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Make Poverty History G8 July - Travel + Accommodation Details

"drop the debt" | 22.02.2005 16:30 | G8 2005 | Free Spaces | Globalisation

The Make Poverty History campaign has set up a website for booking travel, accommodation and tours of the area for its supporters who will be attending their G8 summit demonstration march and rally in Edinburgh on Saturday July 2nd.

See:  http://www.makepovertyhistorytravel.org



The website services link with Travel ScotWorld and Hotelpedia. However the majority of the accommodation is only available through the evening of Saturday 2nd and the travel offers only provide departues from Edinburgh until Monday 4th - two days before the actual G8 Summit starts (although people wishing to stay longer are encouraged to contact Travel ScotWorld). The website will also carry information on drop off and pick up points for people booking their own coach transport.

The initiative to provide tourist packags to "middle class protesters" has recieved a fair amount of media coverage and is part of a wider debate in Scotland over the potential tourist benefits versus the media fixation on riot doom-mongering around the G8 Summit, which will be held at Gleneagles Hotel in July. While Edinburgh and Lothians Tourist Board has been taking a positive view of the potential influx of hundreds of thousands of people to the area, the local authorities and police are being less than helpful with the requests from other protest groups to set up "convergence spaces" or rural campsites to house protestors over several days, and to agree spaces for counter-conferece events.

Recent Media Coverage:

G8 summit is gift horse, not the bogeyman
Scotsman, UK - 22 Feb 2005
Leave the troublemakers to the police - let's concentrate on the tourists...
Travel Scot World is offering packages for "middle-class protesters" which include a visit to a distillery and a walking tour of Edinburgh. But there is no link to the G8 summit on the VisitScotland website and Coldplay, who had been booked to give a concert in Loch Lomond to coincide with the march, have been forced to pull out by the police.

Tourist board bids to cash in on anti-G8 protesters
Scotsman, UK - 13 Feb 2005
PROTESTERS aiming to disrupt the G8 summit at Gleneagles are being offered specially tailored short-break packages by a Scottish tourist board.
 http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=168252005

Plan to cash in on G8 protesters
BBC News, UK - 14 Feb 2005
Tourism chiefs are aiming to cash in on the thousands of protesters expected to gather in Scotland for the G8 summit.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4265357.stm

"drop the debt"

Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. hmm — a
  2. SchNEWS take on this — SchNEWS Reader