1). After 2 hours of fiddling about with MPZmail I gave up and went back to what I know! Sometimes if it isn't broken you should not try and fix it......

New Yoga Retreat

We have just launched a fantastic new yoga retreat on the Prana Holidays website. Based in the south of Spain, they run yoga and self development courses all year round. This includes everything from dancing, yoga, laugter classes and learning Spanish. If this si ssomething that sounds good to you (it does to us!) then check out the full list of courses available in 2010 at this Spanish Yoga Retreat.

With regards to Christmas cards ;-) I found the following - In 1843 John Horsley made the first Christmas cards. He had been asked to make these by Sir Henry Cole who was too busy to write to his friends over the Christmas season. These were printed in black and white and then coloured by hand. The custom of sending cards grew in Victorian times with the arrival of the new 'Penny Post' postal service.(Thank you Topmarks.co.uk)

Better get back to work....

A quiet time for yoga holidays

Well it is very quiet here at Prana Towers. With the run up to Christmas and all that goes with it, holidays are the last things on people's minds. We do get the occasional call with someone wanting to get away from it all over the festive season but even they are far and few between.

I have been keeping myself busy with tidying up the website, adding a bit more content and writing cards to all our customers and suppliers. It is a strange tradition, writing Christmas cards. I wonder how it started?

I'm off to google it and will come back..........

wii fit and yoga

Has anybody tried the Wii fit yoga program? We had a discussion about it over lunch and wondered how good/bad it was?

It seems like a lot of money to spend on a Wii Fit when you could just go to a yoga class. I do like my Wii but dont want to spend all that money on the board etc if it turns out to be some childs game and not really useful for yoga at all. If I was a beginner then maybe it would be an excellent introduction to yoga and help build my confidence. I would still want to attend classes though.

Winter has arrived in yoga holiday land!

The first hard frost of the winter this morning. I was slipping about walking in to the office. There is something very nice about these mornings when you have to wrap up and walk as fast as possible to keep warm. I could'nt live with it all year around but for a month or two its nice. It's when it is cold and wet and grey that it gets me down.

Lotus Blooming Yoga Retreat in the papers

We got all excited at the weekend as one of our favorite retreats was featured in the national press. Lotus Blooming was in the Sunday Express. It is a really nice article and gets the feel of the place exactly. The full article is available on line at http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144508/Bliss-with-my-Marbella-guru

As you can also see we have had a bit of a change on the blog. We think it looks quite fancy but please let us know your thoughts as we always want to hear from you.

Bye 4 now