Originally Posted by
Flightrider
Good on for TUI trying something new.
Banjul was a staple of Thomas Cook's winter flying programme for several years, alongside the Monarch A300s and 757s for Gambia Experience. Ebola was the biggest single impact on the market and there has been little or no mainstream activity there since.
Although it wasn't an every-day thing, I seem to recall more than a few tech stops in Dakar coming north out of Banjul where no fuel was available, after tankering everything you could on an LGW-BJL to keep enough on board to then get from BJL to DKR with sufficient reserves.
Not so new - in the early 1990's Thomson Holidays began a series of Dakar coast package beach holidays from LGW using a 757 iirc of in-house Britannia AW.
They wanted to do it as a there and back for the crew - Big hoo hah - my flat mate was a #1 CC for BY at LGW and told me all about it.
The series lasted not even one season I think.
Crew did not want to night stop as they felt it was too dodgy, but OK for Thomson's to sell package holidays to the punters lol.
Now it appears new resorts are being built there so we will have to see if it sells.
Senegal saw the introduction of the first Club Med resort in the 1970s, and tourism has grown to be an important part of the Senegalese economy.
Since the 1990s, Senegal has made an effort to reach beyond visitors from the former colonial power France and was trying in attracting tourists from Spain, Britain and Italy, in part motivated by the example of neighbouring Gambia, which drew a much larger tourist share from Northern Europe.
Having now lost most of the Egypt and Tunisia market for years now, I guess Tour Operators are scratching around for new beaches, or those that do not suffer from ''resort fatigue''...
Banjul as we know gained bigger popularity in the early 1970's, mainly at first discovered by the Swedes, who love the sunshine, and then of course the Germans.
BCAL had the route and had built a new hotel on the beach (Atlantic ?) so it then soon became the darling of the Brits for some exotic winter sun, being not too far away.
BCAL's Blue Sky holidays offered the destination.
In 1976, Alex Haley published his novel called Roots. It was made into a TV mini-series the following year and received many awards. Roots is about Kunta Kinteh and the subsequent generations of his family. He was a slave from West Africa, taken to America from his village on the northern banks of The Gambia river.
It was this TV series that created interest and helped to put The Gambia and the West Africa people on the map.
The site of his birthplace is now a common tourist attraction in The Gambia.
Thomson with Britannia 737-200's in 1977 made the first UK package charter flights to BJL (with a Tech stop) and the crews night stopped.
Tania 737-200 here at BJL
https://i0.wp.com/jamoroki.com/wp-co...68%2C780&ssl=1
Most UK charter airlines then started to fly to BJL
as we know for their winter staple business, along with the Canary islands.
Business boomed until the military coup in 1994 and the Gambia holiday business was then never the same again.
70% of the business was lost overnight.
In 2006 the Government sought to draw up a master plan to re energise the market by 2020.
A less than savoury part of the BJL travel business for the past 30 years has seen flocks of European women of a certain age seeking ''company and comfort'' at a cost, with young Gambian beach boys known as Bumsters. An issue not specific to the Gambia, but also present in Jamaica, Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt.
The Gambia and Senegal are not Playa de las Americas, nor Benidorm.
Quote from - AirportPlanner1
I guess if it doesn’t sell they will pull it, or if it doesn’t sell well enough it’ll be a one-season wonder
as seen before. Yup!