The Scottish Hotel Awards takes place annually to celebrate and encourage the achievements and successes of Scotland's hospitality industry.

Recognising people of excellence, hotels and guesthouses, the ceremony hopes to raise standards for the Scottish industry as a whole. This year, categories were extended throughout the awards to make room for a growing number of participating hotels.

Loch Melfort Hotel proved to be popular in the Argyll and Lomond region, taking home four awards at the ceremony hosted in Glasgow on the 15th January:

• Best housekeeping team
• Best pet-friendly hotel
• Best accessible hotel
• Best Operations Manager (Sam Erskine)

Forget the doom and gloom attitude this Blue Monday (21st January), and turn what is believed to be the most depressing day of the year into an opportunity to spend quality time crying (with laughter) with friends and family at The Crystal Maze LIVE Experience.

From 21st to 27th January both the Manchester and London attractions will be encouraging teams to not only compete for crystals to secure extra time in the iconic dome, but search for special blue crystal shaped tokens hidden within game play too.

Eagle-eyed team members who manage to find the blue tokens during their time in the Maze will win a free crystal to keep and take home with them. The Manchester and London Mazes will each be placing these celebratory tokens into selected games each day during the Blue Monday festivities, but you’ve got to be in it to win it!

To shed even more light on this dark day in January, The Crystal Maze LIVE Experience has announced that a brand-new maze that will be opening in March in the heart of London, the West End. The new maze will feature 32 new games, is double the size of the existing London space and spread out over three floors so will allow for triple the number of players.

Based on the outrageously popular 90s TV show, The Crystal Maze LIVE Experience sees teams of up to eight people guided through the maze by an eccentric Maze Master.

Players get the chance to don retro satin bomber jackets before entering the maze and dashing through the Medieval, Aztec, Industrial and Futuristic adventure zones where they must complete a series of challenges against the clock.

The more challenges completed successfully, the more crystals the teams win and the more time they have for the final challenge, the iconic crystal dome. In this ultimate challenge, the team must work together to catch as many tokens as possible - a task made so much harder by the dome’s super-strength fans. The amount of tokens caught determines the team’s final position on the leader board.

Birdland is staging a 'Birds Behaving Badly Week' to celebrate feathered friends over the February Half Term Holidays (16th- 24th February)

From blood-sucking songbirds and puking penguins to stinking storks and spitting swallows, keepers at the Bourton-on-the-Water wildlife attraction will reveal revolting facts about some of the world's baddest birds.

There will be toxic talks and terrible trails highlighting the horrible aspects of natural history and visitors will also be able to meet some real feathered fiends of their own during special meet the creatures' sessions.

“Despite their often angelic reputations, birds are definitely among the worst behaved animals on the planet with some truly disgusting table manners,” said Head Keeper Alistair Keen.

“The marabou stork urinates on itself in order to cool its legs, fulmar chicks aim projectile vomit at the face of any potential threats and oxpecker birds will open old wounds on cattle in Africa in order to drink their blood.

“Swallows and housemartins use their own spit to build nests and the lilac-breasted roller vomits on its own chicks to deter would-be predators,” he added.

With its combination of woodland, riverside and gardens, Birdland features more than 500 birds, ranging from the UK's only colony of king penguins and parrots to cassowaries and cranes in a mix of free-flying and aviary displays.

The spectacular 'Out of Africa' feature showcases the huge variety of birds found on the African continent.

Among the species on display are black-cheeked lovebirds, village weavers; famous for their extraordinary nest-building prowess as well as a flamboyance of flamingos featuring no fewer than 36 individual birds.

Other species include touracos, starlings, guinea fowl, exotic ducks and the impressive-looking southern and northern ground hornbills.

Plus don't miss the new Pandemonium of Parrots display showcasing these highly-intelligent and brightly coloured birds.

Famed for their mimicry skills and playful personalities this new integrated feature provides visitors with the chance to get close to over nine different species including rainbow lorikeets, rare golden conures and a range of macaws and cockatoos.

Wizz Air recently relaunched a direct route to Romania’s second largest city, Cluj-Napoca from Birmingham Airport. To mark the occasion, an inaugural ceremony was held at the Airport where passengers and employees gathered to celebrate.

The 166 passengers departing on the 07:40 flight were greeted with a celebration for the new route which operates twice weekly on a Wednesday and Sunday.

Tom Screen, Acting Aviation Director said: “Officially welcoming this new Wizz Air route to Cluj-Napoca from Birmingham Airport is fantastic news. We are constantly working with airlines to ensure that where there is demand for a route we can provide enough choice to be able to meet it - whether this involves the introduction of additional direct services or an increase in the frequency of services.

“Cluj-Napoca is an exciting addition to our growing variety of direct services. Home to incredible architecture and gothic-style landmarks dating back to Saxon and Hungarian rule, vibrant nightlife and a wide range of forests and parks, Cluj-Napoca has something to offer everyone.

“We are pleased this route has been reintroduced and look forward to making the route a success for Wizz Air.”

Tamara Vallois, Head of Communications at Wizz Air, said: “We are happy to celebrate the commencement of an exciting new route at Birmingham Airport. Our newest route from Birmingham connects the city with Romania’s second largest city, the lively Cluj-Napoca, which brings an outstanding opportunity for the travellers who seek adventure to explore real Romanian hospitality and the vibe of Transylvania.

“Cluj-Napoca offers bubbling nightlife and historical sights, a perfect combination for a weekend trip to Central and Eastern Europe. We are sure that our UK customers will enjoy visiting this special city as well as Birmingham will get even more cosmopolitan with tourists visiting the region.

“We would like to thank Birmingham Airport and look forward to welcoming many passengers on board our sixth route from Birmingham.”

As the Caribbean tourism sector prepares to welcome the New Year, we look forward to 2019 with a sense of optimism, excitement and much hope. We are optimistic because we are seeing signs that the lows which Mother Nature imposed upon us during the latter part of 2017 into 2018 are being reversed. We are excited about our prospects because of the incredible turnaround that we are seeing in the most impacted destinations. And we hopeful that the progress of our member countries and supporters can continue unabated, to maintain the momentum they developed since the storms of 2017 when everyone rolled up their sleeves and got down to work to build an improved and more sustainable product.

We are pleased to report that tourism accommodations are being rebuilt and reopened, airports are receiving their full schedule of flights with the return of airlines in full force and the diverse product offerings within our destinations are being restored.

At the same time, increases in the number of available seats, positive messaging and promotions in the marketplace have enabled the unaffected destinations to register continuous growth. The demand among international visitors is strong and Caribbean nationals have continued their quest to explore and enjoy the pleasures of their neighbouring destinations.

Regarding the cruise sector, most ports have been repaired and cruise calls have already returned to normal levels. Indeed, regional cruise visits grew in each month since May, with the region registering growth of 13.7 per cent during the May to September period and 17.1 per cent in the third quarter of 2018.

In October, the region launched a digital awareness campaign “The Rhythm Never Stops” on social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, coinciding with augmented airlift for the 2018/19 tourist winter season. Travel professionals and their clients received the message that the Caribbean is a resilient region with an unstoppable resolve to succeed and to keep on moving in the right direction.

For 2019, the outlook is bright for our destinations. We’re quite excited about declaring 2019 as the “Year of Festivals” in the Caribbean. Simply stated, there’s a rhythm to the region that cannot be replicated anywhere on earth. There’s no escaping the melody of nature, as gentle breezes and free-flowing fronds combine beautifully in perfect harmony; no getting away from the heavenly choruses of tides caressing magnificent world class beaches; no missing the cadence of our conversation, the tempo of our movement.

The Caribbean is a festival of rhythms and a home of festivals – music, art, literary, sailing, lights, food, rum, religious, dance – all with their own attractive rhythms.

The Year of Festivals will focus on the fascinating events that have become an integral part of the Caribbean tourism calendar. Festivals help to energize communities across the region, while giving visitors more reasons to enjoy our destinations.

Despite all there is to celebrate in 2019, we must also approach the New Year with a degree of caution since there’s still much work to be done. While preliminary data from our member countries revealed increased demand for travel to the vast majority of the 24 reporting countries, and despite a 9.1 per cent increase in arrivals in September 2018 when compared to the same month in 2017, overall our performance was still down in 2018. A third quarter decline of 3.2 per cent made this our best quarter, and the rate of tourist arrivals is now expected to slow to -1.0 per cent to -2.0 per cent - a definite sign that the tide is turning. Cruise passenger arrivals are projected to grow at an accelerated rate of around 6 per cent to 7 per cent.

Without doubt, our region is in a stronger position than it was a year ago. We are encouraged by the prospect of even greater collaboration with our partners in the industry, including the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association, the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association, and a range of travel professionals and industry partners who consistently offer Caribbean holiday experiences to their best clients. Our confidence is buoyed by the progress our region is making to combine its resources to bolster our competitive position internationally. The evidence is clear that a strong, unified Caribbean gives the region a global advantage which individual member-countries on their own have little chance of attaining. The success of our countries rests upon our ability to speak as a region with one strong voice.

On behalf of the CTO Council of ministers and commissioners of tourism, the board of directors, members and staff of the Caribbean Tourism Organization, I thank you for all your commitment, hard work and support in 2018, and wish you a New Year of rich blessings and prosperity.